We are preparing ourselves for the day when God shall speak to His people and lead them by a pillar of fire. I thank the Lord for the leadership He has laid upon my shoulders for the people. Now I thank Him for the day that is coming, when this will be required less and less; for the people of the Lord will all be led by the Spirit of the Lord themselves. The days are ending in which we must hear the word of the Lord through another. God is setting His Body in order, and many prophets will be speaking; all will know the leading of the Lord; all will have the witness. We thank the Lord for the days of revelation that are coming. Let us be like unto people who are watchful, waiting for their Lord, for they know not in what hour He cometh (Revelation 3:3).
We are learning the details of executing what God has given us. Like David, when we go out to kill our giant, we do not dare use Saul’s armor or follow the way of warfare commonly used. David was not as tall as Saul, and he could not handle his armor; he had not proved it. So he abandoned that and picked up five stones from the brook and brought down the giant with one of those stones (I Samuel 17). God is teaching us how to face the giant and how to bring him down. He is showing us that we cannot use Babylon’s armor. We cannot war the way Babylon wars. We prophesy against the enemy. We speak the word of the Lord. We fight God’s way, and He gives us the victory.
The days before us are not days like we have walked in before—days of legalism and bondage. We will walk in a freedom, but we are not to take the freedom that God gives us as an occasion to lasciviousness (Galatians 5:13). We are not to take the divine order that God is restoring and make it a legalistic experience, but we are to walk in it in all joyfulness and all grace. We will be temperate in all things. We will use the liberty that God has given us, but we will not abuse that liberty. We are going to learn to be disciplined and walk as Christians in every respect.
What is it like to hurdle the boundaries of one age and find yourself in a day without horizon and find yourself a person without limitation? What would it be like to rise out of the morass of futility and stand on the pinnacle of hope and survey the glories of the Kingdom?
We live in a new day which holds both judgment for the world and promises for the remnant of God. The hour of travail is upon the earth; the Lord is speaking of a new way of life. We must be diligent and alert as we prepare to possess our inheritance.
In these chapters we see many of the ways and means by which we are to prepare ourselves to face the most difficult period of history. We see that as a prophetic community we will be preserved by the power of God even while the earth shakes. Yes, the earth will shake, for the remnant is coming into the authority of Christ to bring down Babylon and every power that exalts itself against the Lord. These are days of great change and distress, but the need of the remnant is not to have a sense of survival. We are sons of destiny; and as we face this day, we must have an awareness of our relationship to the King and to His Kingdom.