Being what we are, a little too human, we tend to exhibit all the frailties of the flesh. We tend to become distracted, discouraged, dismayed, and doubting, and yet the Lord has something special to help those who want to persevere in the end.… he that shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved. Mark 13:13.
We are facing great conflict. We have a destiny to fulfill, and our destiny is not merely to survive, but the subdual of everything under Christ. We are not merely trying to come through as a few selfish individuals who finally made it. None of us are going to love our lives that much; we will be ready to lay them down for the Lord. If I had to survive in a world without a walk with God, I would as soon pass out with the first wave of judgment, wouldn’t you? But we are alive to do the will of God, to seek His face with all of our heart and to fulfill the ministry God has for us. That is the important thing above everything else.
Keep your hearts open to each other. I see something coming, and I give you a warning solemnly before the Lord: the time of deception is upon us. I can understand why the antichrist is called the son of perdition. Only one other individual in the Bible was called the son of perdition—Judas Iscariot. There is nothing worse than the Judas spirit of betrayal that kisses Christ in order to show the others who He is so that they can seize Him as a mob and crucify Him. That spirit is in the earth again, for when the antichrist’s end-time manifestation on the earth is mentioned in II Thessalonians 2:3, he is called the son of perdition, or the son of hell.
Jesus said that the time would come when your own family would betray you (Luke 21:16), and when people would think they were doing the will of God by destroying you (John 16:2). Deception will be so great that if it were possible Satan would deceive the very elect. Imagine what he will do to the rest of the Christian world. The day is past when you could evaluate what you heard by whether it sounded true or not. The spirit of deception is in the world, and Satan is out to deceive, Jesus said false prophets would abound in this day. We must have more teaching on this to prepare the people not to be deceived, not to fall into the traps of the enemy, but to be alert.
God is establishing ministries and establishing churches, and Satan will come in to try to divide them. I give you warning: Be on the alert. Be prepared. Move in with all your heart to walk with God.
The one key that eliminates deception is this: If any man is willing to do His will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or whether I speak from Myself. John 7:17. It is not how you figure everything out in your mind, but it is how your heart is dedicated to do the will of God that determines whether you will be deceived or not. The understanding and the capacity to know the truth does not come from your IQ; it comes from your heart because you are set to do the will of God. When you want to do His will, you will know the truth.
There will be those who are maligned and slandered before you, yet they will be God’s men. Others will come like Satan, as angels of light. Paul warns of this (II Corinthians 11:14). Satan will not come with horns, split hoof and a tail. He will come as an angel of light, an exceedingly religious spirit. Religious people can find many things to criticize in this Walk, but watch that you do not strain at gnats and swallow a camel. By present standards this Walk is most unorthodox, but orthodoxy has a way of rising up in its organization and planning behind closed doors to crucify Jesus. Let’s be careful of that kind of orthodoxy. Let’s beware of the fundamentalism that chops down the charismatic revival and everything else God is doing. In the name of defending the truth, they are building walls against God’s revelation.
The days of deception will come upon the whole world. Jesus said, “As a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth” (Luke 21:35). The man or woman who will stand is the one who is constantly seeking above everything else to do the will of God. And be careful that while you are doing the will of God you do not downgrade your brother. In these days of deception, if you keep your heart pure—even if a brother comes along and presents himself as something that he is not, and you do not pick it up—you still will not walk in deception.
You say, “I want to see through everyone.” You will wind up with a spirit of suspicion. You will be looking at everyone and seeing devils behind every fire hydrant. You will see the devil working everywhere. “Well, isn’t he working?” Sure he is working. But the demon world is very close to the human spectrum of vision. If you move on higher in the spirit world with your heart really set on the Lord, the demon world will fade out. The human spectrum is on one level; the demonic spectrum is above that; then angels; and the Lord is above all. You want to walk on the highest level.
The greatest fault of the Pentecostal movement was that even at its peak, it did not reach up into the highest level, and the most spiritual people were so devil-conscious that they were seeing devils everywhere. They probably were there, but I would rather see what God is doing in a situation than what Satan is attempting to do. I would rather be divine conscious than demon-conscious. Keep your heart set to do the will of God and to love your brother, and all the other things will take care of themselves.
We cannot underestimate the value of revelation. You could be in this Walk because other people talk you into it, and you come because you feel something of the freedom of spirit. Beware of that kind of adherence to this Walk. You will encounter too many situations in which you will need direct revelation from the Lord, and you will not be able to trust your reactions, your responses, or your conditioning. You will not even be able to trust the way you have arrived at the will of God in years past, for even then deception may have entered into your judgment in a measure. You must be open to a flow of revelation from the Lord.
Heed what I say, lest you become a casualty along the way through bitterness or criticism; lest something get into your spirit to make you disenchanted with the whole Walk, and you become a murmurer and a complainer. Suddenly the heavens will be shut to you and you will not see the wonder and the beauty of this.
There is nothing in the world as great as the Walk that God has brought forth. How shall we survive in it? I believe God has led me to a complete dedication. Everything in this world that I ever valued on the human plane I have lost. I have given back to God a thousand Isaacs He gave me, because it was more for the glory of God that I give on the altar before the Lord even that which would have meaning to me, in order that I might wholly follow the will of the Lord.
Wherever God has planted His word, Satan will come to try to snatch it away and twist people into a pattern of betrayal. In the days before you it is very important that you not be moved by things that would disillusion you. If you should hear a report that one of your elders has gone astray or someone you loved dearly has betrayed you, you will go through a great heartbreak. It will be difficult, but you must set your heart upon the Lord and keep seeking Him until He reveals Himself in that experience. Then you will say, “I could have been turned aside and disenchanted with the Lord over many of these people, but I cried unto the Lord, and the Lord heard me. He revealed Himself to me.” I am telling you these things because you will be walking in them. I have been walking in them for a while, and now the Lord is speaking that the Body is coming into it and they must be warned; they must be prepared.
Judas walked as an apostle who may have even raised the dead. He healed the sick, cast out devils, had a wonderful grasp of the word, and he preached the Kingdom. He went out with the twelve (Matthew 10:1–8), and with the seventy (Luke 10:1–20). Yet Jesus said, “Have I not chosen you twelve and one of you is devil?” Not a devil or the devil—the Greek has no article before it. “One of you is devil” (John 6:70). We read in John 13:27 that in the night Judas betrayed Jesus, Satan entered into his heart. But by then he was already seeking an occasion to betray Him (Matthew 26:16). All of that is a picture of the betrayal of the Body, when men will deliver you over for persecutions and many things (Luke 21:12).
The disturbances that will come within the Body in the next few years require two things. The Lord has shown me two things that were absolutely necessary for the Body to walk in. In every message I have written since then I have emphasized first that you stick together as a family, that you be loyal to each other and love each other; and second, that the revelation of the Lord be upon you to guide you and show you what to do. These two qualities prepare you for survival, but more than that, they prepare you for the spiritual assault that will be almost unbelievable against the people of the Lord to divide them and to turn them away.
This Walk is based upon divine order and your submission to it. I am well aware that God has positioned people in this Walk who will betray it, but God has done it, just as He made Judas one of the apostles. I do not know why God allows this to come. But I can tell you this: Set your heart wholly upon the Lord. Believe in the Body He is bringing forth. Believe in the Remnant He is restoring. Believe in what they will be able to do to glorify the Lord in the days to come. It will be a time of satanic activity beyond what you know.
When the Lord reveals to people a situation, as they begin praying, I watch the enemy come in to divide, distract, and confuse them so that they will not understand the real issue. I have asked the Lord, “O God, how can this Walk come forth when Your sheep are so stupid? They lean on their own understanding and they get taken in.”
It does not matter who they are—young or old, elders, prophets apostles—listen to them with submission in your heart. Weigh what they say, and listen. As you dedicate yourself to do the will of God, if that word remains intriguing and beautiful, witnessing to your heart, listen to it. But as you are dedicated to do the will of God, only God can whisper to you, “There is something wrong.” When something is wrong, seek the Lord carefully.
“But,” you say, “they are elders. They are infallible.” No, do not get that idea. Read the twentieth chapter of Acts about Paul’s meeting with the elders of Ephesus. He said, I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you publicly from house to house. He went on to say in verse 28, Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.
I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. Acts 20:20, 28–30. Open your heart to see that God will allow you to be in situations in which testings will come to you. If Satan is able to cause you to see me as a man with all his faults, and that is all you see, you will turn away from the Walk. But if God reveals to you who I am, why I came forth in the earth, and what God has ordained for me to do, you will never waver. Keep these remarks in mind. When we know one another after the flesh, we will all stumble. But I do not look at you after the flesh. I always see you with the hope and the vision and the revelation of what you are in God. Do the same in return.
Do not let Satan beguile you, until you look at the man and his faults and begin to knock him down, or you will miss the oracles of God that are coming forth for you. As for me, it is a small thing whether people accept me or not, because I have difficulty even accepting myself. The only reason I accept myself is because God has laid His hand on me and I know who I am. I know what He has ordained for me to do. And the only thing that will help you is to know who you are in God and what He has called you to do. Otherwise you can become bitter, rebellious, and discouraged. That is the spirit of the age, and it will wipe you out. You can be completely deceived. When I talk with those who stumble so badly, the only verdict they can give is, “I don’t understand—I was deceived.”
We should study the nature of deception and understand why it comes, but you can count on this: if you understand the nature of revelation, you can guard against deception. Revelation that comes from the Lord shows you the truth, but revelation comes only to those whose dedication is to do the will of the Lord, not to know something and casually talk about it with confusion in your minds. Sometimes all that people want is answers for their questions. Forget your questions and problems. Focus on doing the will of God. There are many questions I cannot answer, yet I have been led for many years to do certain things that turn out right. I can be deeply disturbed and burdened for certain people. I may not even know what their problem is or what is happening, but I feel the burden, and the Lord gives me a word about the situation. And you will find that the witness of the Holy Spirit does not make mistakes.
I give you these warnings. When you do not understand, do what I do; keep seeking the Lord. Cry out to Him! If you lean on your own understanding you will miss the truth. But cry out, “God reveal! Show me. I want to walk with You.” Who knows the torment people go through? They live in it in their emotions and their minds. The assault of Satan, the fiery darts of the wicked one can hit you and turn your thinking down another channel completely. But if you keep crying out, “Lord, Thy will be done,” He will bring you through. God will show you His will. If you will fast and pray and seek the will of God, you will come through. Otherwise you will have a diminishing amount of strength and spiritual reserve to meet what is coming.
It is a time of crisis. Either we will move into what God has, or else we will be contained in a corner, struggling with a little mediocre ministry to a few people. That is not the will of the Lord now. You must lay it on the line and say, “I am going to be dedicated to do the will of the Lord.” Do not let your heart draw back. Do not let anything discourage you.
How does this relate to intercession? Isaiah 62 tells us, For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not keep quiet, until her righteousness goes forth like brightness, and her salvation like a torch that is burning. And the nations will see your righteousness, and all kings your glory; and you will be called by a new name which the mouth of the Lord will designate. You will also be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen; all day and all night they will never keep silent. You who remind the Lord (they are called the Lord’s remembrancers on the King James Version—those who call the Lord to remember), take no rest for yourselves; and give Him no rest until He establishes and makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth. Verses 1–3; 6.
What is the command of the Lord? That you be a holy pest who bothers the Lord until He does what He said. You say, “Well, if He has promised it, He will do it.” No, the promises of the Lord are potential energy. They can be compared to a battery. The power is there to do many things—run tape recorders, flashlights, anything. The potential is there. But when we see it in action it is quite another thing. The promises of God are like a great reserve, or storehouse. When God says what He will do, it is a promise, but always consider it as a potential thing. Tune into the wires; hang onto the terminals; get your jolt! It is there! Believe God for it. Power is there if you will appropriate it.
This is what we mean by appropriating—submit yourself to the Lord and worship Him. Get the blessing flowing in your heart. When it flows down there, grab onto it. Say, “Lord, I am going to hang on until I get everything You have for me.” Most people give up, not just when things are going against them, but also when things are going for them. “Oh, I prayed that God would give me an avalanche. Praise the Lord, I got a blessing.” But an avalanche is what you asked for. You have to do something about that. You have to reach in. Say, “I want something more! For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not keep quiet. I will keep hollering.”
Remember the Syrophoenicean woman who had the demon-possessed daughter? The disciples said, “Send her away. She is a pest. She is bothering us.” It looked as if even Jesus was discouraging her. He said, “We can’t take the children’s bread and give it to dogs.”
“But the dogs get the crumbs that fall from the table”—she was willing to take anything she could get. He blessed her faith, He cast the devil out of her daughter, and He gave us a lesson: it makes no difference who you are. You may not be the children of Israel in the flesh; you may be a Gentile, but it does not matter. Just be persistent.
Is persistence in intercession that important? You say, “I cried and cried and cried and there was no answer.” Keep on crying. Go back and read Luke 18 again about the old widow who was cheated out of her inheritance. She said to the judge, “Avenge me of my adversary.” He did not fear God nor man, but she kept after him, and he finally voiced it, “This woman by her continual coming is going to weary me. She is wearing me out. I have no resistance to this kind of thing.” And shall not thy God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily.
We must grasp this idea of hanging on. Very few in the Walk have ever done this. You should say, “I am going to do this. I am going to keep crying until I have no voice left, until I pass out from hunger, but I am going to keep trying until I get through.” There is an intensity, almost a violence in your spirit because you believe Him and know you must have Him. You love Him. The promises are important to you. The truth is that you cannot stand to live with yourself any longer if you do not break through to all God has for you. You come to abhor life, abhor yourself, your circumstances—everything—if God does not meet your heart. So we keep praying and crying. You who remind the Lord, take no rest for yourselves; and give Him no rest until He establishes and makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth. That is what intercession is all about.
Why should it work that way? The reason God is so slow to move is that He generally follows a principle of letting things work out for themselves. Remember what Mark Antony said in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar? “The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones; so let it be with Caesar.” In other words, just let things run their course. Paul put it another way, “The sins of some men are quite evident, going before them to judgment; for others, their sins follow them to the judgment” (I Timothy 5:24). Some people seem to get away with everything. Other people get caught. But it is just a matter of time until they all will face the charges. There will be a time of reckoning.
God tends to be passive and let the iniquity continue on until the judgment day. There are a few interferences, a few times that chance changes that pattern, but most of the time men’s sins follow them to the judgment. A man who is wicked and abuses everyone lives to be ninety. What right does he have to live so long when he is an oppression to everyone around him? I do not know. It is God’s way of allowing events to run their course. God followed that in the Old Testament. Abraham wandered in the land of Canaan. God said, “All this is yours.”
“Fine, I’ll take it, Lord.”
“Not for four hundred years yet. You are a little ahead of schedule, Abraham.” God led him all the way from Ur of the Chaldeas, then said he was too early. He spent his life wandering, and finally died at a ripe old age, still a pilgrim.
The children of Israel spent four hundred years in Egypt before God brought them out and they possessed the land. But the reason for it was that the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet come to the full (Genesis 15:16). There was a lot of sin that had to be committed in Canaan before God would be justified in commanding the wars of annihilation, when Joshua was ordered to kill all the inhabitants of the land, men, women, and children. God was a righteous Judge Who would not deal with them until they had sinned up to their full. He tends to let things come to their fullness.
What can change it? There is one principle higher than all of the other principles that govern God’s dealings with man, and that is the principle of prayer. Higher than all the principles we have learned in science, and all the psychic and emotional principles, is the principle of prayer. Men who prayed have parted rivers and made them pile up. Imagine that! Men who prayed and believed God have caused seas to part. Men who prayed shut the mouths of hungry lions, so that they would not devour them. The flames of the fiery furnace were cooled. Dead were raised. Many things happened. Why? One great principle supercedes everything else, even God’s tendency to let things ride until they have fulfilled their course: someone can stand in the gap and say, “No! I am going to cry day and night until that is changed.”
You do not need to drift through life. “Whatever will be will be; the future is not ours to see.” That is not so! The future will be what you believe God for it to be with that insistent intercession before the face of the Lord. Now is the time to change the course of your whole life. You can change. You can be anything you want in the will of God. Set your sights high and pray for it. You have to break out of the rut of passively drifting and saying, “I am a victim of my generation, of circumstances, of my family, of my heredity, of all of these things…” There is something better for you to walk in. You can have what God wants you to have. Do you believe it? You can be what He wants you to be.
It starts like this: “I am not going to keep silent. I’m not going to keep quiet. I am not going to give the Lord any rest, or take any rest until He remembers Zion and He brings forth what He has proclaimed in His Word.”
Don’t you feel like repenting of your passivity? Be inspired with this. It is the time to reach into this above everything else and say, “I am going to walk with God. I am going to be an intercessor. I am going to pray. I am not going to rest, or give Him any rest. The Word says the Lord neither slumbers nor sleeps, and I am going to be sure of that. I will cry out to the Lord until I get an answer. And it is not going to be ‘Yes, perhaps, maybe.’ I want it now!” We want the divine interference in the course of human events that comes through intercession. Through faith we understand that the ages were framed by the word of God (Hebrews 11:3). All we have to do is contend until God gives the word, and this whole age could be changed.
How shall we pray about the Judas spirit? Christ came forth the first time to be betrayed and condemned, as it was written. But the Scriptures speak of His coming forth now as the time When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe… II Thessalonians 1:10. That does not sound like betrayal. But in the world, the antichrist spirit, the son of perdition, opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God, (II Thessalonians 2:3, 4). Even in the Body we will find the false coexisting with the true. But all of this iniquity the Lord will slay with the brightness of His coming and with the word of His mouth (II Thessalonians 2:3–7). We should pray for the Living Word to come forth in greater utterance. It will slay the antichrist spirit. We must believe the Lord for it with all our heart. Christ is not coming forth in this Body, to be shamed, but to be glorified and to be admired in all them that believe. Christ is to be glorified in us. Christ is to be admired in us.
This Parousia, or coming of the Lord, is not meant to be a betrayal that brings shame upon Christ. He was crucified once for sin, but it is not the Father’s will that Christ be crucified afresh and put to an open shame. Hebrews 6:4–6 tells us that anyone who attempts to put Christ to an open shame has no hope of redemption. God will not tolerate His Son to be so humiliated. The first humiliation was suffered vicariously for us, but this time it is Satan’s assault when Christ is to be glorified. We should absolutely pray against the Judas spirit, the spirit of betrayal which comes to malign and put down the Body of Christ, when Christ wants to be glorified in them. We do have to go through the work of the cross, but that does not mean that Christ is to be disgraced in us.
We must act upon this word. Let God reveal it to you. Have the ministries minister to you and lay hands on you. This must be a revelation from the Lord. Some of the purest moving in the Body comes from the young people who listen to the word. I do not know why I have such access into their hearts, but they really listen to me. They know I tell them the truth, so they participate with a whole heart, and without any reservation.
We should persistently prophesy judgment upon these sources of deception and upon this spirit. Energy goes in cycles. You see it in the earth, the way the waves come in and the tides move in and out. The moon is full and then it wanes. Everything, even your own energies, moves in cycles. When you reach an ebb of low energy, instead of getting discouraged and saying, “Oh, I must force myself,” just reach into the Lord, draw strength and renew yourself. Then go back to the intercession again.
I have learned, when ministering judgment against satanic forces becomes difficult, to wait on the Lord until I am strong, and then I pray the prayer of judgment. After that, I cut the bridge and go do something else. I read the Bible or do something to completely distract myself. Then I go back to waiting upon the Lord, and pray again. It must be like a shock that comes. If you continue praying for a long time, defenses and immunity build up. Psychically an individual learns to live with it. But if God is really dealing with a person, He will bring him to repentance shortly. What you should do is wait on the Lord, then hit the target, then blow up the bridge you built to the individual or circumstance. Then draw away from it, because if you build a bridge, Satan will throw something back over your own bridge and the reaction will wipe you out.
I do not know if you understand these psychic and spiritual principles or not, but you should. Otherwise, you will get a revelation of a certain problem and think, “I know what to pray about now.” You will start praying, and you will pray for about a day. Then all hell will seem to break loose against you, coming back. To avoid that, when you feel the witness in the Spirit that you have been effective against Babylon, you have prophesied against her, and have done what God wanted, then blow up your bridge. Then go about your business, worshiping the Lord and renewing yourself. Put up walls and build an immunity. It is as if you have left the scene. The enemy can throw up everything he wants at you, but it doesn’t even hit you. When you are strong again, build another bridge and prophesy again. You can constantly wear away at the problem.
When you are being hit, submit to the Lord. Instead of becoming angry or violent, go and humble yourself before the Lord all over again. Wait before Him, and when He gives you strength, go right back to what He has for you to do, Satan will come in to accuse you and put you on the defensive. Don’t be on the defensive, but humble yourself and repent, and go right back to hitting the problem again. This is a very effective principle. It is how I survived in the early days when I first started to learn how to walk with God.
God will judge men for our sakes, not because He is trying to defend us, but because we humbly seek the Lord to do His will. We are not better than anyone else, except that we want to do His will. God will preserve us and bring down everything that is against His will. That is the only key to judgment. Should God answer your prayers for judgment if you are not submissive to the will of God? No, you will be open for the same judgment. Do the will of the Lord. Humble yourself before the Lord.
There can be a heaviness that comes after a session of violent prayer. Remember Elijah’s great contest with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel? The fire descended and the Lord was revealed as the Lord to them; then Elijah slew 450 false prophets. Afterwards he ran into the wilderness because Jezebel was after him. Heaviness overcame him and he requested for himself that he might die, but, the answer the Lord had was interesting. He sent an angel to cook him a nice little breakfast, and He let him go back to sleep. That sleep was not a satanic heaviness. He finally nudged him and gave him something more to eat. Then he went forty days on the strength of that double breakfast he had (I Kings 19:8).
Learn to refuel yourself physically as well as mentally and spiritually. Do not go to the Lord in unbelief and request that you might die. Just blank out the battle. Go get your rest. Say, “Lord, I have had all I can handle now,” and commit everything to the hand of the Lord. Then you will go through the process of recuperation. There is a rhythm to ministry. Jesus ministered, casting out devils and healing the sick. He was able to perceive that virtue had gone out from Him. Next you read that He has drawn Himself out to the wilderness to pray all night. He knew that you cannot breathe out unless you breathe in. There is a rhythm; you cannot be constantly ministering in intercession to break the stranglehold of the enemy without constantly appropriating from the Lord in an equal measure. Understanding this gives a great key.
Thank you for this word