One of the deadliest enemies of our walking in God’s promises is the state of passively coexisting with the enemy. Our own hearts must stop submitting to situations that are not right. We have come to the time of which Jesus spoke, when the angels are to be sent to the four corners of the earth to separate the wheat from the tares (Matthew 13:30, 40–42).
We will not enter further into the bringing forth of the Kingdom until He separates the tares from the wheat. We must not let time slip by and fail to redeem it. How much time do we have left? What will happen if the enemy delays us long enough? We will miss the plan of God completely. Then another, more violent generation will have to arise, who will get a Word from God and stay with it until it is fulfilled.
At this particular time Satan cannot stop the revelation that comes to people’s hearts. The living Word that is coming in this hour is very decisive. It opens up heart after heart, but the hearts that are not open to God become completely closed to the Word.
You must realize that you do not have a whole lifetime to seek God. Jesus explained these present days with the parable of the ten virgins (Matthew 25:1–12). At a certain time the door will be shut. Those who do not have their oil ready will be shut out; that will be the end of it. There is an ominous foreboding in what is happening in these days. A thousand prophets must come forth to execute God’s purposes, but they will not come forth merely as the result of months and months of training. To become true prophets of God, they must somehow break through the barrier of time.
The conspiracy of Satan and hosts of demons will try to keep you tied down and preoccupied with many things. The right teachings that God is bringing today, along with your own hope and expectations, could bring you into a full prophet’s ministry. But Satan will do everything he can to rob you of your time in order to delay you and slow you down. He wants to hinder you and shackle you until you cannot win this end-time race.
Learn what the enemy is doing to time. Do not plan on becoming old and dying, with others coming on the scene merely to rehash the truths that have been given for this time. Something must change the present pace. You will not come forth into God’s perfect plan without explosive faith and determination. Something must happen in your life to prevent you from being drawn back from the full, intense fervor that you should have. There are a thousand tricky situations, with little weights here and there, to make you lose the race.
Luke 8 records the parable of the sowing of the seed. Some of that seed was ready to bring forth mature grain, but the thorns choked it out (verse 7). That is happening right now. The rocky soil is not the problem. Demonic birds are not plucking up the seed before it germinates, nor is persecution making it wither. The main problem is the thorns that come and choke the Word. You may be just short of breaking through to a mature ministry, to that manifestation of the sons of God (Romans 8:19). You may love the living Word and feed upon it. However, you must not only know how to feed upon it; you must also be able to reject the thorns that come to choke and strangle it.
In a rising crescendo, like a tidal wave, many are rapidly approaching the manifestation of the sons of God; yet something is stopping the process. They have been in one spot too long; they have been wandering around a mountain when they should have been moving into Canaan. The army of the Lord must march with faith, not with frustration. They must worship the Lord, giving praise and thanks, voicing their proclamations, making their claims, and moving right on to see things happen.
Believe in God’s promises to you. Anticipate becoming one of those prophets of God; but believe also that you are hindered in approaching that goal. The barriers must be broken. Either that, or you will totally reject the possibility of ever seeing God’s promises fulfilled. You will find yourself putting their fulfillment back on this basis: “I am not worthy of this. I missed the boat.” You have not missed the boat. It is Satan who is working to destroy you through the time element of one delay after another. There is a fixed time; and if Satan can delay you long enough, you will miss God’s plan for you.
For the first time in the entire Christian era, there is a fixed time. If you do not get in by that time, you are through, and you lose out. Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins… Matthew 25:1. Then refers to this end time. Read all of Matthew 25. It is filled with stories about the end time. Today you have only a certain period of time to do what God wants you to do.
The Lord prophesied that He would do a quick work in the earth and cut it short in righteousness (Romans 9:28). This has to be. There must be a people who break through. These days must be shortened or no flesh will be left alive (Matthew 24:22). Satan is raging because he knows that he has only a short time (Revelation 12:12). He is more aware of what is happening to time than you are. He is doing everything he can to play havoc with time, to bring oppression upon it until it gets away from you. Frustration comes; and instead of time being an opportunity to seize upon the things of the Lord, you find you are running on a treadmill and getting off at the same place where you got on. You must not accept that. You have a responsibility to dig in with all your heart and see changes happen.
You will not accomplish anything just by trying to discipline your time. If you try to do this in yourself, you will fall right back into the efforts of the flesh. It has to be done in the Spirit. Merely making out a list of the day’s activities and trying to follow it through will not work effectively in the Spirit. Do you want to be like a cork in the waves of the ocean, or do you want to see the destiny fulfilled that God has presented to His people? There is a foreordained portion for the sons of God to walk in, and you must get into it. You must be delivered from the futility of time. You must be released from the frustration that you feel. Start by believing God, by working right up to the realm of the Lord. Stay in His presence, claim what you are going to have, and believe!
People live too much in the future. They live in the realm of anticipation instead of appropriation. They have a built-in response that says, “Yes, tomorrow will be wonderful. We will see marvelous things happen.” That built-in response will cause you to live in hope instead of faith. As great a virtue as hope is, rule it out for right now. You might as well be swallowed up by despair, as to live with the kind of hope that Satan can use to prevent a genuine active faith from operating immediately.
But now abided faith, hope, love, these three: and the greatest of these is love. I Corinthians 13:13. You know that this Scripture is true, and it is good to have hope. In fact, sometimes you survive by hope. But there comes a time when hope becomes only a crutch to hold you up. As long as you have crutches, you say, “Eventually I will walk. Right now I am doing well just to limp.” You need to throw away your crutches of hope and say, “I am going to have faith and walk right now!” Something within you must rise up for more than hope or a good beginning. Tell yourself, “Right now I am going to do it! Right now I am going to do it! Right now I am going to do it!”
God always puts a test upon you, but not to judge you or condemn you for something that is wrong. He only wants to see whether or not you are going to walk in what He is setting before you. God’s promises can be a blessing or they can be a curse. If God has given you a promise, and yet you excuse yourself for not walking in it now because you are hoping that after a while it will come to pass, then that promise is a curse to you. The Fundamentalists think that way, saying in effect, “We have nothing now. The day of miracles and gifts is past. We believe that after a while we will have them, but in the meantime we will just sit and wait for a rapture.” That kind of reasoning produces a deadly passivity. Anyone who is believing to walk in God’s promises now is labeled a heretic by the Fundamentalists. They would rather believe the Scofield Bible and Larkin’s teaching which explains that God’s provision is all for the future. Consequently, they must live with hope and call it faith. That is misguided hope. Traditional Christianity feeds unbelief to good orthodox believers until everything of faith is put off in the future. Let us not limit the Old Testament promises to a Zionist movement that rejects Jesus Christ. We read in the New Testament about the true Israel of God, and we see that there is no other name but Christ whereby we must be saved (Acts 4:12). That applies to Jew, Gentile, or anyone else.
With today’s restoration of New Testament truths, you can say, “I have my Bible back again. Its promises are mine.” But for what? Are you going to limp along for years like the Fundamentalists, or are you going to believe that you can walk in your destiny? In your own heart you must feel this: “I am what God says I am, and I will not wait another day longer. Right now I am a prophet. I am raised up by God, and I will not walk under any handicap. I am going to speak the Word of the Lord.”
Do not anticipate—appropriate! That is what God wants you to do at all times. In Exodus 3:13 Moses asked, “Who shall I say sent me?” God has many names, but He answered, “YHWH.” It means, “I AM THAT I AM.” “I AM” is a present-tense verb. The only way that you can truly express YHWH is this: “I AM THE GOD THAT I SAY I AM. I AM THE RIGHT-NOW GOD.” The Pharisees wanted to stone Jesus when He said, … before Abraham was born, I AM.” John 8:58. He was not saying, “I WAS,” or “I WILL BE”; He was saying, “I AM THE RIGHT-NOW GOD!” If He declared that, then you should declare that you are the right-now ministry that God has called you to be. If He is the Right-Now God, then you are a right-now prophet. Right now! This is the accepted time (II Corinthians 6:2). There is no other way; it has to be now! If what God is bringing forth on the earth is true, then you must walk in it now.
What is the answer for the futility of time? By faith we understand that the worlds (ages) have been framed by the word of God… Hebrews 11:3. God has made a provision for this end time, but it will not happen until someone stands up and prophesies this new age into existence. Let us stand and proclaim this age. Let us prophesy! An age is framed by a Word of God. Do we realize how much initiative God has given His people? In a true submission to the Lord, we could prophesy any kind of Kingdom we want. Jesus said, According to your faith be it unto you. Matthew 9:29b. Those who bow to Him as their King are the Kingdom. Jesus told His disciples, Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Luke 12:32. As we serve Jesus as Lord, God is giving us the Kingdom! It is our Kingdom. What do we want to do with it?
If the Kingdom is ours to proclaim, and it is to be the way we want it, then God will look down on us a thousand years from now and see a people who believed Him and made it happen. Otherwise, we will have been a sorry mess of people who lived only with wishful hopefulness. He has given us the Kingdom and that is exactly what we must walk in. Aren’t you sick of falling short of God’s promises? There is nothing wrong with what He has said. There is nothing wrong with what He has done. There is nothing wrong with the way we believe to see the Kingdom come forth. In this age it has been laid in our hands, and we must take it.
Decide what you want. If you do not quite make it today, you can make it by tomorrow. Stay with it. Continually live in the present appropriation, not in some future anticipation. Make the prophecies that came in the past happen. Let their fulfillment be in the present. Talk about them now, and walk in them now. Be like Peter: Get your foot over the edge of the boat and start walking on water. Do it now, not because of any enthusiasm, but because you believe. If you start sinking, someone will rescue you. But start walking on water. Right now!
What happened to the Israelites? They looked at the giants and backed off in fear and unbelief. God said, “That does it! You don’t go into the promised land!” Then they realized that they had sinned, and the next day they decided to go in and fight the giants. God allowed the giants to slaughter them, and they were driven back into the wilderness where they were to wander for forty years until finally they all died (Numbers 14). They missed it by only twenty-four hours.
In spite of all the promises that God has given for this hour, those who fall short of walking in them will be just like the Israelites; they will die in the wilderness of the tribulation. Let us rather be today’s sons of the prophets. It is the accepted time. Joshua would say, “Go and take the giants! You can do it!” Let us pull down everything that stands in the way. Right now!
This is not a time to relax. It is a time to pursue Satan and his hordes to the gates of hell. Stay with it until the victory is won perfectly. Do not be satisfied with anything short of all that the Lord has spoken, and more. Now is the birth of the sons of the prophets. From now on, move! Accept the end-time ministry of Christ and His anointing upon you. Walk in it! Now!