We want the keys to the greater works that God says are to be done. Jesus said, “The works that I do shall ye do also, and greater works than these shall ye do” (John 14:12). What is the key of those greater works? God’s power is a key, even as it was in the early Church when the Lord said, But ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you; and ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. Acts 1:8. We know that the early Church had a great deal of power. But what is the key to power? The key to power is authority, and the key to authority is unity.
God is speaking to us that the Body is coming together into one. He is stressing the unity and the oneness of the Body. If we think that the purpose of unity is just so we will get along together, we are mistaken. God is welding us into one so we can become the instrument in His hand to ultimately, in authority, bring down principalities and powers and see the greater works of God done in the earth. Unity is not a luxury; it is something we need. When Jesus speaks about the Body being one, He says, “I pray that they may be one, Father, as We are one, that the world may believe that Thou has sent Me” (John 17:21).
There is a purpose behind the unity of the Body of Christ. Our witness of Jesus Christ as Lord depends upon that unity. When we are one as the Father and Christ are one, then the world will believe. All that we expect to happen in the earth will come to pass because God has an instrument to accomplish it. That instrument is His remnant, which will move in great authority because of the unity that God has worked within them.
The fourth chapter of Acts tells about the aftermath of a miracle. The healing of the lame man at the gate of the temple caused such consternation that Peter and John were arrested because of it. After being threatened, they were released. And when they had been released, they went to their own companions, and reported all that the chief priests and the elders had said to them. And when they heard this, they lifted their voice to God with one accord.… Acts 4:23, 24. This is the only recorded instance of a multiple prophecy. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to hear everyone lift up their voices together in a prophetic prayer, all prophesying the same prayer?
The phrase “with one accord” is also found in Acts 2:1. And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. Like a clap of thunder, the sound of a rushing mighty wind filled the house, the Holy Spirit fell upon them, and flaming tongues of fire settled upon them.
Continuing in Acts 4:24b–28, we read that with one accord they lifted up their voices and said, “O Lord, it is Thou who didst make the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that is in them, who by the Holy Spirit, through the mouth of our father David Thy servant, didst say, ‘Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples devise futile things? The kings of the earth took their stand, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord, and against His Christ’ (all of this prophecy was spoken with one accord). For truly in this city there were gathered together against Thy holy Servant Jesus, whom Thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Thy hand and Thy purpose predestined to occur.” They had faith! They did not think that God had finally overcome a trick of the devil with the resurrection of Jesus. They knew that nothing had happened except that which God had before determined was to happen. His hand and His purpose had predestined it to occur.
“And now, Lord, take note of their threats.” Would you pray this way? “Lord, take note of this.” We tend to magnify our ills, “O Lord, look what’s happening to me!” They just said, “Lord, take note of this.” Their main concern was: “and grant that Thy bond-servants may speak Thy word with all confidence.” Acts 4:29. “Grant that we will be able to expound these wonderful truths out of the Old Testament Scripture”—is that what they said? No, their prayer was: “That we may speak Thy Word.” They did not talk about the Word. Only when the restoration began did preaching come forth. Only in the last two or three hundred years have we found expositions of the Scripture exalted to a place of prime importance. Expository preaching reached a great element, but the time has come, not for us to say, “Lord, make me a good expositor of the Word,” but, “Lord, let me speak Thy Word.” The early Christians spoke the Word of God with boldness. And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem exceedingly.… Acts 6:7.
Lord, bring us to the day when we stop talking about what God has said and speak what He is saying. That day is upon us. They prayed, “… grant that Thy bond-servants may speak Thy word with all confidence, while Thou dost extend Thy hand to heal, and signs and wonders take place through the name of Thy holy Servant Jesus.” And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak the word of God with boldness. And the congregation of those who believed were of one heart and soul.… Acts 4:29–32. They were of one heart and soul. Once again, it was the unity and the oneness that counted. They lifted up their voices, and with a oneness and a unity in their spirits they all prophesied together.
I would like to see that kind of prayer come forth, the kind of prayer that opens up everything to us. The place was shaken, literally shaken. Would you like to have that happen, that the place where the people are gathered is really shaken? Something was turned loose of which we have no concept, because there has not been such unity in the Body of Christ for almost two thousand years. Yet it is ready to come again as God brings the Body together. We must be dedicated to it, to be in one accord in one place.
The day of personal ambition is over. The day of one independent church is over. The day of saying, “Here I stand with my ministry” is also past. Today it is the ministry of Jesus Christ through a many-membered Body. We cleave to one another. There is a oneness of the Holy Spirit which we must have. It is in this unity that the power of God is going to be released to the people of the Lord again. We want to see the place shaken, really shaken. “Lord, grant that we will speak Your Word,” was the prayer of the early Christians, and it is our prayer too. In oneness they began to pray, and notice that the power was manifested because of the unity. The unity gave way to the authority.
There is a difference between power and authority. Power is not unknown to the demonic realm. The devils know something about power; they have a measure of power. But according to Colossians 1:13 we are translated from the dominion of Satan into the Kingdom of the Son of His love, so that anyone who comes into Jesus Christ is no longer under that perverted type of authority that Satan holds over a man’s life.
That dominion which Satan has is broken; it is gone. Satan has no authority over you as a believer. He may have power, and he may wield it as he comes against you, but remember that he has no authority. After Jesus rose from the grave, He made this proclamation, “All authority has been given unto Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:18–19).
The authority that Jesus had was manifested at other times. When the seventy disciples went out, Jesus gave them implicit commands about what they should do, and He said, “Behold, I give you authority over all the power of the enemy” (Luke 10:19). They cast out devils; the demons were subject to them in the name of Jesus.
Authority is greater than power. That is the reason we say in this hour that the Body must come together. As we unite, the authority gives way to the power of God which will shake the world. It will move many things. Jesus said, “If two or three of you shall agree, touching anything you shall ask in My name” (there is the authority: “anything you ask in My name”) “I will do it” (Matthew 18:19; John 14:13). It is that simple.
The word “agree” must be understood. The Greek word is sumphoneo, of which our word “symphony” is a direct English derivative. It means “together crying, together sounding out.” Literally the verse is speaking of two or three sounding out. With two or three instruments in tune there can be a symphony. With two or three saints crying together in the name of Jesus Christ, anything that they ask will be done. It turns loose the authority which comes through the unity of crying together and seeking together, and it opens the door for us to seek the face of the Lord with all of our heart.
We do not come together as a convention. We are not a legislative body; but by the grace of God, we will be one voice crying to the Lord! As with one voice we cry to the Lord, the powers of hell can be shaken. God is working to bring His Body together. We have heard about it and we have talked about it, but now we are ready for the real expression of it in the Holy Spirit. We are ready to come into oneness, letting nothing separate us from one another. It is not just an agreement to agree. It is a crying together. It is probably the most violent symphony that has ever been played. It is a new song—the new song that will be heard to the ends of the earth, the song that cries out to God, in praying and seeking the Lord. Forget about being individuals. We are not individuals. Let everything be adjusted to this crying together in unity.
Through the years we have observed the difficulty of prayer, as we struggled to have prayer meetings. We’d had some experience praying the Pentecostal way, so we tried that, every man praying for himself, crying out and beating on the altar; but somehow that kind of prayer was no longer effective. We tried the fundamental style, taking turns and offering sentence prayers. That didn’t work well either. The old-order prayer was for the day of the individual, not for the day of the Body. It was often so flowery that it was hard to tell whether the individual was praying to God or trying to impress the people. We knew there must be a better way of praying. The answer is in the fourth chapter of Acts: they all began to cry together.
During the last year or two, the Lord has begun to give us the keys of prayer. Someone cries out to the Lord with a prayer, and everyone else violently says “Amen” to it. The Spirit of the Lord is sounding through everyone, until a prayer is not an individual prayer with other people agreeing, but it is a crying of every heart together.
In all nights of prayer young prophets lead the people, who come to pray in shifts of several hours each. As they pray, the spirit of anointing comes and they begin to prophesy. It is not one person praying, but a body of people praying in real unity, and the prayer becomes a prophetic expression from the whole Body. As a result, we find that great things are happening.
In the end time several things will take place. When we say “end time,” we are speaking about the end of one age, but also about the projection of the Kingdom that will express itself chronologically before the end of that age. There will be an overlapping period in which we watch many Christians sighing and praying that they can hold out to the end, while we are glorifying God and reaching for a pole to vault over into the Kingdom.
Whether a person holds to a rapture theory to get there, or believes he will wade through with his boots on, does not make much difference, as long as he gets there. We are believing God for the Kingdom that is coming. If some can take a hop, skip, and a jump, and bypass a few things, more power to them; but let us be set to seek God with all of our hearts. If we stop and argue about a few doctrines, we may miss everything that God intends to do for us.
In this end time, in this new day (for it is both), we will find great power manifested. As we look into the Word we are shocked to see that God is saying, “In this day the powers of the heavens shall be shaken.” When I read the book of Joel, I am impressed that simultaneously with God pouring out His Spirit, these violent signs take place in the heavens: the sun being darkened and the moon turned into blood (Joel 2:29–31). These signs have never been seen in any fulfillment of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which leads us to believe that the principal fulfillment of Joel is still to come. He will pour out His Spirit, and there will be those signs and wonders. In the second chapter of Acts Peter quoted the prophecy about the signs taking place. He left it intact as one prophecy, indicating that its fulfillment was yet to come. This great outpouring of the Spirit upon a remnant of God and the sons and daughters who prophesy cannot be separated from the fact that the signs and the powers will be released in the earth, even unto the very heavens. Repeatedly it is mentioned in the Scriptures. The Gospels speak about it, and it is prophesied.
The battle is violent, and we begin to understand what is meant in the book of Ephesians when it tells us to put on the whole armor of God (Ephesians 6:11). It says we are fighting against principalities and powers. Principalities means authorities; they have the same root word. Didn’t we say that the devil doesn’t have authority? Any authority he does have is by virtue of the bondage of sin, not by virtue of any authority that really exists. A man may hold another man in bondage by sheer power and make a slave of him. Although it is against the Constitution of the United States for one man to enslave another, he may attempt to do it, and in doing so he exercises a perverted, degenerated form of authority over that man. We war against those degenerated forms of authority, and we will displace them because all authority belongs to the King. All the rule is His. All power, all authority in heaven and on earth is His. In this end time we move ourselves in this oneness to come to battle.
What does the Word tell us to do? It is interesting to note that the most comprehensive commandment to pray comes right after the exhortation to put on the full armor of God. With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints. Ephesians 6:18. That is a lot of prayer. God is trying to teach us that the armor of the Lord must be upon the army of the Lord; and yet the thing that makes it function is this united prayer, this oneness, this absolute crying together as one.
Now we have some keys. We see that the power is going to be released through the authority of Jesus Christ, and the authority of Jesus Christ is released through the unity of the saints. If it is to work, it will work because we are one in Christ. We will only be a group of little churches, and we will pray and get nowhere, until everyone begins to lift up their voice in one accord. Then God will turn this walk loose.
I do not want one trace of anything in my heart that will allow me to be at variance with my brother. No matter what he may do to me, I will not sin against the Body of Jesus Christ by recognizing any division or allowing it to remain. A disunity or a division has to be two-sided. A man may be vicious against me, but I can refuse to accept his separation from me.
Never expect the Lord to vindicate you, because His purpose is not to work out personal differences between His people. At the beginning of this walk, some individuals told vicious lies about me. When the truth finally came out and it was proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they had lied, not one of them came back and said he was sorry. Like old Jonah when he sat under the gourd and answered the Lord, “I do well to be angry,” I wondered, “Lord, why don’t You vindicate me? Why don’t You let one of those men come back and say he is sorry?” There was no vindication because the Lord is not the least bit interested in vindicating me or anyone else in any situation. It is His cause for which we are fighting.
No one ever vindicated Paul. There was never a council called by an investigative committee of the Roman Empire that finally decided Paul was innocent, and yet he writes in his epistles how evil spoken of he was. Was Paul guilty of these charges? No one ever came forward to say that he was innocent. If he was guilty, God forgave him. If he wasn’t guilty, it didn’t matter. God was more concerned about receiving the glory and honor.
You may say, “But that person wronged me.” Many times the people who are so dead right in a situation are the ones who have the wrong spirit about it. When we see people walking into the Kingdom, we may find that those who were always dead right do not make it, while those who were wrong and said, “God forgive me,” are getting in. Let’s recognize what God is trying to say to all of us.
You had better have a right spirit before the Lord and with your brother and your sister. Criticism and rebellion can get a hold of you; a little root of bitterness can spring up and thereby many be defiled (Hebrews 12:15). How deadly that is. We must hate it. We should rise up and say, “At any cost I will walk in the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
Why is the Lord giving us all these ministries, and apostles and prophets? Believe me—He is not creating another papacy! There must be a oneness, a striving together, giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Two unities are mentioned in the fourth chapter of Ephesians: a unity of the Spirit (verse 3) and a few verses later the unity of the faith: till we all attain unto the unity of the faith. Verse 13. We come into the unity of the Spirit before we arrive at the unity of the faith. Sometimes people come into this walk with strange doctrines they have learned elsewhere. They think, “Oh, we are learning some wonderful truths here. I’ll throw my wild gourds in, too.” But the Lord helps us, and if we have the unity of the Spirit there is a strange way in which He brings it all about until we come into the unity of the faith.
As with every truth we receive in this walk, we will start by repenting. Right now we must repent of the basic disunity that is a part of every old nature, that thing in the human nature which still wants to sit on the throne and pass judgment or evaluate everyone else’s efforts, sometimes in a very uncharitable way. We will have people in this walk who use very poor grammar; we will have some who look very strange. This never made any difference, and it never will make any difference. Rich or poor, whoever they are, we will have that oneness in Christ.
I am believing the Lord to liberate the sisters, for sometimes they have prayed like second-class citizens in the Kingdom. When we teach submission, we tend to apply it primarily to the sisters instead of teaching the real basis of all submission: submit yourselves one to another as unto the Lord (Ephesians 5:21). Submission belongs to the whole Body. It cannot be one-sided; it applies to all of us.
In my spirit there are no hard feelings toward any brother, nor any sense of withdrawal from him. No matter what sin he may have committed against me, I refuse to sin against any brother by breaking unity or faith with him. If I suffer in his behalf, I remember the words of Paul that he was filling up in his body the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ for His Body’s sake (Colossians 1:24). We will do that too. There is no greater sin than that of sinning against one another by breaking unity. This is a Word we must embrace together. If a brother is in need, we must share with him. When a young brother is struggling to start a church, he should not go hungry or have other needs that are not met. There must be ways of communicating and ministering back and forth through the churches. There must be a oneness.
We’ve seen many denominational men approach this walk and then back off. People with no formal training or background in church organization seem to have the greatest success in our churches. We are not saying that ignorance is to be held in high esteem, but rather that the denominational people are hindered by things they have learned wrongly. They have learned a sectarianism. The spirit of Babylon is dangerous, dividing brother against brother. Within the ranks of Babylon it is easy to find people who are looking at one another critically, because it is a system in which a man can rise through ambition, even stepping on the neck of a brother if need be, to reach a place of preeminence. We have seen this happen too often. It is not that God does not want to bless those brothers, but He is frowning on everyone who walks disorderly or in disunity. The one characteristic that marked the carnality of the Corinthian church was the division. One said, “I am of Apollos,” another, “I am of Cephas,” and another, “I am of Paul,” and there were some superspiritual ones who said, “We are of Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:12); but they spoke it with a spirit of division. Let us set our hearts to walk together in unity, humbly in Christ.
There comes a time in which every one of us could stumble and fall because of what a brother does to us. Offenses will come, even in the Body of Christ. Let there be within the Body of Christ that which shall so seek the unity and the oneness in the Lord that no matter what any of thy brothers or thy sisters shall do unto you, you will not sin against them by retaliating or by cutting them off or even by giving way to revenge. Let revenge never even be named among the brethren; let it not enter into thy thought.
Know that there is no greater sin that you can commit this day in the sight of the Lord Jesus Christ than to sin against that which He is doing in the earth, to sin against the bringing forth of the members of the Body of Christ into one. You shall not sin against that. No offense that any man shall bring against thee shall be as great as thine own offense of withdrawing from thy brother, or being wounded in your spirit to the point that you no longer have your heart open to him, or that you put up defenses against him or in any way withdraw from him. It is not a day that thou shalt have restraints or walls, but the Lord shall cause thee to bring down thy walls, for Zion in this day is to be a city without walls. By the virtue of her very growth shall she go beyond all walls that man could bring forth.
Thou shalt not consider thy brother and say, “I shall walk with him a mile,” but thou shalt say, “I shall walk with him the whole way.” There shall not be division or withdrawal within thee, but thou shalt earnestly cleave one to another in the Spirit of the Lord; for in this day the Lord shall bring them from the east and the west and the north and the south. He shall bring people from many nations and many countries and cause them to flow together by His Spirit into one. He shall forge an army that shall not break ranks nor thrust one another. He shall bring forth those who shall do His will in the earth and speak His Word.
Behold, if Satan is able to divide thee, thou shalt not stand. For even the Kingdom of the Lord, if it is divided against itself, shall not stand. But the Kingdom shall prevail, for it shall not be divided against itself. There shall not be one who shall rise up to seek his own place, but he shall seek for the welfare and the blessing of his brother. Let this be in your heart even as the Word hath proclaimed, that thou art willing even to lay thy life down for the brethren. Be not self-seeking nor ambitious. Let no man seek to build his own kingdom. Let no man withdraw unto himself, but let each man rise and say, “It is the Kingdom of God, and unto Him is all the power and the glory forever. It shall be unto the Lord that I shall labor, and for His glory shall I seek.”
Yea, the Lord would remind thee that thou shalt be open to one another to this extent: if one shall suffer, you shall all suffer with that one; if one shall be honored, ye shall all rejoice with that one. Ye shall not see any impediment. That which floweth through the Body shall flow unhindered. If it be an evil thing that cometh against the Body, ye shall all rise up and repent and thrust it from thee. If it be a good thing that cometh, ye shall all be partakers thereof, and ye shall walk therein in unity and strength in the name of the Lord. For He bringeth forth a Body that shall proclaim His will in all of the earth.
When you see your brother stumble and fail, and you see offense in him, you shall not shut your heart up unto him and say, “I shall not be a partaker of this. It shall not touch me.” Thou shalt not so sin against thy brother. Suffer with thy brother and repent with him for the sin that is found in his heart. God grant that he shall repent with thee for the sin that is found in thy heart and put it from thee that iniquity shall be purged. For it is time that God shall rain righteousness upon you. Yea, the Lord would say, “Make haste for the Lord would do a quick work in the earth, and He would cut it short in righteousness.” Therefore put away the unclean thing and flow together, O house of the Lord. Flow together in that which God is working in thy midst.
“Behold, thou dost know that everything thou hast claimed of thy God thou hast received because thou hast spoken it with thy mouth. This is the hour to give voice to the unity and cry out from thy heart to be one with thy brother and thy sister. The unity is not something to be assumed; it is not something to take for granted. It is something to lay hold of, to cherish, and to speak forth with thy mouth.”
“This is the hour that ye who once were afar off shall be made nigh in the blood of Christ. This is an hour when the Lord does break down the middle walls of partition and cause His Body to flow together in one spirit. Ye shall no longer think of Jew and Greek and bond and free. There shall no longer be divisions in your midst. The walls shall be brought down, and in thy spirit thou shalt be one. Thou shalt not give heed to the distractions and to the things that would beset thee, even on the natural plane, but you shall look to the unity of the Spirit. Thou shalt look to the great Spirit of the Lord that bringeth forth, that fuseth and blendeth His Body into one spirit and one new man, making peace before it. You shall give diligence. Be fervent to contend for that unity.”
“The Lord shall cause thy heart to rejoice in the purpose of the unity that He bringeth forth in thy midst. When there shall be agreement in the house of God, when there shall be a symphony, one sound, one voice reaching unto the Lord, then the mighty provisions of the Lord in the Word shall be seen, and the mighty day that hath been held in reservation shall be loosed upon the earth. Yea, thou shalt see how the Lord shall execute His Word on the earth and cut it short in righteousness when there shall be an agreement within thee, when ye shall stand fast together in one spirit, striving for the faith of the Gospel. Ye shall see the power of the Lord loosed, principalities and powers put into the pit, the coming forth of many things for which thou hast longed and yearned. Yea, they shall be loosed when thou shalt be agreed in one spirit.”