The Body of Christ will need a number of things in the days to come. One of them is the need to constantly push the young people. They are sincere and grasp hold of the teachings; they just need direction.
They are ready to run, but they must be told which direction to run. We will do that. As they go along, the young people will have a lot of problems that could swamp them.
They will need confirmation as they draw on the experience of older men, those who have gone through a great many things, those whose spirits are more tempered and mellow in some ways.
However, the young people who have this young spirit must lead out. If they do not, and the older people lead out with their experience, then this next move of the Spirit will go exactly the way every other movement has gone because the older ones will be limited by what they know.
Young people are not limited by what they know and have experienced, so they move ahead and set the pace. The experience of the older people will be needed to deal with problems that are sure to come up. There will be a lot of problems, many of which will be great, and we will have to meet them. The Body of Christ is not going to be all young or all old. It will be tempered with a lot of good balance. The older prophets can give a steadfast word because they are tempered in the walk.
When Caleb and Joshua were ready to go in and take the land of Canaan, they were the only ones left of their generation. Moses and Aaron had died.
Here was a problem: no one in that younger generation had participated in the deliverance from Egypt (the Exodus), or the Passover.
They were all part of the second generation. This will apply to us, too. Many of the people in the New Testament churches are from the second generation. They did not have to bear the heat of the battle. They do not know how difficult it was to get a beachhead for a real walk with God.
They never could know; they were not around. It takes someone who was there to constantly keep the young folks in line so that they do not drift off into the same problems the remnant came out of and the same pitfalls it was in.
We must pray much for God to give divine health to the older generation to keep them around, because the Body needs them right now.
Otherwise the young people in their zeal will go down the road, not knowing the lessons some of the older ones have learned—lessons that were etched by fire upon their very spirits.
Each one will have to learn those things; each one will have to know them. We cannot put a premium on age, but we will not put a premium on youth either. We are all one Body, and we need both youth and age. We need the order and the submission that God brings.
This walk that God has raised up is not just a little flash in the pan or a little inspirational movement. This is God’s greatest enterprise among men since the foundation of the world!
This generation is more important than the generation during which Christ died for our sins. Some may question that statement, reasoning that He died for our sins, and defeated principalities and powers in that generation.
But the fact remains that we have seen sin abounding in the world; we have seen the principalities and the powers still operating. But God has been working all this time to produce a certain thing in the Church, and now He has it. The remnant in this generation are the ones who will put in action and enforce what was won two thousand years ago. What was won two thousand years ago is of the utmost importance, but it is still less important than the day when it is fully manifested.
It is a wonderful day when you sit down at the table and sign the legal escrow documents for a new home, but the day you walk in and possess your house is a little more final. Legally it was yours before, but when the escrow period closes and you move in, then you can do anything you want to with it. That is what the remnant is doing now—it is moving in! None of us are moving in because we are suddenly worthy; we are moving in because the Lord purchased this with His precious blood. He did this for us. He made the provision. It has been a long time coming, but now it is ours! Now, like Caleb and Joshua, it is up to us to express that audacious faith.
Youth is not a matter of age; it is a matter of anticipation. If you are not anticipating anything you are dead already, just waiting for someone to throw dirt on you. You are dead from the neck up and in your spirit. But when you anticipate and believe, when you walk in the hope and expectation of the Lord, then you are walking in youthfulness. If that were not so, we would have to consider God old. Although Christ is called the “Ancient of Days” (Daniel 7:9, 22), He is also the same yesterday and today and forever (Hebrews 13:8). God is still young!
This youthfulness is not natural to the young people. They have a way of being old almost before their time. People do not want to face life. They are not afraid to die (though they may probably just as soon be dead), but they are afraid of living, and so they want to do something to drug it up and jazz it up. They have to take pep pills to tolerate the day, and then downers in order to sleep at night. They are up and down, up and down artificially because they are dead already. The young people have grown old before their time.
This is the oldest generation of young people the world has ever produced. But now God is reviving their youth. The Lord will renew their youth like the eagle’s. He is redeeming their lives from destruction (Psalm 103:4, 5). They are becoming young because of the grace of God. That is why I make no move to stop their enthusiasm. I know what a price was required, how many years of fasting and prayer, to get this fire started in the young people; and regardless of what anyone says or does, I will not allow one bucket of water to he poured on the zeal of the young folks. If this fire is ever put out, it will never be started again. I have seen that happen in men’s lives before. Many who came along with a zeal for the Lord have had someone throw water on them, and the fire was never started again; it was just cold damp ashes the rest of their lives.
We will not discourage the young who come into this walk with God. But we will not be easy on them either. We will channel this fire and this zeal because God has brought it forth. It is the fire of God that is burning, as a burning fire shut up in their bones. More and more this fire will make its demands on them. I will not discourage the fire, nor will I let anyone else pour water on it or downgrade it as youthful zeal. If we ever see the fire put out, we will have lost everything we have worked for. Let the fire burn! Let the steel be tempered! Let the young people move on! Let the older people move on! Let us all move on!
The older folks, too, have become intense in their spirits. They love this walk so much. There is no real distinction in the spirit between the young people and the older ones in the remnant. Actually, if we tried to make a distinction, we would displease the Lord. I have watched the older ones change. They are ready to back this move of God all the way because God is putting in them the same fierce intensity of this fire that He has put in the younger generation. We are all moving together in the name of the Lord. What a wonderful Body the Lord is bringing together. What a wonderful thing He is doing!
The purpose of an exhortation like this is to tell us how to think, how to feel about things. As we meet certain situations, we will not think them over and each of us come up with our own opinion. We do not want that. We ought to be of one mind, but we do not want it to be the mind of a human leader. We want the mind of the Lord. And so we wait upon the Lord until He brings the exhortation that says, “This is the way I think about it, so this is what you should think about it.” And we then determine to think the way He thinks, to feel the way He feels, and to like what He likes. The Lord is working in us to all have the same intensity, the same desire.
People often become critical of this and feel that it is wrong to mold and shape people’s thinking. What do they want us to think about? Would they rather have us think like Freud or Einstein? or like one of these college professors? or like one of these misfits in society, perverted in all of his ways? Is that the way we should think? No! We will wait on the Lord and find out what the Lord says. We will have the mind of Christ. It will be manifested in the exhortations; and as a result, we will suddenly come to think differently than the whole age. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.… Romans 12:2. The Lord is renewing our minds and teaching us because we are yielded to Him.
The churches are not yet too fanatical. We will be very careful to instruct them and tell them when they do become too fanatical. So far they are just beginning to develop that wonderful zeal in the Lord. We must keep our hearts open and believe that the Lord is going to help us to be a little more intense. We want to worship the Lord and praise Him with all our hearts and souls, with all our minds and all our strength. Away with these doubts and fears that belong to this worldly generation. Away with this skepticism and the atheistic, communistic trend that is trying to take over in our minds. We will not be a part of it! We will think Kingdom! And we will worship the King! That is the way it will be in our hearts. This is the way we think. This is our dedication. This is the whole course of our life—to be the sons of the Kingdom.
Some may say, “It’s not yet time; the Kingdom might be many years away yet.” Yes, it might be many years in coming. But if we were all to die before it came, I would still like to be one of the forerunners who reached into the powers of the age to come, because I am sick of this one. I do not like this age, and if I can pick my address, I will choose to live in the Kingdom. I do not want to live in this mess. There is no boundary, no line of demarcation to indicate that when we pass over a certain dateline, we can begin to think Kingdom. No, it is with us already. We are heirs of the Kingdom, and we are going to reach in and walk in it. To do that we will have to think Kingdom. We cannot think the old way.
We must reach in for something more in our educational system, something more in the way we approach life together. Do we dare to stand up and totally buck the system? Much of it is based upon an accreditation system, and if one does not belong to some atheistic group of colleges, his schooling does not count for much, and he will find it difficult to get a job. I do not even know if that is so important. Maybe we can create our own jobs and businesses, and base our requirements on something else.
Many of the incentives in college seem irrelevant to what we are believing for. They learn more and more about less and less, and soon they will know everything about nothing. We ought to find some way that people can get a good education and learn to think, and also learn to tune in to the wisdom of God, bringing revelation knowledge into it. We must blaze the trail, or we will be victims of this age. We have to think differently and be violently opposed to it. There can be nothing within us that conforms to the age, because if we are conformists we are dead—absolutely dead. We cannot even conform to the religions and the branches of Christianity that have existed these past centuries. We cannot be a part of them. I do not care if they have only been in existence a relatively short time; most of them have already become a part of a passing age. We have to beware of this leaven of the Pharisees that could corrupt us. A little leaven will leaven the whole lump (Galatians 5:9).
How do we break through? We are not going to think, “Oh, there is too much zeal, too much enthusiasm.” We will not discourage this. We have a little fire going, and we had better warm our hearts with it. We had better build it up and fan the flame. That is what the Lord is doing. The smoking flax He will not quench; a bruised reed He will not break until He sends judgment in the earth. And the isles shall wait for His law (Isaiah 42:3, 4). We are not going to put it out. If the flax has a little spark in it, we do not put it out. We blow on it gently, until we have a fire going.
People can get discouraged so easily. There is something eroding away at their very spirits all the time—day and night. If you are in the school system, it is pulling you down. If you are out in the work world, that pulls you down. Wherever you are, you are being pulled down. But these New Testament churches are just like furnaces generating a fire, creating an inspiration, and doing something with the people. You can come into a service worn out, but you leave with your batteries recharged, ready to go again. That is how it has to be. “Because iniquity will abound,” Jesus said, “the love of many will wax cold.” Water is being poured on your fire all the time; and when you come to the house of the Lord, you will have to generate it again among one another. You will have to do it!
It will be worthwhile. We will produce the best schools, the best teachers, the best apostles that have been produced in the history of the world. Religious people today do not want to believe that God is going to do anything now. They do not want to believe in prophets and an apostolic company; they do not want to be part of a remnant that the Lord shall raise up wherein there will be deliverance. They would rather believe they are just miserably holding on together, “Oh, we just pray to hold out to the end.” What a fatalistic, pessimistic attitude! They are partially right—it will be a dreadful time to live through, the most difficult time in the history of the world. But I am looking at the fact that the Lord will now give the Kingdom into the hands of the saints of the Most High; judgment will be given to them, and they will possess the Kingdom. That is what we have to believe in!
I, the Lord, will hasten it in its time. Isaiah 60:22b. It is time for us to come forth. If we do not see this and give ourselves wholly to it, the greatest tragedy that has ever happened to any people would happen to us. We would be spectators, standing and watching something tremendous happening and realizing what could have been. There is always some old spit-and-argue club, where some old bum is sitting on a park bench saying, “See that lot where they built that big hotel? I could have bought it for twenty-five dollars back in 1925.” He does not have any foresight; he always looks back and talks about what could have been. We cannot be content to talk about what could have been. We must be thinking of what can be! And it can be now!
You might say, “Well, my situation is miserable.” So—everybody has a little problem. How miserable is it really? Many saints of God in the past have gone through worse things. Get on your knees and start crying to God. Prevail. Break through the principalities and powers. You can do it! God is no respecter of persons. If there is any special time of miracles, we are in it now. If there is any time that God will really answer prayer, it is now. You think the day of miracles is past? No sir! It just dawned! Wake up! It has just started—the day of the greater works. Greater works than these shall you do (John 14:12). They that know their God will be strong, and they will do exploits (Daniel 11:32). It has just started!
If we who are actually living in this generation do not appreciate the time we are in, woe be unto us. Shame on us. We will have greater judgment than any generation that has ever lived because in our unworthiness, God’s manifold manifestation of grace has been extended to us. Satan rages now, but the prophets all called this the time of the double portion. Instead of your shame shall you have a double portion (Isaiah 61:7). We have twice as much extended to us by the grace of God, so the Lord is saying to every one of us, “It’s double or nothing, buddy.” We must walk in it with all our heart, with everything that is within us.
What else is there to live for? The younger generation does not have anything really to live for except to become a part of the establishment. What is the establishment doing? Much of the time we are living in a war economy, with people making millions of dollars from war contracts and the manufacture of bombs and planes. The whole thing of buttering the palms of politicians, of kick-backs and pay-offs is part of a damnable, rotten system. They love the almighty dollar, and the pockets of their shroud will be full of it.
There is not very much one can believe in. But I do have faith in the King. Many professors will try, in a sarcastic way, to destroy anything that young people believe in. College students should thank them for it. They should thank them that they passed their course and realized finally that there is not one thing a Christian can believe in the whole world. Then they should tell them one more thing: “I believe in the King of kings and the Lord of lords.” There isn’t anything else to believe in. Anyone who intends to live for the Kingdom must live for it entirely, or he will exist with disillusionment and bitterness.
When a man lives for so little, it seems like he does not even get that. He decides to let the world go by, as he goes off in a corner with his nice little job and his wife and children. Suddenly he is bitterly disillusioned. His wife has joined a wife-swapping group, his home is broken, and his kids do not even speak to him when he comes home. He is under such pressure that he has a heart attack. Then the only thing the kids are concerned about is whether his insurance is paid up. That is about the way it happens. Can you think of anything worth living for outside of the Lord? You cannot have a decent home, or anything else worthwhile today unless it is in Christ. Go ahead and build your foundation strong. Build it big. But you are still building it on sand unless it is built on Christ. Build it on Christ, and you will walk in it.
What are you going to do with your life? What are you going to do with your vacation time? Think about it. If you will have some free time, I suggest that you plan to spend some weeks or months working on one of the church projects. If you do not know how to do anything, someone will teach you.
Some of you want more out of life than just a salary, out of which the government first takes a big chunk, with the rest eroding away in overhead, leaving you with nothing. I believe we could work it so that our young people could work and actually save more money in the long run than if they were putting out money on expensive rent and overhead and high car payments, keeping them constantly in debt. Even a small salary that you could keep would be superior to that.
We must believe the Lord to create a revolution and bring us a better way of life than being slaves of Babylon. But it will not just happen. It starts with prayers and intercession. We wrest it out of the hands of Satan, the usurper, who wants to keep control of things to which he has no right. They belong to the Lord. All things in heaven and earth, all authority in heaven and earth, were committed into the hands of Christ Jesus, the Lord. What we are contending for is not some outrageous thing to which we have no right. We are only contending for the Lamb the rewards of His sufferings. We are contending that the Lord will give into our hands the things He redeemed and said are to be ours.
We cannot draw back now. We cannot look at our own resources. You must understand another line of thinking. You may have failed, or you may be completely inadequate for life as far as the world is concerned, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with your walk with God. You may have been out in the world, you may have been wounded, but that has nothing to do with your walk with God. Disillusionment may be like a spiritual blindness on you so that you do not know which way to go. That does not have anything to do with it either. This end-time feast is prepared for the lame and the halt and the blind. This is what God has in mind. Those who come in with all kinds of problems do fine because they have a special invitation from the Lord: “That My house may be full.” Some may not be too well-educated. That does not make a bit of difference. As they open their heart, a wisdom will come from God. If they have that fire burning in their heart, they can do the job.
Do you remember what they said about the early disciples? “These are ignorant and unlearned men” (Acts 4:13). Stupid Pharisees! Who made you the ones to call these men dumb and unlearned? Where is your wisdom?
Recently I read a book of a complete compilation of the law with the rabbis’ interpretation of each law; many of which were so extreme that they were absolutely ridiculous. Jesus cursed the vain empty traditions of men and their extreme, legalistic interpretations. When the Pharisees complained because the disciples were rolling some grain in their hand on the Sabbath to get rid of the chaff so that they could eat the grain and when they interpreted that as breaking the law concerning the Sabbath, Jesus said, “Man wasn’t made for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). Some of the things that are happening in the Christian dispensation are just as ridiculous and empty. What are we going to do? We must loose ourselves from this generation. On the day of Pentecost, Peter, the old burly fisherman, stood up and said, “Save yourselves from this generation.” We say it too, “Save yourselves from it. This generation is going down the drain. Get out of it! Stop this age—I want to get off. I want to get out of it. I want to be a son of the Kingdom. I want to do what God wants me to do.”
People today serve man and the opinion of man, and yet no nation on the face of the earth actually fears public opinion as much as we do in the United States. We are born conformists, end-of-the-line conformists. Out with it! The remnant will not be conformists! One day we may even design our own clothes. One of these days we will have our own way of eating, and it may necessitate having our own food stores to avoid buying food that is full of preservatives and other harmful ingredients that are not edible or digestible. I would like to eat food that is not only more sensible and nutritious, but also cheaper. We may have to change our whole way of living. We may have to build our own cities, but one thing we will not do: we will not withdraw to some place up on a hilltop like nuns or monks. We are in this world, but we are not of it.
The remnant will be the witness against the world, the burning and shining light, as we show what we believe in and why. There are millions of people out there who are hungry, and if they could see something from God—a people who are sincere and walking in the truth—they would turn to it, no matter how radical it was. Everything is ahead of us. It is frightening in a way, but yet it is exciting because the Lord is saying, “This is the way you are going to walk.”
I am tired of the old system, and not only the material side of it. When we look at the smog over the metropolitan areas, we realize that in the physical realm this is indicative of the spiritual oppression that is like a cloud over the cities. Someone will have to get busy and bind the principalities and powers. Someone must bring them into judgment and loose the people of the Lord to walk the way God wants them to walk. We have quite a few things to accomplish because nothing in the last two thousand years has been done exactly right. The best books have yet to be written; the best music will have to be written. Someone will come along and have faith that there can be something better.
In the days of the Kingdom, they will probably teach these facts in schools: “There was a people who believed. They were forerunners of the Kingdom. They were part of the remnant. They spoke the gospel of the Kingdom to the ends of the earth. They were the ones who saw the vision, and they were faithful. Many of them laid their lives down. These are some of the books they wrote, containing the guidelines. They had the word from God, and they spoke it and published it.” We can be among those who do these exploits.