We have a new approach to evangelism in this restoration. The old-order altar call and emphasis does not seem to have the anointing that God used to give it. God also does not give the same anointing to preach much about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Instead, He simply leads to lay hands on people for them to receive the Holy Spirit.
We used to have many divine healing services in the old order. We no longer emphasize healing sicknesses, but people are being healed. God is not emphasizing healings; He is emphasizing divine health and our breaking through to a new level of living where our bodies are being quickened. The emphasis is changing from merely getting people to give in and accept Jesus as their Savior from sin so they can drop some old habits and start going to church. It is much more now.
Our message is to go and proclaim the claims of the King, that everything is His. The King reigns in Zion (Micah 4:7). We are to tell them the King reigns. This is the message, that He is Lord over the Church, the Head over all things to us. You might wonder if it is a salvation message, but it is more than salvation; it is the gospel of the Kingdom. The King is coming. Submit to the King. Bow down to Him. Accept His love and salvation. Do not be a rebel. Do not be lawless, but submit to what God is bringing, even to every order He would bring to the services. There will be many ways that God will show each one of us how to relate to it. This message will start going forth, and everyone God has marked for this end-time walk will respond to the message of the Kingdom: “Submit to the Lord, and honor the claims He has on your life.”
In counseling, I am not so much concerned about people’s problems as I am with their relationship to God. Many of the things that are wrong in the Body are because people do not have the right relationship before the Lord. This is what the Lord is going to change. There is no use in merely outlining the way the home is to be set in order. It will not be set in order right until the individual relationships to the Lord and to each other in the Lord are set right. That must be first. Seek first the Kingdom and His righteousness, then everything will start falling into place in your life (Matthew 6:33).
The Lord is going to trouble Zion; He is going to trouble the lives of many. And God will cause us to have the perception and understanding to see the one He has troubled, the one who had his life so organized and under control before God brought him to chaos. God does this because He wants to set it in order in the Kingdom. And as long as a man is content to walk in a measure of success and happiness, he will never seek more of the Lord. The Lord is troubling many of His people in Zion. It has been prophesied that in the day in which the Lord reigns, Zion shall be plowed like a field. Jeremiah 26:18b. God goes through the field, plowing up the fallow ground and disturbing the plantings we nurtured along so very much in our self-life. Now is the time of the Kingdom of the Lord, and we will bear fruit in the Kingdom. We will find those who are troubled, and the Lord will speak peace to them as they submit unto Him as Lord. There is no other message than the message that He is head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. Ephesians 1:22–23.
We will be able to win souls, but I do not like to use that terminology. We are not concerned with the winning of a man in his soulishness; what we want is a regeneration and a new relationship of his spirit to God. That is what salvation really means.
Jesus talked to the woman at the well of Samaria, and there was much revelation. He explained to her exactly what her situation was. When she realized He knew it, she became open to hear what He had to say. Then she went and brought others to hear Him (John 4:1–42). God is going to bring a day of revelation in which you will minister to people you do not even know. You will tell them you are concerned for them because you sense certain things happening in their lives and that God has His hand upon them, and He is bringing them to a place where He will do something for them. Then you will start giving them a positive word, “This is why God has brought devastation to your life.” They will stop and listen, and God will begin to bear witness to their spirits. Then they will be open to receive revelation and ministry and be led into the things of the Lord.
The Lord, speaking to the disciples about their first message of the Kingdom, said, “I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored.” John 4:38a. All you will have to do is give the message that puts on the finishing touch. God will have already prepared the heart. There are millions of people who do not know God, who do not have any preparation in their hearts. There is also a host of people who are to be in the remnant, and these God has already prepared; He has already done something in their hearts. When they hear the word of revelation you speak, they will know you are speaking from God; and they will open up their hearts to receive a real experience of the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
The Lord will deliver us from the futility of soul winning, not merely because it has a reproach on it in the world (if that were all, then I would go out and fervently win souls), but for many people soul winning still has too much ego in it, and it is too shallow. People are now being prepared for something much deeper which will reach the depth of their spirits. God is working a total devastation in their lives. When there is chaos, the Spirit of God starts moving: And the earth was without form, and void (chaos); and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light… Genesis 1:2–3. That is the way it happens. First people have to realize their chaos is caused by someone coming to them and saying, “I am going to open the door so you can know the meaning of what God is doing in your life.”
When people come into the walk with God, they go through escrow. They are no longer their own possession; they are God’s possession. He holds the title deed, but they had better be sure the devil does not have the first mortgage. All bonds with the past have to be broken.
Do you feel as if you are a king? Do you feel as if everything is yours? Everything is yours because everything is His. So then let no one boast in men. For all things belong to you, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come; all things belong to you, and you belong to Christ; and Christ belongs to God. I Corinthians 3:21–23.
We must not forget that line of possession and ownership. The Lord is working in our hearts to show us that at best we do not own anything. We are stewards under God. Let a man regard us in this manner, as servants of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God. I Corinthians 4:1.
The truths God gives to me to preach are not mine. They come from the Lord. They are His messages, and I am the delivery boy. In the days of delivering telegrams, a boy would come holding a telegram and say, “I have a telegram for you, Mister.” Suppose the man would say, “I don’t want a telegram from you, you ugly boy. Take that telegram and get out of here.” In the telegram could be news about an inheritance of a million dollars, but the man would never know. It is not who delivers the message that is important, but the fact that it is a message from Him.
He sends the word and we have to be faithful to deliver it (II Timothy 2:2). In the final analysis, that is what the gospel of the Kingdom is. We have a word from the King. We are His heralds going forth to proclaim a whole new age, and we are prophesying it into being. It does not make any difference if the old establishment considers us to be freaks; it does not make any difference whether they reject us at all. What does matter is that we are delivering the message. We have been entrusted as stewards of the mysteries of God. God is pouring these mysteries upon us and saying, “Here are the precious mysteries of an entire age. Take them and deliver them. Give them to My people.”
People may say, “Who wants to hear anything from you, after hearing what the denominations think about you? Who will listen to anything you have to say.” I can be likened to a telegram boy. I am only a mouthpiece, a steward of the mysteries of God. You do not even have to leave a tip. Just take the telegram; take the word from God. It is for you.
History tells of a man who was accused of murder and was to be executed, but the king gave a pardon for this condemned man. The messenger who was to deliver the pardon did not want that man to escape death, so he took a side trip first, wasting about forty-eight hours, and he arrived at the prison after the man had been hung. The person who was sent to deliver the pardon was then executed for murder by the king.
We have a Living Word; we have the pardon. We must be led by the Spirit of the Lord, because we are stewards of the mysteries of God and heralds of the Kingdom. People are being drawn unto death; therefore we have to listen to God and be sensitive to that little nudge, “This is one of Mine.” Deliver the pardon from the King. We are stewards of it. In this case, moreover, it is required of stewards that one be found trustworthy. I Corinthians 4:2. We all want to be faithful before God. We have received a Living Word that has been our liberation, but we want to be faithful to give it to others also.
Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you… I Peter 3:15. We want to be able to speak at such a moment as stewards of this Living Word—having been entrusted with it and commissioned—standing in readiness. We could take that human zeal too far and be running around pointlessly, doing more damage than good. But God wants us to be ready to speak anywhere without any fear whatsoever, knowing that we have been entrusted with the glorious gospel of the Kingdom. And we are going to speak it unto the ends of the earth, for God will take out of every nation and every people a remnant for His name’s sake. Do not be afraid to plant and sow seed beside all waters (Isaiah 32:20). We must not hold our hands back nor let anything defer us, because God is ready to minister.
We are ready to see a great harvest, but it is not going to come forth because we plow the ground, sow the seed, nurture the plant, water it, and then harvest. Jesus said, “Do not say there are four months until harvest. Lift up your eyes” (John 4:35). In other words, stop looking at your own path, your own immediate life, and lift up your eyes. Look around because the harvest is ready, but the laborers are few.… pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest. Luke 10:2. We ought to pray that prayer now more than any other time in the whole history of the Church Age because we are coming to the closing days. That special time of picking the fruit is coming.
A fruit picker is a long pole that has a little basket and a prong at one end. When there is ripe fruit on the top of the tree, that fruit picker can be used to reach up and get it. A little tug will cause the fruit to fall right into the basket, without being bruised. That is what God is giving us in this day. God is saying, “Look around, and you will see. That one is green; encourage him a little. That one is ready for a Living Word, so get him.” In this day, it is going to be hand-picked fruit. It will not be a big mass harvest, but it will be one here and one there. God is bringing them in. He will anoint them to do a tremendous work for the Lord.
Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. Behold, the farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it, until it gets the early and the late rains. You too be patient; strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. James 5:7–8. This passage goes on to talk about endurance and patience (staying with it). There will be rough times before the Lord comes back, but what is He waiting for? He is waiting for us, by the Holy Spirit, to get the precious fruit of the earth.
“I thought the thing that was holding up the coming of the Lord was the antichrist and the mark of the beast. I thought almost everybody was going to fall away, so there would not be hardly anyone saved, and the Lord would rapture out a few who were left. The devil will be ready to take over everything, and the Lord will have to come or His whole plan will be blown all to pieces.”
No, the word of God says that the husbandman is waiting for the precious fruit; He keeps bringing the rain, and He keeps dealing with it (James 5:7). The Lord has been dealing much with His people. Some people are so smug because they are doing so well and do not need anyone or anything. But the Lord prunes them back and deals with them. He hoes around the roots, and He fertilizes them too. He is getting ready for that precious fruit of the earth to come forth. What do we do? We will be those who pick the fruit. We will use those fruit pickers and get them when they are ripe. The Lord will teach us how to do that.
Do not merely rejoice and say, “Praise God! We are the little flock.” That little flock will still be little when God has brought them all in; relatively, it will be only a remnant. But thank God for all of our brothers and sisters who are coming to birth and all of them whom He is dealing with. Have faith for people. When God says, “I want that one.” Say, “Lord, thank You. I will believe. I will be a channel of faith to see that one brought in, that precious fruit of the earth.” We were not much to begin with, but He is making us His precious jewels. He will remember us when He comes; we are the ones He has gathered together. We are precious because He is coming forth in us; He is being glorified in us.
There is a great harvest, the picking of the precious fruit of the earth and bringing them right into a walk with God. We have known that God was going to do this. The old-order praying, by beating the altar in frustration, has ended for us, and a violent intercession has come forth. The Lord refined it so that even the power of agreement is effective. We once walked in the truths in a shallow way, sometimes soulishly, but now God has brought a depth of the Spirit to everything. Now He is doing the same through the way we bring people into a walk with God. We will bring them into it in the name of the Lord. We will loose them by prophecy, and the Lord will bring them in.
The Lord will send people with problems, the lame and the halt and the blind. The Lord said that when the Kingdom is preached in the end time, “Those who are invited do not come, so go out to the highways and hedges” (Luke 14:7–24). Hedges are the old borders. He is saying to move beyond the old border lines and find anyone. No one is exempt. Many of the lame, the halt, and the blind are the ones God has crippled. Did God have to cripple you before you would walk with Him? You may have resembled a billy goat, rather than a submissive sheep, until He broke your leg. When He broke your leg and gave you an invitation to come to the great supper, you began to appreciate the Living Word. It was life to you, and you were brought into His kingdom. God is going to give you wisdom to see where the maimed and the halt and the blind are, those who have been crippled until they are inadequate and insufficient. They know it, and that is their relationship to God. Those are the ones we are going to see brought into the Kingdom.
This hour that the Lord bringeth thee to is not an hour that you or any who lived before you, have ever faced. The Lord bringeth thee to a threshold of a new day: to a time in which the knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. It shall be a time in which thou shalt behold, even in thy day, principalities and powers and evil spirits that shall be bound. Thou shalt see a world again that men have not seen since the dawn of creation: wherein dwelleth righteousness—where there is no evil thing that defileth and nothing that shall corrupt. For the Lord shall accomplish it.
Thou shalt behold how every stronghold shall come down. Every kingdom that is exalted against the Lord shall pass away and the Lord’s Kingdom shall grow and abound. And of the increase of His government, and of peace, there shall be no end.