I think we are ready for the next level, the next breakthrough. Consider the former years: Five years ago were your song services different? Was the seating arrangement different? Were the services different?
Before there is the creativity of God, there is the chaos (Genesis 1:2). The devastation has to come to an existing order and forms that we have created—not that they were wrong, but they have to change with the unfolding of a new level of the Kingdom of God.
Suppose we say, “Oh, that’s not true. The best things are the things that never change.” There would be no unbelief as great as for Moses or Joshua to walk in here and say, “We are going to worship the Lord,” and then bring in a lamb, cut it open, rip out its entrails, start a fire, and say, “Now we’re worshiping the Lord.” Do you see what I am saying? You cannot worship the way you did at first, because that changed. What changed it? Well, there was a man who came along by the name of John, and he said, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. John 1:29b, KJV. After the Lamb of God was sacrificed for us, I think it became a sin for us to do the same thing anymore. To kill lambs for our sins would be a wrong thing.
I want you to hear this so carefully that you will not forget it. It is going to unfold before you step by step, and you are going to realize that what has existed with us as a church started when God was bringing a transition. There are not any of the first generation of those who were in the church at that time who do not realize that they made a big step. They stepped across the Grand Canyon in one step. They left the old order and they came into something new.
And it was wonderful—they sang in the Spirit; they did different things. But something happened. People got to the place where they could sing in the Spirit and not touch God. We began to make a form. Yet that is what we were running away from—forms. But in our heart we like forms; we like to go back to them. We are a little bit religious; we like to get back into that groove, so we return to it. In fact, if we are not careful, we will go all the way back. But the pilgrim spirit has to be within us so that even though we have an opportunity, we will not go back (Hebrews 11:15–16). We are not going to go back.
Now, concentrate very carefully on this. Something happened again. If the Lord just knew how to take what He has done and bring forth what He is going to do differently, I am sure that He would. I have never made a step in God but what I first had His footprints on my face. Have you felt that same thing too?
If He is going to create a world of all kinds of life and creeping things and living things, first there is chaos, and the Spirit of God moves upon the face of the deep. Then God says, “Let there be light,” and He begins to create by a Word (Genesis 1:1–3).
Again we have reached a new level. It is no different now. God’s world is not just the physical world only, but there is a spiritual world that has been created. And so, if He has somebody He wants to bring into sonship, what does He do? He chastens him, disciplines him (Hebrews 12:5–11). It doesn’t look like He loves you, but there is no other way to change you, because you are not wise enough—none of us is wise enough—until He first almost brings you into chaos, and you go through it.
You feel, “God has forsaken me.” You feel isolated; you feel that something has happened to you that is not good. But He is working all things together for good (Romans 8:28). How could He raise up a people like you, and do all the things that He is doing to you, and not really be wanting to show His love and to say, “By a Living Word, be loosed, be free, be whole”? You say, “Well, I don’t understand all of this.” You don’t have to understand it; you just have to experience it and be changed.
Look back to the things that have happened. What is God trying to do? God is going to prevent forms, no matter how much He was in them, that will lock you into a place where you cannot change or grow. The Old Testament people were making their sacrifices and had the letter of the Law, and God changed all of that in the New Testament. You could say, “God is contradicting Himself; He gives us one thing and then He changes it.” No, God gives you one thing and then He fulfills it on another plane. I don’t care how many sheep you kill—it is not going to do the work of the cross in you. But when you open your heart to the Lamb of God who was slain for you, it will change you. Then you are going to find that what that Old Testament sacrifice foretold, God now fulfills on this level.
What we had the promise of, and what we called “the walk” at the beginning, is being fulfilled on this level. In the past we used to talk about Body ministry. Now Body ministry has come and people can’t handle it. What is the Body ministry? Well, in those days we said, “We believe in the local church.” What was the local church? Although God was faithful to give a pure Word describing the New Testament Church pattern, we saw “local churches” come forth where one pastor would rule like God Almighty—and a bunch of passive elders, whom God tried to move on. They were elders in name only. They had a form, so God just began to eliminate that. He said, “I am going to make real elders out of these ones. I am going to make real shepherds and give shepherds after My own heart to the people” (Jeremiah 3:15).
What is Body ministry? We are seeing it for the first time. Why? Well, we have stopped the auditorium thing where everybody sits in rows of seats. What do we have? A family circle. We are His people. We are His family. I am going to tell you the way that this is going to go. You are not just going to say, “Well, now we’ll turn to page 123,” but we will sing, and we will worship; we will have warfare; we will have participation; we will have the Father’s family, the prophetic community, Body ministry. Now we can walk in all the things that have been told to us for years. We are foolish if we do not let go of what became almost a form when we had a limited fulfillment of what we believed. Let’s go on into everything that God has for us!
I can’t help but get excited about this, because if we had not had this devastation that just threw monkey wrenches into the gears everywhere, we would not have changed. You couldn’t point to it; nothing was done any differently—except that God said, “Smash it down and build it again.” And yet we found that the foundation in our heart of thirty years was real; it was good; the Word was consistent; God had done the thing for us; the authority was there. When you look at it, you say, “How could anybody do anything so perfectly as God is doing for us?” And a new level is coming! Open your heart to it. Rally around the first generation. They may feel, “Well, I like what was.” How far back can you go?
You can go back to anything you want to. You can go back to some denominational structure where you know what they are going to do and you’re not challenged. This change is challenging you. It is saying, “Let’s go on to the reality of what we believe. Let’s get the fulfillment of it.”
Everywhere this is happening. Now we have order. We have a little less form right now, but in the order some very distinct things will happen. The Lord was speaking to me about what we are going to have in the form that the order will take, because it is going to be almost without having forms of liturgy. You say, “Well, we never had that; we weren’t like the old order.” What is the old order but what God did yesterday, when He is doing something more today?
Now, you need to understand something before I go on. Some people are experiencing, really, the fear of the Lord; they are afraid but want to be by our side. But see what you’re going through day by day. It is almost like a multipresence that you’re going through. But they know the battle we go through to begin to function on that leveI, what the enemy does to stop it, it seemed like the presence of the Lord was great, and the presence of one another came through too. You began to feel one another’s presence. people can become aware of our spirit; they we are going to call or visit them.
It is the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ that begins to come forth and reach out through many people. You become aware of one another’s presence, aware of one another’s spirits. You get in tune with one another. You bless one another. Things are a little different than they have been. This is the realm of spirit that we are entering into. We are leaving that locked-in area of the realm of soul and we are getting into spirit.
This thing has been going on for month after month. For several years now the Lord has been leading us right into this next step. And people say, “Well, I liked the old days.” Yes, there were a lot of people who would have liked to run back to Jerusalem and kill a lamb; it was much simpler than getting the reality of the experience of Christ in their hearts. You get to the place where you can fake a form, but you can’t fake the true divine order of what God is doing right now.
There is one thing I am not going to stand for; I am not going to stand for any veil upon your eyes or any dullness of hearing. You are going to hear this Word. You are going to know it. It is a new level of the Kingdom of God. People persecute us. They say, they are new age or “Well, they say they left the church and got into the Kingdom.” They don’t understand what we’re saying. At the beginning of His ministry, Jesus went everywhere preaching the Kingdom of God, saying, “It’s at hand. The Kingdom of God is here” (Matthew 4:17, 23). It started back there. The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it. Luke 16:16, KJV.
The Church Age as we knew it was only a phase of the Kingdom of God. We are still going to be the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, but we are going to hit a new level in the Kingdom.
Can we understand that? Are we ready for it? We have been preaching it and we have been prophesying it, and back at the beginning of this the prophecies about it went on, and on, and on. We are in it. Get ahold of the first generation, the second generation, the third generation; prophesy to the little babies that are still in the belly. Tell them, “The Kingdom of God is opening up on a new level. The things that were prophesied are here!” Let’s get in it. Let’s touch one another.
There is so much I have to tell you, but I am not going to tell you as though I were preaching to you. I want to draw you into it. You see, everything now in the Kingdom of God is moving into a new level of oneness, of the family. Many of you had to fight the feeling of being divided from one another, isolated, excluded. You tried to be family, but there was just too much sibling rivalry and competition between the kids. You wanted to be a prophetic community, but it wound up with a few doing all the prophesying. We wanted to be the priests of the Lord in worship, we wanted to be the army of the Lord in intercession; but when the thing began to break, people still had problems with it, especially that last one—the army of the Lord.
What is an army for? Well, a lot of people’s concept of it is to get in a nice bright uniform and march and have parades. But I don’t think that’s what God had in mind. That is why the warfare is on, the intercession is on. The intercession has increased in the last ten years like nothing I have ever seen. When we first came into this we had prophecies: “The army of the Lord! The army of the Lord! We are going to be doing battle to the enemy. We are going to bring down principalities and powers.” Then when the intercession started, people blew out and said, “I can’t handle this intercession.” Well, are there any Marquess of Queensbury rules on how you defeat the enemy? Boxing, yes—but we’re not boxing. “We are not as those who beat the air,” Paul said (I Corinthians 9:26). We are going to hit the thing. We are going to get it done. We are going to back one another up. And the amazing thing is that there is such a flow that our intercession is a thing of faith, and the whole operation is a thing of love. It is a different kind of warfare than the world knows anything about.
But we are now entering into another level of warfare where we choose the area of conflict, and we do it in the rest of the Spirit, because we have ascended above the heavenly places into the heart of the Father, and the battle is the Lord’s we just execute what has already been won, so it is on a whole new level where we begin to govern things as we hold them in our heart.
What is the order that God is bringing? God is bringing forth order with reality. We don’t want to go through the forms. We could all go up to Salt Lake City and join the Mormon Church, because they believe in apostles and prophets. They have an order, but when you get into it you realize that it has become very much the same denominational system that they preach against. God has blessed us with this—that we do not believe in institutional Christianity. We do not believe that denominations should be just big business and lobbies in Congress and so forth. We believe that we should be the government of God, the power of God in the earth.
There is a difference. We bear the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ and we are not just a force, we are not an organization; we are a living organism. We were drifting very close to becoming a denomination, but the Lord reversed that. That is why I think we are ready for the greatest visitation of the power of God that we have ever seen.
Now, what has God done with us? You don’t think of yourselves as an audience anymore. You feel free to participate. It is still difficult to relate to it, but if you would begin to understand what God is doing and the kind of an order that we are going to shoot for, then you will look for it and it will be there. What are we going to have? We are going to have worship. I think we should just cut loose on this worship, because the prophecies are that the worship is going to be on a new level. Believe for that breakthrough.
Also, the Word is that we are to be a prophetic community. I think that we got into kind of a rut or a form, even in prophesying, and it died down for awhile. It didn’t have the spark and force to it. You watch it—prophecy is going to break loose. It already has started. I am in such a flow of it that I could just start prophesying anytime, because there is a spirit of prophecy that is coming upon the Kingdom of God.
There is also going to be more reading of the Word, and speaking it out loud. I find myself so drawn to that. I don’t mean to just read it alone, but to read the words publicly. In fact, within the last few months, when you read the Word there is something that comes through in the anointing of it that we receive. Go read the chapters that belong to us. Read the Word to us. There is a great anointing coming on the reading and speaking of the Word.
Another thing is the breaking of bread, or what they used to call the “agape.” It was the love feast. That is coming back, because what God is telling you to do is just love each other. We begin to just get together in little groups; and pull somebody in and talk to them and bless them. We just begin to speak love and faith. I think we should call it “the touch and the flow,” because they touch one another. It is like taking hold of a hot wire, and then you touch somebody and it begins to flow to them. That is exactly the way this is happening. That will be part of the way we worship.
We will come together; we will love each other. We will have the worship; we will be that prophetic community. We are going to be the Father’s family. And you can’t be the Father’s family and just say, “I love You, Father,” without beginning to sense that you are a brother with the sons and you are a big brother to the children. You are just opening your hearts to each other, and the thing begins to flow.
Also there will be warfare, or intercession. And there is going to be teaching. I think what I am doing is teaching you. There is going to be a lot of just unfolding the Word so that you know, “This is where I am. This is what has happened.” There is nothing worse than the attack of Satan to bring confusion to you when you are going through something, and you don’t have the faith to believe that God is really working something for good in your life. He is really bringing this thing forth. God was in the start of this walk in the Spirit. He is still in it. He is right here. He is going to lead us on. Soon there is going to be a boldness and a love and a faith. Go out and get ahold of these people and say, “Listen, you believed it, you prophesied it; you were part of the first generation. ‘Now it’s happening. Get into it.’ You believed for it for so long; now it is really happening. Now the thing is really taking place.”
In this time we are not going to have forms, but we are going to have an order. You will have a way that you take Communion, and in it you will begin to appropriate and you will impart to each other. The order is moving away from spectators in an audience watching a few perform, and it is going to come into Body ministry, where all the members of the Body are ministering (Ephesians 4:16).
You say, “Well, I can’t prophesy.” But you can go up to somebody and lay hands on him and bless him; or you can hug him, you can love him, you can greet him with a holy kiss (I Thessalonians 5:26). You could take Communion with him. You can believe for this impartation to come. You can believe for appropriation. You’re going to get it because you believe God to do it, and you open the channels of blessing to yourself, and you open up yourself to be a channel of blessing to other people.
Away with this exclusiveness! Get rid of that damnable thing of exclusiveness that causes you to feel that there is a separation between you and your brother. Begin to touch one another and flow. Be one, because these are the things that are going to happen. This is the order that is coming. You are going to come to receive. You are going to come joyfully. You are going to say, “Today I will be a blessing. Today I will receive a blessing.” It’s there, and you begin to touch one another.
I use that word “touch,” because I think we ought to get away from the idea of ministers—because then we think of position. Just think of the Body ministering to each other. And of course, that is going to lead us into some marvelous things.
There will be shepherds after His own heart (Jeremiah 3:15). There will be commissioned authority that is functional with love and faith.
You get the idea, “Well, then there is going to be no one in charge.” Not in the sense of a position—but in the sense of authority, yes, there will be. You realize that you are in control, not in the control of a position, but you are in control of the assaults against you, of what happens to your brother or sister. You can change the thing because there is authority in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ that rests upon the members of the Body, and they can bless one another. They can loose one another. That was all that “the Unfolding” was about (the messages are on my website—to lead us into His presence and to become aware of His presence in our brother and sister. That is the whole thing. It is taking us a long time to realize how simply God said it, but how profoundly true it brings reality to us.
Have you received what I have said? Do you take it? Do you really feel that there is something of an order coming that is a new level? Our services have seemed to have a certain confusion to them; and the reason is that God brings devastation to us and it seems to create a vacuum. That vacuum will be destructive unless we open our hearts to say, “Yes, Lord, we are open to the order that You are desiring to bring.” You can’t hang onto the old.
Hebrews keeps talking about it: the things that are disappearing, that have to wane, that are passing away, in order that the new could be established (Hebrews 8:13). “He taketh away the old and He establisheth the new” (Hebrews 10:9). And yet you still use the same Scriptures and the same truth, the same vision, the same revelation-except that you shift gears and you have a new level of reality in it. Before, you hoped for it, you looked for it, you wanted Body ministry, you wanted oneness, you wanted all of it there; but always there was something that said, “It isn’t quite what I bargained for.” Let’s get into it! Let’s go on. Let’s meet with one another. Let’s bless one another. Let’s be open for a new order of services. Can you prophesy? Come ready to prophesy. Can you bless? Come ready to bless. Come and worship. Take the gifts. Minister to one another. Bless one another. Love one another. That’s what it is all about! And we’re in it.
Now if you do this, it is going to bridge the gap. Visitors can come in. They will be amazed at this thing. For six or seven years I have found myself preaching about Kingdom evangelism which is prophetic evangelism, but we have not been getting much Kingdom, and we have not been getting much evangelism. Now we are going to have it. You are going to bring people in and God is going to touch them. God is going to bless them. You will find marvelous things taking place because you just believe. Just be the Body of Christ. Be the Kingdom of God. Be the family of God. Be the prophetic community—all the things that were prophesied. Be the army of the Lord. Don’t say, “Well, I don’t know how to intercede.” Just be an army. Shoot. Pull it down. Build up. Defend the brothers, the sisters, the little children. Pray over the schools.
Be involved—totally involved. You are not an audience anymore. You are not members of a church; you are participating, appropriating, imparting members of the living Body of Jesus Christ in this new level of the Kingdom. Believe for it and help each other.
Don’t let a confusion or a vacuum be in your life or in your relationships. Relate to each other. Be it. You are that. Do it. We have faith that it is going to work. I am not preaching, I am teaching. And when I am teaching, I am creating it. There is going to be no more chaos, no more confusion. We say, “Let there be.” We say, “Be the church that God has called you to be! Be the fulfillment of the prophecies that have come over the years!”
We are going to walk in all of it. It is a time of fulfillment. That is all you can say that divine order is—that finally it happens. It begins with you becoming just one with the Lord and one with each other. We are going to be the wedge that brings down everything that is fighting against it, everything that is destructive. We are loosed to do this. We are loosed to be the Kingdom of God. We have authority; it is time we loosed it. We are not beggars in prayer, but we are proclaimers of the Word of God; it will come to pass because we believe it (Matthew 21:22).
I am feeling something so marvelous in this. We need to take a step of faith. We need to have a love feast. Just come in for fellowship. Get a gallon or two of non alcoholic wine and some bread and have Communion an actual meal together like in the last supper, it is not just a form, it is a feast, a celebration. And have exactly what the New Testament had: agapai (Jude 12). That meant “love feast.” Agape was the word for love. It is almost the very same pronunciation. We will just come together for a love feast. Love each other and bless each other. We are going to take a lot of walls down. The truth of the matter is that we have too many walls in ourselves. We do. We are constantly on the defensive. We are afraid that we are going to be hurt. When you’re afraid that you are going to be hurt you usually are hurt. That’s the way it happens.
This is the time where the future that we prophesied about we must recognize as being here. Now we must not hope for all of the things that God committed to us but believe in them and function in them. It’s a change of tense, isn’t it?
Do you realize how much we just need to touch and flow together. Now that we believe this, we are going to take a lot of walls down. I am intolerant of this thing of little walls in our minds. It doesn’t have to be. In fact, we are so one, and the thing has been done already for us. All we have to do is just function in it. We have gone for years with the idea that we had to minister to one another. You can be here with all kinds of problems and say, “Well, I just have to have a lot of counseling and have people deliver me and impart to me.” That may be very true, but do you realize that we could just sit here and be one, and the relationship ministers? We haven’t realized that in this oneness the relationship itself ministers to us. The oneness ministers. I have people who never say a word to me, but they are one with me and it ministers to me. You are made strong by your relationship. You can say, “Well, I just hope somebody discerns my need.” Your need is to be one. The relationship itself will start the ministry. The other may come or may not, but you are going to be all right because you are one. You are a family. You are the Father’s family.