Today has been a day of great brokenness for me as the ministry of the Lord came to me. I don’t know when I have ever felt tears that were not of sorrow, they were not of joy, but just a breaking, a flowing of love unto the Lord. Since then, I have become concerned about the people who lose out with God, those who have tasted of the powers of the age to come.
This message may open the door to something of great value to you. We are going to talk about what God is setting before you people who are tasting of the powers of the age to come, and about the jeopardy you put yourself in when God brings a Living Word to your heart and you begin to walk in it (Hebrews 6:4–6).
Churches have had prophecies and revelation and gifts of the Spirit. I know with an absolute certainty that they walked in the powers of the age to come; they tasted them. They tasted the good Word of God, and yet they fell away. There is something about the state of those people, and the jeopardy in which they put themselves, that has to be understood.
Our main Scripture references are from the book of Hebrews. The first reference is in chapter 12, the second in chapter 10, and the last in chapter 6.
But ye are come unto mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable hosts of angels (not “innumerable angels” but “innumerable hosts of angels”—like galaxies that cannot be counted), to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect. Hebrews 12:22–23.
Who is this verse referring to? Men, visible and invisible in the universal church, coming to the great uniting of all the saints—whether you see them or whether you do not. We are encompassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, those who have gone before us (Hebrews 12:1).
We are coming to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better than that of Abel. See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not when they refused him that warned them on earth, much more shall not we escape who turn away from him that warneth from heaven: whose voice then shook the earth. Hebrews 12:23b–26a.
We shall not escape. One time God spoke on Mount Sinai, and the people did not escape that. They did not escape the consequences of their disobedience after having heard from the Lord (Exodus chapters 20 and 32). You can believe that when God speaks today, you also will not escape the consequences of having heard from God. The seriousness of having a Word from the Lord is almost beyond what people have been able to comprehend. They yearn for it, they cry for it, they want it—yet when they get it, they tend to ignore it if it is not to their liking or if it is too difficult to submit to. We will not escape if we turn away from the Word.
But now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more will I make to tremble not the earth only, but also the heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that have been made, that those things which are not shaken may remain. Wherefore, receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us have grace, whereby we may offer service well-pleasing to God with reference and awe: for our God is a consuming fire. Hebrews 12:26b–29, ASV.
What is this saying to us? The Word that is coming now is going to shake and shake and shake. Are you aware that you have been shaken? I have been shaken daily for some time and this is why: I have been listening carefully to every Word that comes from God; and as I listen to it, it shakes me. It goes deep. There is no use in my looking around and saying, “What about that brother, Lord? Why aren’t You shaking him up as You are me?” It is because he is not listening to the Word. He is not opening his heart to the Living Word. Realize that God is speaking now, and His Word is going to shake you. The only man I ever worry about, the only woman I ever worry about, the only young person I am ever concerned about is the one who is not shaken, the one who is not going through anything because of the Word that is coming. Why am I concerned? This Word is to shake everything in heaven and in earth, because the Kingdom that is coming is a Kingdom that cannot be shaken (Hebrews 12:26–28).
Do you know what is coming to us? It is a kind of courage, a courage beyond what I can tell you. You do not suck it out of a cigarette; you do not sip it out of a cocktail glass; you do not get it from a hypodermic fix. It is the only kind of courage that is going to stand, the courage that comes because men have met God and they have heard from God. They stand though they seem to be going through a major earthquake as God shakes them, and shakes them, and shakes them. Do you know what is going to happen to them? They will be the sons of God who will turn the world loose from its corruption and its bondage (Isaiah 42:6–7; Romans 8:19–21). They will meet men and they will set them free. Why? Because they have met God and God has set them free.
There is a deliverance coming that you are going to minister because you experience it first yourself, and you know that it is real and it is living. We are quickly coming into something in this hour. People are changing more rapidly now than ever before. The process is accelerating because the Word is richer and deeper, and that Word shakes and shakes and shakes. People are finding that the things that can be shaken will be taken out of them.
Do not think that the siftings are over. The siftings of God are not by His divine intent so much as they are by our individual selection. Each individual selects the state in which he is going to walk. Some people who come into the church are prepared to go only so far with God.
They say, “Glory, hallelujah!” all the way—until they come up to a level for which they are not prepared; then God starts dealing with their hearts, and finally they drift away.
What boundaries have you placed upon your dedication? How far have you said that you would go with God? My own heart has been deeply searched. God has spoken to me about the things that are coming. He spoke to me about what it will be like for these people who are approaching this day, and about what it will be like to lead them. How I wept as I stood before the Lord.
It is difficult to explain what I saw. I saw that some man is going to break through as a manifested son. He is going to stand somewhere outside of this morass that people find themselves in. He is going to stand on the shores of the Kingdom. He is going to be like a Moses who will open up the waters that people will walk through. How I cried to God to be that first man in. I realized that for many years I had been driven for this. I was being driven by God. My cry was not out of human ambition; long ago God burned every bit of ambition out of my heart. Rather, I have had to deal with withdrawal and reluctance. As I stood crying before the Lord, I wanted to be that one who could open the door.
Somebody is going to break through, and it is going to be soon. The age is dawning almost too fast. This Feast of Tabernacles set the door open. It is open. God says we are going to walk through it, and we are going to walk through it. We are coming to the glorious day of “just men made perfect.” We are coming to the time in which God is saying to our hearts that He is going to shake everything, for He is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29). We are going to serve Him acceptably, with reverence and godly fear. Things are being shaken out of our lives, and we will stand before Him (Hebrews 12:27–28). The day of worship has come!
We read in Hebrews 10:35 an admonition closely related to this, which comes so strongly to us today: Cast not away therefore your boldness, which hath great recompense of reward. The Lord emphasized this to me: Do not cast away your boldness. There is a tenderness, there is a humility that God works in our heart. But there is something else, something of a courage and a boldness, that also has to come. The early disciples had that boldness, and the people marveled at it. As ignorant and unlearned men they stood, but there was something of the fire of God in them, a boldness that was unbelievable (Acts 4:13).
Do not cast away your boldness. The King James Version says: Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. Hebrews 10:35. In the day of King James, “confidence” was synonymous with “boldness.” In this day, confidence means something of a mental assurance. But the confidence we are talking about reaches out into every area of your life; it becomes a boldness which hath great recompense of reward. There is nothing that rewards a child of God as much as this: that he be bold in possessing what God has given him.
Hebrews 11 describes the boldness of people who did not even have promises, but through faith they obtained them (Hebrews 11:13, 33). The boldness, the utter brazenness of the Syrophoenician woman was such that she would not be denied (Mark 7:25–30). Jacob, wrestling with God—what an affront! “I will not let You go unless You bless me” (Genesis 32:24–28). Have you ever said that?
Behind every man who walks with God is a night spent at the Brook Jabbok. He may have had several sessions there. He has known a time when he wrestled with God. He has known a time when God dealt with him until he has been smitten on the thigh and crippled enough that when the sunrise came, he, like Jacob, limped away in the most beautiful defeat a man has ever faced. Everything in him was subjected and brought under, every bit of rebellion dealt with, and his name changed so he no longer was called “supplanter” but “a prince of God” (Genesis 27:36; 35:10).
It is really disturbing that people do not face their need. Jacob faced it, and he cried, “I won’t let You go; I won’t let You go until You bless me.” That blessing had to be a change down deep in his spirit, in his nature, and God did it for him.
There is a kind of boldness that people need in this hour. Today, in a vision, I saw a throng of people—they were not a marching army, they were without any order, they did not even have any personal dignity. They shuffled along without spirit, without heart. They were the multitude of people I have seen in these past years who have walked away from this move of God. They had heard a Word from God; they had moved in God. Then they counted the cost—something that people do a little late. This is God’s hour; this is God’s move. I wish I could have done something. The time is past, and these were just the shadows of yesterday and the day before and the day before that. They walked by—there were so many of them. They had heard a Word from God, they had moved in God, and they walked away.
They walked away—listlessly, with no spirit, no place to go, but they walked away. Then the Lord spoke to my heart. It was a serious talk, and in it He said, “Speak to My people about the withdrawing spirit, about the rebellion, about the seed of defeat that is still in their spirits, that they be not a castaway.”
Cast not away therefore your boldness, which hath great recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, having done the will of God, ye may receive the promise. For yet a very little while, He that cometh shall come, and shall not tarry. But my righteous one shall live by faith: And if he shrink back, my soul hath no pleasure in him. But we are not of them that shrink back unto perdition; but of them that have faith unto the saving of the soul. Hebrews 10:35–39, ASV.
I am struck by certain things I read in the Word of God. I am struck by the fact that God could look at me and have no pleasure in me. All I would have to do is shrink back. Just shrink back. But we are not to be among those who shrink back unto perdition; we are to be those who believe unto the saving of the soul.
For as touching those who were once enlightened (in other words, the walk in the Spirit came to them) and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Spirit (this was the real eternal life of the Holy Spirit coming to them), and tasted the good word of God (a Living Word came to their hearts), and the powers of the age to come and then fell away. Hebrews 6:4–6a, ASV.
I really believe Hebrews is talking about us in this end time. The “powers of the age to come” is what we are walking in now; that is what we are tasting. We are not tasting the things of the age past, the Church Age; we are tasting the powers of the age to come. What happens to these who have gone through this route and then fallen away?
It is impossible to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame. Hebrews 6:6b, ASV.
It is one thing to displease the Lord—to walk in sin—and then come back to Him. It is another thing to fall away until you are not reaching out to God. I watched one individual who fell into sin; he came out of it, because at every service and every communion, he was right in there seeking God, trying to worship Him, crying out to Him. Your sin does not make the difference; God can bring you through that. It is something else in you that makes the difference: a falling away until you are not reaching out to God.
We have come too far and received too much not to have a solemn warning laid before us of what jeopardy we place ourselves in if we take this next step in God.
When you taste the powers of the age to come, then fall away, you put yourself in a place where you will never be able to repent. Why? Those who have gone that far have seen the living Christ begin to come forth in them. And then not to see Him glorified in your life, but to crucify Him afresh and put Him to an open shame, goes diametrically against the will of the Heavenly Father, and He will judge it.
Nineteen hundred years ago at the Feast of Pentecost, those same people who had crucified Jesus Christ fifty days earlier heard these words by the Apostle Peter, “You men with wicked hands have slain the Lord of glory.” They cried out, “What can we do?” (Acts 2:23b, 36–37.) Peter told them, “Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and your children, and to all that are afar off” (Acts 2:38–39).
It was very easy for them to be saved. Some of those who had participated in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ were ushered into the Church fifty days later. But when this age ends, not one will be saved who crucifies Jesus Christ afresh as He is coming forth to be glorified in His saints and to be admired in all them that believe (II Thessalonians 1:10, KJV). Not one of them will be saved. The first time it was ordained that Jesus be crucified; this time it is ordained that He be glorified.
The Heavenly Father will put an end to anyone who reverses this order that God has established. There once was a time when the murderers of Christ, the persecutors of the Church—including the Apostle Paul—later came into the Church and proclaimed the Gospel. But that will never happen again. Now when you move up and taste the Living Word and the powers of the age to come, if you crucify to yourself the Son of God and put Him to an open shame, it is impossible to renew you to repentance (Hebrews 6:4–6).
This has to do with a dispensational decree in the heart of the Father: Christ is going to be glorified and triumphant. He is going to fill all things, and He has ordained that His Body will be the fulness of him that filleth all in all. Ephesians 1:23, KJV. He is coming to be glorified, and to invade every realm until everything in the entire universe is filled with the glory of Christ and the dominion of His Lordship (Ephesians 1:10, 21–22; Philippians 2:9–11). The knowledge of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14). It is like a great steamroller; go against it, and it is your doom. Give yourself to His being glorified and honored, and the Heavenly Father will bless you and smile upon you. Crucify Him afresh and put Him to an open shame, when it is the Father’s will that He be glorified and magnified, and it would be impossible to renew you to repentance.
For the land which hath drunk the rain that cometh oft upon it (the “land” refers not to some lighthearted adherent to the cause, but to the man who has heard the Word, and the copious showers and blessings of the Lord have rained and rained upon him), and bringeth forth herbs meet for them for whose sake it is also tilled, receiveth blessing from God. Hebrews 6:7.
God is sending the rain because He wants the fruitfulness of that land to come forth for a specific purpose. God has begun to till you and to plant the seed in you, then He waters you—it rains and rains upon you. There are people for whose sake He is doing this. He wants you to bring forth fruit that is going to feed the multitudes and be a blessing to the whole world. It is for their sake that God is tilling the land and raining upon it. When you bring forth the fruit, they will be blessed of God. When you rise up and say, “Yes, Lord, we thank You for the Word and we respond with all fruitfulness to Your pruning to bear much fruit unto Thee,” you will receive blessing from God.
But if it beareth thorns and thistles (take heed to this: If the carnal manifestation of the flesh is all that comes out of your life), it is rejected and nigh unto a curse; whose end is to be burned (you can’t dodge it: He put this truth in the Word again and again). Hebrews 6:8.
Has there ever been any other move of God’s Spirit in the history of the Christian age in which God has poured out so much and demanded so much?
And to whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required. Luke 12:48b, ASV.
The judgments will be proportionate. To do despite unto the Spirit of grace will bring a reversal upon our lives and bring greater judgment than we could dream possible (Hebrews 10:29).
No one needs to whine and back off, saying in his heart, “I can’t make it; I don’t have enough.” This thing is so completely by the grace of God; this is the hour for the lame, the halt, and the blind (Matthew 15:30–31; Luke 14:21–24). It is the hour for the disinherited. It is the hour for those who have known miserable failures and mistakes. It is an hour for the inadequate. This is the day of an inadequate minority coming into the glories of the Kingdom of God.
Oh, the matchless grace of God—He loves us so much! Do you understand it? You may not fully understand it, but do you sense that you cannot justifiably look within yourself and say, “I’m inadequate; I do not have enough.” Instead, look within and say, “Praise the Lord, I’m going on by the grace of God.” Have boldness! There is great recompense of reward for a man who will move in the boldness of God (Hebrews 10:35). Someone may say to you, “You’re no good. You can’t do this; you can’t do that.” You can do all things, for our sufficiency is not of ourselves, but it is of God who makes us able ministers of His new covenant (II Corinthians 3:6).
I want to be around when this shaking is all over. I want to stand; I want to be one of those standing on the earth after that first resurrection. I want to see the rewards. I want to just stand there and weep when I see the ones who have really made it, the ones who stand high.
Marvelous are the opportunities He gives us to walk with Him. But there is an awesome thing troubling my spirit: He has blessed you so much—and what if, after His raining upon your spirit, you don’t bring forth the precious fruit? (James 5:8.) What if you draw back? Will you join that crowd I saw in the vision? Like phantom specters, I saw them parade. It was not the tramp, tramp, tramp of a marching army; they just walked away, silently, as though they were dead. Their voices were silent. They were ones on whom I have laid hands, and I have blessed. I heard no prophesying, no singing in the spirit, no singing of any of the psalms that I once heard them sing. They had heard the good Word of God, they had tasted of the powers of the age to come, and they had fallen away—the living dead. God have mercy on us that we not be one of that company.
O Master, our loving Lord, if there is in our hearts that which would cause us to turn away when You have spoken so much, if we have harbored unbelief and doubts and fears, if in this drastic hour in which You are demanding so much of us we have failed, if we have withdrawn in our spirit, if we have had smoldering rebellion that we have camouflaged until it appeared not to be so, if we have walked in something less than faith, if we have not responded to Your tremendous promises by rising to believe, but rather we have staggered and drawn back, we want You to deal with us. We do not want to run the course, then fall away and find the ebbing of strength or find that the purpose of heart is gone. We know that many are called but few are chosen (Matthew 22:14); that many would, in this hour, seek to enter in and not be able (Luke 13:24). Lord, we are praying that because we are humble and we are nothing, You will give us grace and cleanse our hearts; You will help us and minister to us in a special way.
Help us, Lord Jesus. Minister to our spirits. Bless us to kneel before Thy face, O Lord, for that moment of heartsearching that You may give the strength, the purpose of heart and the boldness that may be that little margin of strength that we need, so that we may be among that vast host who will walk with Thee in the Kingdom.
Lord, help us, for it is not a time of self-condemnation, but it is a time of cleansing deep within, and of drawing Thy strength that we might walk with Thee. In Thy name we pray. Amen.
The reason most people withdraw is that they reached the boundary that they had placed on their dedication.
The lame and the halt enter the Kingdom; they limp because they have wrestled with God.
Many have stumbled and recovered; few have withdrawn and recovered.
To stumble is a serious thing, but to not take the next step with God can be a far more serious thing.
Why has God demanded so much of us? He gave us so very much.