One of the greatest and most practical truths that we can receive is this: revelation versus illusion. Almost everyone who is trying to walk on with God faces a certain amount of illusion, which is often difficult to separate from revelation or even from logical conclusions and evaluations of a situation. I think that this is the beginning of Satan’s great thrust to produce signs and wonders which, if it were possible, would deceive the very elect (Matthew 24:24). Have you ever noticed how you can see a little fault in another, a little root, and it suddenly looks like a whole forest. Then you begin to evaluate. You say, “Oh, I have a revelation of that.” But revelation can be distorted. The very process by which we receive revelation is used by Satan, and there we can have an element of illusion. This is a heavy thought.
If we could really see one another with a pure revelation, what overwhelming love we would have for one another! How we would glorify the Christ in one another! But instead of that, sometimes we fall into the magnifying process of beholding one another’s faults—not beholding one another’s dedication, not beholding one another’s true love for the Lord—until the whole picture becomes one of total deception; and yet it looks like revelation.
How can deception look like revelation? By this amazing distorting process of illusion where Satan magnifies a small thing: a word, one act, a circumstance, a personality trait, until everything—everything—is changed.
This process of illusion that Satan creates can result in the greatest unbelief you have ever had in your life. Faith has to have a revelation that rests upon the Word of God (Romans 10:17), but unbelief can rest upon the distortion of a circumstance, an illusion of something which really does not exist.
A careful study of the wanderings of the children of Israel in the wilderness would show that they leaped to negative conclusions over their circumstances until they murmured and complained, and they played right into the hands of Satan (I Corinthians 10:10). Everything came out of that: unbelief, rebellion, murmuring, complaining.
Yet the circumstances they were looking at did not really justify the illusions that they accepted or the unbelief which was the actual result of that illusion.
This is very important for us, because many are reaching into new revelation, and Satan would like to give them another illusion. You say, “Well, I was wrong because I was doing this or I was not doing that.” Yet there is one thing we were doing right: We were praying for God to bring forth His judgments in the earth again. We have been told from the very beginning of this walk, from 1951 on, that God is going to restore judgments to the earth, and they will begin at the house of the Lord. This is part of our basic teaching; and of course, this is scriptural.
For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? I Peter 4:17.
Now suddenly we have apostates saying, “I don’t believe in the ministry of judgment.” If you don’t believe in judgment, then you don’t believe the Bible; you don’t believe in Elijah; you don’t believe in Jeremiah; you don’t believe in Noah; you don’t believe in any of the prophets who came. And you don’t believe Christ Himself, who spoke of the judgments of these days.
You can’t be a Christian and say, “I believe the Bible,” without believing in the grace of God and in the righteousness of God. And the righteousness of God demands judgment. You say, “Well, I don’t believe that. Jesus has forgiven me.” He went to the cross so He could forgive you. The cross was a judgment for your sins, and if you don’t repent of your sins, it doesn’t work. If you refuse it, Christ is no longer the sacrifice for your sin. We read in Hebrews, “There remaineth no more sacrifice for sin, since you have crucified the Son of God and you have put Him to an open shame” (Hebrews 6:4–6; 10:26–27). There isn’t anything more that you can look for but judgment. This means that if you don’t believe in judgment, then you don’t believe in the Bible, because salvation is based upon the fact that a blanket judgment rests upon every man. Jesus didn’t come to condemn the world; it is already condemned. Judgment is there (John 3:17–18). But He has appointed a time in which He is going to judge the world. This is scriptural (Acts 17:31). Now comes the time when people say, “I don’t believe in judgment.” What they need is mercy, because the judgment is already resting on them. They have judged themselves to be unworthy of the mercy and grace that they expect always to be there.
If we have left the time of devastation and there is a new flow of revelation, let us beware that we do not forsake what God spoke at the beginning.
For this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For if the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? After it was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard. Hebrews 2:1–3.
The word of the Lord came to me saying “The slain of the Lord at thy feet, O man of God, will be multitudes” (Isaiah 66:16). It disturbed me. I didn’t understand it, but I spoke of it once in a while when I reviewed all the other wonderful things that God had said. Yet I didn’t know whether this particular Word was that wonderful or not. But now the time has come that without the ministry of judgment, the Gospel of the Kingdom will not have free course.
Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified, even as it is with you: and that we may be delivered from unreasonable and wicked men: for all men have not faith. But the Lord is faithful, who shall stablish you, and keep you from evil. II Thessalonians 3:1–3, KJV.
There are impasses—Babylon has created them. And unless there is judgment on Babylon, a confronting of Babylon with the power and authority of the Spirit, we will not get anywhere—not one step further.
That is true right now in the house of God. That is where He is starting. He is starting with the Judas in our midst. He is starting with the tares that are being bundled, and the match is lit. The line is drawn. The bundling is taking place (Matthew 13:40). It becomes an impossibility for anyone to walk with God in this day and hour and still have an illusion, a deception about this thing of judgment. It exists. It must of necessity exist. If it does not, then the unrighteous, and the wicked, and the apostates, and the Judases will work their will upon the Body, and that will lead to a fresh crucifixion of Christ coming forth in His Body. This is not to be. He is not to be crucified afresh or put to an open shame.
For in the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance, since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God, and put Him to open shame. Hebrews 6:4–6.
Christ is coming to be glorified in His saints—and not only to be glorified in His saints, but to be admired in all them that believe (II Thessalonians 1:10). The day of shame may be there in our humiliation before God, but the world and the apostates and the Judases are not going to shame the Christ within us. It is Christ who will crucify our flesh in a work of the cross in us. That we submit to, for our hearts would be humble before Him. We glory in the cross, because thereby “the world is crucified to us, and we to the world” (Galatians 6:14). But there must be no illusion that there is no judgment; that is deception. Do you say, “I never believed in judgment”? Then you should never have been in this walk in the first place. I question whether you really were, if you did not understand from the very beginning that these are the days when God begins treading out the wine press in the fierceness of His wrath (Revelation 14:19–20; 19:15; Isaiah 63:1–6).
A lot of spiritual warfare has come against us. The delusions and deceptions of Satan have been great. We have been tried in the fire seven times (Psalm 12:5–6), and the people are beginning to emerge.
“But He knows the way I take; when He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.” Job 23:10.
“And He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the Lord offerings in righteousness.” Malachi 3:3.
In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. I Peter 1:6–7.
The Lord’s healing is upon us. Now, with the release from the satanic illusions, what we must do is this: Return to the original revelations; return to the ministry of judgment; return to the pure worship before God; return to the things that were set before you from the beginning (Hebrews 2:1). The stars have not changed their position; don’t you change your course either! If God had to correct you, He corrected you while you were on course that you might continue, that you might be that people, that ministry, that instrument in His hand, and that there would not be any failure or falling short in what He raised you up to do.
Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth: thou shalt thresh the mountains, and beat them small, and shalt make the hills as chaff. Thou shalt fan them, and the wind shall carry them away, and the whirlwind shall scatter them: and thou shalt rejoice in the Lord, and shalt glory in the Holy One of Israel. Isaiah 41:15–16, KJV.
You have not lived for yourself. You have sacrificed and lived humbly. You have spent every hour that you could, working, trying to minister, giving your time to the Lord. Sometimes you were so devastated that you didn’t know how to go on, but you had a faith and a dedication. Do you say, “But I threw my cross down!”? Then pick it up. Go on and die on it a little more. But don’t forget that all of that time and all of this devastation was not an end in itself; it was preparation for a deeper, more important appropriation of the ministry that God set before us than ever.
We will not fail in the ministry of judgment, either. We will not turn to the right hand or to the left until His judgments fill the earth; and the isles shall wait for His law (Isaiah 30:20–21; 42:4). Hearts have waited for this hour. Prison houses are going to be opened up (Isaiah 61:1). People are locked in, and they have to be freed. It is not going to come without deliverance. And what is deliverance but a judgment upon the demonic powers that have locked people in, locked in their spirits, oppressed them in spirit. It’s time to set them free! It is this freedom that we contend for.
Wherever our old flesh is to blame, God is dealing with it. But wherever there have been human instruments in the hand of Satan dedicated to our oppression, they will either repent, or God will judge them. We are determined that we will be agents of the Lord and ministers of His Word. That is our dedication. But know also that the enemy has dedicated ones, too—ones who are as dedicated to your destruction and your defeat, as dedicated to see you become a disgrace to Christ, as you are to see Christ glorified in you. Can you understand that the time has come for judgment to begin in the house of the Lord and to reach the ends of the earth? (I Peter 4:17–18.) You are not coming out of devastation only for a period of peace. You are coming into the next phase of the Kingdom with a sword! From the beginning, that is what God showed: that the Living Word is sharper than any two-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12). We believe it! The weapons of our warfare are not carnal; they will pull down the strongholds (II Corinthians 10:4). They will unveil that religious hypocrisy, Satan transforming himself as an angel of light in his deception (II Corinthians 11:14).
Our people have not been religious, and how the satanic world criticizes us for not being religious. We would be self-defeated if we turned to that veneer, that facade of religion. We cannot return to that illusion and that pharisaic smugness. We can’t do it. We go on to judgment. The world will look at our enemies and look at us, and they will say that the enemy looks more righteous, looks better than we do, because we want no illusion. The treasure of Christ is in earthen vessels (II Corinthians 4:7). We are not trying to dress up our flesh. We are trying to walk in His righteousness and exhibit Him. Have no illusion. When they criticize out there, they are full of the devil. We don’t hide our mistakes; we confess them and we cry to God for them, and we walk in mercy. Others will point to our mistakes and cover up their own, and have that enigma of all ages—bitterness.
You have come out of this devastation; now get back to your intercession! Stop apologizing for the violence in prayer. Sing and worship with a good, beautiful spirit before God, for you are not praying against or warring against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and the powers (Ephesians 6:12). And if the flesh and blood united with the principalities and powers have a dedication equal to yours, they will be destroyed and you will be delivered.
In the name of the Lord, you who read this, who have been brought through the fires of devastation: The Lord is going to give you beauty for ashes (Isaiah 61:3). You are loosed from the satanic illusion, in the name of the Lord. You are free this day. The blessing of the Lord is upon you to once again arise, without self-condemnation and without the accuser of the brethren trying to put you down (Revelation 12:10), and say, “I love You, Lord, and Thine enemies have become mine enemies. I shall pray until the assault against all that has glorified Thy name in this Body is broken; until every apostolic ministry is free; until the apostolic company moves on; until every ministry who is called of God, but who is languishing in some limitation or barrier or restriction which he doesn’t know how to get out of, is loosed. Lord, we glorify Thy name, and we declare that You shall be glorified in these ones, in Thy chosen servants. Because they were chosen of Thee, we loose them together in the name of the Lord.”
We appropriate our own liberty. We possess our own freedom. We take that which looses us from this self-condemnation, from any self-pity over what we have had to go through. Maybe you fell by the wayside. You lay there and you bled awhile, but be healed in the name of the Lord! There is nothing wrong with you now. Get up! Follow the Captain of your salvation (Hebrews 2:10). The Captain of the hosts of Israel is going to lead us (Joshua 5:14). It’s a day of victory. The Mighty One rides upon the white horse (Revelation 19:11), and the trumpets are sounding for war, for the end of Babylon, the end of the corruption, has to come.
The good fish must be separated from the bad fish (Matthew 13:47–48), the wheat separated from the darnel (Matthew 13:30).
God is bringing an end to that which has had a coexistence, some unreasonable detente with Satan abiding right in the midst of God’s people. We are going to be loosed; we are going to be free. The Lord alone is going to be glorified in our midst (Isaiah 2:11, 17; II Thessalonians 1:10). Deception and illusion are going to go.
O house of God, you are free! O servants of the Lord, you are free! You are loosed in the name of the Lord. The blessing of the Lord is your portion, and you will rise in it in the name of the Lord. Walk in it and see it spread to the right hand and to the left about you. Instead of finding that you huddle together like prisoners in exile, you are going to be loosed, and you are going to set one another free. The bonds that have been upon each one of you are going to be broken now, and you are going to loose one another’s chains. Unwrap the wrappings of death off of the Lazaruses. Call to them and say, “Come alive, come alive!” (John 11:43–44.)
God did not raise you up for you to be defeated. He raised you up to devastate you, but not to defeat you. Now is the time for resurrection life to come forth where revelation would prevail. What God reveals, He causes to live in His sight and become reality to you.
Revelation is reality, but deception is the result of a satanic illusion. Throw away the illusion. The processes of illusion and revelation seem to be very similar, but let God show you the difference.
Rise and bless the name of the Lord. The deception is broken; the illusions go. Like a cloud in the morning it will disappear. You are set free in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Arise and prophesy His strength, prophesy His victory, in the name of the Lord.
Along with all of this that God has done, it is very necessary that a divine order for it come forth. Let the shepherds arise. Let the apostolic company mobilize the forces together. Now we are going to begin this liberating of one another, setting one another free, humbling ourselves before each other and saying, “Help me out of my bonds.” Then we will turn around, and the chains that have bound us are going to become a weapon to beat down the enemy. We will say, “What was my chain is now going to be my weapon. I refuse the illusion, I refuse the bondage, and I judge it. Whatever it did to me, God is going to judge that thing twelvefold over in the ministry of judgment.” This is what we are going to do for each other.
Let there be days of the declaration of judgment against your oppressions. Judge your chains. Judge the walls that were put about you, but not by God. Judge the things that you imposed upon yourself through illusion and deception. Judge the feelings that have limited you and held you down. Judge these things.
Be loosed! Loose the faith that has been put in a corner. Loose it! Loose the love that has been buried. Loose the worship, loose the song! Loose one another! Judge the devils! Loose yourself from the effect of the Judases, and fear them not! It is their guts upon a rock, not yours (Acts 1:18). Loose yourself in the name of the Lord!
We are going to revive again the intercession along with the worship, with the glorious song of the Lord, with our release to sing that song. That which has been wrought in our spirit has helped to perfect it, so that we can be better channels even of judgment in the earth. This intercession will be the cry of your heart in unity with an apostolic company who are going to lead you into battle. The violent intercession will come forth. Don’t say, “We don’t believe in violent intercession.” Cry aloud: “The Kingdom suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force!” (Matthew 11:12.) And that is exactly the way it will be. Participate with the intercession. Rejoice in it; speak it; and it will come out of your spirit like a volcano of fire erupting before God, because this is of the Lord!
Isn’t Christ the way of victory? Is this thing of warfare to be a way of life, a detente, a limited war with nobody winning? No! It is to be a total victory that comes in the name of the Lord. We take the victory. This is what we proclaim: total, absolute, unlimited victory, and no limitation upon any ministry—no limited fulfillment of any prophecy or any commission. No longer will we see the churches torn because of the half-heartedness with which they go through the changes, the half-heartedness with which they accept what God has said, thinking that they deserve a medal because they have given a half-hearted, halfway fulfillment of the thing that God said to do. The day will come when we will go after it with all of our heart, and we are going to win the victory. We seek Him with all of our heart, and He hears us.
“Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:12–13.
How blessed are those who observe His testimonies, who seek Him with all their heart. Psalm 119:2.
Again the Word of the Lord comes unto thine heart, saying, “Thou shalt not flee seven ways before the enemy, but the enemy is to flee seven ways before thee (Deuteronomy 28:7). Thou art the ones of whom it is said that one shall chase a thousand and two shall put ten thousand to flight (Deuteronomy 32:30). But if thine heart be unbelieving, one shall chase ten thousand of you, and you shall disappear into the darkness.”
Open your heart to the fact that this is more than survival. This is the fulfillment; this is the time of the Kingdom prevailing. This is the stone cut out of the mountain without hands (Daniel 2:34). It must fall, it must crush, it must grind to powder all the things that have warred against the Lord and have not been submissive before Him in His Kingdom (Luke 20:17–18; Matthew 21:42–44). It must bring down everything that has warred against the humble growth, the humble hearts that were coming forth in His name. It is true that we must suffer adversity, but the adversary has sought to put down; the adversary has sought to destroy. How many sheep shall be lost before we recognize the battle? How many people shall perish by the way? How many prophets shall become discouraged and turn aside, and their revelation be turned into darkness and bitterness? It’s a day when the Lord says, “Is thy name Mara—bitterness? Or is thy name Naomi—pleasantness? (Ruth 1:20.) What shall it be?”
Do not accept the bitterness with which the enemy would fill thy heart and thy veins and every tissue of thy being. Be filled with the courage and the faith of the Lord.
Prophesy against those things that have warred within thee and around thee and about thee, until they would literally smother and drown you in the lies and illusions of Satan. Look up to the revelation of the Lord, for the sun of righteousness is arising with healing in its wings (Malachi 4:2), and He looses you this day. He says, “No more are you to walk in this!”
Days of prophecy are set before you—days of prophetic proclamation, in which thou shalt proclaim the truth of thy position in God. Thou shalt proclaim the truth of the Word that has been spoken over thee. No longer shall there be that self-condemnation within thee, that drawing back and withdrawal that has refused a Word—refused it—until it has not even been a burning hope within thy bosom. Pick up the Word and don’t turn away from it, or you turn away from your very life. He that turneth away from a Living Word turneth away from the Christ who spoke it. Let that Word burn in your heart and let it become a sharp, two-edged sword in thy hand. Cut down the enemy; cut down the lies and illusions.
And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Ephesians 6:17.
For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. Hebrews 4:12.
Know indeed that the time has come to cry to the Lord for those who are wounded, and to “heal the hurt of the daughter of My people, saith the Lord” (Jeremiah 6:14). Bring forth the balm in Gilead (Jeremiah 8:22); there is healing here. Revive the fainthearted; lift up the hands which hang down; strengthen the feeble knees (Hebrews 12:12), lest any of you be turned aside from the way, lest there be among you any fornicator or unclean person who can find no place of repentance. Let no root of bitterness be in thy heart which shall defile many (Hebrews 12:15–17). Open your heart. Let the joys of the Lord flow. Let faith come. Battle!
Walk with God! This is a walk with God, or the term “walk” would not have become a term of derision in the mouths of the arrogant ones and the mockers.
Another Word comes, and this Word is to the prophets, to the apostles, to the shepherds, to the ones upon whom the glorious prophecies and commissions and anointings have rested, and they find themselves wandering. They find themselves in a wilderness, in a period of barrenness, a period of heart-searching, of trying to hang on but finding that they don’t know how to hang on. Listen: If you are content with being that, tell us what kind of flowers you want for your funeral. We will remember your good works and your good deeds. We will remember your songs and your prophecies. We will remember the ones whom you helped. But beyond that, your memory will perish. But if you say, “Those Words were from God; there is a great disappointment in my heart,” the disappointment is because you have accepted unbelief. The fight is not over. There is another round coming up.
There is no finality of defeat in some of the battles that you have been in, not as long as we have the Living Word. That is the weapon which prevails; that is the winner.
The Word of the Lord will prevail. We may not have what it takes, but as long as we hang on to the Word, we will win. Rise and speak that Word. Speak that Word to the people. Speak it to your own heart. Speak to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Make melody in your heart to the Lord (Colossians 3:16; Ephesians 5:19).
Begin to rise out of the place that you are in, because you refuse to accept it any longer. Refuse to accept the validity of what Satan calls “your defeat.” You are not defeated! That is the lie of the enemy. You are more than conquerors through Him (Romans 8:37). Then, through Him, get up and take the victory!
Speak the Word of the Lord! Break the people out of their ruts! Talk to them! Heal them first! Lay hands upon them and heal their spirit. Dry their tears. Encourage them. Lift up the hands which hang down! Strengthen the feeble knees, lest you be turned out of the way (Hebrews 12:12).
You have the victory right in the palm of your hand. When you look at your palm, it looks as if it has a nail hole in it; but that is the victory. The crucified ones are the conquering ones. You have had the cross; now share His crown.
The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow-heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. Romans 8:16–18.
The effectiveness of what we do will depend upon the elimination of those things out of our spirit which are the dead, inert ingredients that weaken the life flow. Have you ever seen children fighting each other with balloons? They get a balloon and they hit one another with the balloon, because they can’t hurt a person with a balloon. It is ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent air, and that dilutes any force of the substance. This illustrates what our people have been doing. They have been throwing cotton balls at the devil. We did not accomplish much; we did not work any deliverance in the earth. We brought forth wind instead of an effective Word that pulled down mountains.
As the pregnant woman approaches the time to give birth, she writhes and cries out in her labor pains, thus were we before Thee, O Lord. We were pregnant, we writhed in labor, we gave birth, as it were, only to wind. We could not accomplish deliverance for the earth nor were inhabitants of the world born. Isaiah 26:17–18.
Let’s eliminate quickly the pain, the sorrow, the suffering, the diluting of the Word. Let’s get rid of that as fast as we can, so that when we speak, it is a Living Word that will knock the devil right out of the picture. We must take authority—the authority which uses the name of Jesus Christ. But there will be no question within us, no wavering spirit within us, no drawing back within us—nothing that will dilute the effectiveness and force, or dull the edge of the sharp, two-edged sword, so that it pierces right down to the bringing down of strongholds in the name of the Lord. Let’s be more concerned about the purity of our response to a pure Word, and then we will have the purest of victory—not a half-victory, as the result of a half-faith that wrought it.
For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete. II Corinthians 10:4–6.
The bundling of the tares and the bundling of the wheat is taking place (Matthew 13:36–43), and we cannot understand what God is doing. You say, “Why doesn’t God just make all the tares disappear?” Oh, no! The promise in Psalm 91:7–8 says, A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked. You say, “That means, then, that the judgment is not going to hit me. It’s just going to hit them.” Yes, but it means more than that. God intends for you to see the outcome of this, to witness it, to be there when He brings it to pass. You will be seated at the table which is spread before you, in the presence of your enemies (Psalm 23:5). The enemies are going to be there. They will be under the judgment, and you will be feasting on the bounty of the Lord. Does this sound like revenge? It is God’s style of revenge.
It pleases God that after you have pleased Him, after you have suffered a little, He will establish, strengthen, and settle you (I Peter 5:10). And then, when your obedience has come to the full, it shall please God to bring to an end that which has been truly an instrument in His hand for your perfection (II Corinthians 10:6). But you will see it. Through opposition, Haman was the instrument that God used to bring forth Esther and to bring forth the blessings of Mordecai and all of God’s people there in Babylon. Who knows what would have happened if God had not ordered it this way? Haman was an unwilling servant of God; but nevertheless, because he was dedicated to the hand of Satan, he still had to die on his own gallows (Esther 7:10).
And this is the reward of the wicked: They shall perish in the pit which they have dug and in the lies which they have spoken, in their turning away from the things of God and in their trampling under foot the humble ones who come along. We loose the victory of the Lord. We loose that which comes forth in the name of the Lord and says, “God shall bring down, in His own way, that which may have served a purpose; but now He is glorified to demonstrate that this is the way it will turn out.” That is not revenge; that is the deliverance of God in its utmost. We believe for nothing short of His perfect victory.
O house of God, thou hast for a little time been troubled and put down. But if you could see for a moment the effectiveness of the Word you have believed and the disturbance within the camp of the enemy, if you could see those whose knees are loosed to smite one another because they have seen the handwriting on the wall (Daniel 5:5–6), if you could see for just a moment the fear that is in the heart where there has been no faith or where it has abandoned faith, then you would know that the judgments of the earth have begun; and they are relentless. Thou shalt be healed shortly, but the enemy hath a wound that nothing can heal—a deadly wound that bringeth him down.
Say not, “Have I been effective?” The Lord speaketh unto thee, “Thou knowest not how effective you have been.” Thou knowest not how irrevocable have been the dealings of God and the judgments of God that are blasting loose the Kingdom of God! There shall not be a mingled thing within the hearts of men who walk in the Kingdom. They shall be ones that the Lord has refined their spirit, devastated them, put them through the furnace seven times, refined them as the sons of Levi, as the silver is refined in the fire, in order that they can bring forth the pure offering of the Lord (Malachi 3:3). It will not be anything short of His perfect victory! It will be a complete victory!
I repent of any unbelief. Join with me and repent of yours. I repent of the moments when I have been offbalance. I thank God that He kept giving me the Word again, and it picked me up. His Words have kept me on my feet. The Lord has helped me, and I am strengthening my hands in the Lord. I am not saying that we have done everything perfectly. We may have wavered for a little season, but now we lift up our heart and we say, “We move on into the perfect victory that God hath ordained.” Let there be no wavering within our spirit. There shall be no drawing back from anything that God has spoken. We do not accept in our hearts any wavering spirit. O God, our hearts shall be steadfast. We repent of unbelief. We repent of anything that has not been a perfect spirit before the Lord, and we determine that we are going to walk in it, in the name of the Lord.
This is the day of our victory! This is the day which the Lord hath made. We will rejoice and be glad in it (Psalm 118:24). Though it is filled with gunsmoke, and our eyes are watering from the battle, and our ears are deafened for a moment by the roar of the cannons, yet we are part of the sharp, two-edged sword that hews down the enemy, that makes a way where there is no way, that blazes a trail of the redeemed who return to Zion.
Was it not Thou who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep; who made the depths of the sea a pathway for the redeemed to cross over? So the ransomed of the Lord will return, and come with joyful shouting to Zion; and everlasting joy will be on their heads. They will obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing will flee away. Isaiah 51:10–11.
“Behold, I will do something new, now it will spring forth; will you not be aware of it? I will even make a roadway in the wilderness, rivers in the desert.” Isaiah 43:19.
It is time for the truth, time for us to reassess what has happened to us. It is time for the Lord to begin to deal with our hearts, because we have made real and we have made a truth out of the lies of the enemy. Time and time and time again during the battle, he got just a little wedge in, and we began to accept something more—a little more defeat, one more lie, one more limitation upon our faith—until finally that was our “truth.” And this will not be obliterated until we do one thing: We are going back to the Word that God has spoken. We are going to magnify the Lord and magnify the Word and magnify our walk with God, and we’re going to get with that thing as we never have before. And when we do, we will watch God actually dissolve what we have allowed the enemy to build up. We are going to walk around wall after wall and bring them down. We will not accept defeat.
We have learned a bitter lesson: We have learned how the enemy comes like the dripping of water to wear away the stone. We curse every lie of the enemy. Everything he has tried to do, every time he has created contention, every time he has created division, every time he has separated, every time the illusion seemed to be so much a fact that it actually became the reality which we accepted—we consign it all into the pit of hell. And we declare that we will not accept the world that Satan has created by his lies.
We will only accept a world that God has created by His Word (Hebrews 11:3). God said it, we believe it, and we walk in it in the name of the Lord. We turn our hearts away from everything that even for the moment would say, “This is the world that is,” and we say, “There is no world for us but what God says.”
God has spoken of that which we will walk in, of that which is ours, of the way we are going to glorify the Lord in the earth, of the way we will be one; and we are going to walk in it.
We rise up to intercede and say, “O God, we curse every inroad in our thoughts and minds that was not of You. We loose ourselves from it! We move into Thy Word—the pure, unadulterated Word that causes us to live and abound in Thy sight (I Peter 2:2). We will have no place, and there will be no world for us, O God, except Thy presence.” There will be no truth but what the Lord spoke. We will not have anything else.
We will not live in the vagaries of Satan that have the ominous prediction of doom and failure. We will not live under the demonic clouds that have limited our acceptance of ourselves as the creation of God, as a company of people that God raised up to move the earth (Ephesians 2:10).
Above all, O Lord, deal with the men who have turned the hearts of the people away from the Living Word. That we judge, because every time it was done, the people were destroyed. O Lord, give those shepherds a tenfold judgment from God, because they have taken the Living Word away from the people.
We cry unto the Lord that He shall purge from our midst those who have made a detente agreement with Satan. We will accept no detente with the devil which causes us to walk half in truth and half in deception. The Lord has loosed us from it. He has loosed us as we have entered into the days of the Kingdom, that there shall be a purity before His sight. Surely His sons shall not have betrayal in their hearts. They shall not have that which has accepted and yet has rejected the Word which God has spoken. The jealousy and the envy are being driven out of the camp, and the lepers shall not abide in the sanctuary of the Lord until they are healed.
Arise, O shepherds, and heal the flock. Heal the wounds. Heal the breach that is in their spirit between them and the Lord. Remove the clouds that have kept the brilliance of God’s light from reaching their hearts. Bring them forth from the dungeons. O God, bring them forth from the dungeons! O shepherds, loose the people! Loose the people! Lift them up; love them and bless them!
O languishing heart, you shall flourish in His sight. O those who droop before Him, the sun rises upon thee with great expectancy and hope. Thou hast passed through the valley, a night season hath come, and thou hast begun to sing unto the dawn. Sing forth a new day. Let’s enter into His victory! O house of God, let us praise Him together! Let us bring forth our instruments of praise! Let us sing and worship the Lord. Let us rejoice while we see the walls of Babylon fall. Let us keep our march and blow our horns while Jericho’s walls fall flat (Joshua 6:20). They are coming down! They have come down today in our hearts, and we keep singing the song of Zion.
The day of the Lord hath come, but it hath dawned with clouds and darkness and heaviness upon His people (Joel 2:1–2). But the path of the righteous in this day shall shine more and more, for it is the prelude to the perfect day.
But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, that shines brighter and brighter until the full day. Proverbs 4:18, NASB.
He hath prepared thee. Look! Thy loins are girded. Thine heart no longer shall be faint. Thine eyes shall not be dull nor thine ears slow to hear, for thou hast been blessed of the Lord. And out of it comes a new day for thee, a release for thee. This is the day that the Lord hath made (Psalm 118:24), and He is making you a co-creator with Him. Make it a good day! Make it a great day! Rejoice and be glad in it, for the victory of the Lord comes, and the Lord strengthens the hands of His people and says, “Arise, possess this day!”
This is the day which the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. Psalm 118:24.
The Lord giveth a Word unto the confused heart: “Thou art thinking like slaves of Egypt who cannot forget their bondage; you cannot forget your chains. You see the giants before you, and you quail and draw back (Numbers 13:31). And there is a confusion within thy heart and spirit, because there is not a heart to wholly follow the Lord as there was with Caleb and with Joshua (Numbers 14:24, 30), the servants of God who believed that God would fulfill what He had spoken to their heart.” Now comes the hour that the Lord saith unto thee, “Arise. Put away thy confusion. Be stirred in thy spirit.”
O little children, O third generation in the walk, arise, because upon you shall rest the battle. Tackle the giants. Go in and fight them! Don’t be discouraged! Consider not thy youth and inexperience (Jeremiah 1:6–7). Be not intimidated by the older generation. Thou art able to go in because there is a faith in thy heart. There is not the conditioning of unbelief found in the older generation that has submitted to defeat after defeat until they have accepted a lesser way of life. Open your heart. Little children, third generation, come forth and begin to pray! Loose your fathers, loose your mothers, loose your sisters, loose your grandmothers and grandfathers, loose your families, loose the generation! A little child shall lead us (Isaiah 11:6). Believe it. Loose these people! Loose them from the unbelief. No longer even accept the conditioning of homes and environment that is a corruption of everything God wanted because it is filled with defeat, filled with contention, filled with unbelief. It is filled with no recognition at all of what God had said over them. There is not even a burning desire to walk in it, but instead some wistful hope that maybe something will happen. Contend! Fight! Pray! Believe! Put away the confusion! Do not be contaminated by the contemporary thing round about thee, and the verdict which the vacillating human mind says about it. All things are possible (Mark 9:23).
How soon can one day end and another day begin? It happens in the Spirit, even as in the day. You sit in the darkness, and in a few moments the light breaks in the east, and a new day is here. The dark shadows that were so fearsome suddenly are revealed in the light, and there is nothing more to fear, for there was no terror there at all. So the fears of the people must be put away. Let the light come forth! Speak the Word! Prophesy the Word! Live in the Word! It shall be a light unto thy path (Psalm 119:105). It shall cause the fearsome aspects of many things suddenly to be dissolved, and the Lord shall reveal unto thee that thou art His creation; thou art His people brought forth for this hour. Have the faith to live it. Don’t turn away from it.
As in Gideon’s day, thirty-two thousand assemble themselves against the Midianites. Twenty-two thousand welcome an invitation to go home. Out of ten thousand, only three hundred are chosen (Judges 7). Believe that thou art one of a thousand. Prophecy revealed thirty years ago in 1951, “I’ll take one of a thousand, and I’ll bring them into what I have promised” (Jeremiah 3:14). Sifting has been the order of the day from the very beginning when God began to speak to me in Holy Jim Canyon. He has been sifting it down to find, “Who this day will believe the Word of the Lord? Who will believe the world? Who will believe the devil?” Let him who is on the Lord’s side—him who hath heard a Living Word and it hath caused his heart to rejoice—not be fickle, but be faithful; let him not turn aside from the Word, but contend earnestly until it shall spring forth in the earth (Galatians 1:6; Jude 3).
O God, we repent for our wavering. We forget how You have set before us such a sure course. We tend to stumble over the rocks instead of keeping our eyes on the cloud. We repent, Lord, that we can be distracted for a single moment in this passing scene of darkness. We are not children of the darkness; we are children of the day (I Thessalonians 5:5). We do not walk in darkness, but we walk in the day. Lord, we loose ourselves to move into it. We refuse anything else. Day after day we are going to prophesy through these mountains and valleys and seas and rivers. No impasse will hold us back! We are Thy people and we walk in it, in the name of the Lord.
The Word of the Lord shall come in these days of preparation, these days of intercession, and it shall be like the voice of a trumpet. And if that voice shall give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself for battle? (I Corinthians 14:8.) This day we proclaim it. It shall not be an uncertain sound. It shall not be a confused Babel (Genesis 11:9). This will be a certain sound of faith. He that speaks this day, let him speak the Word of the Lord! He who prays, let him pray a prayer of faith! He who rises to intercede, let him embrace the things that God has set before us, and be not ashamed of his prayer or the violence of it. Let him be not ashamed that he hath set his heart upon a course once again that God has set before him; and he shall not deviate to the right hand or to the left until that hath been attained in the Lord. Let the trumpets sound with a certain sound, a sure sound, that hearts may prepare themselves for battle. But let no trumpet sound retreat.
O people in Zion, inhabitant in Jerusalem, you will weep no longer. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when He hears it, He will answer you. Although the Lord has given you bread of privation and water of oppression, He, your Teacher will no longer hide Himself, but your eyes will behold your Teacher. And your ears will hear a word behind you, “This is the way, walk in it,” whenever you turn to the right or to the left. Isaiah 30:19–21.
O Zion, thou hast been like a mother with many breasts, and the wolves have sucked at thy teats and they have gained life. They have sustained themselves, that they should go on in their way as wolves, devouring lambs. That day hath ended! There shall be no more of the wolves feasting upon the life of Zion! O people of God, thou shalt bring forth life, but it shall be for the little ones. The lambs shall not become the victims, slaughtered by the wayside, while the wolves suck off the life of the Body. There shall be no more spying in the camp that the Lord shall not judge. He shall smite the deceitful ear and the treacherous heart. The eye that hath been the spy for Satan, God shall bring it down. There shall be no more of this within the camp. Though there hath been trouble in the land, and though there hath been a disturbing, yet we come to the place where we say, “We have not brought forth fruit for the enemy to devour. We have not brought forth life for the wolves to suck it. We come forth in the name of the Lord with a life-giving portion, but it shall be life to the saints.”
We refuse the battle as individuals. The battle is against the Lord and against His Living Word, and we bring it down in the name of the Lord! We do not defend ourselves; we don’t have to. We say, “The Lord is my defense. I’ll not fear what man shall do (Psalm 118:6). If a host encampeth against me, I’ll not fear, for Thou, O Lord, art with me (Psalm 27:3). Thou art going to be my strength!” In the name of the Lord, I loose this faith, this release, this spirit of battle that is upon us to prevail by the Word God has spoken!
The Lord shall heal, but the Word is not really healing or resurrecting. We are in Ezekiel 37, where the bones in the valley were the first revelation. There has to be that revelation of your devastation before there can be a resurrection. But the Lord has given the Word, and one by one we have learned to relate; and bone has come to bone, all by the moving of the Spirit of the Lord (Ezekiel 37:7). Yet we have a voice to say, “We are still devastated. We are a destroyed people.” Yes, but it is the Lord that hath done it. It is the Lord that hath wrought it. And now He brings what never existed before—bone to its bone, everything in place, a divine order coming forth, requiring only the miracle Word of creation until they shall all be a standing army, standing in the presence of the Lord, ready to prevail over the enemy (Ezekiel 37:10).
God is creating the cause of His ultimate victories in the earth. An army is not an end in itself. The victory and the war that the army wins is the objective, so God raises up the army. He raises you up. Come on, we have a job to do! We must fulfill the purposes of God! We are beginning to live and breathe in His sight. We are beginning to stand before Him with faith. We are beginning to prevail in the name of the Lord, and there is only one way to go now—only one way. We are going to do what God said. We are going to bring forth and establish His victory and His Lordship in the earth, because He has chosen us as the channels to perform it.
We are the channels that God has chosen to bring forth His victory in the earth. Though He could work it through angels, and though He could speak one Word from the heaven of heavens and perform it, He hath delighted to bring it forth out of the devastated, weak ones. The base things, the foolish things, will rise up and confound the mighty (I Corinthians 1:27–28). Thou shalt not condemn thyself because thou hast become the instrument God chose to use. You say, “I was not wise; I was foolish. I was not strong; I was weak. I was not a mighty one; I was a base one.” Good! Now you are just exactly what God is going to use. Dump that self-condemnation that Satan throws on you as the accuser of the brethren, and say, “I am nothing more nor less than an instrument in the hand of God.” When you say it, it will happen—here, now, today, tomorrow, next week, next month. It will be a pattern of victory that God turns loose in the earth. No more shall we know periods and cycles. The Living Word is loosed upon the earth. It is unleashed to sweep the hearts of men. The Living Word will now be heard, because we have heard it.
Satan’s goal is to make deception look like revelation and revelation look like deception.
Illusion can be based on facts seen in unbelief; revelation is based upon faith that interprets all facts by the Word of God.
Satanic illusion can enslave, but The Truth lets you appropriate your own liberty.
The detente between wheat and tares is over; illusion and revelation also are being discerned.