Then they set out from Mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; and the people became impatient because of the journey. Numbers 21:4.
While the Israelites were going by the way of this sea of rushes, the Word said that the people became impatient because of the journey. I have a feeling that sometimes we become a little bit impatient. When we came into a walk with God.
I wonder how many other people have been disillusioned because they set God on a timetable, and sometimes in the long-suffering of God, things were delayed a little longer than expected. We realize that the Lord does delay His coming because “He is waiting for the precious fruit of the earth, and He has long patience for it until it receives the early and the latter rain” (James 5:7). God’s scheduling of time is uncanny. He is stretching things out as long as possible in the days of preparation because He is waiting to get as many into a walk with Him as He can. He is waiting for the precious fruit of the earth and has long patience for it.
But don’t forget Satan has a timetable too, and his idea is to bring total destruction to the human race. “If those days were not shortened, there would be no flesh left alive” (Matthew 24:22). So time is stretched out for our sakes as the Lord is trying to get all of us to walk with Him. And yet, when that’s complete, and the precious fruit is come forth, how rapidly the Lord will move to outmaneuver Satan in his efforts to destroy the human race. He will cut the days short or no flesh will be saved alive.
In the meantime, you and I are kind of caught in the process. We wish that God would get with it and get this thing over with. At least we say so, until some problem looms up in our lives. Then we say, “Lord, just a few more days to work this out, please.” Then we’re not in such a great big hurry as we were a short time before.
The Lord is speaking to us concerning the time of His presence and what it is to mean. Regardless how long things seem to tarry or how bitter the battle is, we are in the Parousia. Forty years ago, the prophecies in Ezekiel 38 and 39 were being interpreted thus: The Prince of Meshech, meaning Moscow, would come against Palestine, and in the Valley of Megiddo, where many battles in history have been fought (including David killing Goliath) there would be the Battle of Armageddon and the blood would flow to the bridle bits of the horses. Of course, we have prophecies that speak of this (Revelation 16:16; 14:20).
For some time, though, we have realized that the prophecies which we have seen on a natural plane must be interpreted on a spiritual plane. This is where the Jews erred because they wanted all of the prophecies of the Old Testament fulfilled on a natural plane. They were looking for the son of David, but they looked for someone to come and get an army together and defeat the Roman army. And when Jesus, the son of David, came and was casting out devils instead of killing Romans, they crucified Him. They were looking for the fulfillment on a natural plane, and when it came on a spiritual plane, they weren’t prepared to accept what did come.
Let’s be careful in this day that we don’t accept fundamentalists’ interpretations of prophecy and do the same thing the Jews did—go back and interpret it entirely on a natural plane when God is doing a thing on a spiritual plane. I think we have been in the Battle of Armageddon on a spiritual level for some time. It will not be surprising if we do see something on a natural plane, even if only a token, to indicate where we are.
Right now we are witnessing what Jesus prophesied, “Jerusalem will be trodden down of the Gentiles until the time of the Gentiles be fulfilled (Luke 21:24). The last few years have been the first years since the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. that the Jews have possessed Jerusalem and no other foreign peoples had anything to say about it. For a number of years, Jerusalem was half Arab and half Israeli. But with the “lightning war,” Jerusalem now is not under the hand of the Gentiles but under the hand of the Jews. With Russian aid and instructions, Jerusalem was almost overrun, which sounds like the fulfillment of prophecies as they were interpreted for many years. Only one thing is wrong with it: the invasion came from the South instead of from the North as the prophecies indicated. Only the munitions came from the North.
I have been praying for Israel. Though after the flesh we know that they have no hope apart from our Lord Jesus Christ, yet I believe we must think very kindly of them for the Father’s sake. For unto them was committed the oracles of God (Romans 3:2), and they preserved for us the word that we cherish so much. Keeping this in mind, we should pray for them. If the Arabs win, the nation Israel will be annihilated. I believe for God to help them. It is something like a miniature Armageddon taking place there, but I’m more concerned about the real Armageddon in the spirit. With that Armageddon taking place right now, there is encouragement to believe we’re facing the Parousia.
“Parousia” is a Greek word, translated “coming” in the King James Version; but the literal meaning of the word “Parousia” is “presence.” Different words are used for the coming of the Lord during the end-time events. The apocalypse speaks of the great revelation and unveiling of the Lord. The Parousia is another period of time, in which there is an intensity of His presence, especially with His people: “Then if any one says to you, ‘Behold, here is the Christ,’ or ‘There he is,’ do not believe him. For false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect. Behold, I have told you in advance. If therefore they say to you, ‘Behold, He is in the wilderness,’ do not go forth, or, ‘Behold He is in the inner rooms,’ do not believe them. For just as the lightning comes from the east, and flashes even to the west, so shall the coming (presence) of the son of Man be (Notice, “so shall the presence of the Son of Man be”).
“Whereever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather. But immediately after the tribulation of those days (indicating that the time of His presence is also the time of tribulation) the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. (This refers back to Joel’s prophecy, ”I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; … the sun will be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, … Joel 2:28, 31. The outpouring of the Spirit, the signs of judgment, and the great presence of the Lord are all tied in together.
“And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory (so His presence is first intensified with His people while the great end-time judgments are being poured out; then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the heavens, and everyone will behold it).
“And He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together His elect (or, His “chosen ones”) from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other.” Matthew 24:23–31.
Some fundamentalists will say that “His elect” means the Jews. And they interpret other prophecies to mean that the Lord is gathering all of the Jews back to the Holy land. But this passage says that the elect are to be gathered by angels from every corner of the earth. Something’s wrong someplace. If the elect are the natural Jews, they’re supposed to be all in one spot. The truth of the matter is that the elect of God are the spiritual Israel, and this passage shows we will be living here until the day of the sign of the Son of Man comes.
I believe we’re going to exist through a lot more troubles than we think right now. In fact, I do feel that it would be very wise at this time for people who have an excess of property to study carefully what is happening in the collapse of the monetary system here in the United States. It is a very serious thing. We are approaching it rapidly. Begin to prepare your heart. I wish that we could do even more in getting farms at the present time, and make provision for foods for our people. In some way our readiness must be accelerated, because we have to be prepared to live within this tribulation. The Scriptures for the rapture are very flimsy; there is no verse in the Bible that says you will be raptured out before all of these things take place. This Scripture indicates that the elect are gathered together after all of these things have come to pass, and that is disturbing.
Of course, the rapture theory came within the last hundred years, so it is fairly new teaching. But it certainly has taken hold, especially in Baptist circles and anyplace where the Schofield Bible is used. Many people have believed it. But if you look into the Word, and the Spirit bears witness to your heart that you will live through this time, you had better become concerned about how you are going to live through it. Give attention to it. Don’t just say, “Well, now, our teaching is that we don’t believe in the rapture, but we believe we’re going to go through the tribulation.” If you believe you are to go through it, prepare your heart spiritually.
But don’t think of it as though you are going through tribulation. Think of it as a time when the presence of the Lord was never closer to His people. If you think of it in that way, then you have your encouragement. The important thing is the way that you accept His presence and do not look at the other. You can go through anything if the Lord is really present with you. It is when you walk afar from the Lord that you will live in the torment of these events.
But now thus says the Lord your creator, O Jacob, and He who formed you, O Israel: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine! When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;” That’s a good verse right there: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you.” “And through the rivers, they will not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, nor will the flame burn you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.” Isaiah 43:1–3.
This forty-third chapter of Isaiah was quickened to me when the Honolulu church was first being formed, and it has become real to me again. I just rejoice in how the isles will wait for His word (Isaiah 42:4), and they will rejoice in it. Going back to the Scriptures that the Lord has made real for the Hawaiian Islands, I see how the promises are coming to pass.
The Lord is speaking again, “This is My word for My people in this day.” They’ll go through the fire and through the waters. They will go through all of these troubles, but they will not overwhelm them because the Lord says, “I will be with you.” It will be the Parousia, His holy presence, that will bring us through.
The presence of the Lord may come in a very great way, so that it is easier to break into it or witness it than at any other time. I think this is true now. Some of you young folks don’t know what it was like in my generation to seek the Lord. You don’t know the perseverance, the all nights of prayer, the seeking after God to get a walk with God. You don’t know how much more of the Lord there is in the earth today than there was when I was a boy. I sought God with all my heart, and I saw visions and had revelations from the Lord. He spoke to my heart, but it was a different day. We are coming into the presence of the Lord, and you young people can break through to things now that even thirty years ago people couldn’t break through to have from the Lord.
Some of you think, “Oh, it’s so hard to walk with God.” Well, I know that we are supposed to be living in a much more wicked age. But it’s just that sin has changed its manifestation in our age. It has ceased to be a thing of such hypocrisy and has become more open. I don’t know which is worse. I know that when sin is open, people do worse things than they did under hypocrisy, but the hypocrisy itself was terrible, too.
You say, “Prohibition was a terrible thing, everybody breaking the law and so forth.” Well, prohibition was repealed, and how many millions of alcoholics do we have today that we didn’t have then?
You can say that this is a better day, a day of freedom and liberty, but it is also a day of greater sin, greater problems. I don’t know how to compare, except I know this: while there may be more sin and there may be more problems, it is easier to break through to God today than it ever has been.
Some of the early saints, in their journals and their memoirs, tell how they sought God, how they fasted and afflicted themselves, what they went through. They deserve credit; those boys went after it. And what did they get? There isn’t one of our young people who doesn’t have a hundred times more revelation than any of them. All the monks and nuns and recluses in the Catholic church for a thousand years never came up with as much true revelation from God as one of our young people has right now. That is not spiritual pride or egotism, just the truth. But if the young people had lived back then, they would have had the same struggle. There wasn’t as much release.
But today God says, “You are coming into the time of My presence.” It is easier to break through to God today than it ever has been. That should be an encouragement to us. But at the same time, I give you a warning: the presence of the Lord is a thing that is practiced. It does not sovereignly happen to you. You won’t go along and see big bright lights leading you. You tune into it in your own heart. Many people in this day will be blinder than any generation has ever been. They will see the hand of God moving and won’t believe it. They will see the judgments of God in the earth and won’t repent, and they will be destroyed. The presence of the Lord has to be practiced. You have to open up to it. Walk in it by faith. It doesn’t just automatically happen to your life.
This message is doing more than just encouraging you, isn’t it? It’s giving you a little prod to get with it.
“You are My witnesses,” declares the Lord, “And My servant whom I have chosen, in order that you may know and believe Me, and understand that I am He. Before Me there was no God formed, and there will be none after Me. I, even I, am the Lord; and there is no saviour besides Me. It is I who have declared and saved and proclaimed, and there was no strange god among you; so you are My witnesses,” declares the Lord, “And I am God. Even from eternity I am He; and there is none who can deliver out of My hand; I act and who can reverse it?” Isaiah 43:10–13.
This identification of God’s integrity and His faithfulness is beautiful. God says, “I act, and who can reverse it?” I think we need to hear those words today because there seem to be so many ways in which God starts to bless us, and we would declare that the Lord then took the blessing away. Or God starts a dealing, and through some transference the thing is taken away from the individual He was dealing with. But God says, “I act, and who can reverse it?”
This terrible practice of transference, which is actually the basis of witchcraft, is going to end, especially for the House of God. Instead of people being harassed and oppressed from various satanic sources, that thing is going to end. God says, “I act, and who can reverse it?” I’m going to stand on that promise. No one can reverse what God turns loose in the earth.
Up to this time, it has been very clever the way the sinner has made the righteous man look like the sinner. I don’t know whether or not you’re moved by the millions of dollars which have gone into finding actual things that people could get against political leaders to discredit them. The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. Can we find a leader or a party that is not corrupt? God is exposing things now. America is facing the beginnings of the judgments of God; things will not get better. We are heading for tribulation. But one thing we can do is be sure that we are citizens of the Kingdom, and that we understand how to live and survive until that Kingdom is established here upon the earth.
Because we in America have been blessed with blessings from God, pray that God will spare the country and bring it preserved into His Kingdom. Amen. God is able to do that, even though He must bring down many things of corruption. I am grateful for what I have seen happening in the government recently. I believe this is really the hand of the Lord moving, and I pray, “Don’t let it stop here, Lord. Expose them all. Expose it until everything comes out, in the name of the Lord.”
“I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King.” Thus says the Lord, who makes a way through the sea and a path through the mighty waters, who brings forth the chariot and the horse, the army and the mighty man (they will lie down together and not rise again; they have been quenched and extinguished like a wick): Isaiah 43:15–17.
Notice the setting of this. He talking about how God is making a way of deliverance, but He is also taking the mighty of the earth and they will lie down and not rise up. He is bringing to an end the forces that have governed the world. He is bringing them down. The powers which have ruled the earth will be at an end. The combinations that have governed the earth will be at an end. People used to send around papers about the international bankers and how they control the world, and the terrible plight our country is in. They would give all kinds of warnings. I haven’t been too worried about that because even if there are dozens of international bankers behind the scene, God will deal with all of them anyway. They are going to lie down together and not rise again. They have been quenched and extinguished like a wick.
“Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder things of the past. Behold, I will do something new, … Verses 18–19.
Be prepared in your mind, because the human heart is very tricky. It likes to hang onto the things of the past. Millions of dollars a year are made by amusement centers that help remember the good old days. Though people have a way of glamorizing them, a lot of things just weren’t that good about the good old days. Have you ever had to carry your own water, or thaw out a pump after a freeze? Have you ever had a bath in the middle of the winter in a galvanized tub? Have you ever not had inside plumbing? Before electricity do you know how difficult it was to keep things cool and preserve them? One of the greatest blessings in the world is the refrigerator. Talk about the good old days!
Do not call to mind the former things… The human heart has something that hangs onto the past, and it really doesn’t want to change too much. Isn’t that true? Oh, we’ll take some changes, but we don’t want to change too much; we want to keep the nostalgia going. Then when the Lord brings something drastic, we can’t bear it.
There are some fine people going to church every Sunday, and Jews are going to the synagogue every Saturday because this is the old traditional way to do it. They are so busy enjoying themselves with their traditions that they have missed the fact that God has gone on. And they don’t know that God has moved in the earth.
Don’t call to mind the former things. Don’t think about them. Open your heart for something new. There are new ways of worship. Don’t get hung up in this Walk, either, as if you’re always going to do things the same way. Lord, make us more perceptive, because we can get in such a rut that we figure we have to prophesy or sing psalms every service. That’s not true. Let’s turn the services upside down when God says to turn them upside down. If the Lord says, “Back up the steps and walk in backwards,” let’s walk in backwards. At least we’ll see where we’ve been. Let’s do it the way the Lord says to do it. Let’s follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. Let’s not in this day be calling to mind the former things or ponder the things of the past because the Lord says, “Behold, I will do something new.”
You should be encouraged by this chapter to be prepared for things to happen. If you are looking for family life to exist the way it has been in the past, you’d better prepare your heart for something new. I don’t mean there will be a break up of the institution of the home, but I mean that the home will have to adjust itself to tribulation ways of living. Tribulation ways of living will be entirely different. I don’t know what’s coming, but I am aware that we must be a very closely knit family of God together. We must love each other and take care of each other. None of us must be opinionated or set on the idea that everything must be a certain way.
I find that the older I get, the less opinionated I am; I’m more open to listen. The former things aren’t going to exist anymore, so why should our former patterns of thinking be so set? I’ve known men in this Walk who have changed from extreme conservative to near radical prophets of God. They were not at all inclined to think the way they think now. It was completely foreign to their mental makeup. They were actually grooved in certain patterns of thought and response, but they opened their hearts completely and became open and perceptive to the spirit world. We have scientific men, very much addicted to the scientific process of thinking, whom the Lord has made into prophets, perceptive of the spirit world and spiritual forces. Every one of us can change. We can change to whatever extent or degree we have to change in order to grasp what is now taking place in the earth.
Lord, we are not going to consider the former things. We are not going to think like we used to think. We are going to be open to hear what God has to say, and it may be astonishing. There has to be a breakthrough. We can’t go back to the methods that worked in this Walk ten years ago. We must open up to changes, and different ways of thinking, and different ways of doing things. We should look for different ways of ministering. Somehow, we became tied in with the idea that we had to receive people with individual, personal ministry, and as a result there is no hope of catching up with the personal ministry over the people whom God brings into the Walk . It wouldn’t be possible for me, ministering twenty-four hours a day by revelation and the laying on of hands, to take care of prophesying over the people in this Walk in the next five years. There will have to be other ways of teaching, other ways of impartation, other ways of getting through. There will have to be companies of prophets, there will have to be a collective way of ministry, a Body ministry that reaches everyone at the same time.
Even the ways of ministry are changing within the Walk as God brings others in. What will happen as the tribulation comes, and we are not able to get to church as we do now? Stop and think of these aspects. We must see the ministries changed. The school of prophets will be a necessity because in the days of tribulation, there will have to be little groups of prophets who have been thoroughly trained to know the voice of the Lord, who can go among the various groups and minister to them, even if they have to walk. Keep ministering. The work of the Lord, the ministry, and the Body will go right on. Let’s do what we can in the way we’re doing it now for as long as we can. But let’s also be prepared that almost at a day’s notice, we could see our ways shift until we could meet in a thousand homes instead of a few churches. We could meet like that just as easily. Are you prepared?
“The people whom I formed for Myself will declare My praise.” Isaiah 43:21.
That is one thing we will count on in this Walk. The Lord has created us for Himself, and we are the ones to praise the Lord. We shall declare His praise to the ends of the earth. I am opening up fields of encouragement for you. I asked God, “Lord, help me to create in their minds the image of what is to come, and to create in them the spirit that must reign in their minds as they approach these coming days, not with terror, but with a real concern that they be able to adjust. Lord, by this word make these people new wineskins that shall be able to bend with what is coming, flexible with what God is bringing forth, as it seems to change and become richer and richer.”
I think God filled us with the new wine, but that new wine is still working, isn’t it? It hasn’t reached its peak yet. God has been working on us. He has put His new wine in us, and it has been working for several years.
The anointing that I have now differs from the anointing I had at the beginning of this Walk. I can’t look back to the “good old days” and say they were better. I thank God I’m through them. The warfare that comes against me in one month now is as great as what would come against me in a year at the beginning of the Walk. And the restrictions upon my own individual life are far greater than they were then. When I say restrictions, I mean that I have less of a personal life and more of a life ordered in the ministry. Almost every ounce of energy and every moment of time is devoted to the Lord. In those early days, I used to have time to do other things, but that has disappeared.
As you go along in the Walk, be prepared for changes to come for you. The anointing is not going to decrease, it is going to increase. And the demands God makes upon you will not decrease, but they will increase. Keep in mind that everything is going to change. Your life will change. Our whole way of worship will change. This Walk will change. Not that we will change it, but God will. He will change it because change will be absolutely essential.