TRANSLOCATION

TRANSLOCATION

                I just woke from a dream in which I was riding in a cab in some big town. The cab driver was a Latino man and he seemed to be listening to me intently. In the dream I seemed to be drawn to tell this man everything I knew about Jesus with great passion.

                Soon the cab driver pulled to the curb and stopped the car and turned around to listen to me. It was amazing the connection that was being made and a sense of awe came over me and I began to weep and I said to that man, “Sir, you have an anointing on your life far, far greater than what you are doing right now.” And the minute I said that, two other people showed up in the cab and they laid hands on him and began praying over him.

                As I listened to them I began to realize that this man was being commissioned to do something great in the kingdom of God. Whatever pains, disappointments, griefs and doubts had led him to settle for driving a cab, they were now being broken off of him and his eyes were being opened.

                As I started to get out of the cab, I woke up from the dream feeling like I had just been somewhere. It was all so real and so powerful. The people who showed up in the cab (a man and a woman) seemed familiar and yet I was left with the distinct feeling that they had been angels, waiting in the invisible realm for me to say what humans are supposed to say. It was important for me to say what I said to the cab driver and when I had done my part, they moved in to anoint this man for his high calling.

                A few of the prophets I listen to have talked about translocation. They say that in the great harvest just ahead, God will move us just as He did Phillip. He will translate us to specific locations to give a specific word to a specific person or group and when we have finished, we will suddenly be back in our own place again.

                All God needs is people who are full of His Spirit and full of His Word. He needs people who are learning how to live their lives by divine appointment. The encounters that we have with people from time to time are no accident. They are divine appointments and we sense it because our heart begins to burn within us.

                As we prepare for the harvest, I am convinced that God is looking for people who are passionately in love with Him. Out of their innermost being will flow rivers of living water. We need to witness the way Jesus did. He didn’t go about teaching people Jewish doctrine or even inviting them to the synagogue per se. What Jesus had to offer them went straight to the heart with an encounter that changed them forever.

                Yesterday I had an encounter with a man who had answered an ad to buy our tow dolly which we had bought and used for the move out here from Washington.  He seemed to be very sore and stiff and he told me that he had recently had a severe bicycle accident. He told me that he had been an off road motorcycle racer, but had given it up to live long enough to be with his new granddaughter.

                I got the feeling he was a daredevil rider and so when he had an accident on his bike he was most likely doing something extreme. He doesn’t remember the accident. He only remembers waking up in terrible pain, his jaw broken his back broken and he was bleeding and unable to move. He was about 2 ½ miles from the nearest road, but there were hiking trails in the area. He lay there for an hour or two occasionally calling out for help when a hiker came by and got help for him.

                He had brought his car to my house to see if it fit on the tow dolly and it did so I offered to hook it up to my pickup and haul it out to his home. He was glad for that, being so sore and all, so I followed him to his home up into the mountains out past Norris dam. He had a beautiful secluded place with horses and barns and acreage of woods behind his home. (Where he had had his accident) I helped him unload the tow dolly and he showed me around his place and we had a nice conversation and seemed to bond to each other in immediate friendship.

                At some point he asked me where I went to church and I told him and described where it was and he knew the place. You know what? I think he might visit sometime. He could have died out there in the woods and yet God had arranged a divine appointment for him, first of all between him and a hiker and then with me. Is it his time to have an encounter with the Lord? I think so.

                It is not our own cleverness that draws people to the Lord. It is the Holy Spirit that draws them. Jesus never went around handing out business cards, or even tracts. He lived by divine appointment and He always met people at their point of need. People were attracted to Him by the invisible love of the Holy Spirit drawing their hearts to the Way, the Truth and the Life.

                I have a feeling my bones that the great and final harvest may come at a time when church as we have known it may be largely shut down. Persecution will arise. Even now, evil forces  are trying to shut down every avenue of communication and to outlaw Bibles because Bibles condemn men’s sins and nowadays that is called “Hate speech.” California is trying to make public use of the bible illegal.

                Did you realize that if such laws are passed, then people would be free to sue you for witnessing to them? Did you realize that any public preaching where the Bible is used could become illegal?

                So how are we going to win the lost in huge numbers when one wrong step could land us in jail? And where are we going to invite people to come to when corporate religion is largely shut down?

                This is why we need to learn to minister like Jesus did… and we need His power, because a toothless Gospel will not draw people… and we need to be so full of His Holy Spirit that His presence in us speaks louder than words. Yes, we can invite them to church now, but a time is coming when we will need to lead them to salvation right on the spot.

                Phillip did this with the Ethiopian man.  Phillip answered his questions…They found some water… he baptized the man right there and then he disappeared and found himself in the town of Azotus.  (Acts 8:4) We are not told what happened to the Ethiopian after that, but there are a lot of Christians in Ethiopia.

                We need to begin praying to enter into a new realm with God. A great deal of what we have done as Christians has been done according to the flesh. We act like worldly salesmen who must convince people to buy our particular brand, or we won’t get points for it. Salesmen are not going to bother taking time to sell you someone else’s brand if they don’t get a commission from it. Why win people to Jesus if they don’t buy my brand of Jesus? But this is the way of the flesh.

                Paul said in 1 Cor. 2:12, 13: “Now we have received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words.”

                Then in chapter 3 verse 11 he says: “For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” Then in verse 16 he says: “Do you not know that you are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?”

                We have developed this idea that the Spirit of God is over there in that building with that label and if you want God’s blessing you must go there. We feel unqualified to lead someone to Christ for various reasons. Either our doctrines are so complicated that  we have given up hope of ever teaching them to others, or more likely we have abdicated all sense of being a temple of the Holy Spirit and that we must send them to the professional clergy to get them saved. After all, we have become spectators rather than doers.

                A great shaking and falling away is coming. It is spoken of in Hebrews 12:25-29 and 2 Thess. 2:3, 4. Everything that is manmade will be shaken out of our religion including much of the corporate structure that we have built where we hide from the world. We have in effect removed the life of faith from the sidewalks of life and into the monasteries and fortresses of religion.

                They have served their purpose of course and they still serve a purpose. Monasteries, for instance, were built in remote places where pious men could hide from the despotic religion of Rome to seek God apart from a pagan dictatorship. Millions of Judeo/Christians hid in caves and remote mountain regions to worship God according to the dictates of conscience… even as religious dictators probed the world with their unholy inquisitions.

                Well, Rome has not changed and neither has Satan, so as religion joins hands with the political arm and the financial arm to attain global power, we will see the same kind of persecution again… and it will be in such an environment that the Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in all the world for a witness to all nations.

                We are going to need the same kind of power and authority that the early church had when they too were living under the persecution of Rome. But times of persecution are no accident. God knows that the Gospel spreads faster under persecution than it does in times of ease when Christians have become complacent.

                We have been given an extended amount of time to prepare for the harvest and we honestly do need to pray diligently for the powers of the age to come. How can we do the work of Christ if we don’t have His power? But this time around we need to have His character to go along with it. His love, His humility, His emptying of self… His crucified life and His ability to hear His Father’s voice.

                It is said of us that we will overcome by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of our testimony and we will not love our lives even unto death.” Rev 12:11. We are that Remnant people. We are the final generation upon whom the ends of the age have come. We have been born for such a time as this.