DECLARATION OF DEPENDENCE

DECLARATION OF DEPENDENCE

                “You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagle’s wings and brought you to Myself. Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples; for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel.”     Ex. 19:4

                “Now these things happened to them as an example and they were written for OUR instruction UPON WHOM THE ENDS OF THE AGES HAVE COME.” 1 Cor. 10:11

                Friends, we are nearing the final baptism, the crossing of the Jordon River and into the Promised Land. In our Christian walk we were baptized in the Red Sea. We came out of Egypt. We followed the Lord to Mt. Sinai where we learned obedience. We passed through the wilderness, we wandered. We failed God at times. We fell for the Golden Calf. We allowed other gods, possessions, ideas, self-determination to take the place of the Lord. Many have died in the wilderness, but we have survived. We have somehow clung to the faith of Caleb and Joshua. We are now facing Jordon.

                Now we have a final lesson to learn before we cross over. Our God has delivered us from slavery and into freedom of the sons of God. But God never called us to freedom from Him. He bore us on Eagle’s wings and brought us to Himself. He called us to be His own possession. He called us into a covenant. It is a covenant in which we hear and obey His voice. It is a covenant in which we have been called to be priests to the world.

                AS we cross this Jordon, this final baptism, we are going to leave the wilderness behind. We are going to leave Sinai behind. We are going to leave our dependence upon Manna behind, to live by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God. We are leaving the tables of stone behind. From hence forth His Law will be written on our hearts and we will obey Him, not as slaves, but as sons.

                We are leaving the Tabernacle behind, for we ourselves have become the tabernacle. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob now dwells in us. We have become His dwelling place. So in this final crossing of Jordon, we must above all, leave the flesh behind, for flesh cannot take us over Jordon. Only that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.” Romans 8:14

                Whatever we originally thought the New Birth was when we came up out of the Red Sea, it must be traded in for a new anointing. We have lived under the anointing of Pentecost, but this next baptism must be a baptism of Tabernacles. We must prepare not only to receive the early rain, but we must prepare this time to receive both the early rain and the latter rain together.  (James 7:7, Deut. 11:13, 14) It is an anointing for the final harvest and in this anointing all flesh must die.

                Here we must learn that our freedom was never given to do our own thing… call our own shots… please ourselves… live a comfortable life… make our plans as if God doesn’t exist… then give him a token of appreciation one hour a week as we drag into church to get our spiritual batteries recharged.

                All such “Christian life” is about to come to an end. Everything that can be shaken will be shaken and just as we see the snakes being exposed in politics, so the snakes will be exposed in the church. In this tabernacles anointing many Christians will be surprised to discover that they have demons hiding in them. The unmitigated presence of Jesus under the tabernacles anointing will expose those spirits that have hidden in our good intentions…religious spirits that made us satisfied to pretend, to be casual followers of Jesus… to have our own agenda.

                Those who live by the flesh will not make it through the Jordan baptism. Many will be laid to rest before this final baptism. They have trusted in Jesus. They got saved, but they never left the outer court. They never really entered into the Holy Place of sanctification. They never spent time in the Most Holy Place in intimate communion with God. They are saved because they received Jesus as their Savior, but they will never reign with Him for they never made Him their Lord and King.

                The Jordon crossing covenant that we will now begin to walk in is described in Rev. 12:11 where it says: “And they overcame him (Satan) because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony and they did not love their life even to death.”

                Crossing this Jordon is ultimate death to self to become the possession of the Lord… to live not by the flesh, but by the Spirit… to live every moment of life by divine appointment. Like Paul we must be able to say: “But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of ALL THINGS and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” Phil. 3:7-11

                Coming up out of this baptism our new platform and reality will be this:

                “For if I rebuild what I have once destroyed, I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through the Law I died to the Law that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and delivered Himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.” Gal 2:18-21.

                Now don’t get me wrong and don’t misunderstand the Lord. We are not being set free from the Law in order to do our own thing, for as the opening text said, God called us out of Egypt and out of slavery to Himself… to be His own possession… to be inhabited by Him as His temples. We are not our own for we have been bought with a price. This we must learn before we can cross Jordon.

                This false grace going around today that says we can do our own thing and sin or whatever because it is already covered and God is not expecting holiness of us; is totally contrary to God’s desires and plans for us. It is outright rebellion. It is preparing a people to join the great falling away that will lead them to worship the antichrist. Don’t even go there.

                Neville Johnson had a dream in 2008. In this dream many people were walking on a road and they were approaching a crossroads. If you turned to the right you entered a road called “Selfishness.” If you turned to the left, you entered a road called “Fear.” If you turned around and went back you found yourself on a road called “The past”… your old comfort zones… your past experiences … your immature ways. But if they kept moving straight ahead, the road was called “Glory.”

                As Neville, in his dream took the straight ahead road to glory the way became increasingly brighter and brighter and when he turned and looked back at the other roads people had taken, they were becoming darker and darker until they were literally enveloped in gross darkness. This gross darkness was not only the absence of light, but an oozing and dripping darkness… a thickness that bound them and trapped them and immobilized them.

                Such is the gross darkness that Isaiah describes in Isaiah 60. This gross darkness will cover the earth and the people who chose roads of selfishness and fear or of clinging to the past. Only those who put away selfishness and fear and what lay behind them, will move into the glory of the final move and harvest of the Lord in the days to come. In this any one of us is no better than the other. We must all equally seek to live by the Spirit rather than the flesh. We must all lay down self and take up the resurrection life of Christ. We must take up our cross and follow Him. It is the same thing for everybody.

                Neville Johnson, after describing his dream of 2008, told us that he has just received the exact same dream again within the last week. He said that Joseph had told Pharaoh that since he had had the same dream twice it meant that God had confirmed the dream and that the events dreamed were soon to take place.

                Everywhere we look we see signs of the end times. We see it in nature. We see it in politics. We see it in the embroiled mass of humanity. Everything that happens these days is apocalyptic in nature… unprecedented in human history. The birth pangs have continued to increase in intensity and frequency to the point where the water is about to break… and when it breaks, life as we have known it will never be the same again. Are we watching the signs? Are we preparing our hearts? Are we moving out of flesh controlled lives and into Spirit controlled lives? Have we come out of Egypt? Have we passed through Sinai? Have we begun to put the wilderness behind us? Have we avoided the roads of selfishness and fear and tradition? Are we moving ahead on the road to glory?

                Christianity as we have known it is about to come to an end. The wheat and tares are about to be separated. “Everything that can be shaken will be shaken so that what remains will be of God, borne of His Spirit… belonging only to Him. This is the message of our time… and even as many false prophets are prophesying peace and safety and smooth times ahead, the true prophets of God are warning us to put our fleshly lives behind us and to walk in the Spirit… to put away sin and to live in holiness and fear of the Lord. The great harvest is about to begin, but it will only be carried out by those who have put selfishness and fear and the old ways behind to continue on the road called glory. God is speaking to His people and we must listen. This is not a declaration of independence, but of total dependence upon God. It is freedom from the tyranny of self in order to belong fully and completely to God.