STRANGE DAYS

STRANGE DAYS

                On Friday of last week, while doing some recording at Abishai’s studio, he shared a dream with me. Abishai has dreams often and people listen when he shares them because things come true that he dreams about. So in this detailed dream that Abishai shared with me it seemed like a labyrinth of random experiences as dreams usually do because dreams are a way of processing information differently than we would logically put it together when we are awake.

                O couldn’t begin to tell you most of the details, but one thing caught my attention. He dreamed that the Catholics and Muslims had joined together to become one religion. That was on Friday afternoon and on Saturday morning I met my son Zach for our weekly walk along the river. So Zach met me with a paper in hand, a printout with a picture of Pope Francis and a grand Imam signing an agreement of peace that was said to be for the whole world.

                Now on Sunday morning (yesterday) I woke up at 1:30 AM ( I’ve been doing that a lot lately) and I wrote an article about the Pope and the Imam entitled (“As the world sleeps”)  After I finished the article I became sleepy and sat back in my chair and went to sleep. During my short nap I had a dream in which I was preaching fervently to a crowd of people about Bookends. In my dream I remember leaning forward in my seat and listening closely to what on earth I was preaching about bookends.

                When I had heard enough of my dream to know what was important about bookends, I woke up and went back to my desk to write the second article, “Bookends.” Now was there anything supernatural about the article that would make people say “Wow, I never knew that?” No, in fact it was a simple message that anyone could preach, but the point was that we live between the two bookends of birth and death and the decisions that we make while living between the two bookends can have eternal consequences. We only live one life and once we have passed the final bookend of death it will be too late to make those all-important eternal decisions.

                The question is this: Do these dreams and visions make either Abishai or me prophets? No, it does not. Abishai is a young man and I am an old man and Joel chapter 2 tells us that in the last days old men will dream dreams and young men will see visions and I believe that we are in those last days. Anyone who is listening to the Lord and being guided by His voice and walking in His Holy Spirit and living in obedience to the Word, will have encounters of one kind or another with the Lord.

                Many people say that they never hear from God and they wish they could, but the truth is God never stops talking. He is constantly speaking into our lives, into our spirits the things of God, so it is only a matter of tuning in to what God is saying and living by what He says that we begin to recognize His voice among the many voices that are in our minds… and we know that God will never lead us contrary to His Word and so His Word must be our constant companion.

                It was God’s voice that led Bonnie and me to move to Tennessee. It was God’s voice in our spirits that led us to the exact church family in answer to their prayers for people who would do the very exact things that Bonnie and I are now doing in the church. It was in hearing God’s voice that we ended up with a house that was bigger than our needs… but now a recording studio is being built in that huge den for which we had no beginning purpose.

                It was in listening to God’s voice that I am able to have Saturday morning walks with my firstborn son Zach and so the conversations that we share while walking along the river/lake are deep and profound as the pieces of the end time puzzle are being put together. Zach is well-versed in church history, the foundational teaching of the church going way back to its inception.

                Zach belongs to an Orthodox church that has preserved the true message of the Gospel as it was lived and presented in the first century. They feel that they are keepers of the original Gospel once offered to the saints.

                Some who are reading this article may say to themselves, “Oh I would never become an Orthodox Christian, it is too “Catholic” in its liturgy… but the truth is, their worship service was taken from the earliest Jewish Christians and it is patterned after the Tabernacle of Moses and their stated goal is to maintain the traditions as they were from the very beginning. And while they meet on Sundays, guess what? They recommend that their members observe the Sabbath as a day of rest as per the scriptures.

                So others may say, “Oh I would never be a Pentecostal believer. I’m not into that Holy Spirit stuff and so my conservative approach to God is good enough for me.” Okay, fine, I won’t argue with you about that, because every person must follow the Word of God and the Spirit of God and each of us will give an account of our faith when we stand before the throne. But even as the great falling away is taking place in the Body of Christ today, and many are blindly following after globalist ideas, God is likewise putting something together.

1.       He wants to restore the church to its foundational principles and traditions. He wants us to return to the faith of our fathers.

2.       The Lord is also calling us back to the day of Pentecost, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that once animated the church with the Spirit and fire of Jesus Christ.

                What Jesus is calling us to in these last days is a more direct obedience of the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the Law. The letter of the Law is a poor substitute for the spirit of the Law. Jesus, in His life here on earth, demonstrated this truth by using the Pharisees as a backdrop for His teaching. He demonstrated that the Pharisees, in keeping the letter of the Law, found it impossible to enter into the spirit of the Law, or into the life and power of Christ’s ministry. His life and ministry were a rebuke to their weakness and they hated Him for it.

                It is only in living with the very Spirit of Christ in our hearts that the Law is fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. So when we live by the Spirit of Christ, we enter into His Rest, which the Law pictured for us but could not provide. You can have 600 laws on how to rest, but rather than bringing rest, these laws only bring us into deeper and deeper slavery.  

                It was the letter of the Law that ended up putting Jesus to death and it is the letter of the Law that puts us to death also, in order that we may die to the letter and then to be born again into the Spirit of the Law, so we can move from being slaves to being sons. As slaves we live under our cruel task master the letter of the Law, (See Romans chapter 7) but as Sons, we share the same spirit with Christ, so that He is not ashamed to call us “Brethren.” This is at the heart of Paul’s message. It is not a matter of doing away with the Law, but rather that of living by the Spirit of Christ so that the Law is fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit Thus we cease from our own works or labors as God did from His on the seventh day of creation.

                This discussion goes far beyond denominational boundaries. I am not saying that one denomination is better than another. You don’t have to be Orthodox to return to first principles and neither do you have to be Pentecostal to live by the Spirit. This new life is available to every soul that inters by faith into God’s Whole Word and invites the very Spirit of Christ to become the life of their life.

                This is how Sunday worshippers can preach on the commandments and endorse them whole- heartedly and yet not feel in conflict over the Sabbath issue. They believe that Jesus fulfilled the Sabbath when He rested in the tomb over the Sabbath day, and rose from the dead on the eighth day to bring us into a new beginning. Likewise we also enter into His death and die to our own works, to rise up in the power of His resurrection to live in the more direct obedience of the Spirit rather than the letter. It was the letter that put us to death so that we may live by the Spirit who brings us rest from our own labors.

                Does this mean that it is wrong to worship on the Sabbath? Of course not! But, like the Pharisees of old, we need to understand that keeping the letter will in no way earn us points for eternal life. For as Romans 8:14 says: “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.

                Now, as we look forward to being God’s last day remnant people we realize that they are identified as those who keep the commandments of God and who bear the testimony of Jesus. Rev.12:17 and Rev. 14:12. We tend to use this remnant ID as proof that we must keep the letter of the Law when in fact this remnant group of people is doing something that the Pharisees could never do. They are fulfilling the letter of the Law, by living in the Spirit of the Law and the testimony of Jesus, which they also bear, is the Spirit of prophecy. Rev. 19:10.

                This remnant ID should give pause to those who have followed the religious world in abandoning the study of Bible prophecy. In it God shares His agenda with His children, so that we will neither become lost, or confused, or fearful about the coming days of chaos that Satan is bringing upon the world.

                Many fail to realize the important connection between the Holy Spirit and prophecy. Revelation 19:10 tells us directly that the testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy… and we shrug it off, but John tells us in John 16:13 saying: “But when the Spirit of truth comes HE will guide you into ALL TRUTH; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears HE will speak; AND HE WILL DISCLOSE TO YOU WHAT IS TO COME.” (That is Bible prophecy)

                This sort of leaves us wondering what spirit it is that causes us, the church, to become complacent about Bible prophecy. In my way of thinking this blatant disregard for Bible prophecy is at the heart of why the great apostasy or falling away is taking place in the world today. Where there is no vision the people perish. Without prophecy, we fall into circular routines, coming over and over again to the altar, living out our endless routines in hopes that we are somehow pleasing God or earning points for heaven, when in fact we have become Laodicea.

                I am constantly astounded by Christian people who harbor a total disinterest in prophecy. As soon as you mention it, their eyes glaze over and their mantras form in their heads such as “No one knows the day or the hour.” But prophecy is not about predicting when Jesus will return. It is about understanding where we are in the flow of time. It is about watching end time pieces of the puzzle as they fit together… as the nations line up to fulfill their part in human history, as the false prophet gathers the religions of the world together to wonder after the beast. It is about watching today’s technologies make it possible for ancient prophecies to be fulfilled in our day. It is about watching for signs in the sun, moon and stars and realizing that God is giving us final warnings, which we as His people should understand even if the rest of the world is without a clue.

                Instead of jumping on the band wagon for global warming, Bible Prophecy gives us a way of understanding that our planet is in big trouble, but it is much more about our spiritual and moral decline than it is about driving SUVs. If we understand the rise and fall of nations throughout biblical history, we know that it has always been about spiritual and moral decline. Rome imploded from within, simply because they were doing morally and spiritually and financially and politically exactly what America is doing today. It was the same with the rest of the world empires.

                When we choose to serve other gods, then the hand of the True God is removed from us. We see that God has given America one last moment of time in which to repent and yet we continue to pass laws in defiance of His commandments. We are committing abominations and as we do so we are aligning ourselves with the antichrist who will commit the ultimate abomination of desolation in the temple that the Jews and the globalists are now trying to build.

                Friends, we are living in the most nail-biting and exciting time that this world has ever seen and yet there is a blanket of ignorance and lethargy and complacency over the church. We don’t want to leave our comfort zone. We don’t want to stir up the church, least of all the tithe payers with unsettling news. But some day, church people are going to grab the lapels of their pastors and in anguish cry out: “Why didn’t you tell us these things? Why is all of this stuff happening and why are we still here?

                If we believe in a pre-trib rapture… fine, but in truth even if there is to be a pre trib rapture we have no idea how much we will have to go through in what the Bible calls the beginning of sorrows. After all, people in China are being persecuted, killed, tortured and thrown in prison and their churches torn down.  Christians in Muslim countries are being behead for their faith or sold as sex slaves or what have you. Christians in various parts of the world are experiencing famines, droughts, floods, extreme apocalyptic weather… political upheaval, food lines and massive disease outbreaks. Maybe they think we are in the Tribulation right now.

               

                The truth is anything short of a massive revival of godliness in America and we are due for a major collapse and fall right here at home. We are divided like never before and it has become an obvious battle between those who have chosen Satan as their leader and those who have chosen Christ. That is the bottom line. We are now required to choose between the globalist landslide into the waiting arms of the antichrist, or we are becoming God’s stalwart remnant people. Our nation is becoming a habitation of demons and as such we need more than the letter of the Law and our powerless traditions to overcome the onslaught of the enemy.  Paul said it best in 1 Cor. 2:4, 5:

                “And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power that your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.” 1 Cor. 2:4-5

                I would like to invite you to read the whole of 1 Corinthians chapter 2. It is meat for the soul and for the spirit. Meditate on it and ask God for a new revelation of what it means. He will open your mind and your heart to what He is saying to His church today.

                We are indeed living in strange days. Records in every category are being broken. We are walking through the apocalypse and we need more than mere information… we also need power and that power is brought to us by the Spirit of Christ.