DESTINY

DESTINY

                “For whom He foreknew He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren; and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified, and whom He justified, these He also glorified.” Romans 8:28-30

                Think of predestination in this way. God knows the end from the beginning. He saw the end and you were in it and so He went back to the beginning and set it up so that you would be here in this most important and glorious time in earth’s history. The fact that you are here now, means that you have been chosen to take part in the final harvest. God knows that you will come through.

                Many of us go through life wondering what God sees as our destiny. How are we going to fulfill it? How will we know what it is? What is our ministry? When is God going to launch us into our purpose?

                The truth is we already know our destiny, our ministry and our purpose in life. WE are predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.

                So many Christians go from meeting to meeting and seminar to seminar just hoping that someone will prophesy over them and set them on a God-given course, but in truth, most of the “prophets” don’t know any more than you do and they are prophesying out of their own imaginations and not from the Lord.

                “Thus says the Lord of hosts, “Do not listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying to you. They are leading you into futility; they speak a vision of their own imagination, not from the mouth of the Lord. They keep saying to those who despise Me, ‘the Lord has said, you will have peace’, and as for everyone who walks in the stubbornness of his own heart, they say, ’Calamity will not come upon you.’ But who has stood in the council of the Lord that he should see and hear His word? Who has given heed to His word and listened? Behold, the storm of the Lord has gone forth in wrath, even the whirling tempest. It will swirl down on the head of the wicked. The anger of the Lord will not turn back until He has performed and carried out the purposes of His heart; IN THE LAST DAYS YOU WILL CLEARLY UNDERSTAND IT. I did not send these prophets, but they ran. I did not speak to them, but they prophesied. But if they stood in My council then they would have announced My words to My people and would have turned them from the evil of their deeds.” Jeremiah 23:18-22.

                There are many prophets in the world today. Some of them speak the word of the Lord, but many speak out of their own imaginations. Therefore we must test them by the Word of God. And when they tell us that the church is doing great and we are all about to be swept into glory; they forget that they are speaking to Laodicea for the most part. Jesus may be saying that we are lukewarm and He is close to spitting us out of His mouth. Rev. 3:16

                Until we understand our opening text in Romans 8:28-30, we will not understand our calling or our purpose. The words spoken here by Paul sound strange and even heretical to a church that has been taught to maintain the status quo. We wait for the rapture when Jesus will clean us up, but the truth is we cannot go until the Gospel of the kingdom has been preached to every nation, kindred, tongue and people.

                Our goal, our purpose, our ministry and destiny is to become like Jesus… to share His Spirit… to share His love and His passion for the lost.

                When we are born again, the Holy Spirit enters into our spirit and quickens it with the life of Jesus. We become new creatures, dead to the world and born from above so that we are literally aliens to this planet. We have received the Spiritual DNA of God and that has made us into His children in our spirits. In other words John tells us in 1 John 5:18 that no one who is born of God sins; but he who was born of God (Jesus) keeps him and the evil one does not touch him.”

                That is to say that the new spirit that God places in us is both eternal and sinless. It cannot die and it cannot sin because it is born of God.

                But our soul is a different matter. Our soul is not touched by the new birth. It still craves and wants and desires the same things of the flesh that it always did. WE may experience an emotional high when we are first born again, but in time we find that the desires of the flesh are still there.  What are we to do? The devil is right there to tell us that we weren’t really born again… that it didn’t work for us. This is why we need to learn to live by the spirit rather than the flesh; “For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace.” Romans 8:6.

                Friends, we really need to study and meditate upon Romans 8 until it sinks in. There is so much provided here that flies far above what we normally hear in church.

                Isa. 60:1, 2 says: “Arise, shine, for your light has come and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.” It doesn’t say that the glory of the Lord as descended upon us, but that it has risen upon us. Like Jesus said, those who believe in Me, out of their innermost being shall flow rivers of living water. What we will become has already been planted in our spirit. We share the DNA of God. IF we live by His Spirit, we will win every time.

                What God said through Jeremiah is that in the LAST DAYSs we will come to understand this and when we do, the long awaited sons of God will be manifested in the earth. They will be like Jesus. They will do the works of Jesus and even greater works. They will bring in the final harvest, by the power of God that works in and through them.

                We are going to take back the dominion that Adam lost in the fall, but it is not going to be a bit like the dominion theology being   taught in many circles today. We are not going to gain control of governments and educational systems and the media, or politics, or by any other man-contrived means. The harvest is going to be brought in by a people who are just like Jesus, who operate by His power and who perfectly emulate His character. We will bring in the harvest His way and by His Spirit; not man’s way.

                If you want to know what your purpose is, then start by showing kindness to others, be gentle and forgiving, patient and longsuffering… in other words manifest the fruit of the Spirit in your life and live by the principles of Jesus’ sermon on the mount. This we can only do as Christ dwells in us. We need to allow Him to do a work in us such has not been done in history but to a few. Many of us have been damaged in our souls by past experiences and sins. This damage prevents the Spirit of God from fully entering into our soul temples and cleansing us from all sin and damage. It is Jesus that cleanses our temple. It is all His work from start to finish, but we block Him, with our own sins, our own stubbornness and our own damaged minds. We need to ask Him to come in and to heal us and restore us to His image. When memories of old sins come into your mind, ask Him to take them away forever.

                When we are born again, our spirit is born again, but we must take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. We must serve our born again spirit in which Christ dwells and not our flesh that belongs to the old kingdom. This is the saving of our souls and while the saving of our spirits is instantaneous when we receive Jesus as our Savior and Lord, the saving of our soul is a process of learning to yield to the Spirit and to choose the Spirit over our flesh until we reflect Jesus more and more in our lives. The saving of our souls is called sanctification. It is a process of time and experience…of faith and obedience.

                You really need to listen to the talk by Neville Johnson that I just shared on Facebook. It is both challenging and extremely encouraging, for he explains how it is all done and his picture of our purposes far outstrips anything I have heard anywhere. If you are not on Facebook you can find it under the title. “ WE ARE THE LAST GENERATION, CHOSEN AND SPECIAL SEPT. 7, 2017 Neville Johnson      Published by Pray World Endtime prophecies warnings.

                These revelations are coming to us upon whom the ends of the age have come so that we can finally fully understand them and walk in them. We have been through the age of Passover. We have experienced Pentecost. The final ministry of Christ in the world will be the ministry of Tabernacles when Jesus fully tabernacles within men. He is going to reveal Himself in and through us so that the glory of the Lord will literally will rise upon us and we will finish the harvest.

                We can discuss Bible prophecy all day long and we can be aware of the things that are occurring in the kingdoms of this world as it comes to a close, but we are really not of this kingdom. Our focus must be on what God is doing in the heavenly realm and how He intends to bring heaven to earth in us.

                Isaiah 53 in talking about the death of Christ in verses 10 and 11 says: “But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering. HE WILL SEE HIS OFFSPRING, HE WILL PROLONG HIS DAYS AND THE GOOD PLEASURE OF THE LORD WILL PROSPER IN HIS HAND. As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; by the Righteous One My Servant, will justify many.”

                Jesus was not married, but Isaiah says that through His offspring He will prolong His days. Well, are we not His offspring who have received His Spiritual DNA just as Mary received God’s spiritual DNA making Jesus the only begotten Son of God? Yes, we too have received that same spiritual DNA and even though we are not God and will never be God, we are His children. John the Baptist clearly made the distinction in John 3:31 telling us that Jesus was from above and we are from below. Nevertheless His redemption has truly made us into children of God, totally new creatures and citizens of His kingdom and no longer citizens of this world.

                But God has reserved something special for the final generation so that apart from us, past generations should not be made perfect. We shall overcome as He overcame and thus we will become first fruits of the Harvest of Tabernacles.

                So much of the church is sitting around waiting for Jesus to rapture us and clean us up, but He is coming for a Bride without spot or wrinkle. To do this He is going to pour out His Spirit with great power so that the latter rain of Tabernacles will be 7 times more powerful than the rain of Pentecost.

                Remember, Jesus cleansed the temple twice during His ministry on earth and nothing that God does is without meaning. Everything Jesus did tells us something important about His final work in the world. Remember also, if you will, that on His final Tabernacles celebration, (John 7:2) He tarried behind His brothers and then came in the middle of the feast…and He came up not publically but in secret. (John 7:10) What does that signify? And then on the last day of the feast He cried out… “If any man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.”

                The Bible is full of messages that we ignore and we must prey for divine revelation. We are the generation that must come to understand these things and to fully enter into God’s program. Every bit of it is done by His power, His wisdom and His purpose. We don’t need to worry about how we fit into the program. All we need to do is to learn to live by His Spirit, walk in His Word by faith and allow Him to produce His fruit in us. And when we are doing the “little” things, He will give us bigger things to do in His harvest.

                We should not be satisfied to carry around the same anger, impatience, lust, greed, or self-centeredness that we had when we were first born again. If we do, then we have not been allowing the Holy Spirit to do His work in us.  If we are not living by the oil, the Bridegroom will come and He will find us without oil in our lamps, for our lamps will have gone dry.  This is not necessary for the Holy Spirit is infinite and His supply is in exhaustible. All we have to do is to ask.

                In a vision, Neville was walking through the Holy Place of the Sanctuary. He could see the Menorah and the table of showbread, but the room was filled with smoke and it was coming from the altar of incense. Some of the smoke was white, but much of it was black. So Neville asked the Lord what this might mean and the Lord told him that it was the selfish prayers of His people.

                Could it be that we are praying for prosperity when we should be praying to be like Jesus? Are we praying according to His will or our will? When we pray in the Spirit then we will pray according to His Will and not our own and in seeking first the kingdom of heaven and His righteousness, all the other stuff that we need, will be added.

                A talk like this should not burden us, but fill us with great joy. It was Jesus that cleansed the temple. He didn’t ask the people to do it. He doesn’t even ask us to do it. He only asks us to come to Him and believe in Him and to let Him do His finishing work in us so that we can do His finishing work in the world.

                This is the greatest privilege that has ever been bestowed upon mankind. We are to become the manifest sons of God. We will be like Him for we shall see Him as He is. This world is our training ground, but He created this vast universe for a reason and a purpose which we will be privileged to carry out when sin and death have been defeated and removed forever. “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the mind of man the things that God has prepared for His people.” Perhaps during the millennium, Jesus will teach us a course in righteous planet management.