THE GREAT SHAKING PART 1

THE GREAT SHAKING   Part 1

                You can call it the great shaking, or the great apostasy or the great falling away. It doesn’t matter. It is all the same thing and this falling away will clear the way for the antichrist to arise as seen in 2Thess 2:3, 4. So, it doesn’t matter much what we call it, but Paul tells us in Hebrews 12:25-29:

                “See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less shall we escape who turn away from Him who warns from heaven. And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but the heaven.” And this expression, “Yet once more” denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, in order that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire.”

                What this text tells us is that God once shook the earth on the first day of Pentecost, when the Law was given on Mt. Sinai, but here at the end of the age we have come to the foot of a different mountain. We have come to the heavenly Mt. Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly of the first born who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant and to the sprinkled blood which speaks better than the blood of Abel.. Heb. 12:22-24.

                God shook the earth once at Sinai and again at the second Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came upon the early church. He fell upon them with a mighty rushing wind and tongues of fire as the church was conceived by the Holy Spirit.

                But now, we are facing a final Pentecost and we are about to see a side of God that we have never seen before. We are about to see the “Day of the Lord” as spoken of by nearly all of the prophets and Jesus Himself in His depiction of the last days before His return. God is coming to His threshing floor and when He is done, the wheat will be in His barns and the chaff will be in the fire and there will be nothing left in the middle.

                There is something we need to understand about Bible prophecy. When the prophets have a vision, they enter into a timeless realm in which all time is now. They come out of these visions with an urgent message from the Lord and they don’t know if the event prophesied is going to happen tomorrow or 2000 years from now. So nearly every prophet in the Bible prophesied of the day of the Lord as if the time was at hand and indeed it was. But in our western bent towards linear time, we try to plot prophecies on a sequential time line when in fact we should have seen prophecy in terms of repeating cycles, birth pangs that increase in frequency and intensity until the baby is born in the fullness of time.

Prophecy is pattern. There is nothing new under the sun. God has been telling us about the end from the very beginning and everything we can learn about the last days finds its roots in the book of Genesis.

                Reading Genesis forward we see the paradise of God, then the fall of man, then a promised seed, then unbridled wickedness and a flood and then Nimrod in His first attempts to build Babylon and a New world Order. If we read Genesis backwards, from about chapter 8 we see our own time, as the New world global order is fronted by a Nimrod, the antichrist, then gross sins and judgment until the promised Seed comes and restores us to paradise and we are back to Eden again.

                We look at the parade of life from the sidewalk where we watch each float passing by one at a time. God sees the parade from outside of time where He sees the entire parade from beginning to end at the same time. So His warnings apply to every age, but they also point to a final fulfillment and climax at the end of the age.

                Well, let me put it this way: the true prophets of God in the world today are speaking with a new intensity, because Bible prophecies are currently being fulfilled much faster than anticipated. Pieces of the final puzzle are being fitted into place with a rapidity heretofore not seen. And it doesn’t accomplish anything to argue pre, mid, or post trib right now because we are entering into a harvest and a great shaking that simply must occur before any rapture can take place.

                Remember, if you will, what Jesus said about the wheat and the tares. They must grow together until the harvest. But there is a time when the wheat and the tares must be separated. There is a time when the wheat must be separated from its chaff. There is a time when all that is real and born of God in the church must be separated from that which is manmade, false, uncommitted and not conceived by God’s Holy Spirit. All false doctrine will fall by the wayside. All organization other than that simple discipleship upon which Jesus built the church will fall away. Everything that is not built upon the Spirit of Christ and the Word of Christ will be exposed. All of the secrets of man, both in the church and in the governments of the world will be exposed as the remnant people of God begin to preach with power and to do the works of Christ at a level not see, not even at the first Pentecost. His Spirit will be poured out 7 fold so that even the angels will stand aghast at the power of God.

                So the false church in the world today says: What does it matter? We are saved by grace. We are saved by His righteousness and not our own. We are just going to be evacuated out of here before any trouble comes our way. But there is a catch. Yes we are saved by faith in Jesus Christ alone. We are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. He did it all for us. We are not saved by the works of the flesh, but by the grace of God. All of this is true… right? Of course it is! This is the Gospel.

                The question is how many of us as Christians have actually entered into this covenant of salvation? How many have actually entered into the death of the cross? How many have actually died to the flesh? How many are truly living by the resurrection power of Christ?  How many are actually led by the Holy Spirit? Salvation must be entered into… not just mentally agreed with. Our relationship with Jesus Christ is a betrothal in which we have separated ourselves unto Him. We have died to Satan’s kingdom and we have been born again into the kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. As we have received Him so we must walk in Him. We are no longer our own. We have been bought with a price. We live only to bring glory to His name. 1 Cor. 6:19, 20, 7:23

                As we draw closer to the time, our views of the rapture are being refined. Not everyone that calls himself a Christian is going to be caught up in the rapture. In other words there are two distinct groups of Christians in the world today. There is the Body of Christ and there is the Bride of Christ. Many people call themselves Christians simply because they have received Jesus as their Savior. These form the Body of Christ. They hang around in the outer court. They occasionally venture into the Holy Place, but they have never pressed into that Most Holy Place of intimacy where life is conceived.

                 But the Bride of Christ is made up of those who have entered fully into the engagement and they are preparing as a Bride adorned for her Husband. The have eyes only for Him. They follow the Lamb wherever He goes. They have separated from the world system to walk in His Spirit and in His Word. They have pressed into the presence of God. They have this ”hope as an anchor of their soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”  Heb. 6:19, 20. They have become temples of the living God.1 Cor. 3: 16, 17, and 6:19, 20. It is only the Bride that will be caught up in the rapture and to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

                Philadelphia has before it an open door, but Laodicea is counselled to buy gold tried in the fire. Her works and her faith are incomplete. What they did not do in terms of relationship, they will have to do in times of great stress and a great shaking and separation of wheat and tares.

                In this matter of being a part of the Bride, think of it this way. You go to a wedding and there are many women there. They are all equally qualified to be a bride, but when the wedding song plays, only one walks down the aisle. She alone has entered into the intimacy of relationship that has led to their consummation. Only she will enter with her Husband into the chamber and shut the door.

                This is what is meant by the parable of ten virgins that Jesus told. The Philadelphia church had oil and went into the marriage feast, while the Laodicean church had to go into outer darkness and buy oil the hard way.  Get out your Strong’s concordance and look up the Day of the Lord, or Day of Judgment, or day of vengeance. You will be amazed

                This is a hard message and one that would have the limp-wristed, namby-pamby, cotton candy preachers pulling their hair out. They have spared us the full truth of the matter for the sake of church growth. Almost nobody preaches the unvarnished truth any more. They preach a message that keeps the money flowing in. They do not want to offend their support base and so they don’t tell us what it really means to be born again. They have invented a cream puff religion that isn’t real Christianity at all and so a great shaking is coming in which all of the false prophets and false preachers and false members will be shaken out.

                The church will become much smaller, but it will increase greatly in power as Jesus pours out His 7 fold anointing upon the purified church. And many people in the world who have despised the church for its empty facades will suddenly see something worth living for and worth dying for and they will come to Christ in droves. Even amidst blood and fire and columns of smoke they will come. Even in the face of fierce persecution they will come in.