In part one a foundation was laid describing how the Kingdom is about bringing the Heavenly Reality…that is the ways, attributes, functionings of heaven to earth. That there is now, and always has been a heavenly Tabernacle which was represented by an early prototype in Moses Tabernacle, then later by the Tabernacle of David, and later Solomon’s Temple.
The true Tabernacle and Temple
But Jesus said “I will tear down this temple (meaning His body now) and rebuild it in three days, signifying by what death He was going to die.”
Why , in this discussion is this important?
Because Jesus was going to do something no one had ever done before. Ever.
Outside of our time world, He had declared “Today, I have begotten you, It is written of me in the book, “I come to do your will O Lord.””
The Word that dwelt with the Father was not human, but God, present at the foundation of our known world. He was saying an Eternal “YUP”……
to becoming a containing vessel like us,
to becoming fully human
and to, (for the first time anywhere, ever,) bringing human flesh in its now glorified form
into the very Presence of the Father in the Holiest Place.
Never. Never. Never. Had anything like this ever happened.
Before this the Word had dwelt in the Presence of the Father….but never had a human.
So for the first time in heaven , now since the ascension, a human stands on the righthand of God the Father. And guess what? It gets better! He is interceding there for us. Why is that good? Just because He’s good at praying…so that us struggling little beings make it to the end of our lives without losing faith?
Nope.
His intercession is for us to catch the revelation on our insides that He has prepared a place for us. What, you mean rent-a home, on the outer reaches of heaven somewhere in the outer circle?
Nope. You’ve completely missed it.
He is not ashamed to call us brethren.
The place He has prepared for us fellow humans….. Fellow containers of God Himself is in this unheard of place that no one in their right mind in heaven would have even contemplated…
The very Holiest of Holies. This new place where human flesh can go and yet still live.
This is what is meant by
He has opened up for us by a new and Living Way……..
a place at the right hand of God
A place in the very heart of the Father
A place, in that sense that no angel can ever quite get near.
A redeemed place.
A place that Satan chose not for himself, in the midst of the full glories of heaven…yes by a very deliberate choice..
and we, in the face of appalling negatives, by faith, on earth, surrounded by very real opposites, have chosen…yes
God Himself.
Because we are containers of His glory…
God designed this picture of it:
A wooden (representing human flesh) Ark of the Covenant
covered on the inside and the outside with gold, representative of His Kingly glory.
Inside this Ark are the Two Tablets of the Ten Commandments.
This is Jesus life within us, in exactly the same way that Jesus on earth here , as a human, was a container for the Father’s life. He is the actual Law keeper within us.
So how does this affect us?
How does this affect us? Are you kidding? Nothing that we currently do can ever quite remain the same.
First some ground rules.
Did you notice how Nancy jumped in at the end of Part One and said this
"We have all three levels in us, when we have Christ in us"
and a few weeks ago when I was describing how it was now time for the Third level to be corporately manifested in the Church, she said "The mature Father level has always existed since the Church was born in Acts."
Do you remember me saying it is just as Ezekiel said...Wheels of prophetic outworking within wheels.
I describe this more in the Third Level audiomessage part 1 see picture link on my blog.
The arc , and probably the most important arc that Nancy is seeing began at the Cross, has always existed ever since and will culminate in ever increasing glory until the return of Jesus.
What I am declaring is quite specific and is no different , but perhaps stronger,with more clarity, than both Graham Pulkingham and later John Wimber. God's tide is no different than a gradually rising incoming sea tide. It comes in and goes out in individual waves, but the net effect increases until hightide is reached.I speak of the revelation of the Church, both local and corporate, which in the Spirit have little to differentiate them.
Something ,as I have stated repeatedly on my blog, of unique importance happened around 1906 as a man called Evan Roberts lay , conducting meetings, face down on a Welsh chapel floor. Yes, the return of the Holy Spirit supernatural form of Christianity returned in Wales,The Black Forest and Azusa St, but something even more incredible was happening. It was the birth of a Church actually beginning to function corporately, and not just as a man in a pulpit pulled strings. This was the Order of the Holy Spirit.The Order of heaven. A manifestation of the all but forgotten heavenly realm that Jesus Our High Priest moves in, the Melchizedek order of Hebrews chapter 7.
These sort of waves, only God knows about. Specific historic timings in God.
What Nancy is talking about is our foundation.
The Cross favours all or it favours no oneJesus died to bring absolutely everyone back into a full and complete restoration to God the Father.
"The Fulness of the Godhead dwelt bodily in My Lord (the song from Colossians says)and we are complete in Him." We have everything pertaining to life and godliness in Christ NOW." We don't need to go up for it,that's to bring Christ down, we don't need to go into hell for it, that is to bring Christ back out of His sacrifice. As stupid as it may seem to our left-brains locked into what we can see hear touch and taste....our lives may not look like what we consider is Him....but if we just believe ON Jesus, on the very Power of His Life within us,He has promised to bring us ably to full maturity. It is not dependant on us willing and striving, it is dependant on the Power of His Life to get us there, from wherever we may be now.
Is that not rather cool?
As I stated in Part One, the order, the timing,the way,is entirely up to Him...providing we keep our hearts open to Him and don't as it says...harden our hearts, or allow any root of bitterness to rise up and take us clean out of His plans for us.This is why we encourage one another. Not just with friendly words...but because our words have spiritual power and strength as they come from the Holy Spirit.
As insane a thought as watching a cell divide and so develop into a complicated human Body....I mean the initial division doesn't look anything like it will look...so in the Spirit, our initial experiences may seem to be of absolute irrelevance to what we're aiming for. But that is just the nature of this present universe!!!!
The second ground ruleIn every church, however dire,even the ones that have no idea about the gospel based on the finished work of Christ and not of works.....somewhere even there, is the stubborn "twinkler" in God who has somehow in this parched desert environment,reached full maturity in God...though he or she is blessed if she can tell why....they just...well....and tears fill their eyes at this point.....are in love with God...you see.
I know the Holy Spirit is a gentleman etc, and doesn't force Himself on anyone....yet I have noticed , because He only sees a full complete work of Christ at the Cross...He does tend to ignore the religious restrictions and mindsets of His people. Quite often He shocks those with little or no faith, byanswering their prayers and absolutely clearing someone's body of cancer. This is because when you are All powerful, and a full and complete annhihilation of all the Devil's works has been accomplished by the Son, Your co-worker at the Cross....it is terribly easy , by accidentally flicking your finger a bit too much, to 150% answer someone's prayer when they are only in faith for 10%. This is what is meant by He is well able to accomplish far above what we can even dream or think.
The power of the Word and faith over decades seems to have sufficient power to bring on even those who have spent their life kicking and screaming against loss of control, and baptism in the Holy Spirit, such that even they too reach an incredible maturity. It's just that the original plan for the Church was that this take 3, 4,5 years and not 70. If the disciples took only 3 years, what is possible in the Holy Spirit according to Jesus phrase "Greater things than these shall you see".
So the Holy Spirit is continually ignoring any first and secondlevellers plea for the quiet life, and rudely sends thirdlevellers in whose job it is, as it says in Isaiah, to stir the nest of the eagles, that they may be pushed out and forced to find their wings.
In general the Holy Spirit ignores all man made traditions and ideas of what Christians think Christianity is, to continually get believers to read of their position in Ephesians chapter 1 and 2, and in Colossians and Romans. He even gets the complete Bible to be read out in Anglican Churches. And gradually at least some start to get the hang of the radical stuff that Jesus has done for us.
The third ground rule
What is meant by a first, second or third level church?
Well according to the Tabernacle picture, a church that does not accept it's need for the shed blood of Jesus on the Cross to re establish and reconnect people back to God the Father, does not understand the brazen altar at all, and as such have not even begun to enter the real Presence of the Living Lord.
They are doing acts of religion, but the reality is not inside them, in their hearts.We have to ASK Jesus in.
No I am talking about the three personal and corporate stages of maturity as outlined in 1 John 2:12ff "Children, young men,fathers." This is spiritual development , not age.
It is not possible to have a church full of people at one level, nor, as in life, desirable.It is not like a school. No , I am talking "destination".
Imagine buses. Say London ones : Watford, Golders green , Marble Arch,Waterloo station,say. ie going south. So you wish to get to Waterloo, but your bus only takes you to Golders green (incidentally it's Jewish).
A first level church will only take you as far as evangelicalism. Faith in Christ. A basis of faith for living.
A secondlevel church can either like Keswick, point you to the exchanged life, or be charismatic, and teach you functionally about entering into, and moving in the Power of the Spirit.They are rarely both, I have found.
A thirdlevel church, has as its end goal, mature sons of God. Now, as we will see, every other level will claim they do this...because no one likes to think of themselves as immature....but the Holy Spirit will soon find you out if you are faking it.
So, I recommend looking into the destination on your church wall...it will save future frustration.
The fourth ground ruleIf you have ever read the Intercessor magazine produced by the people Norman Grubb was with called Zerubbabel, or if you have read my blog " 080808 On,now,to the third level" you can be excused for mistaking "the independent self" teaching and Christ as me in my form, for the third level.
This is NOT so. Sorry. The believing of these things into being is equivalent to the reckoning that goes on in Romans 6 and 7. It is NOT Romans 8,9,10 11 and 12....which actually, as Nancy points out with Norman, IS the third level.
The third level is like Ephesians, where you have spent Chapters 1 to 5 being matured into a position of KNOWING who you are in God. Then ON that basis....and only that basis....you move into battle and intercession as described in Ephesians 6. The THIRD level is the Poured Out Life for Others. You can have all the theory...but if the "fruit" of John 15 is not popping out the end of your branches...well, you ain't got it....or else, as it says, you are going through another season of pruning.
By the third level, you are not allowed your little quirks anymore,(quirks being what you personally like to believe in because it suits you. Jesus is King, and He decides what you get to believe in.)
You have to be what Smith Wigglesworth calls Word and Spirit.
If before, you were exchanged life....but had great hangups about Toronto...and you were blowed if you were going to stagger about looking silly....and you were going to remain in control at all costs....
Guess what?.....You can forget that! The Holy Spirit is coming to tickle you....so you lighten up!!
If before you were charismatic...with a particular predilection for funny tic noises and movements at strange times.......well, you're going to be learning about the Exchanged life, that you've skilfully avoided up until now....hmmm.....BIG TIME.
How can you tell a 2nd level church ?
The easy thing would be one sentence here. Read Jack Fortenberry's "Corinthian Elders",Darin Hufford on Free Believer's Facebook blog, and Stephanie Macentire. They have all done an excellent job at nailing the externals of 2nd level churches. They don't call it that, but that's what it amounts to.
There are two types. Some that are really quite happy and will remain as they are for years, maybe forever. Some, like Havant, or Rob Rufus's church in Hong
Kong "City Church International" are genuine "seeking the Lord as the face of the God of Jacob type churches". Perhaps they are TWOPLUS. If the hunger is genuine, you just know they are going to meet with God as a Church, as indeed He is doing.
TWOPLUS churches are interesting because certain Thirdlevel facets are already arriving.
I hope it's not too much exposure to say Havant are already pretty dead to "ministries". In the third level you just are ministry...so you don't bother ever talking about it.Most people in Havant are extremely prophetic...but they don't talk about that with anyone. Rather they talk about opening up wells of healing...that is the current faith challenge. In Havant, leaders are not always prominant at all.Christine and I spent 8 or 9 months not knowing John and Wendy Wilbraham were the pastors.There is a very high participation level. These are all good features.The best meetings are the Key of David meetings.I feel slightly less like a kamikazi suicide bomber in these when I bring some snippet of what I'd really like to share lots about.
You have to go through the young men reckoning stage to get to be a thirdlevel church.
Many churches have made the charismatic realm a dead-end, with no vision for ever going further.These I am calling 2ndlevel churches.The destination on the church wall is
2nd level only .
First and secondlevel churches have this feature. Control.
They are still to some extent absolutely locked in their left-brains.Locked into step by step thinking. Pulling strings. They're frightened God won't show up, so they won't allow Him to be God.
Related to this, but by far the biggest feature underneath everything, they are still locked in the delusion of the independent self. This is the lie that the devil sowed in Genesis 3:5. that if you just take of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil you will be like gods....able to be self-running beings in your own right. It sowed the lie about the Father being a rather distant angry God who doesn't really love us nor want the best for us, which has remained inside us for millennia. And it failed to say that there is no independent position anyway, so we switched by default to being run by Satan himself....for as Bob Dylan sang...we gotta serve somebody....and we became containers for another deity, little d....the devil.
2ndlevel churches universally don't want to hear this....and consequently cannot take on board huge sections of New Testament scriptures. They are like the multitude listening to Jesus message "Unless you eat My flesh and drink My blood you cannot have life within yourselves." And nearly everyone withdrew saying "This is a hard saying". This is the gospel of the Exchanged Life that very few want to hear. (Read Sylvia Pearce "
Two deliverances at the Cross)
2nd level churches, in my experience, spend little time in Romans, Colossians and Ephesians. They have little or no overarching revelation on these, so therefore cannot begin the reckoning process needed for them to break into the third level. "Break in" is a good phrase, because it describes the energy needed as violent men/women of the Spirit, to take the Kingdom by force.
2nd level churches believe that Romans 6 and 7 is a repeat of Romans 3,4 and 5, which it isn't, it describes instead a new phase entirely.
Relationships are enormously affected by these lacks, because by not knowing properly who they were, and who they now are, they are unable to fulfil the scripture "henceforth we see no man after the flesh"...for their entire walk is to see people after the flesh, as independent beings.
I began part One describing John the Baptist very deliberately. Charismatic pioneer ministries today like Morris Cerullo, Rheinhard Bonnke, David Hathaway, Youth With a Mission, all stride the globe at a rate of knots, leading people into 2ndlevel revelation. It is true to say they almost bust a gut doing so, while secretly being very frustrated that so few are out there helping them.
Third level ministry is of such a higher order, that asJesus said about the Kingdom as to John the Baptist, so it is to the current "flatout" ministries....."the least of these is greater".
Why? Morris Cerullo's gospel, Benny Hinn's gospel, only talks about salvation and deliverances.
Well, you can deliver someone and then 7 times as many devils can come back in. But the thirdlevel gospel gets the root....Jesus said "I came to lay the axe to the root".
So as fast as Winkey Pratney(YouthWithAMission training course) is training up a friend of mine who came into Bible House Emsworth with me later, just as fast this lad is marrying, getting divorced, and having to completely rebuild his life, because at no point....even in all the subsequent Word of Faith teachings of the Copelands which he attended, were the real roots of the gospel explained or preached to him.
Out of my whole Live in Community Bible College I attended, very many have divorced already, and even a surprising number are dead. It is a very dangerous thing to half build the Tower of God. We expose ourselves to ridicule and open ourselves to much danger spiritually.
2ndlevel Christianity does not work. It is flawed. Even in the time of Israel, all of them were intended to go right into the Land, not die in the Wilderness. 2ndlevel Christianity was NEVER meant to work....it was only ever meant to be a
through stage to get to the third level.
If you are a 2ndlevel leader it is exhausting, because nobody reaches the stage where they take your place as a father ministry.
This leaves only one option:install a leadership that you can trust while you remain at the top of the pyramid.Who can you trust? Well on the one hand it's the blessing of God that your kids have followed you into the Kingdom....but it's quite another to say they should be given positions over the same work....and especially if you are still the string puller at the top.And where do you get the idea that YOU do the installing anyway? A man's gift makes way for itself. All a ministry is, is the grace ability to move people on inthe Spirit by transplanting Christ, transplanting Word. What's this CEO corporation you are building anyway? So you are left with a bunch of unmotivated disappointed people who believed Christianity should work, but plainly doesn't, and now you have to work twice as hard motivating them to keep coming. Ofcourse huge numbers come in the front door of the church and walk straight out the back.
2ndlevel churches don't get the Cross and the Communion as Sylvia Pearce has shared.
If you are in a 1st or secondlevel church watch the Communion closely. Outside the revelation of the Holy Spirit it is almost impossible to maintain the right tone with the Communion.
It either becomes extremely heavy and as in Transubstantiation in Catholic churches...possibly very weird indeed...if not connected to simple faith....
or as in most new Protestant independent churches...an incredible levity bordering ludicrous.There will be an appreciation of the Blood of Jesus, but nearly no revelation at all on the Body of Christ.
Why?
This Body revelation (see
Two deliverances at the Cross article by Sylvia Pearce June 2010 on my blog.) is precisely the missing ingredient which takes you on to the Third level.
Likewise 2ndlevel churches have no real idea how to maintain the wonderful Presence of the Lord in meetings, when outside. There is a similar kind of effect to Communion goes on. Struggling not to be too spiritual, nor to revert back to the flesh.....(it's an awkward time)
when ofcourse once your interior believing has changed in the third level....you are fully convinced of who it is living your life AND YET
it's not theory, because for some months ,years,decades you have learned to distinguish between "independent believing" and believing in your new life as Christ as you....having your senses trained as mature people ....
In the 2ndlevel , because you do not know who you are with any confident assurance, you put intolerable pressures on your congregation, on your spouse, your children, all those around you.
You spend way too much time organising outreaches not realising your extreme Body Odour is making people run a mile.
2nd level churches arrange house groups or cellgroups of people that normally would not be seen dead together. In one sense this is good discipline, to learn to relate to those you would not ordinarily be with. On the other hand, if you taught the gospel properly, so that as Paul said....I looked for Jesus crucified among you....and by this time, that everyone knew in the Spirit that they
have all died with Christ and that
it is not them who live, but it is Christ who lives within them....
such a savour of Christ is now swirling around...
like in the best Key of David meetings...
that you actually do want to spend the rest of eternity together like the Fisherfolk Community with Graham Pulkingham.
I was in a community where , at the highpoint there were 30 all together in a standard three storey house in Emsworth. It fell to me to build the rabbithutches...then using much of the same technology I built 3 x 2 bunkbeds for us lads. OK, we were all cramped together....but our hearts were never melded, so one person's bunk could have been a million miles away. We had separate existences because we were a 2ndlevel church...so none of us knew who we were yet.
2ndlevel churches are filled with political intrigue. They are pyramid shaped with a pastor at the top.The devil only understands pyramids. God the Father builds open relationship families.
2ndlevel churches have hidden and open structures. They have pecking orders.
1st and 2ndlevel churches have a reality problem. This becomes more intense, not less after having been baptised in the Spirit, because you now know for certain that God exists, and you are familiar with His actual Presence. Then like Peter at the Transfiguration, you have to go down in the valley again and face all the problems in the real world. Romans 8 does not deny the real world....the persecutions , the sufferings, the problems. Rich Novek's series of posts in May on my blog are excellent on this:
Seeing God only. No more compartmentalising. All of life is His unfolding plan.Even those "drawings"and "pulls" you're not telling anyone about.It's Him, not in the sense that He is doing the drawing...for as James says God tempts no man....but He means for us to face choices....it is not outside our "earth curriculum".
What do we desire? It is legitimate to own up to what is pulling us....but what do we do with it? This is seeing God in everything. We proclaim the truth about what God has done for us in the midst of "how it looks" to our eyes. We allow the Genesis figleaves to be ripped away. We allow our shame to be covered by Jesus all sufficient Blood Covering, but we go further , believing on His very Life to birth in our being His very life...which isn't just the absence of a particular sin.....it's so far the opposite...that when later we face say a roomful of people with "stealing" problems...we irradiate them with the grace glory of Jesus own" giving" kind of life.
Helen Rubio made a fantastic point
(see her message Helen Rubio and the Russian Dolls on my blog).
She made the point that she doubted if we could go a lot further in advancing in worship in what is called the 3rd heaven...without going a lot further in our daily walk. Ofcourse this is said very much from a 2ndlevel framework.
The truth is.....
you bettya! 2ndlevel worship is so bowed down by shame, and people wrestling with their feelings of inadequacy, because nobody has preached to them what Paul is actually writing, and what Jesus is actually saying that....yes there is a huge ceiling on our present corporate worship.
Learn the 3rd level walk and boy will the corporate level of praise and worship fly!!!!
At the moment the whole thing is a bit "ass about face" because people are trying to get into something Jesus put them in 2000 years ago. They are using the CDs of Hillsongs in a rather manic way, to plug the hole left by rather weird onesided preaching as to the true nature of the human condition.
And they wonder why it doesn't work.
So 2ndlevel churches duly send their worshipleaders off to get more training and anointing....when what they really need is to sit down and "get" the 3rd level teachings.
2ndlevel churches either struggle for cash, or make the gospel look ludicrous by using crass commercial (Jerusalem moneylender) techniques for clawing in the dosh.
The real point of the 3rd level is this. The Holy Spirit Himself brings us to the Romans 12 point of offering ourselves as a sacrifice. In my experience, this is not really a repeated thing...it is a defintion God brings us to.
Without that point being reached, you are going to spend your life as 2ndlevel churches cajoling,pleading,preaching repeatedly,generally pulling your hair out....
but the one thing necessary has never been faced...
they follow one leader
they have a handful of doctrines
they have never decided to be that person offering themselves FREELY in the day of Power
they follow man not God
they have never heard anyone preach many of the doctrines in the NT
they certainly have never heard one message on hebrews 7 about the Melchizedek order
they still think if you give money to God you'll run out
they've never grown up and they never intend to grow up
for faith comes only by "hearing"(gaining a spiritual capacity to hear) and hearing by the Word of God.
they live in cliques and sects.
they relegate all NOW words of God like Martha to the day of resurrection
they are 2ndlevel
Cindi Estep and Francois Du Toit like this.
Francois Du Toit check out Athanasius on the Incarnation, http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/history/ath-inc.htm#ch_1
Yesterday at 12:12 · Chris Welch thanks Francois will do
Yesterday at 12:22 · Cindi Estep Wow Chris! I will read over again a time or two, maybe three or four! Much to absorb here....To see Him in everything! Blessings ♥
Yesterday at 13:11 · Chris Welch Think I will too Cindi
Yesterday at 17:13 · John Madden thanks Chris and Joanne
19 hours ago · LikeUnlike ·
