There is a difference between Matthew 10 and Acts 3. It is not easily discernible initially. In the first passage Jesus " called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil[a] spirits and to heal every disease and sickness."
Every disease and sickness. First ministry trip! Not colds and headaches and after you fully receive the Spirit you get the rest! From the word go...it was the full package.
No, the difference is more subtle. From shortly after I received the anointing I found I could do extraordinary things. Straight away. Quite early in the 80s I was prophesying into a National Welsh conference. It was a complete shock...I was there under the guise of children's ministry...and only an assistant at that. So Jesus sends us forth, giving us tasters. Ministry trips. The same anointing. Nothing inferior about the anointing.
The difference with Acts 3 is this. THEY WEREN'T ON A MINISTRY TRIP! They just "were it" full-time. That's the difference. They were just going to a meeting. And supernaturally something happened....they both simultaneously suddenly looked at the same man who was always there!!! The Holy Spirit was pointing him out. Just occasionally that happens in our Havant meetings. One or two of us will suddenly find ourselves looking at someone. And sure enough the Holy Spirit is then up to something with them. It's often a kind of signal to stretch our hands towards them and pray...or prophesy... or maybe pray for healing.
Let me draw another man out of the wings. Eldred Linden. A teacher with the International Ministry Association , whose related Spanish site in La Linea, is the Buddy Cobb message link on this blog. Eldred can tell you the prophetic significance of every knothole in every floorboard in the Tabernacle! But another thing he said was about how a caterpillar changes. It has 3 forms.
Eldred uses the phrase"earthbound" for the caterpillar stage. And it doesn't seem much better in the pupae stage. But the 3rd level stage is ofcourse the butterfly...which is free to fly off anywhere. Earthbound is our natural material vision of life. We haven't yet learnt that our spirit is the main bit of us. With a soul sheath, in a body suit!!!
Well God has an accelerator to get us sped up for the 3rd level. God's particle accelerator. His Body. The Ministries in His Body. The Word. The Holy Spirit creating in us a relationship with this Word, Jesus. In the first 2 levels we do ministry under the anointing. In the 3rd level we have been accelerated on our insides. We ARE THE MINISTRY.
A particle accelerator type verse is in Daniel12:4 "many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase" and in verse 3 "Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever." Now it could be that "many shall run..."means people are running about frantically trying to unseal what Daniel was told to seal...but it would seem to me to be a prophetic vision of the end, when both in the natural with air transport, and vehicles, and in the Spirit, people are energised, moving around with great speed and anointing, turning many to righteousness, because the time is short.
If Romans describes an individual's particle accelerator to get him whizzing around like Romans 8, (greater detailed description of 3rd Level Intercession Life is given in Romans12.) Well, Ephesians gives a more corporate vision of particle acceleration. Once we are established in the founding truths of where Christ has placed us and how His Body works Ephesians Chapters 1-4, then Chapters 5 and 6 are about positioning ourself to reflect the truth that, in fact we are now LIGHT 5:8. This is tested out in every natural relationship context...family, work, state,churchlife. THEN, ONLY THEN, are we allowed to really go into action in the last few verses of Ephesians Chapter 6. All that intense preparation, just for a few verses of action.
Jesus spent 30 years without one hint of anointing...during this period he was confirming his own self-belief, that He was the 2nd Adam, God Himself come down to Earth from heaven...worked out in every day spheres of work and social life. Then He was anointed...specifically tested in the wilderness....and then He went into action...for a relatively short but highly accelerated period.
Here's my problem! The last post described the tremendous workings that prepared a people to go into action under the banner name of Israel. Three whole lifetimes of revelation. The Revelation of God to Abraham - The Faith Walk. The Revelation of God to Isaac - The Well Opener. Then The Revelation of God to Jacob concerning the Name Change.
Then, 2000 years ago, these three generations of revelation were squashed into a Discipleship Course spanning only 3 years with 12 men with Jesus as the Course trainer.The course had to have an additional 40 days added to it AFTER THE RESURRECTION, as a catch-up refresher for the bits they weren't getting in the main class. (Questions such as Philip saying "Show us the Father" kind of showed Jesus He was going to have to do an extension module.) But by Acts 2 we are looking pretty much at a 3rd Level bunch of accelerated men.
This is my problem then. If we know what 3rd Level is...even if we don't call it 3rd Level, why do we act as though we are ignorant? In every Christian bookstore are the same names over and over again. Independently chosen by each bookstore owner and the buyers in that locality. None of the authors represent the same denomination. Clearly wiping all denominational importance away right there! Spurgeon.George Mueller. John G Lake. Watchman Nee. Mother Basilea Schlink. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. George Verwer. Graham Pulkingham. Yonghi Cho. and all the modern contemporaries. They are all forerunner 3rd Levellers. They are Father ministries. Maurice Smith calls people like this "twinklers". 1st and 2nd levellers flunk out at this point and say "Oh...them...yes they are special Christians aren't they? Remarkable people!"
Nope. Nope. Nope. They are not remarkable people. Let's call them what God calls them. Christ in their form. Just mature Christians...that's all! Period! People that have done a bit of dying and resurrecting. You 1st and 2nd levellers are liars. By calling them special, you know you are making God out to be a liar. Because the truth is...you too were crucified with Christ. By calling them special, you are wriggling out of your own grave. You are trying to let yourself off the hook. because if you don't call them special, the next uncomfortable question is why are you not like them also!!!
The second of the two related problems is this. Clearly ALL our ministry training in the whole world, be it evangelical colleges, attempts at apostolic centres such as George Kouri....Certainly Youth With a Mission...and Morris Cerullo's School of Ministry...
Yup. All of them. Are Naive. And that is putting it politely.
Once you see what Ed Miller saw, and describes as a roomful of snakes, suddenly having the light switched on, so you can now see them. That is our natural life that according to Genesis 3:5, is hooked into a totally delusive sense of independence.
And like Ed Miller or any of the IMA, you begin to see how deep and "incurable " this disease of the self is..... you can understand that our current 3 years of Bible training is totally insufficient, which is largely left-brain...at which point we fill in a few exam questions, receive a certificate at the hands of some authoritative Board...and people point us towards a church, where we inflict ourselves on a bunch of expectant pew-fillers...and we call that Kingdom training!
Ridiculous. Absolutely STUPID. The devils are laughing to high heaven as they continue to plug into us and live through us in this religious setting. Jesus has a great description of how we do church. He was ofcourse talking of His contemporaries the Pharisees. He said "You go 200 miles to make one convert...then you make him twice the son of Hell that you are."
Another of Jesus (true) jokes is always taken wrongly. He said if you see a speck in your brother's eye, first take the log out of your own eye. So we think, if I see anger in someone else, I must first take out anger from my own life. That is not what is meant by the log. The Log is the BIG ONE! Not Big Sin. But Sin itself. The Spirit of Sin which we hooked into in Genesis which expresses itself through the whole gamut of sins...given the right circumstance. That's what this phrase is saying.
It's Jesus saying "You're all nuts!" Just as we are with our stupid ministry training programmes.
"You great bananas!"Jesus is saying..."how on earth do you hope to do a 3rd Level job (bringing in the Kingdom) if you haven't even sorted out where you lost the Kingdom by hooking into the devil in Genesis. That's the devil's smile on your face as you welcome them to accept Jesus. You phonies! "
Are you beginning to see how radical the message in this whole blog is. There is not one thing in our lives that will remain unaffected. As we begin to bind in our belt of truth (Ephesians 6), and pull in all our loose and flapping garments....can you begin to see the sort of authority we will have now when we talk, pray or share. We'll be doing this from the position of Divinely accelerated beings.
