The Inauguration of the Kingdom of God
by David Johnson
Even though we have heard that we are living in such a day of miracles and sensational happenings that people are shock-proof, let me remind you that people are not shock-proof! Soon a series of prophetic fulfillments of a sensational nature will be transpiring right here on this earth that will shock millions of people who thought themselves to be shock-proof heretofore! Truly, we are living in a day of miracles. Every time we look at a new born baby we are looking at a miracle, and every time we see a giant plane take off the ground into the air with hundreds of people on board, we are looking at a miracle. I have seen paralyzed people jump out of wheelchairs, tumors and goiters disappear before my eyes, and gasoline created in the tank of my automobile. However, these will fade into insignificance, compared to the miracles that are just ahead.
Even though we have heard that we are living in such a day of miracles and sensational happenings that people are shock-proof, let me remind you that people are not shock-proof! Soon a series of prophetic fulfillments of a sensational nature will be transpiring right here on this earth that will shock millions of people who thought themselves to be shock-proof heretofore! Truly, we are living in a day of miracles. Every time we look at a new born baby we are looking at a miracle, and every time we see a giant plane take off the ground into the air with hundreds of people on board, we are looking at a miracle. I have seen paralyzed people jump out of wheelchairs, tumors and goiters disappear before my eyes, and gasoline created in the tank of my automobile. However, these will fade into insignificance, compared to the miracles that are just ahead.
The prophetic word of the Lord gives promise
of a time when the Lord will move in a marvelous and unprecedented way
by His Spirit. At that time the Lord will restore all that was
lost through the ages past and the long night of man’s selfhood, sin,
sorrow and death. There is an event soon to take place which shall
overshadow and eclipse all former, partial, manifestations of God’s
glory and power in the earth. The glories of this great event will
inspire, initiate, and bring to fulfillment the times of the restitution of all things.
The grandeur, the splendor, the glory and the great power of God to be
manifest at the time of this event is impossible for us to comprehend
presently, for we are still living and moving in the realm of the
“firstfruits” of God’s Spirit. The grand and glorious event to which we
refer is the manifestation of the sons of God.
The supernal glories that lie like towering
sierras before us are beyond compare. The grandest event of all time is
now at the doors! For almost two thousand years the Lord has been
gathering out of all nations and peoples an elect body, refining its
members in the furnace of affliction, transforming them in mind and
heart by the deep dealings of His Spirit, preparing them by experience
and in wisdom and knowledge to possess the reins of the government of
the world. And while we rejoice and praise God for all the mighty
visitations of the past, and those glorious movings of the Spirit we
have experienced in our life-time, yet we know by the word of the Lord
that the next great move of God will be greater than all — the
manifestation of God through His many sons. Nothing is more certain than
that. The Spirit witnesses all across the land and around the world
that the long awaited unveiling of God’s sons is at hand. The
unveiling of the in-Christed is upon us! The cry of the groaning
creation and the prayer of the travailing saint are joined with the
unutterable longings of the Holy Spirit, all crying in unison and
harmony for the arising of God’s deliverers. The desire of all nations
is at hand. The next stage of the Kingdom of God is ready to unfold!
Let the mountains reverberate with the sound
of the message; let the hills shout aloud for joy, and all the trees of
the forest clap their hands! For we now stand on the threshold of a new
dimension of the Kingdom of God, and we must be prepared to receive HIM
in fullness. As we earnestly look for His appearing, we are to receive
ALL THAT HE IS, for when He appears in His glory in His manifest sons,
all the traditions of yesterday will be swept away and the realms of
limitation swallowed up in His surpassing glory. I cannot overemphasize
this great and important truth: When Christ appears in the fullness of
Himself in His many brethren, we must be prepared to receive Him on a
higher plane than we have known Him hitherto.
We cannot tell Him what portion of Him we
will receive and what portion we will not receive. WE WILL RECEIVE AND
MANIFEST HIM IN FULLNESS, and without any reservations or preconceived
ideas, or we will not receive Him at all. Either we will walk in the
power and glory of His sonship, or we will miss the glory. Should we
cling to the ministries and methods of the past, we will not be manifest
sons. Vast multitudes of Christians will not stand in this new glory
because of their tradition — but their time of visitation will come
later. But for those who are willing to pay the price, to be thoroughly
purged of all that is of the flesh, and disposed to turn loose of the
past religious traditions, the old forms and ceremonies, the former
means and methods, and the stagnant remains of yesterday’s visitations,
there awaits great glory and heavenly wealth, and a world-shaking
ministry beyond the comprehension of mortal mind.
Some of us have surely noticed that in every generation and age God is doing two different kinds of work — a general work and a specific work.
For instance, in Noah’s day there is no doubt that God was acting in
diverse ways and on different levels, doing numerous general things in
the earth. He certainly was caring for His creation and we know that His
Spirit was striving with all mankind (Gen. 6:3). But God was also doing
a very specific thing. The Lord appeared to Noah and gave him His word
for the new day He would bring to pass. The Lord told Noah that because
of man’s wickedness He was going to destroy all flesh by a flood, except
his family, and that he should build an ark to save his family and two
of every kind of creature on earth. Noah found grace in the eyes of the
Lord! He was a just man and perfect in his generation. He walked
faithfully with God and became related to God in that specific thing He was doing in the earth at that time.
To fulfill God’s purpose required that Noah
build an ark on dry ground in a world where rain had never been seen.
Nobody really knew what a flood was, for God had not caused it to rain
upon the earth. The face of the earth was watered nightly by a mist that
the Lord caused to cover the land. No one had ever seen a rainbow, for
there was never sufficient moisture in the air by day. After receiving
his instructions from the Lord, Noah labored faithfully to build the
ark. With every stroke of his hammer Noah was judging that generation. I
do not doubt that the scoffers mocked Noah and ridiculed him for
building such a huge monstrosity which he maintained would one day float
above the mountains and save his family from death. With no rain in
sight, the mockers had a hundred years to laugh at Noah, taunt him,
shout obscenities at him, while calling him a stupid and crazy old man.
But when the flood came and the waters overflowed the earth, their
mocking came to an abrupt end. God’s word to Noah, and Noah’s
involvement with that specific thing God was doing in that
generation, judged the whole world and brought the dawn of a new age.
When the flood was over, Noah and his family stepped out of the ark to
see a new earth that was cleansed of the evil of previous times.
Ah, time fails me to speak of Abraham,
Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Solomon, Jeremiah and a host of
others who dared to become related to God in that specific work He was
doing in their day. It is easy to be related to God in the generalthings
He is doing. Today God is moving in the earth to touch and bless and
use people on may different levels of His purposes. Vast multitudes of
believers throng to the activities of these general movings of
God. You will always find the crowd at the general move of God! But we
live in a unique period of the history of the world, just as Noah and
others did. And in our generation, as in theirs, God has a SPECIFIC
PURPOSE in mind, that one precise, unique, special and transcendental
work which He is performing for the advancement of His Kingdom into the
new age. The masses of Christians flocking to the meetings, crusades,
projects and activities of the church systems in this hour are related
to God only in the general things He is accomplishing in the earth.
There is a people unto whom the Lord has
appeared and to whom the Lord has given His word for the New Day. For
this reason we are a people to be conformed to a higher standard — a
people made in His image and likeness, trained in His ways, instructed
in His purposes, initiated into His sacred secrets, devoted to His will.
The apostle Paul also lived in a unique period. He was called to bridge
the gap between the old and the new. Paul was called and ordained and
equipped to establish a new order in the earth. So is it in this Day!
The specific purpose of God in our generation is to bring the
many-membered body of Christ to maturity, to birth the company of the
manifest sons of God, to bridge the gap between the old Church age and
the new age of the Kingdom of God upon the nations. I speak as a
prophetic voice in the earth in this generation. The manifestation of
glory and power and righteousness that will be manifested in this Day
will eclipse all former moves.
Who can carry on with the programs of man
anymore, who can wade in the shallows of former visitations once he has
received the vision of what shall be realized as God’s people launch out
into the deep. The last or most recent “shower of blessing” came as the
great outpouring of the Lord as Latter Rain during the years 1948-1953.
The effect and blessing of that outpouring is with us still and various
smaller showers have fallen also. But the celestial deluge is yet to
come in GREAT POWER AND GLORY. Glorious beyond words to describe was
that wonderful outpouring of God’s Spirit at Pentecost, but no language
of men below nor of mighty angels above can begin to describe the
SURPASSING GLORY of the manifestation of God in this New Day. The
“waters to swim in” are coming, the outpouring of the fullness of the
spirit and life of the almighty Christ of God, and compared to these
waters the former outpourings are but trickling streams compared to the
vast ocean currents beyond the power of man to either produce or
control.
Hear me now and believe me later — if you
cannot believe me now — soon there will come the manifestation of the
sons of God, for which all creation has groaned for long millenniums and
ages. Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed from the living,
completed temple of His body. His glory shall flow out and fill the
earth. His power shall shake the nations and all nations shall come and
worship before Him. The harvest of this age shall be gathered.
Everything shall live whithersoever the River cometh. The Spirit of God
has witnessed to many thousands of saints around the world in this hour
that a NEW DAY is upon the horizon. The next great move of God is even
now at hand. There will not be another revival. There will not be another visitation. It is not the hour for the restoration of the New Testament Church. All
that has already been accomplished! A new day dawns. God is marching
on. He shall do an entirely new thing in the earth. A new age lies
directly before us. The manifestation of God’s sons is at hand. That has
never happened before! A new and unspeakably wonderful stage of the
Kingdom of God is upon us! In this New Day the ministry of the fullness
of the Spirit of God shall be released through many sons in
reconciliation, blessing, and transformation unto all the ends of the
earth! It shall bring a deliverance and change beyond any the world has
ever witnessed.
There can be no hanging on to the things of
the past. There must be a clean break away from all of the old order,
not only the orders of men, but the old order of God Himself. We
must forsake all that has waxed old and is ready to vanish away that we
may attain to that specific thing God has called us to. For my part,
nothing short of attaining will satisfy! We must attain without
counting any cost. It means the loss of friends and fellowship. It
means misunderstanding among our relations and often the closest members
of our family. Those who are led by the Spirit are the sons of God
(Rom. 8:14). All others will go the way of the flesh, receiving their
instructions and guidance, not from the Spirit, but from carnal-minded
preachers, childish, immature Christians, and apostate church systems. Do you want to share in the Kingdom? Then there are responsibilities for you which
Martin Luther, John Wesley, Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, the Full Gospel
Business Men’s Fellowship, and all the other orders of the past and
present have not had. Therefore, for you to live an earnest and
dedicated Christian life as these have, is not enough. Did not the
generation of Jews, on whom the end came in the days of Christ Jesus the
generation that saw or might have seen the glory that came with the new
activity of God in those days have responsibilities their fathers did
not have? And were they not judged accordingly?
Unless we are enlightened by the Spirit and
given eyes to see as God sees, and hearts to understand as God
understands, our minds will be filled with the darkness and spiritual
foolishness of these times. The Christ within should always be our
guide! The Christ within will open our eyes and cause us to see new
things in the Spirit and by the Spirit. Then we will see this great Day
and Father’s Kingdom purposes to which His chosen, faithful and mature
sons are called. Only when we are enlightened by the light of Christ are
we able to look beyond the feverish religious activities of the carnal
church world and the evil and darkness of these times, to see the hope
and purpose and glory of a people prepared to rule and reign with Christ
in His Kingdom — in this Day!
When this people arises in the earth the
Kingdom of God shall prevail through an altogether new ministry for the
new age. Yet many of those who yearn for the manifestation of God’s sons
are left feeling much like the expectant woman whose due date for
delivery of her baby has come and gone. All the signs are there that
there is a baby — the tummy is swollen so tight it can’t be
pinched, the baby is kicking, the water may even have broken and
contractions begun — yet the birth has not followed. At such a time the
mother may wonder if things could go on like that indefinitely. It seems
almost unbearable, the waiting grows intolerable, the nights long and
depressing. Still, all signs give assurance that the hoped for event
will take place. And, praise God, it surely shall! We are getting very
near the end of our journey. For some of us it has been long, hard, and
treacherous; the road often rough and stony, feet becoming torn and
wounded. But the glad news is this, the morning is at hand, the day is
dawning, the glory of the Lord is arising upon the elect, and the
overcomers are ready to be clothed with His resurrection and
immortality. We have been set apart from birth. We were always
“different” from others. We were in the world, at times we were part of
the world, and for a season we enjoyed the pleasures of the world. Yet
something within us pulled us away and led us to the spiritual…to the
unseen…to the eternal. HE was always with us. Through all the steps of
our growth and development in the spirit we always sensed…knew…that
there was more. We were never satisfied at any stage of the
journey, with any church or move or ministry. We were irresistibly
impelled onward to things we did not yet see nor comprehend.
Carl Schwing wrote of the beauty of this
great truth, “There is a field, a very lovely field, where the lilies
grow. They stand tall in the sunlight and dance freely in the wind;
white trumpet-shaped flowers with the fragrance of a rare perfume. They
neither labor nor toil…they are free from things like that. They simply
do what they were created to do; they grow and become beautiful and are
admired by every passerby. But sadly there comes a cold gray day when
the flowers fade and all of their loveliness is gone. Yet deep within
the cold dark earth they rest, until summer’s sun. I have often wondered
if the lilies know that someday the sun will rise to set no more, and
that they will bloom forever in the Father’s lovely field. Ah, then
shall they be free from change and decay. They will be free to live on
and on, and be a thousand times lovelier than they were before. I must
share a secret: I know that they know…for they moan for the hour of the
Manifestation of the Sons of God.
“There is another field…the earth which we are.
And deep within that cold harsh earth there is hidden an inner son.
Within this son dwells all the mysteries of the ages. All the wisdom and
knowledge of the Father dwells in him. He is the ‘inner being’ out of
which the River of Life shall flow. He is the emancipator that the whole
creation cries out for. He is a son of God’s Christ. And now he rests
within the body of flesh…till the call of the Rising Son.
This, my beloved, is the unrest which you
feel. The earth which you are is being shaken by the knowledge of the
inner truth. This is the feeling we have of something breaking forth.
The stone of flesh is soon to be rolled away. The light of God is
swelling within you and His Kingdom is being prepared to come forth.
Even now the Rock is grinding to powder the kingdoms of the world. Even
now we can hear the songs of the Kingdom as we dwell in the presence of
the Father. Even now the Kingdom Light is shining forth from our eyes
(understanding). Even now upon the horizon we can see the coming of the
Manifestation of the Sons of God…and they shall live on and on, and be a
thousand times lovelier than they were before. They will be the eternal
glory of the Father, the pillars of His House, and the joy of all
creation. They, with their Elder Brother, form the Son of God by whom
all things were created, redeemed and restored. Who can be compared to
these Holy Lilies of the Field? Hallelujah!”
There is coming a new and fresh and full
revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. The night is falling on the present
order. Already we are seeing evidence of the dawning of a new day
breaking forth upon us as thousands of the Lord’s elect are arising to
behold the first rays of the dawn and to drink in the intoxicating
freshness of the morn. There is a mighty cry in our hearts for the Lord
to move in an altogether new way in our lives and in the earth. Many
things are happening in the Pentecostal and Charismatic realms today,
but I do not hesitate to tell you that all of those things are but stale
“left overs” from previous visitations. We are due for a fresh move and
a new work of God in the earth in this hour! So the night is coming
upon the religious realms, bringing an end to particular forms of the
movings and operations of the Spirit of God. Though all the
manifestations of the past have been precious and needful, yet our God
in this hour is moving on. A new manifestation and revelation of the
Christ is coming in the midst of us, and I hear and see the signs that
He is beginning to come. We are living in the early dawn of the fullness
of the APPEARING OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. This appearing will be
through the long-awaited manifestation of the sons of God. It will not
just save and heal and bless people, it will deliver creation from the bondage of corruption. It will bring full salvation,
spirit, soul and body! This truth is burning within my bones, pulsating
within my bosom. I am being quickened by these things. My one desire is
to be available to be a part of this appearing of the Lord that is
preparing the sons of God for the wind-up of this age and the
inauguration of a far greater age of glory.
We must be willing to move with God into the
new, and that means to be completely released from, separated from,
stripped from the old. Oh! How we try to bring the old along into the
new, to adapt the old methods, the old order of the church systems to
the new order of sonship and the Kingdom of God. But God will not have
that, my friend. It is human nature to want to fit the passing into the
mold of the new. Have you ever noticed, for example, how it worked in
the automotive industry. How many of you remember what the first
automobiles looked like? If you do, then you remember they looked
exactly like horse-drawn carriages without the horses! When the designer
sat down to draw up a concept for this new vehicle of transportation
known as an automobile, he was so hitched to the past that he came
forth, not with a new vehicle at all, but merely with a reproduction of
an old one. The first automobiles were made to resemble horse-drawn
carriages — right down to the sockets for the whips!
Every time there is a change in the working
of God we are thrown into a crisis situation. There is something about
us that is never quite prepared for change. There is always that shock
of seeing a cherished order vanish, while wondering what the next order
will be. But this is how it is. The Lord reveals His glory and it
accomplishes a purpose. Then the end of that day comes. The night steals
in upon that era. God is ready for a new order, a new day, another
greater phase of His workings. Again, even as I pen these lines, there
is a fresh revelation and working of God in the earth. Again there is a
“going forth” of Jesus Christ, released in a fuller form through a
many-membered body of mature and transformed sons of God.
I must speak very frankly, my friends. The
next move of God, the manifestation of the sons of God, will not come
through those who are waiting for a rapture to whisk them away to the
skies. It will come through people who are crying out from the depths of
their spirits, “Oh God, visit us afresh. Do a new thing! We need YOU!
Creation groans for a mighty deliverance! Come, Lord Jesus, move through
us on a higher order, a higher dimension of your power and glory. Come
to your temple in fullness. Come in the manifestation of your sonship.
Come! that we might behold you as you are and be changed into your
image, clothed with your life and immortality. The whole earth is
waiting with bated breath for the glory of the Lord to be revealed.
Come! and cause righteousness and praise and incorruption to spring
forth before all nations!”
THE GLORY OF MANIFESTED SONSHIP
Old as it is, there is always something new,
something prophetic, in the miracle of the coming of spring. No man of
us, unless he be utterly dead of soul, but feels a new thrill and throb
of heart as he witnesses the wonder of the world renewed. “Behold, I
make all things new” is a text of which nature writes a new lesson every
year, lest we forget. Gently the earth, but yesterday so gray and
winter-worn, is bathed in sunlight; silently a new life wells up from
within, and the wonder is wrought. The dead grasses are gone, they are
reborn in living green; the stark trees adorned in elaborate foliage and
ornate blossoms. Since time began this demonstration has touched the
heart of man with new hope that, if God so reclothes the grass which
perishes, shall He not much more by a mightier ministry renew the men
made in His image together with all creation?
The word of God clearly teaches that the
manifestation of the sons of God at the close of this age brings FULL
SALVATION —salvation for spirit, soul, and body. The purpose of this
manifestation is two-fold: first, to bring full redemption to God’s
elect; second, to bring deliverance to all peoples, tongues, kindreds
and nations, to those now living as well as to those vast multitudes who
have lived and died throughout the ages, until sin, sickness, sorrow,
darkness, pain and death shall exist no more anywhere in God’s unbounded
universe, worlds without end.
Let us notice how the apostle Paul reveals
this purpose of God in the following words: “For even the whole creation
waits expectantly and longs earnestly for God’s sons to be made
known — waits for the revealing, the disclosing of their sonship. For
the creation was subjected to frailty — to futility, condemned to
frustration — not because of some intentional fault on its part, but by
the will of Him who so subjected it. Yet with the hope that creation
itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and corruption and
gain an entrance into the glorious freedom of God’s children. We know
that the whole creation has been moaning together in the pains of labor
until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves too, who have and
enjoy the firstfruits of the Holy Spirit — a foretaste of the blissful
things to come — groan inwardly as we wait for the redemption of our
bodies from sensuality and the grave, WHICH WILL REVEAL OUR ADOPTION,
OUR MANIFESTATION AS GOD’S SONS” (Rom. 8:19-23, Amplified).
As our Lord did after His resurrection, so
will the sons of God do. We will be in glorified bodies and we will
belong to the heavenly world, but we will appear and take part in
earthly life and show forth the fullness of the power and glory of His
resurrection right here on earth. This is Christ coming to be revealed
in the fullness of Himself among all peoples and over all nations. Our
Lord’s life on earth after His resurrection gives us an illustration of
what resurrection life ultimately means. He was in a place simply by
willing to be there, regardless of space, time, or of material
obstructions. He had access to heaven and to earth. This is the destiny
of all the sons of God! Since this is the truth concerning the
resurrection of the firstborn son of God, it follows that this is the
glory that shall be manifested when all the sons of God are glorified.
Furthermore, the glory of the Lord to be manifested on this earth when
all the sons of God are transformed and glorified shall be much more
magnificent than it was when Jesus was glorified. Jesus was glorified to
ascend and pour out the firstfruits of the Spirit; the sons of God shall be glorified to express in the earth the fullness of the Spirit and to deliver all creation from the bondage of corruption.
Although the glory of the Lord revealed and
manifested when Jesus was glorified was awesome, there is a glory coming
that shall be greater by far! For it shall not be just one son
glorified, but many sons brought to glory. The whole creation is
standing on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight of God’s sons glorified
and manifested! Every created thing is waiting to be delivered from the
bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the family of God.
Deliverance from corruption means the abolition of death — resurrection
life for everyone and everything. Oh, the mystery of it! Oh, the wonder
of it! Imagine the glory to be revealed when all the sons of God are
transformed and glorified! And not to ascend to heaven in a cloud, but
to minister deliverance, transformation and glory to the whole creation!
Truly this is the promised “coming” of our Lord Jesus Christ. That
great event will be the transformation and glorification of the entire
body of Christ, resulting in creation’s deliverance from the bondage of
decay and death, into the glorious liberty and victory of the very sons
of God. And what a triumphant victory that shall be!
Most Christians today are expecting the “end
of the world.” I cannot but feel astonished that any serious Bible
student should have his mind fettered with the common and vulgar notion
that the great Creator and our heavenly Father intends to destroy the earth and creation. God so loved the world that He sent His Son to be the Saviour of the world.
The Christ came and consecrated even this earth by His presence, and by
spilling upon it His life’s blood. He drenched the very soil with His
precious, divine blood! There is a special consecration upon the earth
which makes it revolting to think of its being handed over to oblivion.
God created it to be inhabited and established it that it be not moved.
The footsteps of the Son of God upon its soil, the breathing of its
atmosphere by His lungs, the wearing of its dust upon His person, the
warming of its fluids in His arteries, and above all, the glorification
of its atoms and particles by the resurrection of His earth-body, ought
to be enough to satisfy us that neither the devil nor destruction will
ever possess it. It is the place where the Son of God took the earth
into His very existence, where He was born and reared, and where He
taught, and slept, and suffered, and died. It is the territory on which
Divine Love and Mercy have poured out the costliest sacrifice the
universe has every known. It is the chosen theater of the most momentous
deeds that have ever attracted the adoring interest of angels. It has
furnished the body, the death-place, the grave, and the glorious
resurrection and triumph of Jesus Christ. And how is it to be delivered
over to everlasting nothingness? Perish what may, a world so consecrated
can never be blotted out, or cease to be one of the most cherished orbs
in God’s great creation!
God has purposed that the Christ shall be
glorified in the whole creation, in the earth and throughout the
unbounded heavens, to the whole extent of His grace. He has already
glorified Him in the realm above all heavens. He will now glorify Him
where He lived in poverty, where He had nowhere to lay His head, and
where He gave His life a ransom for all. As He, in humility and
obedience, went down below all that God created, He has been raised as
man above all that is created. ALL between those depths and those
heights, ALL, I say, must own His authority, ALL must be gathered
beneath Him as head over all things, ALL must be infused with His divine
life, ALL must be delivered from the bondage of corruption. That is the
testimony of the written Word and it is the testimony of the Holy
Spirit in the mouths of His holy apostles and prophets in this Day. What
unspeakable joy! What immeasurable glory!
Many of the Lord’s people are caught up in
prophecies of gloom and doom, predictions of the destruction that they
believe will come upon the earth. But these are messages that come out
of the darkness of men’s carnal minds and soulish imaginations. Such
teachings pertain to the blindness of religion. God’s plan is not to
destroy the earth or the universe, but to redeem and restore it. The
whole purpose of the coming of Jesus Christ with the glorious gospel of
the Kingdom of God is to bring forth a new earth filled with
righteousness in the lives of all mankind, and not to destroy the earth
or the world that He has graced with His divine presence and atoning
blood. God’s elect are destined to be the agents and ministers of that
restoration! If we know what time it is on God’s great prophetic clock,
we will understand that it is time for one age to end and another more
glorious age to begin right here on earth. We will then stir ourselves
from the blessings and orders of the dying age and arise to become
related to God in His purposes for the new age. We will put away all
those prophecies of gloom and doom, of the destruction of the earth and
multiplied billions of people with it. We will then seek the Lord for
His appearing in us, for we are the hope of the restoration of all
things. Certainly there will be judgments, but not unto destruction and
everlasting doom, rather unto correction and salvation. Yes, Great
Babylon will fall, but will be replaced by the light and the rule and
the glory of God’s New Jerusalem people and His sons who reign from
mount Zion. And what a Day of deliverance this shall bring when the sons
of God begin to reign!
As Carl Schwing has written, “It has been
appointed to the sons of God to establish the New Heaven and the New
Earth in righteousness and peace. The high places shall shout for joy
and leap with gladness; the low places shall be filled with blessing,
honor and glory unto the Lord. And like a mighty river the Word of the
Lord shall go forth, baptizing all things in the light and life of the
Son of God. All creation shall gather before the Father to proclaim His
power and might. Everything that has breath shall glorify the Lord.
Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that God’s Christ is
Lord and King over all…unto the eternal praise of the Father. Knowing
that such glory lies just ahead, should we not lose sight of all else?
Even now our inner son can ascend to the place of his former birth and
eat of the feast that has been prepared. Even now we can walk at the
Father’s side amid the Paradise of our former dwelling.
“Though all the powers of the world and of
religion oppose the hand of the Lord, He shall, through the sons of His
Christ, bring forth His good pleasure. Not one portion of His plan will
be altered, not one among His creation will be able to resist His
authority. Among the lightening and the thundering of the Father’s
infinite glory, the sons shall send forth the proclamation of freedom,
to establish the justice and goodness of the Lord. Life, and love, and
grace, shall burn as a purifying flame throughout all creation, until
God is all and in all. The New Age dawns before us; bask freely in the
rays of this earthly morning. Let thy spirit soar upon the wings of the
Spirit to the place known only to the sons of God. Enter into the peace
and stillness of the age; enter into the rest of the Greater Sabbath.
Where we are, there is light; for He who is our light hath enlightened
us with Himself. He is the True Light, born from the Divine Energy of
the Supreme Being. He is the Light that conquers all darkness; the Light
that shall lead all creation into the City of Life. He is the Eternal
Light that rises as the Morning Star within our hearts.”
“For He is our peace, who hath made both
one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; for
to make in Himself of twain ONE NEW MAN” (Eph. 2:14-15). “Till we all
come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God,
unto a PERFECT MAN, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of
Christ” (Eph. 4:13). God is making a new man, a perfect man. There is
going to be a new man after a new order. This new man is a new creation
in the Christ. That is God’s purpose for calling us, for birthing us,
for filling us with His Spirit, for dealing and changing and
transforming us from glory to glory into His own image and likeness. And
here is what this new many-membered man is for: A NEW MAN FOR A NEW
AGE. For two thousand years God has been fashioning and forming this new
man in Christ. This new man is the new Adam, the second man, the head
and authority and ruler over God’s vast creation.
Through our many years in the pews of
Babylon all we ever heard was “the end of the world, the end of the
world, the end of the world is coming!” So we grew up looking for the
end of the world. All the preachers ever thought about, it seems, was
the “end of the world.” Now I am going to tell you something
folks — there isn’t going to be any end of the world! Someone, to make
it spiritual, says, “Well, my world has ended!” That may well be,
but the truth is the Bible does not speak of the end of the world. If
you will look up all those scriptures in the King James Bible where
Jesus spoke of “the end of the world,” you will discover that in the
original Jesus never said “the end of the world” at all; He just said
“the end of the age.” The Greek word is AION, meaning an eon or an age.
Ages end, but the world does not end. Jesus Christ is THE SAVIOUR OF THE
WORLD! Look up the times where Jesus spoke of “those who would be
accounted worthy to attain the next world,” etc. Check it, and you will
find that in the Greek text Jesus didn’t say anything about a world to
come, but He said, “those that are accounted worthy to attain THAT AGE.”
And THAT AGE is going to be right here, beloved!
There isn’t going to be an end of the world.
You might as well stop packing your suitcase and testing your wings and
praying God to kill you and take you to heaven. We have far too many
Christians in the world today with dying faith, but they don’t have any living faith.
They’re always wanting to die and go off to heaven to be with the Lord.
That is, until they get a dizzy spell or chest pains, then they rush
down to the hospital and spend their very last dime to keep from flying
away out there to be with the Lord! It gets rather ridiculous. They talk
about going away to heaven to be with the Lord, they sing about going
to heaven, they preach about going to heaven, they shout about going to
heaven, they clap about going to heaven, then do positively everything
they can to KEEP FROM GOING TO HEAVEN! They go to every doctor, enter
every hospital, swallow every pill, pass through every healing line, and
call the saints far and near to fast and pray — so they won’t have to
go off to be with the Lord! Ah, something is wrong, very wrong,
somewhere!
Should I die, certainly my desire is to be
with the Lord. But I am with the Lord even now! My vision is not to die
in order to go and be with the Lord, but to live and reveal the life and
the power of God here upon this earth. God is raising up a people in
this hour with a vision for LIVING, not so they can stick around to see
their great-grandchildren, or go on another cruise, or raise another
garden — but because of an inner consciousness of the mind of Christ
that the Spirit of God doesn’t want us out there, He wants us right here
bringing in this NEW AGE! There will be no end of this world, only the
end of an age. The end of an age bespeaks of change, transition,
progress, furtherance, upward movement, breakthrough, growth,
advancement, enlargement, increase, new order. When God’s new man has
come to perfection, to the full measure of the stature of Christ, then
the age in which the carnal mind and wicked heart of man has ruled over
the world will end, and the new age will be brought in, in which God’s
many-membered man will be ruler over all this world that God has created
for the sons of God right here. Hallelu-yah!
God is making a covenant in this Day with
His chosen elect, a covenant of miracles, a covenant of power, a
covenant of glory, a covenant of life. He is going to keep His word and
we will see miracles, signs, and wonders on a higher plane and of a
higher caliber than we have ever seen before. It won’t elevate men in
the flesh, making one man a superstar, another man “God’s man of faith
and power for the hour,” or “God’s handmaid for the age.” It will bring
the sons of God into the ministry that will exalt Jesus Christ and bring
His kingship and dominion into the earth in mighty power and glory.
This sonship ministry will begin in the Spirit and it will end in the
Spirit. It will not parade across a stage with theatrics and
showmanship. Flesh can have no part in this Day!
The manifestation of the sons of God will
break suddenly and rapidly upon the scene. It will begin to happen
everywhere at the same time, spontaneously and supernaturally. The glory
of God will arise upon a people, an unknown people, an unheralded
people, prepared in the isolation of solitude of the wilderness
experience and in the crucible of the furnace of affliction. There won’t
be time for anybody to come along and educate people or explain what
has happened, how it is happening, that this is a move of God that is
originating with this one or that one, with this movement or that
movement, or who is in charge. The spontaneity and power of it will blow
our minds away and defy everything we have ever learned or known about
evangelism or ministry of any kind.
The Lord will suddenly cause the paralytics
and quadriplegics to walk and leap as an hart, the tongue of the dumb
will sing for joy, the blind will see out of darkness, the deaf will
hear the words of the Lord, the embalmed dead will be raised out of
their coffins at the mortuaries, the secrets of men’s hearts will be
revealed and men will fall on their faces and admit of a truth that God
is in us. The wisdom of God will pour forth like mighty Niagaras of
living water, the righteous will have divine information from God, the
omniscience and omnipotence of God will be revealed through His people,
revelation knowledge will abound in the lives of the elect, and this
Word will be spoken to all men great and small, without respect of
persons, from the beggar on the street to kings, presidents, prime
ministers, tycoons, and men in all positions of authority will recognize
that there is a God in heaven and that the sons of God have arisen in
the earth!
The One who shall be glorified in this Day
is the Lord Jesus Christ. God is preparing a company of sons who will
walk with God in the moccasin print of their leader. The Native
Americans were tremendous strategists. Those were intelligent people,
and we could use them in our intelligence apparatus today. The leader
would walk along and all of those who followed would walk in the
leader’s moccasin print. They did this to confuse the enemy. The enemy
would come along and see only one set of moccasin prints, and the enemy
would say, “Well, an Indian passed this way today” — one Indian. But the
truth of the matter is that perhaps 120 Indians passed that way, armed
with bows and arrows, but they didn’t know it.
That’s what our great Captain has in mind
when He says in Luke 9:23, “If any man will come after me, let him deny
himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.” He is saying,
“Whoever will be my successor, or participate in this sonship ministry,
let him deny his own identity and presence in this world and follow in my footprints.”
We’re going to see it happen on this wise. The devil and the wise men
of the world will come along and say, “Well, look at this — what’s going
on here?” because hospitals will be emptied, dens of iniquity will be
cleaned out, great men and rulers will be astounded, all the people will
be saved, healed, delivered, filled with the Spirit, and transformed in
spirit, soul, and body.
You see, it’s not enough to say that
thousands of people made a decision for Christ or were healed. So what?
That’s not what the manifestation of the sons of God is about! Creation is not groaning for more Christians, Church
members, or people who have been blessed or received a miracle.
Creation is groaning for the manifestation of the sons of God because
creation is to be DELIVERED FROM THE BONDAGE OF CORRUPTION. That is
deliverance from all sin, limitation, and death in spirit, soul, and
body. It means total transformation. It bespeaks of a complete metamorphosis.
If thousands of people in any town or city are raised up out of
hospitals, mortuaries, slum, dens of iniquity, and are healed,
delivered, regenerated, changed, and transformed by the resurrection
power of Jesus Christ, I want you to know that the houses of
prostitution will be affected, the pornography shops will be affected,
the crack houses will be affected, the medical industry will be
affected, the funeral business will be affected, the work places will be
affected, the homes will be affected, the schools will be affected, the
lawyers will be affected, the judicial system will be affected, the
city government will be affected, everything and everyone will be
impacted by the Kingdom of God. God will move in such incredible and
unprecedented power that the multitudes of men and women and entire
nations will be swept into the Kingdom of God as it were in a Day!
It will not be said, “Billy Graham had a
crusade here today,” or “Benny Hinn had a great meeting and hundreds of
people were healed,” or “Pat Robertson shook this place with a word of
knowledge,” or “Preston Eby passed this way today and gave a great
teaching.” Oh, no! The people will declare, “It was Christ the Lord who
did this — the Lord of glory passed this way and He has set us free!”
Only one set of footprints, but 144,000 sons of God in the fullness of
God’s Christ! That’s what the Lord has waited on all this time as He has
prepared His sons in secret, He has had long patience for the precious
fruit of the earth, until they receive the former and the latter rain,
bringing forth a people conformed into the exact image of Jesus Christ,
the Son of the living God. These sons will give all the glory to Jesus
just as Jesus gave all the glory to the Father.
A brother has said that the three things which most easily destroy the ministry of preachers are the gold, the girls, and the glory.
The final test is the hardest. It is because we covet the glory that
there is so much petty jealousy and strife among brethren. We are so
concerned that our church, our talent, our opinion, our counsel, our position, our gift orour ministry gets the recognition, the praise, and the glory. We want to get the credit. And the credit IS the glory!
Many religious people cannot receive the things I now say, but, because
it is the truth it will strike a chord within the hearts of all of
God’s elect. To pray, “Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the
glory,” demands full humility, brokenness and obedience. And right here
is where the Kingdom laws come into operation. When we abdicate the
throne of our own lives, our own strength, our own ambitions, plans and
ways, the Lord makes us kings and priests unto God. When we confess that
all the power is His, He makes us strong in the Lord and in the power
of His might. When we refuse to touch the glory, He glorifies us with
the glory He had with the Father before the world was. And this is an
unfolding glory, an ever-intensifying glory that shall shine as the
stars and the brightness of the firmament forever.
We are commissioned to preach the Kingdom,
and commanded to do the works of the Kingdom; but we must always be
careful to understand and acknowledge that the Kingdom is His, the power
is His, and the glory is His. If we get a touch of the Kingdom in
revelation, in preaching it, or in demonstrating its power, and use that
to elevate ourselves, to gather men to us, to manipulate and control
people, to build a little kingdom around our talent and ministry, or to
fleece God’s people of their money for our self-aggrandizement, then
that is all there is. Such can never be kings and priests that reign
over the earth. Such are not sonship material. Those ministries will
hang their heads in shame and slither away into the woodwork in the day
when the sons of God arise in the earth.
Those who splash their pictures over every
page of their magazines, know nothing of what it means to walk in Jesus’
footprints. They will not be a part of the sonship ministry. God has
used great men, He has used superstars as they have been known, God has
used men with great religious pedigrees, with magnetic personalities,
charisma oozing from their pores, promotional abilities, talent and
soulical powers, but the time has come when God looks back on the
foolishness of these lesser orders, which have been blessed by His mercy
and grace, and no longer winks at it. He says, “Now the real thing is
coming, I’m going to stand my sons up in the earth, I will pour
out, not ‘of’ my Spirit, but I will pour out all the plenitude, all the
fullness, all the majesty, and all the glory of the seven spirits of God upon
all flesh, I will show the world my ways, my acts and my life, and the
scripture will be fulfilled, ‘All the ends of the world shall remember
and turn unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall
worship before Thee’ (Ps. 22:27).”
If what we have had up to this time is all
there is in God, then the devil has already outsmarted God and won the
day. But there is a ministry coming, even now it dawns upon the horizon,
the heart of God is being fashioned in a whole army of people who are
after His own heart. To these He is revealing the fullness of His power
and His greatness and His total majesty and they are going to turn the
world right side up, never to sink again into the abyss of selfhood, sin
and death.
God has called us to have a role in
establishing this new order of the Kingdom of God. God is offering to
His elect in this hour something He has never offered any generation
before. He is calling us to participate in the activity that will lead
to the prize of all the ages. It is greater than anything He has done
from the time of Adam to the present; it will never be done again! It
has never been done before, because it is God’s new thing. He is calling
a people to obey Him, to follow on to know Him, to be His sons and
daughters indeed for the deliverance of all creation. Be aware lest
old-order brethren rob you by stealing this hope from you. It is very
important that we not let anyone rob us of this treasure! It’s our
inheritance. The inheritance is the absolute fullness of God to deliver
creation.
God is preparing a people He will put His
stamp of approval on and endorse with all His wisdom, power and majesty.
The voice will come from heaven and say, “These are my beloved sons in
whom I am well pleased — hear ye them!” You who have been thoroughly
processed by the Father have His image, you bear His likeness, and He
will put His full endorsement upon you to represent His Kingdom purposes
in the earth. We are called to live such a life and walk in such a
dimension of the righteousness, peace, joy and power of the Kingdom of
Heaven that we can testify, “If you have seen me, you have seen the
Father.” It will take a life of total abandonment to walk with God as
sons, expressing His nature before all men and nations. It has been said
that we beheld the Saviour and became the saved, we beheld the Redeemer
and became the redeemed, we beheld the Healer and became the healed, we
beheld the Baptizer and became the baptized. But now it is time to
behold the SON OF GOD and become the sons of God in the earth. We must
not bear a message about the Father, we must be the message.
Men and women are reading these lines at
this very moment of whom the world is not worthy. They are part of a
company under the dealings of God’s great hand and the world has no clue
of their true stature and destiny. The day is wonderfully nigh at hand
when these shall arise in such power and glory that all nations will
come up the mountain of the Lord’s house to learn the Lord’s ways. All
nations will come and sit at the feet of the sons of God to learn the
wisdom and knowledge of God. Upon these sons shall rest the spirit of
Yahwey — the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel
and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. The
world will sit at your feet because you have sat at the feet of Jesus.
This people is partaking of the mind of Christ, the heavenly calling,
and these are the ones who receive sonship authority and have influence
over nations to rule them with a rod of iron — the irresistible power
and all-consuming passion of the love of God. My greatest hope is to
live to walk into this Day as it dawns brighter and brighter upon the
world. And if not, I will be back in the power of His resurrection!
The nations don’t yet know that a kingdom of priests is being prepared
for the great transition of the ages. These are now being abased under
the mighty hand of God in order that they might be exalted in due time.
In this new age of the Kingdom there will be no more superstars for
God is raising up an obscure, motley crew in this Day to manifest
sonship authority that will scare the devil out of the devil, raise the
dead, release the prisoners, and do mighty signs and wonders that will
stop every mouth and testify of the Father to all men. The sons of God
will not minister out of talent, natural ability, personality, charisma,
nor out of theological training or organizational skills, but in power
and demonstration of the Holy Ghost. I say to you by the word of the
Lord — it’s coming, and it is going to be powerful! There
shall be a glorious showdown, this sonship ministry will show forth the
glory of the living, exalted Christ in the face of every power on earth.
The sons of God will actually accomplish more for the Kingdom of God in
one year than the church systems have been able to do in all these
hundreds of years of history. Hallelu-yah!
The religious crowd will never bring in the
Kingdom of God with power. Look at Jesus’ followers when He walked the
pathways of earth. Thousands thronged about Him to see the miracles and
eat of the loaves and the fishes. His followers were at one time five
thousand, then later five hundred, there was the seventy, and then
twelve, and finally we find Him with just three — Peter, James and
John — the innermost circle. Is that not how it was with David’s army?
There were 800,000 men that drew the sword, but only thirty mighty men (II
Sam. 23-24). One out of every 26,666 was a mighty man of valor. Think
about it! There was a small inner circle that was distinguished among
them all. Gideon’s army at the beginning was 32,000, then it was
decreased to 10,000, and in the end there were only 300. Out of all the
ministry there is in the body of Christ today the hand of God is upon a
small remnant that is aiming for excellence. So whatever
spiritual level you fit in you can just stay there, but if you have
heard the trumpet, if you have received the call, if the urgency of the
Spirit has been birthed within you then set your face as a flint, turn
neither to the left nor to the right, and go for the one-hundred percent
— THE HIGH CALLING OF GOD IN CHRIST JESUS.
The best is yet to come! We haven’t seen
anything yet! The glory of Christ is about to appear, the banner will
wave, and the whole world will say, “This is our God; we have waited for
Him, and He will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for Him, we
will be glad and rejoice in His salvation” (Isa. 25:9). The ears of the
people of all nations will tingle, it will be glorious for multitudes,
and frightening for others, but there is coming a shaking, there is
coming a quaking, as all creation comes face to face with God. There is a
people unknown by the church and unheralded by the world, who in the
secret place of the Most High has discovered the rarest extract of God,
these have drawn so close to the Father that they have sucked the very
breath out of the mouth of God and live by every word that proceeds out
of His mouth. To these the true and un-cut word of the Lord is revealed,
the incorruptible word of God is being inworked, and by the
metamorphosis from corruptible to incorruptible a new ministry will shed
forth in these significant days.
In the time of glory that lies before us the
earth shall reel to and fro like a drunk man under the impact of the
power of God in His sons. The thing God will do will get the attention
of whole cities, of whole states, of whole nations, and finally the
entire world will see that God is in this people that has the ensign,
that has the seal, that bears the banner of the presence, nature and
power of the Lord of glory. The Day is upon us. The season of
preparation is now drawing to a close, for soon we will speak and the
lame will leap as the hart, little paralyzed children in children’s
hospitals will be overwhelmed by the power of the Kingdom, their little
bodies will be made straight, whole wards of precious little ones will
leap and dance under the supernatural power of God, the dumb will sing
for joy, blind eyes will open, deaf ears will unstop, drug addicts will
cast their needles and paraphernalia from them, men of pomp and power
will be broken and melted in the presence of the Lord, worshippers of
false religions will be quickened to the living reality of Jesus Christ
the Saviour, wicked men shall be cleansed and transformed by the
consuming fire of God and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and
all flesh shall see it together!
There is a sound in the heavens and there is
a rustle in the mulberry trees. This is the New Order! This is the New
Day! I have lived my whole life for this Day. Thank God, we have not
wasted our inheritance; thank God we have not squandered the substance
of our Father in riotous living with the wanton harlots of Mystery
Babylon. Thank God we are just now ready to cross over the threshold to
see the glory of the Kingdom of God reserved for this Day. The spirit of
wisdom and power in God’s sons will bring a fatal blow against humanism
and against religious, scientific, educational, medical and political
professionalism. It will be marvelous beyond description! We will be
able to accomplish more in a day than we have been able to do in a
lifetime of preaching the gospel. The power of God will reach from one
end of the earth to the other, from pole to pole, and from sea to sea.
The glory of God will reach every cavern, every foxhole, every hidden
valley, every isolated hamlet, every remote jungle, every mountain
height, every tribe, every tongue, every people and every nation. God
will reach them in spite of the vast populations and expanses of earth,
despotic rulers, blinding religions, entrenched customs, and godless
cultures. THERE SHALL BE A MIGHTY AND UNIVERSAL INCREASE OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD!
