Purification is the byword of 2006! During 2006 God will begin to bring forth a new emphasis on purification of the Body of Christ, individually and corporately. And, purification entails deliverance.
2006 will mark the 100th Anniversary of the so-called Azusa Street Revival, and the Pentecostal Awakening that God brought forth at the turn of the 20th Century. The Winds of the Spirit blew repeatedly during that one-hundred-year period bringing forth the Pentecostal, Healing, Charismatic, Prophetic, and Apostolic Movements. But, what the Church has failed to recognize is that none of these refreshings, renewals, or revivals, whatever you want to call them, were an end in themselves, but rather just a part of the continuum of restoration God is bringing forth in the Church Jesus is building (Ac. 3:19-21).
Each of these emphases that transpired since 1906 were vital elements in the restoration that God has been taking the Lamb's Wife through in order to prepare her for the return of Christ to claim her as His Eternal Bride. The Pentecostal movement initiated a renewed awareness regarding the imperativeness of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. Yet, that Truth was and is not an end in itself, nor a panacea by any means. Rather it was one piece of the spiritual puzzle, so to speak.
The Pentecostal Movement spawned the Charismatic Movement, which brought a renewed emphasis and revelation concerning the Gifts of the Spirit, which inure from the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. But, the Gifts of the Spirit are likewise no end or cure-all in themselves.
Out of the Charismatic Movement came the Prophetic Movement of the 1980s, restoring the function of the prophet and bringing attention to the prophetic gifts whose preeminent role is to edify the Church and speak edification, exhortation, and comfort into believers' lives (1 Cor. 14:3,4). Yet, the raising up and establishing of prophets and prophetic gifts was not the ultimate purpose and goal of the Prophetic Movement.
The company of prophets God raised up during the last two decades of the previous millennium disclose, declared, and decreed things in the Spirit required for the most recent movement, wherein the Apostolic Dimension is arising in the Spirit realm, to be birthed. The apostolic function has been reestablished in the Spirit realm, and a new Apostolic Ambience is gradually manifesting. But the pertinences of the apostolic emphasis likewise are neither an end in themselves or self-completing.
Rather, all these emphases, and the "special effects," so to speak, that have arisen from them, are vital elements of the Master Plan of purification of the Bride of Christ God has been effecting from before the foundations of the Earth. From the beginning of time God has been doing one thing overall -- preparing for Himself a people, redeemed humanity. From before the foundations of the Earth, the Christ was slain, in order to redeem and purify a people who were "qualified" by grace through faith to live in eternal communion or relationship with God.
Not all professing to be Christians will have a part in the final chapter of that Master Plan. There will be a separating -- the sheep from the goats, the wheat from the tares -- before Jesus returns to claim the Church He is building as His Eternal Bride. In the end, the Bride of Christ will be comprised of a remnant of individual believers. The Church Jesus claims as His Bride will be a remnant Church comprised of only on-third of all those claiming to be a Christian Church or group of churches. The Prophet Zechariah saw it in the Spirit:
"And it will come about in all the land," declares the Lord, "that two parts in it will be cut off and perish; and I will bring the third part through the fire, refine them as silver is refined, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon My Name, and I will answer them; I will say, 'They are My people,' and they will say, 'The Lord is my God.'"
Refining, purification is the essence of God's Master Plan of the Ages. God has been carrying on the process of purification of a people for 6,000 years since He breathed the Breath of Life into Adam. The Church that Jesus said He was building is the entity He shall return to claim as His Eternal Bride. It is not those who profess to be a part of that Church who actually are, but rather only those who bear the fruit of the Kingdom of God, and thus of whom God says, "They are My People -- the people whom God is preparing through purification for Himself.
A vital element in this purification God is bringing forth in 2006 is deliverance.
Until now, the relatively few churches and ministries who claim to recognize the validity of genuine deliverance ministry, wherein demons are actually cast out of people, relegate this absolutely vital aspect of the ongoing ministry of Jesus to a backroom down the hall next to the restrooms and broom closet, metaphorically (but sometimes, literally) speaking.
Even those acknowledging the occasional and (to them) aberrational need for deliverance of some poor soul -- usually the extreme cases -- keep it at arm's distance and as a hush-hush matter not to be discussed openly among the congregants, and regard those individuals who deal in this verboten activity of casting out demons as being somewhat "a bit off-center" and weird. This is how the vast majority of even Pentecostal and Neo-Pentecostal churches regard the matter of deliverance, despite the fact that casting out demons was the preeminent aspect of Jesus' fleshly ministry, the first thing He commissioned the Twelve Apostles of the Lamb to do when He first sent them forth, and it was the first priority of His five-faceted "Great Commission."
In 2006, God is bringing deliverance out of the back room and into the front room; out of the darkroom and into the Son-room; out of the bathrooms and into our living rooms; out of the broom closets into our prayer closets; out of the out-house and into His house and your house!
The next move (emphasis) of the Spirit in the Church Jesus is building, is an emphasis on deliverance -- casting out devils.
"To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven" (Ecc. 3:1). The season for purification of the Church has come. The time for wide scale deliverance of God's people, as an initial step in effecting that purification, has come. God's faithful servants who have, in the face of contempt, scorn, and derision, maintained their heart for deliverance and continued to diligently labor to set the captives free -- their TIME HAS COME!
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