OUR MOST CRITICAL NEED

"The Glory of the Latter House shall be greater than the Former!" (Hag. 2:9)

The hour we live in without equivocation is the most spiritually profound of all of history, and certainly of all “His-story.” Indeed, it can be no less when we are told that all of the historical Biblical events comprising His-story—i.e., the history of Israel—“happened to the them as an example (illustration) and they were written for OUR instruction upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Cor. 10:11; cf., Rom. 15:4). God is therein declaring that the entire content of the Old Testament—the events it chronicles and the wisdom and instruction those events illustrate—are and always were intended for the true end-time believers comprising the end-times Church that Jesus is building!

Moreover, our spiritual assimilation of the morals illustrated and reflected in those Old Testament events and examples coupled with those given us in the New Testament will play a major role in producing the outcome that the Glory (tangible manifested presence of God) that abides upon those comprising the “Latter House”—the house of the faithful High Priest, who was faithful over His house as a SON (Heb. 3:1-6), that is, the Church Jesus is building—will far exceed any Glory that was ever upon the Former House—the house of Moses, who was faithful over his house as a SERVANT.

While the faithfulness of God’s SERVANT Moses produced per the Law of Reproduction a succession, intermittent as it was, of SERVANTS, the faithfulness of the SON over His House produces the surpassing results of “bringing many SONS unto Glory” (Heb. 2:10). By virtue of the fact that the House Jesus is building is a House of SONS, versus SERVANTS, the Glory of the Latter House MUST indeed be GREATER than the Former, for the Glory of SONS of God versus SERVANTS of God is like unto the glory of the sun compared to the glory of the moon (a non-illuminary planet).

God’s ultimate intent in the Creation of the Cosmos has always been to produce a burgeoning House or Family of SONS—SONS OF GOD! The choice and perfect Seed He sowed—His ONLY BEGOTTEN SON (itself one of the inscrutable mysteries of God, in that He was “begotten” and not “made”)—spiritually germinated and ever since has been producing like unto its Kind, that is, SONS! Abraham and his lineage, the Patriarchs, were SERVANTS. Moses was a SERVANT. David was a SERVANT. Though the magnitude of their servitude and faithfulness was incomparable, their highest expectation could only ever be to produce a legacy of SERVANTS, reflecting the Glory of SERVITUDE.

But, the SON, His legacy shall be an innumerable company of SONS, who “shall be like Him,” reflecting His Image—the Glory of SONSHIP! And, now, in these days, more than ever before in the history of the Creation, the Creation groans and writhes in the excruciating pangs of childbirth as it with rapt expectation awaits the revelation of the SONS of God.

Reader, I implore you to keep listening to this word. Stay attuned to the Spirit to hear this! Your life and the life of those you love depends on it!

Absolutely every segment and aspect of the foundations of all the systems of this world are unraveling and disassembling as God’s Spirit is shaking every thing that can be shaken to orchestrate a massive removal of all those things that can be shaken (earthly, humanly-made things) in order that only those things that cannot be shaken (Kingdom things, things of God) shall remain. So corrupted have the very foundations, fabric, and functions of the world’s systems become as the consequence of the utter corruption of its delegated stewards, the “sons of men” (Ps. 115:16), that the unseen elements that have been providing it stability, order, and cohesion, are being systematically removed at breakneck speed. While people go obliviously about the business of their self-consumed lives, the world we live in—that is, the systems that comprise human existence—has deorbited and is hurtling downward in its final spirals unto utter perdition. Do not be deluded, Church: nothing can or will stop its rapid descent! The world is on a collision course with Hell!

The end-times Church, the True Church, the Church Jesus is building, is not OF the world, but it is IN the world, for now. So, in this hour when the world is spiraling out of control in this final irreversible, precipitous decline, what is God’s message to the True Church? His message is the same as it has always been:

2 Corinthians 6:17,18
“Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate,” says the Lord. “And do not touch what is unclean; And I will welcome you. And I will be a father to you, And you shall be sons and daughters to Me,” Says the Lord Almighty.

2 Corinthians 6:14,16
Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, “I will dwell in them and walk among them; And I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

1 John 2:15-17
Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.

These are God’s words of advice to His children in these last days. The world is indeed in the process of passing away, along with all its self-indulging and self-consuming lusts, including the most damning lust of all—greed, or covetousness, or the love of money—which is the root of all the evil that pervades this dark and deceitful world. God’s people must be delivered out from under the strong delusion of the world and the spell of its lusts. But, seldom in the annals of history have the captives been liberated through self-deliverance. Jesus said the Spirit of the Lord was upon Him to set the captives free. Captives rarely gain freedom through their own efforts. God always sends a DELIVERER! A Deliverer like Moses unto the Israelites and Jesus unto ALL HUMANITY!

Our “most critical need” in this hour, as A.W. Tozer wrote more than four decades ago in the following article, is "men—the right kind of men, bold men." Bold men who will come marching out of the desert, like John The Baptist, to a different drumbeat, confronting the systems of this world and the religious orders that are keeping the people of God bound in invisible chains of deception and delusion, whose pied-pipers continue to fiddle while the ship is sinking and Rome burns down all around them! We need MEN OF GOD who will rise up as DELIVERERS to set the captives free! GOD, SEND THE DELIVERERS, who will speak the truth in love to your people and thereby snatch some out of the fire!
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"OUR MOST CRITICAL NEED"- by A.W. Tozer*

THE MOST CRITICAL NEED of the Church at this moment is men—the right kind of men, bold men. The talk is that we need revival, that we need a new baptism of the Holy Spirit—and God knows we must have both—but God will not revive mice. He will not fill rabbits with the Holy Spirit.

We languish for men who feel themselves expendable in the warfare of the soul because they have already died to the allurements of this world. Such men will be free from the compulsions that control weaker men. They will not be forced to do things by the squeeze of circumstances. Their only compulsion will come from within—or from above.

This kind of freedom is necessary if we are to have prophets in our pulpits again instead of mascots. These free men will serve God and mankind from motives too high to be understood by the rank and file of religious retainers who today shuttle in and out of the sanctuary. They will make no decisions out of fear, take no course out of a desire to please, accept no service for financial considerations, perform no religious acts out of mere custom, nor allow themselves to be influenced by the love of publicity or the desire for reputation.

Much that the church—even the evangelical church—is doing today, it is doing because it is afraid not to do it. Ministerial associations take up projects for no higher reasons than that they are scared into it. Whatever their ear-to-the-ground, fear-inspired reconnoitering leads them to believe—or fear—the world expects them to do, they will be doing come next Monday morning with all kinds of trumped-up zeal and show of godliness. The pressure of public opinion calls these prophets, not the voice of Jehovah.

The true church has never sounded out public expectations before launching its crusades. Its leaders heard from God and went ahead wholly independent of popular support or the lack of it. They knew their Lord's will and did it, and their people followed them—sometimes to triumph, but more often to insults and public persecution—and their sufficient reward was the satisfaction of being right in a wrong world.

Another characteristic of the true prophet has been love. The free man who has learned to hear God's voice and dared to obey it has felt the moral burden that broke the hearts of the Old Testament prophets, crushed the soul of our Lord Jesus Christ, and wrung streams of tears from the eyes of the apostles.

The free man has never been a religious tyrant, nor has he sought to lord it over God's heritage. It is fear and lack of self-assurance that has led men to try to bring others under their feet. They have had some interest to protect, some position to secure, so they have demanded subjection from their followers as a guarantee of their own safety. But the free man—never. He has nothing to protect, no ambition to pursue and no enemy to fear. For that reason he is completely careless of his standing among men. If they follow him—well and good. If not, he loses nothing that he holds dear. But whether he is accepted or rejected, he will go on loving his people with sincere devotion, and only death can silence his tender intercession for them.

Yes, if evangelical Christianity is to stay alive, it must have men again—the right kind of men. It must repudiate the weaklings who dare not speak out, and it must seek in prayer and much humility the coming again of men of the stuff of which prophets and martyrs are made. God will hear the cries of His people as He heard the cries of Israel in Egypt, and He will send deliverance by sending deliverers. It is His way.

And when the deliverers come—reformers, revivalists, prophets—they will be men of God and men of courage. They will have God on their side because they are careful to stay on God's side. They will be co-workers with Christ and instruments in the hands of the Holy Spirit. Such men will be baptized with the Spirit indeed and through their labors He will baptize others and send the long-delayed revival.###

SOURCE: This World: Playground or Battleground?, [Chapter 7]

* NOTE: A.W. Tozier (1897-1963) for many years was the pastor of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church in Toronto and Chicago, the editor-in-chief of the Christian and Missionary Alliance's official organ, Alliance Weekly, as well as a prolific author. Many revered him as a twentieth century prophet. Of his many books, The Knowledge of the Holy (Harper & Row), was perhaps the one for which he was best known.

A Desperate Cry For Revival In Charismatic Camelot

Publishers Note: Charisma Magazine, founded by Stephen Strang, was originally an organ of my home church, Calvary Assembly of Winter Park, Florida. Roy Harthern, Benny Hinn's father-in-law, was the influential senior leader of the church at the time. Harthern convinced the church financial board that Calvary should commit quite a large sum of money to the upstart of this new magazine which would essentially be the church's PR organ. The year it was launched Calvary also helped to underwrite the launching of another upstart ministry I had a part in founding and developing, Festival of Praise, under the leadership of music extraordinaire, Thurlow Spurr. Because of my involvement in FOP and other areas of ministry, I had firsthand personal knowledge of Charisma's birthing.

What began as a small non-commercial magazine intended to be the in-house print organ of one of the fastest growing churches in America, soon grew into a relatively expansive and profitable publishing corporation with multiple divisions, Strang Communications. From its genesis, Charisma has been a primary source of print public relations and marketing exposure to the Charismatic/Neo-Pentecostal ministerial universe. To say it was a primary source, is putting it politely. The fact is, for more than a decade, it was just about the only game in town for reaching the Charismatic realm. That the publishing house realized their dominance of this niche market early-on was reflected in the exorbitant advertising rates, which were comparable to premier secular magazines, it soon commanded. The perhaps unintended result was that the mega-ministries who had the resources to purchase the broad exposure Charisma proferred became the hand that fed the multi-million dollar enterprise Strang Communications became.

In addition to that, over the years, personal relationships were forged between the publisher and the prominent ministers whose ministries were a source of hundreds of millions in advertising revenue. Add to all that personality traits and personal proclivities along with impure ambitions and the result is a rue rendering objectivity regarding these ministers and their mega-ministries a virtual impossibility.

Over its history Charisma as well as the other divisions and mediums of Strang Communications have reflected that reticence or resistance to be critical of the mega-ministries with whom it has been so cozy for so long. Historically, Charisma seemed to be locked into a look-the-other-way philosophy when it came to integrity issues regarding prominent ministers ministries. Only when scandal in Charismatic-dom broke in the secular media and therefore could not be ignored did Charisma cover the story. Intermittently, some breakaways from the organization's fundamental ostrich philosophy have occurred through the op-eds of Charisma editor, J. Lee Grady. The above article by Grady totally surprised me with its frankness and forthrightness, and, in my view, is a testament to just how bad things have become in our beloved Charismatic Camelot.

A DESPERATE CRY for REVIVAL in 2008
By J. Lee Grady

...Never in my 15 years at Charisma have I known a time of such intense spiritual turbulence. God is shaking everything that can be shaken, including our Christian colleges, our megachurches and our most prominent ministries.

At a time when a U.S. senator is investigating the financial practices of six well-known preachers, I sense that God has taken out His holy plumb line to conduct His own detailed inspection of every church and ministry in this country. He wants to unleash a nationwide revival, but He must bring His correction first.

These are desperate times that require desperate measures. That is why I have joined with the Awakening America Alliance to call for a solemn 21-day fast that runs from January 1-21. Here’s a list of the things I’m praying for during the next three weeks:

1. The fear of God. Holiness was so tangible among early Christians that false prophets were blinded and greedy liars fell over dead. As a result of God’s judgment on Ananias and Sapphira, “great fear came over the whole church” (Acts 5:11, NASB).

Where is this sense of “shock and awe” today? How can Christians be so cavalier about divorce or so flippant about adultery? How can television preachers sleep at night after robbing God’s people with manipulative fundraising appeals?

We celebrate His mercy but ignore His severity. We need a thunderclap from heaven and a display of Elijah’s fire to remind a wayward church that God will not be mocked.

2. Integrity and purity in the church. Our movement hit rock-bottom in October when charismatic pastor Donnie Earl Paulk of Atlanta announced to his stunned congregation that a DNA test had proved he is not the nephew of Bishop Earl Paulk but is in fact his son.That such unspeakable depravity was permitted to thrive for decades at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit is an indictment against the elder Paulk and all leaders who refused to challenge his behavior when they first learned about it years ago.

This and other recent religious scandals have so tarnished our credibility that we have become a curious freak show. Many unbelievers now associate ministers with wife-swapping, wife-beating, no-fault divorce, gay affairs and $10,000-a-night hotel rooms. We need a Holy Ghost housecleaning.

3. A return to evangelism. In the 1970s we were less sophisticated but so much more zealous for Jesus. We handed out tracts and witnessed to everyone. Sharing our faith was the priority. Yet most people in churches today have never led anyone to Christ.

We are no longer contagious. Spirit-filled believers spend more time chasing “financial breakthroughs” than lost souls. We have rejected sacrifice and compassion and embraced a counterfeit gospel that produces bored, selfish spectators.

4. Godly leadership. As we head into an election season it’s obvious that our nation is facing a leadership crisis. But this leadership vacuum is not just in the political arena. Many of our spiritual fathers have disappointed us, either by their own moral failures or by their refusal to confront sin.

I pray that God does not give us the president we deserve in 2008. If we cry out for mercy, perhaps He will upset the current slate of candidates and put someone in the White House who can model Christian integrity. May He also give us spiritual shepherds who care more for the flock than for the crowd’s applause.

5. A national spiritual awakening. There were seasons in America’s past when sinners became so convicted of their sins that they collapsed under the weight of their guilt. During the days of revivalists George Whitefield and Charles Finney, huge waves of conversions led to a widespread transformation of society. Drunks became sober, prison inmates sang hymns, stingy business owners stopped oppressing their workers, atheists surrendered their unbelief, and rebellious children returned to faith.

Can such a movement happen again? It must or our country will descend into its darkest hour. I urge you to join me in this solemn fast. Pray with desperation for the five topics outlined here. We can’t settle for anything less than a heavenly visitation.

J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma
SOURCE: http://www.charismanews.com/

A Vision: Recent Florida Fires and US Drought

In 2004, as I was traveling down I-95 and praying, I began experiencing an open vision in which I saw large plumes of fire suddenly erupt, here and there, along the east coast of the state of Florida. Then, I seemed to be taken above the state and was seeing it from an aerial view. Soon, it seemed like large sections of the state along the east coast were on fire, from Jacksonville to Miami.

Then, as I passed through several main junctures along I-95, I saw the state of Florida as if from tens of thousands of feet up and was looking down on the entire state, and I saw seven "hot spots" where the Spirit had ignited "fires of revival" at different times in different regions of Florida during past eras ranging from the 1950s to the 1990s. In each of those regions where revival fires had broken out sometime in the past that He showed me, the face of a man would rise up out of the fire in a particular region whom God had sent to those regions and used either to spark a fire or to decree things that would come to pass at an appointed, future time. Some I knew, some I did not.

In each case the move that these men were used by God to initiate was prematurely foiled and spoiled. He showed me a very stark overview of the scheme the enemy used to bring cessation of the work God had started through those men. Each of them met with supernatural adversity and affliction, suffering tragic events and circumstances, and experiencing severe brokenness and brokenheartedness that waylayed their attempts to complete the calling. In each case, "a great price" (I heard in the Spirit) was paid as a result of merely obeying God's calling. Some had actually experienced spiritual and emotional breakdowns rising out of the frustrations and opposition they experienced, mostly from a resistant Church.

Each had been given a prophetic vision and mission, what was really a "mission impossible" in that each had been speaking of things and calling for changes that were "far ahead of their time," relative to the spiritual status quo and understanding of their peers while they were here laboring. In each case, it was the "spiritual separation" of these people from the rest of the Body of Christ, "because of the surpassing greatness of the revelation," that these men suffered what they did. Because the Body did not understand them or their message, the Body failed to surround and support them in the Spirit. They were spiritual "amputees" that the Body rejected, saying, "I have no need of thee."

Then, the Spirit comforted me in the sorrow and sadness I was feeling in my Spirit for these men telling me that they all now have received healing of their brokenness and brokenheartedness, and entered into the joys and rewards stored up for them, for God is faithful and will never forget the labor we have labored on His behalf, and though they suffered much, not one was lost. This too made me weep, but also exalt God with great exultation at the same time.

Then, as I traveled farther southward, and reached certain of those junctures, the Spirit would move upon me to lower the window and begin to shout out into the air prophetic decrees that those revival fires be rekindled in those places where the Spirit had started "a good work," declaring that God would yet finish what He had started, and what had been temporarily "lost" or foiled due to the schemes, plots, and plans of the enemy, would be restored and finished.

"Restore! Restore! Restore! FIRES OF THE SPIRIT that no one and no plan of the enemy can stop!" the Spirit shouted through me.

I then saw in the Spirit these fires begin to flare up even greater, and to move westward toward the middle of the state. Soon, it appeared that much of the state was being consumed by fire. And, from my aerial view in the Spirit, I saw the smoke of these fires rise high into the air and nearly cover the state, and strong wind currents then began to blow them toward the adjoining southern states of the US. As I watched this scene, I heard within, "The Glory of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the seas. The manifestation of God's Glory shall now be released through the church Jesus is building!" (Of course, the physical fires and smoke are not the Glory of the Lord, which is the tangible manifestation of the Spirit or Presence of God, but they symbolize it and its manifestation in the Spirit.)

I've never published what the Lord showed me that day. But I have been feeling the prompting of the Spirit to do so in the last few days. Though, I don't have much revelation as to why or why now, other than to say that I have been hearing within only a rather vague "bulleted version" of a word about the historic-proportioned drought that much of the southern US has been experiencing, and how that God will soon be calling upon some Elijah-type prophets to come forth out of their caves of secreting and obscurity, commanding, "Places!" like the director of play. Many of them, though they have pledged obedience to God, loathe the spotlight, like an owl loathes the daylight. Yet, God will use them and this multi-state drought to underwrite their credibility and underscore the credence of the restoration of the prophetic office today.

I don't profess to know all of what God said or is now saying. But I do know that something, something dramatic and demonstrative, is about to happen. It shall be of national and international proportion. The world shall be astounded, but unfortunately those among the churches shall be also. These droughts are not merely the result of global weather changes or phenomena. They are of Divine Design.

With great reservation due to how many will misconstrue these words, I am compelled by the Spirit to also say, God is about to use some prophets as He used Moses, granting them power even over the elements. God shall call forth Elijah- and Elisha-type prophets out of their hidden places where He has been keeping and protecting them for "such a time as this." They shall come forth like John The Baptist out of the wilderness, "in the spirit and power of Elijah" (Lk. 1:17), proclaiming prophetic words, preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and being used by God as vessels of His power "to make ready a people prepared for the Lord" (Ibid.). Many Moseses shall also be called forth out of their Midians to lay down their personal ambitions to deliver many who for many long years have been living under the oppressive captivity of the enemy.

And, yet another thing I hear in my spirit, though without liberty to expound upon it at this time, is that what shall soon manifest in this respect shall also have a significant and strategic part in a paradigmatic shift in the Body of Christ that shall position many to begin to experience in earnest the turning of wealth of the wicked, or the world, unto the righteous, the redeemed, that has been prophesied by so many for so long. God is about to suddenly and sovereignly shift us into a new, higher dimension in this regard, a dimension much more expansive and extensive than what most people are thinking at this time. God has a plan that is "exceedingly abundantly beyond all we can ask or think," and that plan shall indeed be according to the power that works within us, for it shall be supernatural and of the Spirit.

The fires shall increase and the drought shall continue in the natural realm in certain strategic places as a precursor and reflection of what God is doing and is about to do in the spiritual realm. Let us pray that God's purposes for the fires and related circumstances be fulfilled, and that the Body of Christ begins to get the revelation of its responsibility to cover His chosen vessels on the leading edge with strong intercession of the Spirit so that His plans and desires be no more waylayed or hindered. We must receive the revelation of the Spirit that God's anointed and appointed Davy Crocketts and Daniel Boones—the "free radicals" of the Spirit—who do not fit into the prototypical modern molds of spiritual leadership also require our spiritual and financial support in order to accomplish the missions to which they've been called on behalf of the entire Body. Relative to the rest, they may be "far out," but that grants no right to ignore and marginalize those individuals, nor their ministries. We must not be guilty of saying, "I have no need of thee!" We also must cease making "amputees" of those whom the Lord has Himself set in to the Body for spiritual government, construction, and advancement of His Body (1 Cor. 12:28; Eph. 2:20, 4:7-16).###

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