Revelation 10:1-7
And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire: And he had in his hand a little book open: and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth, And cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth: and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices. And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.
And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer: But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets. KJV
Revelation 11:15-17
And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever. And the four and twenty elders, which sat before God on their seats, fell upon their faces, and worshipped God, Saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power, and hast reigned. KJV
Let all those that have been chosen to participate in the 7th Day unveiling of the Son of God in the earth be aware that we are now living in the time of trumpets! Throughout the history of mankind, God has visited His beloved creation with His Glory and Presence. Each holy visitation brought about sweeping changes in His relationship with His people. In the beginning, God would speak to individuals, bringing them instructions that would signal a great change in the earth and in heaven. Noah was told to build an Ark, Abraham was told to leave his home country and cross the river in order to enter into his inheritance, Jacob was visited in the night by an angel and had his name (nature) changed and many other individuals that received a visitation of change and order. Then, God began to deal with a nation of people, Israel, freeing them from the bondage of Egypt and bringing them into the wilderness, where God would deal with them for 40 years of wandering. During this time, Israel camped and marched according to their tribal designation. Seeing as to how there were upwards of 3 million people with Moses in the wilderness, the Lord instructed Israel to use trumpets to signal the entire camp what to do and when to do it. The trumpets brought order and instructions to the people and were used in a variety of blasts and types of trumpets to convey the message to the tribes. Without the trumpets, the people would truly be lost in chaos and confusion. Each tribe knew when to march forward from the camp site by hearing their designated blast. The people knew the difference between the trumpets during peace time and the trumpets used for the time of war. There was a distinction between the signals that gave clear instructions when to camp and when to break camp, when to be at rest and when to be alarmed. To be assured that the correct trumpet and the correct amount of blasts were sounded, only the priests were allowed to sound the trumpet. When the entire camp was called to the door of the tabernacle to receive instructions, a certain blast was given. At times, only the Princes of the tribes were summoned and the trumpets were used in a specific amount of blasts to distinguish that from the general gathering. All of the Israelites were instructed to know the different trumpets and blasts, so the camp could move as one, without confusion or disarray.
Today, we are in great need to be instructed to hear the trumpet of the Lord in our midst and what the trumpet is signaling us to do or not to do. Our problem today is not the lack of trumpets being sounded, our problem is to know the SOUND of the Trumpet of the Lord and to distinguish it from the noise of man’s trumpeting. Everyone today seems to be blowing their own horn, so to speak, without distinction or reason, filling the heavens with an uncertain sound that many are following after simply because they do not know the sound of the spirit. God’s people are in state of paralysis because we know what we are hearing from the prostituted ministries of the religious systems is not the pure sound of the Voice of the Lord. As a result, we have not been able to join with any of the maneuverings of the religious prophets and apostles. We may not know as of yet the sound of the Trumpet of God, but we know enough of God’s spirit to know that what we have been hearing from the false priests of Babylon is not the sound we need to hear. As a result, we are a people in disarray, secluded and suspicious of what we are hearing in the heavens. We have become more and more disenfranchised, not able to fellowship or draw strength from the conglomeration that invades our life on a daily basis. Most of what labels itself as “Kingdom” is not the Kingdom of God, it is the Kingdom of Men, which has its own Priesthood, Feast Days, Temples, Jubilee, Celebrations, etc.. The only problem with this is that it is not of God, it is the religious bondage of soulish MEN and WOMEN. Their feasts stink with the smell of flesh, their Priests are corrupt and self-serving, their temples are orgies of man-worship and flesh pressing, their jubilees and celebrations are geared and driven to teach God’s people to hide from the dealing of the spirit of the Lord. They use the title, KINGDOM, to distinguish themselves from other Christian groups in order to make it seem like they have a special revelation that others must join in with to be blessed. If you are not one of them, a member of their group, then according to them, you are living on scraps served to dogs. This corrupt priesthood sets themselves up as kings in the earth, exploiting the poor and the widows, lording over their minions with unabashed celebrity status. We should all be aware of the fact that if you allow it, people will make celebrities out of us all, as it is in the nature of the flesh to make gods of men and that leads to them setting up men over themselves so they can be in the presence of greatness, even though that greatness has been bestowed upon the religious leaders by men and not God.
If we are truly in the time of trumpets, as I believe us to be, then we must start to hear the true priests of the Lord sound forth a CERTAIN sound, which will be distinctive from all the other sounds that are blasting forth today from the religious realms. Right now, all the sounds being blasted are like elevator music to the ears of the chosen of the Lord. Every trumpet I hear today is non-distinctive, a monotonous drone of generalized messages, with a slight variance from each other, but all agree on the basic notes of man’s doctrine about God. I may be telling my age, but today’s musical venues are lacking any real distinctive sound, a sound that is original and unique. For example, when one hears Ray Charles sing, they are not sitting there trying to identify that distinctive sound from all other artists. It is the same for Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Aretha Franklin, Merle Haggard or any other musical artist that has brought forth a sound from their music that sets them apart from any other sound being manufactured by other artists. Get ready all of you chosen of the Lord, we are getting ready to bring forth a sound that will awaken the heavens with the sound of the Risen Christ! It isn’t WHAT we say, it is WHERE we are speaking from! The sounds I am hearing from the false priests are earthly, terrestrial, dusty and muddy. When the Lord sounds His trumpet, it is from HEAVEN, full of LIGHT and GLORY, filling His people with UNDERSTANDING and KNOWLEDGE. Without that certain sound of Life and Glory, God’s people are like sheep gone astray, without the Voice of the Shepherd leading the way. The ranks of the true Kingdom people are in great need to find their purpose. We are all willing to do whatever the Lord wants us to do, but the vast majority of sons have no clue or direction as to what their purpose is. We are in the 7th Day of God’s eonian plan and as the Day of the Lord dawns upon us there is coming to us a series of BLASTS from the mouth of the Lord which will set the Day in order and place His sons in rank and file. There is a coming together right now as never seen before in the previous visitations of God. Not a coming together in a physical location, although there will undoubtedly be in some instances a physical coming together for a specific purpose, but the true coming together is into a spiritual place in God. This spiritual gathering will take place more and more as the Trumpet of the Lord starts to sound forth louder and louder in the ears of His elect.
I know many ministers of the Kingdom Message that have had a great need to be joined to other like-minded ministers, to gain strength and have meaningful fellowship. Due to that feeling of isolation and loneliness, they have been sucked into coming under the authority of a Bishop over them, or some other less descriptive shepherding ministry. That, my dear friends, is not where we need to go. The Bishopric ministries that declare themselves as being “kingdom” ministries are only offshoots of a Babylonian principle of keeping people in bondage to an iconic personality, that seeks to control and manipulate the people of God. I am sorry to be so blunt in describing this situation, but I don’t have time to soft soap this sad tale. It is a true enough reality, that anyone that has left the mainstream church systems, especially those that have a calling to teach or speak, will be involved in a lonely walk in the Lord, at least for a time. When God cuts us out of the herd, so to speak, and brings us into a dimension in Him that is apart from that which we once ministered and flowed within, we are going to lose old friends and have old doors of fellowship closed to us. It is a big shock to find out that what is giving us life is something that others may not want in their lives. It is at this crucial time of transition in the life of the believer that is apprehended for the Kingdom of God where their faith is tested. Some cannot take the isolation and will make compromises to get back into the fold of the religious camps they left. Others will recognize that it is God’s doing and will start to allow the spirit to teach them a new and living way in Christ. Only those that are ready to die for the Gospel will survive this period of letting go of the old and reaching out into the new. One would think that this would be enough, just to survive the initial dying to the old and coming alive to the new, but then the fun really starts. Now, they have been initiated into the first phase of the development and growth of a son of God, who, like Abraham, has found the faith to remove himself from the bondage of the religious systems of men and to be free to hear God for themselves. However, this is the stage of the walk of sonship, which is the infant stage, which leaves the new believer in a precarious situation. As any natural infant, the new born Kingdom believer will instinctively want to fill themselves with anything and everything that even sounds halfway spiritual and unorthodox. For a newborn, the hand has only one purpose, to put stuff in the mouth, making no distinction between something good and wholesome and something poisonous and corruptible. For the first time in their life, the new believer starts to hear an array of sounds coming into their spirit, having been freed from the covering of soulish flesh, they now discover a world of unbelievable heights and depths to which their heart leaps in joy, just to know such a realm existed. Welcome to the world of spirit! But, just because it is a realm of spirit, does not mean that every spiritual thing is for their good. In the realm of spirit, there are angels, demons, dragons, thrones, dominions, flying things, beautiful things, horrific things, things that give life, things that try to take life. Everything and anything is in the realm of spirit and the young believer is thrust into this mind-boggling realm of extremes.
It is here, in the land of absolute freedom and liberty that the young believer will learn through a series of trials and errors. We have all had our time in this no-mans-land where we messed up more than we hit the mark. I would love to go back to my early kingdom days and have a redo session on my ministry, but no can do. What I was able to do was to allow the spirit of my Father to teach me the difference between MY faith, MY ministry, MY church, MY anointing, MY message, MY desire, MY ego and HIS plan and purpose for me to become a willing vessel in His hands, to mold me and make me into that which brings glory to His Name. Every son must learn these lessons and some sons take a LOOONG time to learn them. There are fast learners in the Kingdom of God and there are slow learners, but in the end, if you are truly called to this realm of sonship, you will be brought to your true identity in Christ. Some through fire, some through the flood, some through great testings, but all through the Blood. Did you know that there is a trumpet of man noising forth today that would try to make the dealings of God obsolete? Some have come to the place where they no longer want to go through a test or trial of the faith, trying to make it sound like anyone that isn’t rich, or healthy, or hunky dory then you have missed God. They look down on the suffering and think that God will not allow anyone to suffer, or go through a test because God finished His work 2,000 years ago and all we have to do is accept that finished work and we can all live a blessed and trial free life through being indoctrinated into this so-called “truth.” Of course, this kind of message only works for those that are not presently going through any hard times in their lives. If you have a beautiful family, a beautiful home, a beautiful car and money in the bank, then this message would makes sense. But that only lasts until someone gets cancer, or they go through a messy divorce, or their kids get on drugs or a myriad of other things go wrong, then they are excluded from the “finished work” club, since you would be a living testimony against such nonsense. The Truth is that God is making a Son! Not a church going, smile you’re on camera, fake faced, marketeering Christian for some profit organization. He is making a Son that will have been changed from the image of the earthy into the image and likeness of his Heavenly Father. If you are not being tested, you are not being changed! Without the fire of God’s testings in your life, you are only putting on an outer disguise of being an overcomer, whereas your inward parts are like dead man’s bones. The truth is that many people today do not think it is COOL to be pruned and plucked of their self-glory, so they change the Truth into a half-truth, turning the judgments of God into a thing of the past, setting God’s people up for a rude awakening when God comes on the scene to strip them of all that nonsense they have clothed themselves with and do a quick work in them to make them fit for His service.
Some think that God doesn’t require anything out of His people, that the state and condition you are in right now is what God had in mind when He formed you from before the foundations of the ages. They would make it sound like God loves to see you in a divided state, part earthly and part heavenly, sometimes good and sometimes bad, one day a spiritual dynamo and the next day a natural deviant. I do recognize the fact that God loves us throughout all of our stages of growth and development in Christ, but to make it sound like God doesn’t have any other expectation of His creation except for them to make their whole life all about ME and to remain in a state of death and corruption is beyond all sense of sanity. If our present state and condition is all we have to look forward to, then I have to be honest, I was looking for more out of such a loving and holy God. Truthfully, this is a bunch of crock that needs to be shown for what it is, the man of sin sitting in the temple of God trying to BE GOD. Dear child of God, do not think that God is going to leave you in your present state of being! He will continue to strengthen you through those things that try your faith. It is through the trying of our faith that we are made overcomers and it is the overcomers that sit in the throne of God. For those that have left the Truth of God and have written their own truth that gives equal footing to both flesh and spirit, they will have what they have always wanted, a wonderful earthly life, living high on the hog for however many years they will be alive in the earth, and then all that will no longer matter for them, as they go the way of all flesh. But, for those that are hearing the Truth today, they will forego a life of pleasure and spiritual banality and will present themselves to their Father as a living sacrifice. They will deny themselves and confess Jesus Christ as their Lord and their Life, laying down their life in order to be raised by His. This is not some kind of old order, glorying in your suffering truth that I am writing to you. I am not presently writing this message to you with tears of suffering pouring out of my eyes and neither will I take this opportunity to relay to you all of my trials and testings that I have gone through. I am writing this message with joy unspeakable in my heart, with nothing but Good News about the life I have in Christ. My body is not dictating my spiritual state and condition and I know that within me is a Word that cannot be bound by earthly afflictions or physical frailty. If God allows me to continue my race on this side of the river, all of my physical limitation will be changed in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye. Both myself and my dear wife, Charlotte, have never allowed our physical conditions to limit us in our ministry to the saints of the living God, simply because we have learned that our testings are not to bring us down, but to lift us up into the greatness of our God! How did we learn that? Through the dealings of God. Through yielding ourselves to His will in our lives and by not hiding from His life-changing fire, no matter what shape or form it came to us. We concur with our Brother Paul, in counting all of our afflictions as being a light thing, in comparison with the glory that is being bestowed upon us by the grace of our Lord Jesus. We have come to recognize the spiritual economic blessing that each affliction and trial has given to us, rewarding us with a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. You see, if we are expecting anything else out of our trials and testings than the GLORY of God, then those testings have not accomplished their desired outcome in our spirit. Some want glory from men, seeking approval and recognition from their peers, but for us that have died the death to self, the only One we seek approval from is our heavenly Father. We really do need a long and definitive teaching on suffering, as there are so many misconceptions about what it means to be tested by God. I recently saw a post on Facebook that said, “Testing Lesson 101 – When you are going through something hard and wonder where God is, remember the Teacher always remains silent during the test.”
None of us are at a finished state and condition in God. God sees us in our finished state and condition, through the blood of Jesus Christ and His Life. However, we are not going to be allowed to stay in a fallen state, just because we know the scriptures and sing and worship of God’s greatness. Some of our dear family and friends have departed from the earthly scene, having graduated to a higher dimension of spiritual reality. For them, anything that has been left in their being from the old nature will have to be changed, just like it is now being changed for us who remain in the visible dimension. Just because they laid down their earthly house, they are still in need of full redemption. They are not made perfect, without us. The Trumpet that is blowing in our ears today is getting us ready for full redemption, spirit, soul and body. Only a remnant of those alive today will have this calling upon their lives, to be set apart for God to do His mysterious work within them and make of them the exact same overcoming son as the original, first born Son, Jesus the Christ of God. Our requirement is to leave those believers that have settled for being “followers of Christ” and avail ourselves to the power of God that will transform us into the express image of God and His Son. There is a vast difference between someone who just settles into being a disciple of the teachings ABOUT God and someone who is actually being apprehended by God to BECOME what the teachings are teaching about. We have many able speakers and writers expounding about the mysteries of Christ, but many of those precious saints will never go beyond the teachings to enter into the very THING they are teaching about. This Day of the Lord is not about God teaching us how to become better orators or scribes, it is only interested about one thing and one thing only. A NEW MAN. Nothing else matters at this point of time, as all creation is poised on tiptoe, peering into this generation to see the wonder of a NEW CREATURE formed by the Word of God. When I say Word of God, I am not speaking of the Bible, but it is the Living Word I speak of. All the reading of the scriptures will not bring forth this wonder of wonders that I just described. The only thing that will produce the NEW MAN is a submission to the death of the old form and substance and a resurrection into the new form and substance of God’s NEW THING. In order for this to happen, we must be willing to go into the changing chamber where we experience the process of metamorphosis, which will be the method by which God will reveal what He hid in mankind all the way back in the garden. Oh yes, God loves to hide things within other things, boxes inside boxes, treasures in earthen vessels, gold and silver buried in the earth, waiting to be brought to the surface. This is where the testings of God really become crucial, as they PRESS those hidden things to the surface. Through the pressure of the Day of the Lord, we are being emptied out of those heavenly, spiritual jewels and diamonds that speak of eternal Truths concerning God’s desire and purpose for His creation.
There must first be a people that are set aside for these extraordinary events that will not run at the first sight of blood, especially their own! Blood speaks of life and whether we want to admit it or not, we are losing our life. For those that have vision to see the end product, they willingly give their life up, as they have witnessed the greater life that is to come. For others, it is a time of gloom and doom, languishing away in tears of sorrow over all that is being taken from them. The Day of the Lord has to come to these as a thief in the night, entering in unawares and stealing the man-life from the unsuspecting victims. For others, they meet Him at the door, opening it up to Him and welcoming Him in to take whatever He would like. What a contrast between those that are still hanging on to their earthly image and those that are ready to let go of the corruptible life. In the changing chamber of the butterfly, there is a battle between 2 forms and 2 mindsets. As a worm, the butterfly is buried inside the worm form, unrecognized and certainly unseen. The mind of the worm is in complete control, which allows the worm to function as a worm is expected to function, crawling through its world, eating what a worm eats and having no higher aspirations, certainly not of flying through the air! The worm is content in its worminess. (yuck). However, one day something strange begins to happen to the worm. It starts to have mysterious urges and desires and begins to do unexplainable things. Something from inside the worm form has stirred and it begins to exert its influence upon the worm. Through a series of wondrous events and actions, the worm becomes obsessed with building a hollow tube, known as a chrysanthemum, which will be his tomb. An earthbound, limited, lowly worm enters the chamber. A beautiful, winged, unbound butterfly emerges. What is accomplished inside the chamber is a miracle that is the epitome of what the Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, concerning their full redemption.
1 Corinthians 15:51-53
Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. KJV
What Paul is describing here is the metamorphosis event that is scheduled for EVERY MAN. Paul uses the Greek word “musterion” for mystery, which describes a sacred secret, which one must be initiated into in order to discover its secret. The secret Paul is telling here in the Greek language is one that entails a change, but not just any kind of change, but a change from WITHIN! The Butterfly is the prime example of what the word, metamorphosis, describes. It is not just a shedding of an outer form, but it describes something far greater than just an outer change. You see, if the form of the worm was done away with and the form of the butterfly was produced, then that is one thing. But if the mind and nature of the worm remained in the new form of the butterfly, the ramifications of such a monstrous act would be horrific. If only the form was changed, from a crawling worm into a winged creature, then the new form would be a curse to the mind and nature of the worm. The worm doesn’t have the knowledge of flight, in fact, it would be unimaginable for him to use the wings for flight at all. As a result, the worm would try to crawl unimpeded through the foliage as he did in his worm form and the beautiful, large wings that was produced would now be nothing but a hindrance, with all the potential of flight laid to waste. So it is, I am eternally grateful to our loving Father that He will not bring about the full redemption of our new body until we have had an inward change of mind and nature, from a lowly, earthly, limited, corrupted mind and nature into the brilliant, unlimited, spiritual mind and nature of the Son of God. Some would try to halt the process of metamorphosis because they don’t want to go to the death chamber. They would have God’s messengers to be half-baked sons of God, revelated preachers that can TALK all day about God but don’t have a drop of life worked in their being by the transforming power of being PRESSED by the spirit to produce something MORE than themselves. I am told that when the butterfly emerges from the chamber, he must squeeze through the opening, so he can press all the fluid out of his wondrous new wings and then he dries them in the heat of the sun. Dear friends, in light of such a monumental time that we are experiencing today, we must not allow our flesh to convince us to halt our metamorphosis at any one point, simply because we don’t like the things we have to go through during the change. All of the talk about “higher consciousness” and “enlightenment” and other such grandiose terms will not bring us to such a supernatural event as I am describing. Those terms are mostly used by those that have tired of the race and want us to believe that it is enough for us to have “higher thoughts” about God and the world around us. This type of Eastern philosophy will do NOTHING to bring us to the full redemption of our body. Another misrepresented truth about the message of the kingdom is the beautiful truth that Christ died AS us at the cross. Some would make it sound like all we need to do now is gather at some location and keep repeating that to each other, “He died as us, He died as us, He died as us.” Okay already. He died AS us and we participated in His death at the cross. Fine and good. What happened then? He went to the grave and on the third day He AROSE. Well and good. What happened then? Did He bring His kingdom and government to the earth and bring paradise to mankind? Did He transform everyone into an incorruptible and immortal creature? Did all earth worship Him as their King and Lord? Did every earthly kingdom become His own kingdom? Did every king of the earth take off their crown and crown Him Lord of all? No? No? WHY NOT? Because His work of full salvation and glory is an ongoing, eonian action that is present continuum. That is why Paul wrote what he wrote concerning the metamorphosis that is scheduled for mankind. That is why we are still hearing trumpets sounding, still receiving instructions from God, still having the spirit deal with our hearts and speak to us of what MUST be done. That is why many of us are becoming aware of the solemnity of such a time, of the seriousness that is presenting itself in our gatherings. God is not going to leave this world in such a corruptible condition and He surely is not going to leave mankind in the hellish world that we live in today. Some of you may say, “Come on Bro Bob, isn’t that a gloomy picture of the world?” Yes, it is, and if you still think just because you have a job and a house in the best country in the world and you still don’t think the world has a problem, that is a perfect case in point for seeing things as they really are. If you would just broaden your reality to beyond the borders of the USA, you will see a world set on fire of hell. Again, we are not just called to be sons of God in order to transform and bless the U.S.A., we are to be saviors for the world, messengers that will speak to the world, priests that will minister to the world. Do you want to end world hunger, break free the world’s population from religious bondage, see the Kingdom of God reign and rule throughout the earth? If so, you need to know that our little Sunday morning messages are not going to get that done. Our little social parties in the church basement are not enough. Our men’s and women’s retreats with some self-help guru are not going to get it done either. The ONLY HOPE the world has to come into the inheritance that has been bought for them by Jesus Christ is the unveiling of the spiritual treasures that God has hidden in the hearts of His chosen servants. What? Are you the only people that could possibly hear the voice of God in your being and be changed? Don’t you know, the same spirit that spoke life into your land is able to speak to the whole earth and bring life to all men everywhere? OH, if we could only truly know what is buried deep within our being! The power of it, the glory of it, how it can outshine the sun with its brilliant rays of Son-light, how it can bring mankind back to their former estates before the age of sin, bringing them back to their spiritual oneness with their God, before they took on the color of their skin or the traditions of their cultures. In the beginning, we were all ONE, one spirit and one people. Before we put on these sacks of bone and tissue and started to think as a beast, we were EXCELLENT in God, without a blemish or shadow. Now, we must find our way home again and by His unfailing grace, we shall!
Every son of God must start to be prepared to have God use them as His trumpet in the earth. It is no laughing matter when you think of how crucial it is for us to know WHEN to sound forth and WHAT to sound forth. Again, what we have been doing thus far, whatever that may be, is not enough for the hour of the Day that we are in. It is time for the Seventh Angel to sound forth his message into the earth. We have to get to the place spiritually where we can be mature and fully developed in our spiritual makeup to become that trumpet blast that will begin the rumblings of change throughout the heavens and the earth. Let me assure you, our God has us exactly where we need to be and He has the power to perform His Word in and through us. He is not leaving this momentous occasion to chance or fate. He has written this Day within His own Divine Self and will unfold each phase of His grand unveiling according to His appointed time. As we start to feel the change that the worm started to feel working inside of its form, an urge to gather and an undeniable thirst for the change of nature and mind that we all must come into, then the Lord will begin to manifest in our midst a pure word and a pure sound. How we have longed for that! I sense a freshness of the spirit rising in our midst, with the smell of fresh baked bread that will fill our senses. I used to travel to work when I was a young man and I would leave the house early in the morning and drive by a bread factory. Oh, what an aroma filled the surrounding streets from that place! My stomach would growl with desire to be filled with that fresh bread and I am feeling the same desire today as I contemplate what is stirring in my heart. No one wants day old bread, we want it fresh from the oven! In God, we are getting just that, a fresh and living Word of Life, brought forth from the furnace of affliction, a people that are becoming a whole loaf before the Lord, filling the house with the aroma of His Presence. Oh worship Him, give Him glory and praise His Name. Let the aroma of His being fill our house with the perfume of His unfeigned love. Let Him break you today, allow Him to crush you like the petals of aromatic flowers, pressing out of you that perfume that is hidden in your petals. Let Him open your bottle and fill the house with the fragrance that He has shut up within your being. You don’t have to be a powerhouse preacher, or a famous prophet in the land, or even a minister of title, what is needed in the world is that which God has buried within your being brought forth. An old song must be sung at this point. If you know it, sing it with me.
Would you be poured out as wine, upon the altar for me?
Would you be broken as bread to feed the hungry?
Would you be so one in me, that I may do just as I will,
To become light and life, my love fulfilled in you.
Yes, I’ll be poured out as wine, upon the altar for you,
Yes, I’ll be broken as bread to feed the hungry,
Yes I’ll be so one in you, that you may do just as you will,
To become light and life, your love in me fulfilled.
As a priesthood, we must be careful not to be dispassionate when it comes to the suffering of the Body of Christ. We are a Royal Priesthood in our God and the things we personally experience and overcome will be used to instill in us an uncommon compassion when it comes to those that are going through such trying times. Our mail, email and phone have received a great amount of prayer requests for those in the Body of Christ that are going through desperate situations. It moves our spirit to hear of such calamity and brings out of us a cry of intercession. We have a High Priest today that is moved by our afflictions and Who feels our pain and dismay. There is a reason why God designed our natural bodies with nerves that relay messages of pain or distress to our brain from all areas of the body. If we hit our thumb with a hammer, our whole body responds to that pain, sometimes with whooping and hollering and maybe a jump in the air once or twice, depending on the individual. I can only draw off my own humble experiences. Our mind can be distracted in many ways and isn’t it a blessing to know that our body can grab the attention of our mind that we have a problem that needs immediate attention? When someone develops diabetes, they will eventually have to start taking the time to monitor the condition of their extremities, as the disease causes blood vessels to constrict and shut off proper circulation, particularly in the feet. When we lose feeling, we lose the ability to respond properly to a problem. The Priesthood of God cannot afford to lose their ability to feel the pain of the Body of Christ and in this time of trumpets, God is going to move on our heart and spirit and do away with the haughtiness and arrogance that have been so prevalent in prior visitations from God. I see a new Priesthood rising today, one that will seek out the hurting and the suffering and strengthen them with a Word of the Lord. Love must reign in our hearts. There is not greater balm than the genuine love of God when it comes to ministering to the needs of God’s people. Love is the foundation for everything God is doing in the midst of His people.
The mystery spoken of by Paul in 1 Corinthians is the fact that something is on course to happen in the earth that will involve both heaven and earth, spirit and flesh, God and man. “We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed!” Although all other generations have laid down their natural bodies and have passed into the invisible realm, there remains a company of believers that will not “sleep”, but will be changed while standing on their two feet. For me, the term “sleep” is not to say that people are laying in their graves, waiting to hear a trumpet sound from the sky that will raise them out of their coffins. I know this has been the staunch foundational belief of the religious systems of men, but once again it is a doctrine made up of a bunch of scholars that have become locked into a small and narrow reality of the world. If our physical resurrection that is described by these promoters of the physical rapture of the dead out of the cemeteries were actually true, then what of those deaths that have led to the annihilation of the physical body? Surely we know that not all dead bodies are laid down in a self-contained box, containing the intact body of the deceased. It is customary for our Naval Service to bury the fallen sailor by dumping their bodies in the ocean. Some folks are cremated, either by choice, or by a tragic death by fire. Others have been eaten by animals in wild country. Surely, we can see that in a good many cases there is no intact body to be physically raised from a box in the ground. This is why I have come to see that the spirit and soul of the deceased do not stay with the physical body when it expires. I believe they are in the presence of God and according to their spiritual development while in their physical body, they will be in a place of being introduced to the grace and love of their heavenly Father. After all, God is the Father of all the living and the dead. As our Father, He has birthed us in love, as HE IS LOVE. God will never pass away or cease to exist and the Love of God will therefore never pass away or cease to exist. “We will all be changed!” In light of what I have just related to you, we must then come to the conclusion that there is a very real connection between the visible and the invisible, or the earthly and the heavenly dimensions in God. Whatever happens on this side of the river, happens also on the other side of the river. Whatever spiritual change occurs in you and I who are still living in our physical bodies, it will also happen to those that have laid their physical bodies down! Heaven and earth are intrinsically connected and we are going to come to know much more about that connection in this present time of trumpets.
Trumpets are used, as I have written above, to give instructions to the camp and to signal a time of action and response to those instructions. I believe that we are in store for an intense instruction from the spirit of God on how we are to respond and function in this final hour of God’s unveiling of His dear Son and the establishment of His Kingdom in the earth. Those that remain in their physical bodies until that unveiling will be instrumental in the tearing down of all principalities, powers and dominions, both in heaven and earth. According to the scriptures, the fully manifested sons of God will be invested with power and authority, to cleanse and purify the earth and heavens, to bind and to loose things both in heaven and earth, to judge angels and men, to empty hell of imprisoned souls and to decree the mystery to be finished and time to be no more. This is not going to be done the way I have always heard it described in the traditional religious systems of men. Their scenario is with us being raptured out of the earth, sitting somewhere in heaven at a large table having supper with Jesus, while on earth angels and demons wreak havoc and destruction on the earth’s inhabitants. In fact, the scriptures are talking about a company of Messengers, spirits of just men made perfect, that are so one in unity and purpose that they are singular in their actions. When we read about the 7th Angel, sounding the trumpet, we should understand that this is no ordinary angel, it is a unified company of son/messengers, all sounding together in a perfectly complete ministry, having the whole Truth worked in them and through them, having the whole counsel of God at their disposal, operating under the direction of the Commander in Chief. When they begin to sound, dire and immediate consequences occur. They speak and it happens. They move and events happen. They are the harbingers of God’s power and glory in the earth and all heaven is at their disposal. Today’s name it and claim it and rule and reign circles are operating in a Pentecostal order, which although it is moving in the spirit at times, other times it has the corruption of the flesh and psyche of the natural mind. People who gain power in God must be subject to the will and purpose of God. If not, they can become controlling and self absorbed, setting themselves up as the man or woman of God of the hour with the power. I know many ministries in this realm that truly believe that if something is not done through their ministry, then it won’t get done. As the 7th trumpet of the 7th Angel begins to sound, it will first begin a cleansing in the governmental ranks of the Kingdom of God. If we are going to reign in Christ, then we can be assured today that we will go through such a cleansing in our being that leaves nothing that resembles pride or arrogance. All prejudice is to be removed, as God begins to sound in our midst with a sound that will strike fear in every heart. Yes, I said FEAR! Only a fool would rush in where Angels fear to tread in the spiritual realms of God. For those that have blundered about in the holy place of God’s presence, like a bull in a china shop, this will be a shock to know what sacred and dangerous things they have been handling with such childish ignorance. Only God’s immeasurable grace and love has kept them from being harmed by their handling of a wild fire, not kindled by the spirit of God but ignited by their own spirit. Indeed, for all of us that have been through our growing pains of ministry, we can only humbly thank God for being such a loving and patient Father in helping us to learn from our mistakes and for taking the time to give us understanding concerning this glorious age in God. Some, however, are calloused in their consciousness and are beyond teaching and learning, deceived in their own minds about the things of God. For these, there will have to be a visitation of God that will dismantle their god-complex and bring them into their right mind (heart) so they can be salvaged for the purpose of God in His Kingdom. None of us are exempt from having our fleshly nature try to usurp the Lord Jesus Christ from the throne of our heart and become our own sovereign lord. We should all make a habit of undertaking a self-examination of the state and condition of our heart as it relates to our walk in God. What are our motives? Are we still in a state of yielded surrender to the will of God in our lives? Have we allowed anything to get between us and our God? The Holy Spirit should always be given the opportunity to make corrections in our heart and mind, as we allow the adjustments to be made in our walk that will keep us on the path of life. When driving a car, we always make slight adjustments to the direction of our tires, which must be made in order to keep the vehicle traveling for a distance in a straight line. When one draws a line toward an intended mark, the further away from the beginning point of the line we draw, the more apparent it will become if the line is going to hit the mark or not. God, through His daily dealings in our lives, allows us to stay on course and keeps us in a state of “right mindedness” which will allow us to flow in a pure spirit and word. Oh, how we need that today!
I urge every believer to start to seek after the Lord and to focus on having a right spirit in the Day of the Lord. I cannot over-emphasize to you the importance and necessity for this to be accomplished in the Priesthood of this Day. I have heard excellent words ministered at times, full of truth and scriptural soundness, that should have been a feast of the substance of God. But, even an excellent and truthful word, when ministered out from a wrong spirit, will be made null and void and instead of ministering life, will deal out death and confusion. Give us a right spirit, O Lord! What does the Lord require of us?
Micah 6:8
He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good;
and what doth the Lord require of thee,
but to do justly, and to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with thy God? KJV
God is able to do all that I have written here by His power and majesty. All of this will be the work of the spirit and not of our own strength or abilities. However, it remains that it is in our own hands to guard against the pride of life and the celebrity of power with God. It is designated unto us to do whatever it takes to stay surrendered and willing in the Day of God’s power. If we are not willing to do so, then we will force God’s hand to deal with us in a more severe and determined manner. Jesus urged us to fall on the rock and to be broken. If not, then the rock will seek us out and fall on us, which will effectively bring about the same end result, us being broken before the Lord. I don’t know about you, but I find the first choice much more desirable! There are many things that I do not have perfect understanding on and I would not even attempt to try to make anyone think that I have all the answers. I do know that God is much larger and greater than any of us could ever imagine or comprehend. This is a most holy time in God. It behooves us to not be found with an attitude of bravado, trying not to seem to be ignorant of anything concerning the Day we are living in. The truth is, we ARE ignorant of all that God has in store for us! Anyone that claims otherwise is simply deluded and living on another planet. So, if you find yourself going from a time when you knew everything to a time when you now know nothing, REJOICE, you are a candidate for all that I am writing about. Only those that are willing to be emptied out will be filled up with the knowledge of God as HE IS and not as we have thought Him to be!
By Robert D Torango (To be continued)