GLORY

As I prayerfully sought the Lord for today’s message, I kept discerning just how very much the Father wants to draw us into His Glory and how He wants to prepare us for the coming harvest of souls that will dwarf any previous moves of God and may even be the final harvest. The Glory is God and is an unfathomable existence that we are incapable of understanding or experiencing this side of eternity. We can get a glimpse and experience a portion. That portion depends upon your relationship and assignment – any more than this is impossible because you would not be able to live. 

The Glory of God is a most important and exciting facet of God that will only manifest in the life of one willing to make the sacrifices necessary to truly be broken bread and poured out wine for the King of Kings. Without humility and sacrifice the manifestation will only be enough to reveal to whom you serve. It is not for you or about you. It all belongs to God and is used for His purposes. Those He chooses are forever changed for once you begin to experience, it sets in motion the miraculous. The Glory is for the miraculous manifestation God which draws souls to Christ. The short stint we know as life on earth, which is aptly summed up in James 4:14 as a vapor here today and gone tomorrow, leaves us not a moment to waste. We are in the womb of preparation for eternity and God will and does shake heaven and earth to draw you into His eternal presence. We are constantly at war with our own flesh and with the forces of darkness that seek to deceive, steal, and destroy us. We do have a choice, so I encourage you to choose wisely but without procrastination.

I will never trivialize the things of God – nor will He. Though Dr Lindy and I experience miracles, signs, and wonders in our apostolic metron, they have a purpose, and it is not to gain accolades for us but to draw men and women to God. To be that arrow hitting the target of His purpose requires anointing. The requisite anointing is very costly and attained from a furnace of affliction. When you persist in seeking the anointing your faith grows. The supernatural power gifts of God such as faith, miracles, and healing can only manifest through great faith residing in the servant manifesting the Dunamis Power of God which enables them. The flesh says why would you suffer greatly? Why not let someone else do it? That is how most see it, so the question becomes how does God get anyone to do the work, especially the heavy lifting? I’m glad you asked because the question begs an answer.

The answer is His Glory. Once you experience Glory you really are never the same. It begins to consume you. It forever changes and purposes the recipient. Here’s how it happened with me. Though, I was seeking God from an early age, I nevertheless was transitioning from a heathen lifestyle in the late 1980’s. I was in prayer with perhaps a dozen others when a cloud of smoke filled the room and put me on my face before God. I noticed everyone else was postured the same. You hear people refer to the weightiness of the Glory and that is factual. It is so heavy that there is no way to get up until it has lifted. I suppose it was much like when Solomon dedicated the Temple in in 2 Chronicles 7. Moses had an experience with the Glory on Mount Sinai meeting with God and receiving the Ten Commandments. You will recall he could not look into the face of God and live but when he was done he glowed from the Glory. Jesus took Peter, James, and John up high mountain and was transfigured before them. I believe the purpose here was to reveal and remove any possible doubt that He was the Son of God. God spoke from a cloud revealing and solidifying the Identity of His Son. Back to my experience, when you’re in it you hope it will never lift as the experience of His Presence is the most awe-inspiring event you have ever experienced. I was changed and though not receiving anywhere near that dosage again, I nevertheless pleaded with God for another experience like that before going to eternity. It is just that incredible and there is insufficiency of words to describe.

So, just what is this phenomenon called Glory? As I just said, there is insufficiency of words to describe. The experience we are able to have is but a glimpse of eternity because we are unable to see the Father in all His Glory and survive. We have access to Almighty God through the sacrifice of Jesus becoming a propitiation for our sins, sins which would forever preclude such ability. The complete mystery will become clear when our earthly sojourn is over, and we see Him face to face as He really is.

The prophet Habakkuk prophesies in Habakkuk 2:14 that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. This is a Millennial Prophesy that I believe we are beginning to see gradually unfold before our very eyes. It is the will of God and our purpose to grasp it and pull it in. Saints, we have a role to fulfill. We are not merely spectators – we are in the battle. The Father could in a nanosecond end it all, but in His infinite mercy desires harvest of all harvestable souls. There is providential purpose in the Father’s strategy and His every move. The only thing we really know of the end game is that “We Win.” We must be ready as the wise virgins the parable of Jesus in Matthew 25:1-13. In the parable we find that only half of the ten virgins had oil in their lamps and were ready for the bridegroom when he came in the middle of the night.

You must get into your spirit that abundant life and victory is yours now as well as in eternity. It is your right as a believer in the finished work of Jesus Christ and a joint inheritor of the Nations. When you really grasp the magnitude of what He has given you, the excitement will deprive you of sleep and you will wonder how Satan deceived you for so long. It gets even better as you begin to peel back the layers of an unending revelation of the Glory of God.

I encourage you to taste and see. I can promise no regrets. Proverbs 10:22 says the blessings of the Lord make rich; and He adds no sorrow with it. When you do the will of God, you are blessed. You are promised by Jesus that you will be persecuted, but you will have victory in this life as well as in eternity. When you live in accordance with the principles Jesus gave for Kingdom citizens, it is a done deal. The principles of sowing and reaping apply to everything in the Kingdom. You reap what you sow. God spoke through the Prophet Malachi in Chapter 3:10 that we could put Him to the test regarding the principle.

Father God is going to have a final harvest and whether it be now or future it will happen. The Prophet Joel gives prophesy for the coming Tribulation. Chapter 2 of Joel sounds as if it could be today. Though the prophetic word is given to God’s people Israel, it pertains to the Gentiles as well because Father’s plan includes all of mankind. Even if there is a Rapture prior to Tribulation, at minimum some Gentiles will experience and receive Christ during the Tribulation along with their Jewish brothers and sisters. As I present portions of scripture from Joel, listen to how the words seem to compare with where we are at today. Chapter 2:1-3 Blow the trumpet in Zion and sound an alarm in My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble; for the day of the Lord is coming, for it is at hand: a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, like the morning clouds spread over the mountains. A people come, great and strong, the like of whom has never been; nor will there ever be any such after them, even for many successive generations. A fire devours before them, and behind them a flame burns; the land is like the Garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; surely nothing shall escape them. Verses 10-17 read: The earth quakes before them, the heavens tremble; the sun and moon grow dark, and the stars diminish their brightness. The Lord gives voice before His army, for His camp is very great; for strong is the One who executes His word. For the day of the Lord is great and very terrible; who can endure it? Now, therefore, says the Lord, turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning. Rend your heart, and not your garments; return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness; and He relents from doing harm. Blow the trumpet in Zion, consecrate a fast, call a sacred assembly; gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children and nursing babes; let the bridegroom go out from his chamber, and the bride from her dressing room. Let the priests, who minister to the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar; let them say, Spare Your people, O Lord, and do not give Your heritage to reproach, that the nations should rule over them. Why should they say among the  peoples, where is their God?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Then in verse 28 we have the promise that even amid this time of Tribulation “It shall come to pass that afterward I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, and your young men visions.”In those passages Joel gives a warning and a solution. Of course, Joel is speaking to his own people as God has not brought the Gentiles in at this time. It is very easy to see what is coming and what needs be done. Remember this is a Tribulation prophesy meaning it is yet to come. No link is made to a certain time period or person, so Joel is speaking across time to a future event. Is this where we are today? It certainly could be, but regardless the warning order of the Prophet rings loud and clear.

What I am trying to convey is multifaceted. God has always called us to repent and return to Him. He has always had a plan. Although He operates on a totally different time than we, nevertheless there is a prophetic timetable which has been laid out for us, but for which only He knows the exactness of the same. I get really excited when we move to the next book which is Amos. Amos addresses the Tribulation, the final sifting of evil from the Kingdom and then ends the book with prophecy of the second coming of King Jesus and the Millennial Reign. Amos 9:11-15 begins with “In that day I will raise up the tabernacle of David that has fallen and close up the breaches thereof, and I will raise up his ruins, and I will build as in the days of old. That they may possess the remnant of Edom, and all the Gentiles who are called by My name, says the Lord who does this thing. Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, When the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him who sows seed; the mountains shall drip with sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow withit. I will bring back the captives of My people Israel; they shall build the waste cities and inhabit them;they shall plant vineyards and drink wine from them; they shall also make gardens and eat fruit from them.I will plant them in their land, and no longer shall they be pulled up from the land I have given them, says the Lord your God.

The promises of God are always with His created mankind, but we His people must perform the work He has given us to do. He gave us the Kingdom keys and we have for the most part been found lacking as stewards of His training academy on earth. Why do we find ourselves in such evil and seemingly captive to the same? It is nothing new and has happened throughout history. What is new is the speed of technology which connects all for both good and evil and the timeline of where we are in history.

I feel in my spirit and through what I see prophetically that we are drawing close to the Millennium. The Biblical signs and clues align well with where we are. I have seen in the Spirit, Glory coming to my Apostolic metron of Africa and have prophesied the same. I see progress in the Regional Ecclesia of North Florida and a sense that the United States of America will not be lost to a seemingly uncontrollable death spiral, rather that she will arise from the evil and destructive situation she is in at this moment.

I began with and will end with the Glory. The Prophet Isaiah, in Isaiah 43:7 says that God created us for His glory. We are not without everything and every weapon we need. We need only learn the authority and power we have in God. Recall that Jesus was God and man and as such suffered many of the same things as we, yet without sin. The Devil confronted His humanity enticing Him to sin and you surely recall His faithful weapon, the Word of God. “Satan, it is written…” Saints, we have a complete arsenal available to use. The Godhead is pleading: “Use Us.” Holy Spirit is with us always. The Angel Armies under command of their Captain Jehovah Tsaba are always attentive to the needs of the inheritors of the Kingdom; they are ministering spirits to us, the heirs of salvation.

I encourage you to get fully involved. We need each other as never before and that is precisely what the Lord desires of us. Please understand what the Apostle Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 4:7, that we have this treasure (the Glory of God) residing within our earthen vessel that the power be of Him. He has given us the ability to carry His Glory that we might reveal Him to the nations. Jesus in His final words with His Father, in part of the greatest prayer ever prayed, located in John 17 at verses 20-25 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word,that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” Finally, we are assured all of what I have just told you because the inerrant Word of God says so. The deal was sealed, as registered in Hebrews 1:3, when Jesus “who being the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.” The seal happens when He takes His precious Blood and applies it to the Mercy Seat. Glory! Glory! Glory! To the One who was and is and is to come.

I truly hope that the words of my mouth and meditations of my heart have imparted blessings to you this day. Amen