Coming Storm of Judgment

Beware! Beware of mixing and diluting! If you give but an inch the torrent will get under your feet and sweep you away with its own destruction - but build your house upon the rock; build it upon my unchanging and immutable Word.

My Word is like Me; it does not change or shift at the whim of culture or the market you are targeting, but it is formed upon my character. I do not change. I may do or speak different things, but my Word is a hammer that splits the rock; it is not the other way around. My purposes stand fast through all generations. Anyone who claims to know this must stand with me continuously and not be like a bent reed.

A tree planted by streams of water will yield its fruit at the appointed time. It will not be swept away, for I have established it. Anything that is not established by Me will be swept away in the torrent, the foundation upon which men have built will be exposed before the day of judgment. I will sort and sift and winnow; I will rightly divide and judge; I will alot and set apart for My Name's sake.

A storm is brewing, and for many it is beyond the horizon, but the light in the sky will change first. Look for this! Only when you scan the sky from east to west will you notice this. But it will be a storm without rain. Its dry winds will lick at the roots and foundations, making them crumble as it seeks the moisture and craves the lifeblood of people. This storm will not water, but it will search and seek and drain and collapse. Manmade foundations cannot survive this, only those laid down upon the rock which is My Word.

They will try to build bridges with you; they will try to reason with you; they will try to gain your acceptance. This will only open the door. The agreement, spoken or written is established on earth by men and is accepted in heaven. It will stand and give legal right to him who walks through the door.

Your house will slide into the river whole. As it slides off its foundations there is no love to bind you to your foundation; there is no love of truth. What binds you to the truth? It cannot be that it is correct; it cannot be that it is needful or useful - all these reasons pass and fade. For man will set up another truth or standard to govern by, as he falters from one regime to another to correct the external structures of his ailing heart in society. A love for the truth itself is the only anchor that will bind you to your saviour in the torrent.

A torrent is coming from afar. No rain will fall except beyond the horizon in a distant land of desert oaks. You may hear it rumble in the darkness, but only those founded upon My Word, those who hear and obey and do not argue with me, will stand firm. In this time, do not move, not an inch! Do not respond in kind to their 'reasonable' speech; they seduce you. But resist them and they will revile you. Do not negotiate with them. Do not agree with them. Do not make alliances with the structures of man's ailing heart. If you move out of sympathy or any motive of the heart other than obedience to Me you may be ensnared and the trorrent will get under you. You may not find your footing ever again.

There is a time coming when to question the lies of men will seem folly and madness. Many will desert and follow the way of Judas. There will be such pressure to conform to their 'rightness' - their 'orthodoxy' - that it will be overwhelming for many, but this is how I separate the goats from the sheep, from those who walk with Me from those who do not.

It all started with mixing and diluting; wave after wave of lies have poured from insitutions purporting to represent me and were indeeed founded by those who knew me. These lies have been mingled with My simple gospel to provide something sophisticated and knowing. They have compounded lie upon lie in their own compound. Through their own machinations, they deny that I save. They do not trust that My Son and My Sacrifice were enough They added and they took; they mixed a compound of their own making, and now I will make them drink it.

'Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,' Part 2

"What are you, O mighty mountain? Before Zerubbabel you will become level ground. Then he will bring out the capstone . . .."
Zechariah 4:7

We want to start something; we want to plant and we want to build. Man has been doing this for millenia and he has built one of two cities: Babylon or Jerusalem, both with different foundations. One city of the 'I will' and the other of 'Your will'. But before a single stone can be dragged onsite, before a single stone can be laid as a foundation, before any of that starts, there is a mighty work to be done and it is not to build up into the air as in Babel - it has always been to dig down, down into the dirt to get to the rock.

And who is it that digs? It is not us who performs the work; it is the High Priest. And who is the High Priest if He is not Christ himself? And upon what or whom does He perform His destructive work? It is upon us. We are the object of His levelling. Up to this point we have got it completely wrong. We thought we were doing a work for God, but - in fact - it has been Him who needs to turn us into the workmanship of God. Like David, we have offered to build a house for His Name when in fact the Lord has turned round to refuse the offer. Instead, He will be the One to build a House for David to rule over for ever. We can always offer but God will always trump us; He always has something better in mind. We look to build something temporal when God looks to build something eternal.

That proud, rugged and wild mountain must be brought low and circumcised before God can begin to build. Where once people would say, 'Look at that fine, beautiful mountain,' they now say, 'Look at the temple mount, the house of God!' They no longer see the mountain, it has disappeared. Its pride has been brought low. Where once nothing could touch it save for groves of olives and wild animals, it is now brutalised under a building site, marred and scarred beyond recognition. Its lofty heights laid low, all that it took pride in is now despoiled. It is a woman bereft of her hair, a soldier shorn of his weapons. The mountain lies naked and exposed. The guts of the mountain have spilled over to reveal what is inside. And when people pass by to look at the work in progress they will be appalled - disfigured beyond that of any mount. They will not recognise the likeness of the mountain ever again. They will remember the former mountain and shake their heads. But the haughty mountian must go through this if it is to be beautiful once more for wholly different reasons. Before, it was beautiful for its own sake, now it is beautiful because of what it bares - a place for God to dwell.

Remember this when the stone masons get to work on your stone heart, when the chisels and the pick axes fall, when God digs deeper and flattens you out. You thought you were a mountain; now you are a footstool.

It will stop. The rasp of metal on stone will cease and all will feel like paradise. And when they bring out the capstone what a shout will rise up from the mountain. What delight will be yours when the perfect stone is laid on a perfectly level surface. Before anything is built the mountain has as its heart one joint, one union upon which everything is built, from which everything is measured. What delight will be yours when God comes to rest in your centre, upon you, without a gap between you . . .  complete contact.

You thought you were a mountain, now you are the resting place of God.

'Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,' Part 1

'Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,' says the Lord Almighty. (Zechariah 4:6)

The signature verse for this blog was given to me as a baptismal 'promise' 26 years ago. I didn't like it at the time as I always wanted some great promise about me as a great man of the future, not some note of caution or rebuke implying some character flaw. I never liked anyone telling me what I couldn't do or the limitations to my evidently great spirituality; my flesh had always to be pampered to and puffed up and very few people in my life opposed this in me. I couldn't take criticism at all and was always extremely sensitive to it. I wished someone had opposed me with some godly wisdom, but I am completely responsible for this flaw.

The upshot was that I spent the majority of my christian walk trying to make something of myself when I should have been making nothing of myself (Philippians 2:7). I got it completely the wrong way round: I had been taking the high way instead of the low-way.

Back to this verse: it has been nagging away at me for decades now, like a bad penny, like the big bit of grit in the centre of an oyster. It has puzzled me in its conciseness and plainness. It's language appears straightforward and it sounds spiritual. I barely know what it means today!

Recently, however, something was unlocked inside of it when I read Watchman Nee's "The Latent Power of the Soul". Something clicked into place. To put it simply, the "might" that is disallowed by this verse refers to the physical strength to achieve and build; the "power" that is forbid may well refer to political machinations to achieve, but for the individual, it prohibits the use of the soul in all its intellectual, emotional and psychological (conscious and sub-conscious) power to counterfeit any work of God; this includes any projection of the soul to persuade and manoeuvre people into your way or methods.

It is not by the use of soul power that God's temple is built, though that could quite easily achieve the required end result more swiftly. No, the Spirit of God must build His temple if He is to dwell in it, He will dwell in nothing less than His own creation. Other temples maybe built with more guile and apparent skill and may appear more beautiful, but they will not stand in the flood or the fire. It is only the true spiritual house with its foundation on Christ that will stand both.

How often are we tempted to counterfeit God's work with our own well-qualified programme or ministry. Therefore, bind up your flesh and your soul as you plant the seed of God's work and make them slaves to the will of God for His purpose - do not start your work and ask God to bless it. The world will but God won't.

The Careful Builder

A clock measures a man's time, tick-by-tick, but it is I who measure a man's life - every beat of his heart is mine and it is where I lay my plumb line in the inner most place. I look at the straightness of his ways.

You are the temple of God and what is it that your life's work builds if it is not the temple of God? Therefore be careful how you build; build not with temporal and flammable things. Rather, build with those things that are eternal, that which is hewn from my quarries and mined from the deeps of the earth. Once I have measured it, I will test it with fire. And what is left will be to the praise of God. That which is done through God will stand and be seen; that which is accomplished in the strength of the flesh and the power of the soul shall perish. Build carefully then - meticulously - not to gain time or honour with men. Do not despise doing the small thing well, for in that day all things shall be built upon this foundation - the foundation of Christ.