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 7

This Word spoken to Zerubbabel is the Cross; it is the Gospel. And only in standing on the Mount of Olives and looking back and down to the Mount of Zion do we see it - in embryo, in seed form, but it is perfectly formed. Only from the Mount of Olives do we truly 'see': from the Mount of Unction from whose ancient olive trees was the anointing oil of the Priests and Kings of Israel refined; to which David fled, barefoot like a priest, when fleeing from his son, Absalom; in whose dusty soil the tears and blood-sweat drops of Jesus fell; whose shaded walkways canopied the pathways of Jesus' feet from Bethany to Jerusalem; on whose trinity of mountain tops Solomon built altars to Chemosh and Molech; on whose defiled and detestable altars the reformer Josiah crushed human bones; and from whose lofty top Jesus ascended, and to which He shall return. If we do not 'see' from here, we do not 'see' at all. If we do not weep over her stones and take pity on her dust, we will never 'see' what Jesus saw and never 'see' as Jesus sees.

It is only from here, seeing through time, do we 'see'. The whole of Jerusalem stands in the shadow of the Mount of Olives - literally: the largest of the seven hills of Jerusalem, rising in the east, always beyond the Kidron Valley, always on the outside of Jerusalem. Only from outside do we see the City of God in context as she truly is: the site of idolatery, sacrifice, defilement, promise, anointing and salvation: death and resurrection together - valley and mountain.

The stone that Zerubbabel laid was Christ: first the foundation stone, then the capstone. Only the latter was cause for celebration; however, the day of small beginnings is always despised. It is always a humiliation first before it is a glory. And we know that no building of any significance in the ancient world was never established without sacrifice - including the pagan world, moreso the pagan world! So it is the same with Christ: the first to be laid and the last to finish the work that He inaugurates. He is the First and the Last in All Things, so it must be in the church. Of late, the foundation stone has been purely ceremonial and decorative, something for mayors to bless. It is often seen with a conspicuous inscription, facing outward and to the public commemorating a moment in time when the great and good cut a ribbon. Such a stone is functionless. Nothing rests on such a stone; it has migrated upward and away from an inconspicuous corner to seek the light of fame and glory. Not so the True Cornerstone: laid in the dust of a once proud but emasculated mountain, from Whom the whole house rises, to Whom the whole house refers and adjusts itself, hidden and buried in an obscure corner - the meeting of two axes where He hung His head. And because He takes the lowest place He is given the highest honour; He is the Capstone.

The question remains: not, have we migrated upward, but the the real question we must answer before we lay any stone at all: have we rejected Him? We would cry No! Of course not!, but such a cornerstone is apt to be rejected by builders, it often fails the examination on the basis of man's criteria. The cornerstone must never be referred to our standards, or measured by us, or our prejudices allowed to sway its selection. The Cornerstone I speak of was rejected and despised and was esteemed not. They took offence in that stone because it did not fit, but we are called to make Him our True North; He is the bottom and top, the First and the Last. If we are to be the ground and pillar of truth we must be laid down with Him. Why did the builders reject such a stone? It was mis-shapen and apparently 'crooked'; it was not showy enough: they wanted something to be displayed. They would have to individually cut every stone to fit around it; it would be too much work. The Cornerstone is the reference point. We may think we lay the stone but Zerubbabel is the only one called to and he is Christ.

 

'Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,' Part 3

"What are you , O mighty mountain? Before Zerubbabel you will become level ground."
Zechariah 4:7

What is the dirt that has to be dug through? First to go is the life that grows out of that dirt: that which has a semblance of life and fruitfulness, that which seems to be benefitting you, that which has been with you most probably from the beginning - olive groves that have been here longer than the mountain - that which simulates the life of God and in some way it is unthinkable to lay the axe at its root: but I have been blessed by it! we declare. These things are the closest to our heart, that which we have yearned for and prayed for and God has allowed us to have and yet it comes between us and God. Will you lay it down? These are simply the extremities, the levers God uses to prize open our heart. The real work has not yet begun. Others will wonder: why have you done that? It will make no sense to them. Why would anyone cut down such beautiful olive trees? Even then you may be tempted to replant them.
Next will come the dirt out of which this purported life grew. Soil is a mixture: weathered rock, rotten life, water and air. In short, death. But it's fertile! It gives life! Life only comes by one death: the death of Him, not you! The death of your 'death' - the death of your sacrifice on your terms is the real death; it's not about your sacrifice, it is about His in you. But this is what I've achieved; I've spent years and decades on this! The death of your self-appointed and self-conscious sacrifice, where we whitewash our tombs, must come. We cobble together from the remnants of our life something that approximates to life, but supplants the real life. We stitch it together and rationalise it. The life of God needs no such explanation; it is self-evident.
The dirt is cleared to reveal what the Lord really wants to get at, and this is where the real work is done by the hands of God. Something which sticks up vertical needs to be laid down. At its core it is the rock-like obstinacy and stubbornness and self-will that will not bend or yield in certain or any circumstance. It will not allow the circumstance to dictate to it but wrestles with it. It bucks beneath the circumstance - not accepting that this is God's will. We wanted the victory and the triumph but He must conquer our hearts first. On first contact it must be broken and then peeled back and excavated to reveal the strata of the rock, its secret and hidden ways of how it was originally made. We protest and complain that its uprightness was for God. It's hardness and strata will be put to more glorious uses than it was otherwise intended for: an indefatigability for God, a defiance for God in the face of the world's onslaught, a strength that will take the whole weight of the House of God because it has been laid in a tomb of rock and not of earth.