Five-Fold Today - War Before The Face Of God - More Than Prophesy - The Great Dispensation - Who Can But Prophesy? - The Exchanged Life - The Key of the Greater Works - Be Still And Know That I Am God - The Olive Tree

December 1, 2000

War Before The Face Of God

Terry Mengle

We have been called to war! We have not been called to maintain the 'status quo' or to continue as we always have in our traditions. Like any war, this war has more than one front. We are called to war both in the world and in the church.

Recently, while meditating, I heard the words: "War before My face!" I asked the Lord what He meant. He began to show me a vision of a church during its' Sunday morning corporate worship service.

The prayers, thanksgiving, praise, worship and adoration that flowed from the hearts of the passionate lovers of God ascended like pure white incense before the throne of God. This fragrant smoke began swirling together to form something solid and shimmering in gold. What I quickly saw forming was a beautiful corporate mercy seat that obviously pleased the Father. He moved closer to that altar of worship and service in response to His pleasure. He was fascinated, pleased and drawn to it.

The scene shifted back to the church as they were involved in their worship and the exercise of their gifts focusing on the glory of God. Suddenly one of the people present stood and spoke. What flowed from this one's mouth was different in substance and nature and it contained gray tainted and defiled smoke. This strange smoke settled over the corporate altar, began to move that which was pure out of the way, and defiled the altar. The response from the Father was evident revulsion. He moved away from the altar.

Explanation:

The Lord explained that His people wanted His manifest presence among them so multitudes could be saved, healed and delivered. They wanted His presence and glory because it destroyed the yoke of bondage, gave them guidance, and was a delight to experience. Then He repeated the words, "You must war before My face!" He repeated the words from Ephesians 6:12: "For WE (His emphasis) do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places."

Example:

I have heard it said prophetically many times that the church will be getting supernatural discernment. I don't see it! I don't see it in corporate worship services.

At strategic locations, often places of imminent revival or of importance to God;s plans, my wife and I have seen God's people begin to build that altar; only to have the subtle voice of the enemy bring forth a false or tainted word. This is an impure spiritual influence that defiles the alter being built. It interrupts and displaces the flow of true prophetic words and usually disrupts what God wishes to accomplish in that place. It also takes counterfeit authority.

Time after time we will be enjoying the presence of God when suddenly we are jolted out of sweet communion and confronted with a word from a familiar foe. Our first reaction is to grab for our swords and go to war. Only when we look around we see that most attending do not sense what we discern. There are occasionally alarmed looks or winces from a few, but everyone wants to be polite and not disrupt the proceedings. This appears admirable, initially. After all, we want to be subject to the local authority. If there is discernment among a few, you can feel a blanket of intimidation and fear arise. We become intimidated by fear of man. "What will others say if we stop this now? It wouldn't be decent and in order." However, the Lord leads me to ask, "What is decent and in order about allowing this or any other defilement before the face of the Lord?"

Application and Appeal:

There are foundations that must be laid and actions we must take: First, worship leaders, elders and pastors or those in immediate authority, if they lack discernment, must pray for it and/or enlist the help of prophetic intercessors with discernment to detect this defilement. It needs to be swiftly, but politely and lovingly stopped! If we wait too long the damage will be done.

Second, if no one in leadership discerns, someone from the congregation should exercise their own discernment. He or she must go to one in authority for help or stop it immediately by interrupting. Humility must be present in submission to the later approval or disapproval of leadership. Some would say we must exercise the law of love and I agree, to a point, but who should we love the most or first? "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind." This is the first and great commandment. "And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Matthew 22:36

The Lord is saying, "Arise, warriors of the King! I call you to fierce battle. This conflict will not be won by the faint of heart. Get rid of all defiled altars. Remove them from among My people. WAR BEFORE MY FACE!"

Gideonsban@aol.com

More than prophesy

Debbie Cossu

Amos 3:6-8 "If a trumpet is blown in a city will not the people tremble? If a calamity occurs in a city has not the Lord done it? Surely the Lord God does nothing unless He reveals His secret counsel to His servants the prophets.. A lion has roared! Who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken! Who can but prophesy?"

Vision:

I saw a sea of people. They all had clean hands and pure hearts. They had gathered from every stream and every corner of the land. They stood with their mouths opened to be filled with the word of the Lord. Surely He encourages all to desire to prophesy. Any one bearing His heart can speak His word to encourage and strength and correct. That is why this gathering was open and free to all who wanted to come.

SUDDENLY all mouths were shut as the Lord approached the center stage and stepped up to the microphone. Everyone sat down in silence. He alone stood, and only His mouth was opened. A holy hush could be heard as His eyes searched through those who had come.

Word:

I am well pleased. I am glad you have all come. You have responded to My call without hesitation, even with the cost many of your have born over the years. Sacrifices of time and health and possessions and relationship have not gone unnoticed before the Throne of Mercy. Surely a season of recompense is about to begin in My house, starting with you.

My calling and choosing are two separate graces.

All of you have been called by Me personally to give your life in abandonment, and you have been faithful to Me even in the times you had to stop and be refreshed along the way. I bless you this day and say to you continue, continue to grow in the knowledge and fear of the Lord so the fear of man will not snare you. Open your mouth to declare My heart in season and out with the boldness of My Love pulshing thorough you afresh.

There is a group I have come to address who have been chosen to not just prophesy, but to live what I would speak through them.

You are the trumpet to be blown in the cities where I place you, and those I will send you to. Your times of calamity are divine appointments for My power to be demonstrated so those around you will know My hand is able to heal and deliver and restore whenever I am honored.

You are My chosen servants I declare My counsel to. You do not look at what can be seen with the eye, or make decisions based on what you hear with your ears. The fear of the Lord has taught you to discern, and granted you deep fellowship with Me.

I release you to deeper fellowship with one another. It is not what you say any longer that will demonstrate My Way and Truth and Life. Your very life, who you are in Me and who I am in you will resonate in every place you set your foot. As you walk together in new unity and purpose, the commanded blessing will flow upon you and through you to all peoples.

Who can but prophesy...not My chosen ones for they will be the word of My testimony for all to see and hear. As you lay down your life before Me, you shall be strengthed to run the course set before you anew with joy. You will live well in My presence and cause others to enter in. Just be with Me in the secret place and together you shall walk the face of the earth declaring My Kingdom and Power and Glory.

The call on your life...is your life. With this in view even apparent death will grant new life all around.

I am with you, do not be afraid.

debbcossu@juno.com

The Great Dispensation

BONITA CHAPMAN

It is time for My children to be given those things that I have had to hold back for too long. It is time for the great dispensation of My goodness and of My presence and of My judgment. All of these are part of the same package. This is what the world finds so difficult to understand. To them, I am either all love, and no judgment, or all judgment and no love. But I am the fullness of both of these. I cannot separate the two, because they are both ME. I would have to divide Myself in order to separate them, and that I cannot do.

For My children, the time of judgment holds no fear, because My love, My goodness, and My presence will sustain and lift them above all that occurs, and those things that they see all around them will only draw them closer to Me.

For the world, it will be different. Not only will they suffer the fullness of My judgment, but they will do so with eyes that see the way My children walk above it. They will see the love from a distance, but will not be able to partake of it. It is not My desire that anyone be in this second group. However, I know that some will make the choice to stay apart from Me. Some will make a turn, and turn away from Me. They will find that My judgment is real and is not something to be toyed with or laughed at.

It is time for the dispensing of both judgment and love – both together, at the same time, part of the same package. Whether you see and experience this package as My love or as My judgment depends entirely on your response to My continuing call to turn to Me completely. A partial turn will no longer do. You must be completely turned to Me in every part of your life, or you will not be able to handle or walk through the time that is coming. But if you will give yourself completely to Me, learn to recognize My voice, and be obedient to me in every detail, you will find yourself walking in the manifestation of My love every moment. Your obedience is necessary in order for you to walk through things without harm and without fear. I do not ask for obedience just because I want to be obeyed. I ask for it for your own sake. I know the path ahead, and you do not. You do not know the way that your obedience in a seemingly small thing today is clearing the way for you in your tomorrows. It is My love that requires obedience, and it is My love that rewards it.

You still have a choice whether to see Me in love or in judgment. Make your choice for love, and turn yourself fully over to Me. The time is coming when that choice cannot be made. There will be a closing of the door to My heart. There will be a time when one will not be able to turn to Me. Don't keep putting off your decision. Turn now and allow yourself time to know Me, learn My voice, see My love manifested, and know My presence within you. Your eternal future depends on the choice you make.

It is time for the great dispensation.
************
Dispensation: The act of dispensing. Something dispensed. A specific arrangement or system by which something is dispensed. Theology. The divine ordering of worldly affairs.

Dispense: To deal out in parts or portions; distribute. To separate into shares and distribute among a number.

Word Life Teaching Ministries
http://wordlife.dte.net/
wordlife@digitalexp.com

Who Can But Prophesy?

MARY KOONS WATTENFORD

Surely the Lord God will do nothing without revealing His secret to His servants the prophets.

The lion has roared; who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken; who can but prophesy?
(Amos 3:7-8)

How can you BUT prophesy? Hear the Word of the Lord...

For I am coming to a church that is pure, and unsullied by the world. A BODY - MY BODY! that holds forth MY NAME in pure worship - singing forth Praises to their King! For you have fallen by the wayside - and been left to die. Where is he who will raise you up, set you upon his beast, transport you to shelter and protect you? Where is he who would give his own lifes blood for another? Where are My Chosen Ones - tried and true? Oh My Children, come before Me and be cleansed of your iniquities! And be made WHOLE!

Who can but prophesy? Those who I AM is calling - know what I have told them to do.. they do not hesitate - they do not stop and count the costs of obedience. Many are called but FEW are chosen! FEW - because most won't PAY THE HIGH COST of the HIGHER CALLING. they are content to lap up the crumbs beneath My Table..and though those too are healed and made whole by My Word - even as the Syrophenician's daughter was, the high cost of servanthood stops them from partaking of the whole meal!

Who can but prophesy? Can you keep your eyes on Me? Where has your attention been? WHO HAS bewitched you? Service to Me is the highest of calls, requiring the lowest of self-indulgences. Service to Me is not based on WHO you are, but on WHAT you will become - IN ME! When you attempt to jump ahead of My timing - you fail. When you strive to keep yourself righteous - your dirty rags show through. When you seek to curry favor with men, you are of no use to Me. When you reach out and call forth calamity or blessing and I AM has not commanded you to do it - you are of your father - the devil. When you hearken to another voice - you have called another "Lord."

My Word says that HE WHO IS NOT "FOR ME" - is "AGAINST ME.." Are you for ME? Do I have your heart - your undivided attention in this day - AT THIS HOUR? Oh My children - do you not see the handwriting on the wall? MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.. You have been judged and found wanting.

And this [is] the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.

This [is] the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it.

TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.

PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.
(Dan 5:25-28)

Wellsprings Ministries International
Spokane, WA
mkoons15@hotmail.co

The Exchanged Life
By Hudson Taylor

All the time I felt assured that there was in Christ all I needed, but the practical question was--how to get it out. He was rich truly, but I was poor; He was strong, but I weak. I knew full well that there was in the root, the stem, abundant fatness, but how to get it into my puny little branch was the question. As gradually light dawned, I saw that faith was the only requisite--was the hand to lay hold on His fullness and make it mine. But I had not this faith.

I strove for faith, but it would not come; I tried to exercise it, but in vain. Seeing more and more the wondrous supply of grace laid up in Jesus, the fullness of our precious Savior, my guilt and helplessness seemed to increase. Sins committed appeared but as trifles compared with the sin of unbelief which was their cause, which could not or would not take God at His word. . . . I prayed for faith, but it came not. What was I to do?

When my agony of soul was at its height, a sentence in a letter from dear McCarthy was used to remove the scales from my eyes, and the Spirit of God revealed to me the truth of our oneness with Jesus as I had never known it before.

"But how to get faith strengthened? Not by striving after faith, but by resting on the Faithful One."

As I read, I saw it all! "If we believe not, he abideth faithful." I looked to Jesus and saw (and when I saw, oh, how joy flowed)! That He had said, "I will never leave thee."

"Ah, there is rest!" I thought. "I have striven in vain to rest in Him. I'll strive no more. For has not He promised to abide with me--never to leave me, never to fail me?" And, . . . He never will.

. . . . As I thought of the Vine and the branches, what light the blessed Spirit poured direct into my soul! How great seemed my mistake in wishing to get the sap, the fullness out of Him! I saw not only that Jesus will ever leave me, but that I am a member of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. The vine is not the root merely, but all--root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit. And Jesus is not that alone--He is soil and sunshine, air and showers, and ten thousand times more than we have ever dreamed, wished for or needed. Oh, the joy of seeing this truth! I do pray that the eyes of your understanding too may be enlightened, that you may know and enjoy the riches freely given us in Christ.

. . . It is a wonderful thing to be really one with a risen and exalted Savior, to be a member of Christ! Think what it involves. Can Christ be rich and I poor? Can your right hand be rich and your left poor? Or your head be well fed while your body starves? . . . . No more can your prayers or mine be discredited if offered in the name of Jesus (i.e., not for the sake of Jesus merely, but on the ground that we are His, His members) so long as we keep within the limits of Christ's credit--a tolerably wide limit!

The sweetest part, . . . is the rest which full identification with Christ brings. I am no longer anxious about anything, as I realize this; for He, I know, is able to carry out His will, and His will is mine. It makes no matter where He places me, or how. That is rather for Him to consider than for me; for in the easiest position He must give me His grace, and in the most difficult His grace is sufficient. . . . So, if God should place me in serious perplexity, must He not give me much guidance; in positions of great difficulty, much grace; in circumstances of great pressure and trials, much strength? No fear that His resources will prove unequal to the emergency! And His resources are mine, for He is mine, and is with me and dwells in me.

And since Christ has thus dwelt in my heart by faith, how happy I have been! . . . I am no better than before. In a sense, I do not wish to be, nor am I striving to be. But I am dead and buried with Christ--ay, and risen too! And now Christ lives in me, and "the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."

. . . . Do not let us consider Him as far off, when God has made us one with Him, members of His very body. Nor should we look upon this experience, these truths, as for the few. They are the birthright of every child of God, and no one can dispense with them without dishonoring our Lord. The only power for deliverance from sin or for true service is Christ. And it is all so simple and practical!

"But are you always conscious of this abiding in Christ?" Mr. Taylor was asked many years later. "While sleeping last night," he replied, "did I cease to abide in your home because I was unconscious of the fact? We should never be conscious of not abiding in Christ."

I change, He changes not; The Christ can never die: His truth, not mine, the resting place; His love, not mine, the tie.

Hudson Taylor founded the China Inland Mission in 1865

THE KEY OF THE GREATER WORKS,

Oswald Chambers

...I say to you, he who believes in Me...greater works than these will he do, because I go to My Father" (John 14:12).

Prayer does not equip us for greater works - prayer is the greater work. Yet we think of prayer as some common sense exercise of our higher powers that simply prepares us for Gods work. In the teachings of Jesus Christ, prayer is the working of the miracle of redemption in me, which produces the miracle of redemption in others, through the power of God. The way fruit remains firm is through prayer, but remember that it is prayer based on the agony of Christ in redemption, not on my own agony. We must go to God as His child, because only a child gets his prayers answered; a "wise" man does not. (Matthew 11:25).

Prayer is the battle, and it makes no difference where you are. However God may engineer your circumstances, your duty is to pray. Never allow yourself this thought, "I am of no use where I am," because you certainly cannot be used where you have not yet been placed. Wherever God has placed you, and whatever your circumstances, you should pray, continually offering up prayers to Him. And He promises, "Whatever you ask in My name, that I will do..." (14:13). Yet we refuse to pray unless it thrills or excites us, which is the most intense form of spiritual selfishness. We must learn to work according to Gods direction, and He says to pray. "Pray the Lord of the harvest to send our laborers into His harvest" (Matthew 9:38).

There is nothing thrilling about a laboring persons work, but it is the laboring person who makes the ideas of the genius possible. And it is the laboring saint who makes the ideas of his Master possible. And it is the laboring saint who makes the ideas of his Master possible. When you labor at prayer, from Gods perspective there are always results. What an astonishment it will be to see, once the veil is finally lifted, all the souls that have been reaped by you, simply because you have been in the habit of taking your orders from Jesus Christ.

From My Utmost for His Highest: Updated Edition

Submitted by Together - together@idirect.com

BE STILL AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD

Yolanda Ballard

Be still and know that I am God and that I am in control of all that is going on around you. Do not be dismayed at what you see....the great calamity that surrounds you at every point. Don't you know that I have to allow certain things to take place to bring about My perfect will? My ways are not your ways nor My thoughts your thoughts. Even though you press in to have the mind of Christ, you still do not have a full understanding of My ways.

For I love My people, and I want them to know that these are serious times. I want to shake them and wake them to alert them to not allow the enemy any place in their lives. For the little foxes, the things you easily overlook and not even try to overcome....they are the things that spoil the vine....the fruitfulness of My life manifesting through yours.

You are My people called by My name, and I want to use all of you as vessels of honor. But where many of My children are at this point in their walk with Me is not a place of overcoming victory. Many are laid back, apathetic at My calling them to seek My face and pray. Many are complacent, wrapped up more with current events than they are coming before Me honoring Me with their intimate presence and feasting upon My word.

I need you to come before Me and sit at My feet and just bask in My presence. I need My children to draw close to Me and humble themselves before Me. I need My children to pour their hearts out before Me.

I said if My people who are called by My name would humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways....then I would hear them from heaven and I would heal their land. But many are not desperate to see Me move across this land. They are not desperate enough to stay close to Me. They do not love My presence....to draw close and feel My heart beat for them, nor do they really want to partake of the deep cry of My heart that all My children would be saved from the wrath that I will pour out upon the earth.

Draw close to Me, My lambs, and let Me snuggle you close to Me. Let Me pour out My peace upon you that you may lay down in My safety. Feast upon My word. Be still and know that I am God and that I am in control. Be still, be quiet and assured that I will lead you and guide you into all truth. For I love you, My little lambs.

bethsheeba@juno.com

The Olive tree - A vision.

David Howe

This came during a meeting prayer time.

I saw an olive tree, On this olive tree I can see both the wild and natural branches growing together, Together in unity.

On this tree I can see the olives are ready for harvest, I see the workers coming towards the tree with baskets in their hands.

My people, The harvest is ready. Go forward and harvest my people For the olives are ready says the Lord.

Go forward and do not fear. Go forward for the last day will soon be over. Go forward and reap.

Do not say four more months and then the harvest, For I say to you, Look up, Look at the olive tree, For the tree is ready, For the harvest is ready.

Yes both Jew and gentile are ready says the Lord.

Go and harvest the olives, For soon the day will be over and night will begin, For when the night begins no one will be able to work.

Yes, Go forward my reapers and harvest my people, Do not let any be lost, For I wish all to be saved says the Lord.

The olives are ready for harvest.

Wellspring ministries England

David Howe
www.davehowe.co.uk
davehowe@fdn.co.uk

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