When rains fall, rivers run. When rivers run they shift. When rivers shift, the old dirt is carried away and new borders are formed. When new borders are formed, the old borders run dry. When old borders run dry, the trees that once drank from those fresh waters begin to wither and die.

The Lord says, “Behold I am doing a new thing! But you must turn in order to see it!”

Rev 1:12 I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands…

The voice of the Lord came from a direction he did not expect or anticipate. For, this man was facing in the wrong direction. Had he been looking in the right direction, he would have been facing towards the voice who spoke to him. Likewise there was no vision at all before this man until he turned to see.

The word of the Lord is to turn from the old so as to see the new thing that is coming. It is time to turn away from old ways of going. Old moves, old religion, past failures and past successes… even yesterdays thing.

God is forever doing a new thing. But we can not see the new thing unless we are supernaturally given supernatural eyes to see it.

Mark 8:23-25 He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?” He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.” Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

In the natural, we are looking in the wrong direction. But in the spirit realm, and then only by the voice of God and then by His release of supernatural vision can we see what is important as to the Kingdom of God.

If we do not TURN, we are just as blind as this man was.

Trees in a Swampy Bog

I saw a vision of a field of oak trees. There were both young and old trees in this field. They were growing in what appeared to be stagnant old bog water. They were all dying.

The Lord showed me that all of these trees were once planted by a vibrant fresh flowing River. They were thriving on the fresh flowing waters of the River at their feet. However, at some point, the River shifted position, but they did not discern it. So they continued to drink of yesterday’s waters. They were living in the ways of their yesterdays.

When a river shifts position, from where the river once flowed remains an area of stagnant waters, or marshy bog land that remains for many years. Though there may be life in these waters, the fresh waters have moved away leaving only that which can be contained in a small microcosm. It is an exact picture of the small boxes man places God in when we have defined Him based upon past events and experiences; when religion sets in.

Religion can be defined with two words: “Our Past”

In this vision, the large older trees represent old time religious churches that were established in moves of God in generations past. They also represent individual people stuck and dying in that old time religion. The young trees represent churches established and running in moves of the Lord in the recent past such as the Jesus movement in the 70’s, or even say 1994, 2001 or even yesterday! As well, these young trees represent people locked and dying in the same “moves of yesterday.”

God will not be contained by our yesterdays, however good. In fact He will not be contained in any box. Some say that bad religion places God in a box. Really it is the people in that religion that are placed in such boxes, not God. God just doesn’t show up in such places. The result is spiritual death. God just will not be contained by any of man’s natural fleshly definitions.

This vision of trees in a bog is a picture of both religion and the reliance upon the mind of man. It is a vision of a reliance upon old ways. A people placed in boxes of man’s definitions of God. It is a picture of what happens when we have to figure God out, when we have to cranialize what God is doing.

When the mind of man is in the way, or when the fear of man is in the way, the theology can only be but flawed.

But the Lord is always doing a new thing and this new thing is made known by a coming out of a former glory into His new and fresh glory.

He is looking for a people who will stand on the edge of the old glory and look outward in expectation of the new glory to come. Problem is that when “a glory” manifests, we have to figure it out. That causes us to turn around in the wrong direction and look inside at the old thing rather than focusing outward in patient expectation of the new thing.

It is true that whenever God does a new thing, it is from there that most criticism comes, and from those still locked in whatever is the old thing. This is because when we have “figured Him out” we become closed minded to something new that might be around the corner. Because we have “the answer”, when a new answer comes we no longer have eyes to see or ears to hear.

Eyes to see! Oh for eyes to see! Only God can give us eyes to see the new things of the Lord. Revelation is absolutely mandatory! Revelation comes from the revealed word of God by way of the Manifesting Presence of the Holy Spirit. For He is the voice who speaks it! The Holy Spirit is the Councilor who leads us into all truth.

Look again to this Mark passage at how Jesus gave the blind man eyes to see. Jesus first gave the blind man spiritual vision. He then restored the man’s natural vision. Which, then, was the more important gift that Jesus gave this man?

Now I see the vision of the oak trees in the bog again! I see them uprooting! I see them walking! I hear the call of the Spirit voicing the desire of King Jesus to these dying trees, beckoning the oak trees to “come”! Just over the ridge is where the new River is, from where Jesus calls. The trees are uprooting and walking over to the new edge of the new River! I see people, they look like trees walking around! They are coming out of the old thing into the new thing. They are re-rooting at the edge of the new River! Change change change!!! It’s just what Jesus was showing this blind man.

Ezek 47:6-12 He asked me, “Son of man, do you see this?” Then he led me back to the bank of the river. When I arrived there, I saw a great number of trees on each side of the river. He said to me, “This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, where it enters the Sea. When it empties into the Sea, the water there becomes fresh. Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows. There will be large numbers of fish, because this water flows there and makes the salt water fresh; so where the river flows everything will live. Fishermen will stand along the shore; from En Gedi to En Eglaim there will be places for spreading nets. The fish will be of many kinds– like the fish of the Great Sea. But the swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they will be left for salt. Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will bear, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing.”

Well that just about says it all for me! I give up! Just Plant me by the River of the Spirit of God for the rest of my days so that I can partake of the intimacy and adoration of my glorious King and Father God! Plant me there so that I might be a fisher of men! Plant me there so that I might bring healing to the wounded, joy to the sorrowful, peace to the downhearted, encouragement to the discouraged, truth to those who are dying!

Oh for the days of Heaven when we will all drink deep of these waters for eternity. But I tell you this, there is a portion of this River available for us right now. It is for the effectiveness and fullness of our individual call and of the call of this End Time Church. Only those with eyes to see and ears to hear will see and hear. They will be the ones who will do great exploits. They will be the ones who will reap the harvest of the end times.

Cart Before the Horse

In order to do these exploits, it is time to understand and flow in this ever-revealing wisdom of “change, change, change.”

Father is moving his emerging End Time Church on out to the very edge. He is then taking the church on the edge from one way of understanding out to a new way of going that we do not, cannot understand. He is taking us off the map that we are familiar with into places uncharted.

Father says that we need to stop trying to figure Him out and we need to stop trying to place the heavy yoke of cranial worldly definitions on His moves based upon what we think. He is saying that now is the time to step out into a new realm that will say, “I don’t have to have all the answers. I will trust Him and His leadership in all that we do.”

The way to do this is to let the Spirit have control of our meetings. Problem is that we, for so long, have been putting the cart before the horse. We have had to have control of our meetings. But the fact is that we cannot maintain effective control unless He first is in control. Then we can be in right control!

It’s like the soul being in control of my spirit and body. My cart is before my horse! My spirit must control my soul and body. That is right order. So it will be in the church. The Spirit will be in control of our meetings. Then the leadership will easily be able to exercise right leadership within a meeting. The Spirit reveals all things.

Fear breeds control. But the word says, “Perfect love casts out fear.” People lead religious church meetings as the “coverage” over the church out of fear. But when the Spirit is in control, there is no roof over the church. The leadership takes their place as part of the foundation of the church, right next to the Chief Cornerstone of that foundation, Jesus Christ! They hold the church up on their backs and say, “Here are your people Lord! YOU LEAD!”

All fear has left the building, man is no longer in control and now God can come with His still small voice and show His church His wonders! We have just turned to hear…

My Beloved Toronto

Many Spirit filled churches are beginning to move in this way. This has been the modus operandi for Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship since the Spirit fell in 1994. I can tell you, the Spirit has not been grieved in that place because John and Carol Arnott, my two very wonderful heroes in the Kingdom of God, they understand what it is to give full control to the Spirit. The Spirit has been coming and coming for years in that wonderful house of the Lord. Why? Because they will not touch His glory. They will not get in the way of the Lord. They had, and remain to have ears to hear and a heart for change. This understanding will be critical in the days ahead and critical for the church that is on the edge of a new glory.

If you want to study what it is to have and maintain revival that leads to reformation, take a trip to the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship.

I am certain that John and Carol would be the first to tell you, it was not perfect. I’m sure they would speak of the many times things did not go as expected. Or the many failings they had run into. But they knew this one very great key… They would never get in the way of God. They would always give Him their meetings. God is not looking for perfection in these things. He just wants us to let Him lead. This is why revival remains at TACF even today.

Left and Right

There is a new day coming now in which the Lord is dividing up the church between the left and the right (see Ecc 10:1-3 NIV). The church on the left will be the church without His Presence, the trees in the swampy stagnant salty waters that are dying. The church on the right will be the Spirit filled places of His radical Presence in which love will so manifest. It will be the places of the harvest. It will be the places of healing, deliverance and the raising of the dead and even more radical things than these. This church on the right will look like trees lining the banks of the River whose branches produce fruit for the nations.

The church on the right will be most criticized… not so much from the world, but from the church on the left. This will happen much in the same way as it was in the days of Jesus as He confronted the religious leaders of His day, the Pharisees and Sadducees. Today’s Pharisees and Sadducees are religious church leaders who cling to religious thinking. They will cling to their own conclusions over the radical revelations of the Lord by the Spirit. They will come against places of the Spirit on the right because they will not have ears to hear nor eyes to see. Even today there are some rising to prominence to speak out against the Spirit filled church, such as John MacArthur. John openly mocks such places, and it’s leaders of the Spirit as being heretical.

Then the Lord showed me a literal fall vision of a tree in the fall season. A tree goes dormant every year, which is a type of dying. It has to experience this “death” in order for the new thing to spring forth in the spring. All it’s leaves had dropped. But it was clinging on to the nuts, the fruit it had produced in the last season. Such are dead and lifeless religious structures that will not allow for the new thing to manifest. One must die to self before the new fruit can bear forth.

The Lord showed me that this tree was clinging on to “yesterdays fruit”.  And like this tree, most of today’s church is clinging on to yesterday’s successes based upon the teachings of man. This is the basis for religious ways.

Past Cannot Contain the Future

God is bursting out of the boxes of our yesterdays. They are too small for Him. Any box is too small for God. And most churches have their own box. It’s just that some are bigger than others; more room to move around in, but the same boxes of limitations. Like a tree that must die every year to bring forth next years fruit, so it is with the church. We must be ready to die to self again and again so as to remain pliable in the hands of the Lord for the new thing.

But God is ever rising, ever doing a new thing. And in this season it is marked both by acceleration and increase. He is about to restore what it truly means to go from glory to glory and from faith to faith. He is establishing His End Time Church to be one that recognizes a mystery as a mystery that cannot be explained. He is turning His End Time church away from intellectualism that has to find a man made answer to everything God does. He is taking servant leaders and in love making them subject to the headship of Christ as the ultimate leader of the church and all of His meetings.

He is taking the End Time Church into a radical place. He will bring them to the edge of what we understand then will thrust us forth into that which we do not understand. He is moving us from the edge of the old glory and thrusting us into the new glory. He is telling us to not look inward but outward when the new things happen. He is saying don’t try to explain the miraculous new things, you can’t explain it. Do not cranialize it. Just move in it and then look outward for the next new glory. He is telling us, we must turn in order to see.

This is not sensationalism; it should be the norm for the Spirit filled, Spirit lead Kingdom thinking church!

The River is always shifting. Do we have eyes to discern it? Do we have ears to hear of it? Are we willing to give up control, to turn and to hear the voice speaking from behind us?

Reigning Over the Reins

The Lord Jesus is going to reign as King of Kings over the church by way of the power of the cross, the very manifestation of the Holy Spirit right in our meetings. He wants to bring radical release so that we will see signs miracles and wonders that we have never seen before. If we try to explain it, we will miss it. If we try to explain a mystery, it is no longer a mystery.

The King of Kings is going to reign over His End Time Church in power. He is going to reign and He is going to hold our reigns! He will have it no other way. We must throw all our reigns of control up into the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ and give Him reign of our meetings by His Holy Spirit. In so doing, Jesus will be in control, not us.

Church leadership has been in fear of the enemy and the flesh long enough. The Lord says, “Who is God in my church? If I am God in your church, then what of the enemy or the flesh do you need to fear? In fact my perfect love will so permeate your church by My Spirit that no fear will be able to stand in your church! Even so you will easily know and defeat the works of the enemy in such places of My Presence that He will flee from you without you striving for a thing. I will show you where to disciple, who to disciple and how to disciple.”

The Lord is calling upon all leaders to take their reigns and throw them up to the Lord so that He will be in control of our meetings.

What was able to contain yesterdays blessing will be unable to contain the blessing to come. There are two reasons for this. First, this is a principle of Kingdom business. But more importantly for the season we are entering, it is a radical increase, even a “move” of God that is for the express purpose of the release of God’s end time plan. It starts with the reformation of the church! But reformation must start with His revival Presence! Things will go so fast, we can only but trust that He is in control. We won‘t have time to question when hundreds, even thousands get saved in one day.

It is time for everyone to let go of whatever it is that they are clinging to! If you don’t want to miss what is just around the corner, time to die to every way of being that limits God. That is, to die to the flesh in as full a measure as we know how.

Mt 9:16-17 “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”

Come let us all die so that we may truly live. Time to discard ALL our old wineskins and take on the new so that we may drink of Jesus like never before. Such is the only way that rivers of living water we will be able to flow from us.

Many have been touched by current and past revivals by the manifest Presence of the Holy Spirit. However it is true that revivals have failed. The Spirit departed, because the new wine was being poured into old wineskins that were unable to either contain or preserve the blessing over the long term. Man got in the way.

The new wineskin represents the man dead to self. In such a state, he does not grieve the Spirit by the manifestations of the flesh. He discerns and remains out of the way of the Lord. He lets go of the old and receives the new.

But behold, God IS doing a new thing.

How Do We Press In?

In order to see it, we must turn. We must turn out of the natural and into the spiritual. We must turn from the old into the new thing. We must release unto Him everything and die to such things as time schedules, agendas, plans, fear of loss of control, man made strategies, or whatever turns us away from the task of intimate face seeking, or the entering into the atmosphere of His Glory. In Revelations, John turned from what, in his mind, seemed the right way to point his attention around to an unexpected Voice that spoke from behind him. He turned from the natural way of thinking in order to see the spiritual vision of Jesus Christ dressed in a white rob and golden sash. When he passed the test of turning, he saw.

God is forever in the business of testing His leaders to see who is in control.

Now the ground has been shaken so as to see everything that has yet to die to die. Because, He is restoring the manifest Presence to the church that lasts.

The manifest Presence of the Holy Spirit is the key that will unlock and unleash the move of God that is coming. He is the only way. Christ is on His throne. He is no longer here. But He said that He would not leave us as orphans. He said that He would give us another Councilor, the Holy Spirit who would lead us into all truth. Read carefully John 14-17!

And God is doing away with “come and go” revival. Revivals die because of unbroken flesh, not because the Lord arbitrarily comes and goes. God never meant for the manifest Presence of the Spirit to leave the church. He is going past the mind and rising up the heart. He is replacing come and go revival mentality with a renewal (day by day ongoing) heart.

The Spirit of the Lord is coming like a freight train, and with much grace, but only to places who have eyes to see and ears to hear. And He is coming to houses that are full of love and full of brokenness from the top down. Because as goes the leader, so goes the church. But this release of the Spirit is preparatory for the move that is about to come.

The manifestation of the works of the Spirit is not the move, the move is bigger! The Spirit flowing in the church will be the “norm” which is prerequisite to this move. Signs miracles and wonders are coming.

Here’s are the keys: Worship and Intercession

Start with “ongoing corporate sacrificial ascending praise” that leads to …intimate worship. (But don’t stop when the Spirit begins to manifest in that intimacy!) Be soakers in His Presence. Waite for Him patiently, and do not stop in the waiting and soaking until He comes.

Intercede with revealed intercession. Leave your lists at the door and then pray! And don’t stop until He comes.

We suddenly find ourselves prostrate at the feet of Jesus. Then in the atmosphere of love and not satisfied at His feet, He lifts us up to His Holy face and then into His eyes… It is there that the Spirit manifests and the glory falls. Rivers burst forth in a dry and weary land and we gain spiritual food that satisfies!

Praise leads to worship, leads to intimacy, leads to the Presence manifesting, leads to Glory, leads to unimaginable effectiveness! Therefore love intimacy is the key!

Out of this manifestation will come releases of anointing of all kinds! And I saw a vision of a woman so busy in the laying on of hands that two people were needed to hold up her arms to lay hands on yet another recipient. She was like a Ruth Hefflin, like a mother in the Church. And it is the anointing that breaks the heavy yoke.

The Contextual Progression of Mark Chapter 8

Before we see or move in the Spirit, we need to first have eyes to see and ears to hear by faith. And the Lord is saying much to us out of Mark 8:1-25 that is key.

Mk 8:1-3 During those days another large crowd gathered. Since they had nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. If I send them home hungry, they will collapse on the way, because some of them have come a long distance.”

And the Lord says, “I have compassion for My Church Body who has had little spiritual food to eat, who have gone hungry for generations due to religious error. I am coming to you with food that satisfies. And many of you have been waiting a long time. I say to you, you will see it, whoever has eyes to see let them see!”

Vs 4  His disciples answered, “But where in this remote place can anyone get enough bread to feed them?”

And the Lord says, “Stop thinking in the natural and start craving the spiritual. In so doing you will see even greater things than ever before.”

Vs 5-10  “How many loaves do you have?” Jesus asked. “Seven,” they replied. He told the crowd to sit down on the ground. When he had taken the seven loaves and given thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people, and they did so. They had a few small fish as well; he gave thanks for them also and told the disciples to distribute them. The people ate and were satisfied. Afterward the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. About four thousand men were present. And having sent them away, he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the region of Dalmanutha.

And the Lord says, “Did I not say to trust me? Therefore be it known, what is of eternal value comes only from the hand of the Father, and which is supernatural. Learn therefore that I am in control, not any man. Of yourself, you cannot, but of Me you can, and in far greater measure than you can imagine!”

Vs 11-12 The Pharisees came and began to question Jesus. To test him, they asked him for a sign from heaven. He sighed deeply and said, “Why does this generation ask for a miraculous sign? I tell you the truth, no sign will be given to it.”

And the Lord says, “You will be tested in this to see if you have faith for the things of the Lord. What seems out of control is My test of you. Many will manifest radically, will you be offended? Will you step in My way? Or will you give me your meetings? Will you trust Me? Am I not infinitely more powerful that any of My enemies? Then will you give me your meetings? Will you trust me?”

“And the world will seek signs, but it is the lovers I seek, and it is to them I will show Myself.”

Vs 13-15 Then he left them, got back into the boat and crossed to the other side. The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat. “Be careful,” Jesus warned them. “Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.”

And the Lord says again, “I am always doing a new thing. Therefore do not go back to yesterdays successes. And walk away from places of dryness and religious ignorance!

And you will be tempted by money, fame, power, and a spirit of worldly excellence. Satan hates the fires of renewal more that anything, and He will make every effort to put these fires out. But have I not said that these fires, no man nor any work of the enemy will be able to put out? Therefore, be confident, I go before you and with much grace will you go. Therefore, in authority, and like a mighty flowing river, move around your obstacles, and take no heed of them.”

Vs 16-21 They discussed this with one another and said, “It is because we have no bread.” Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?” “Twelve,” they replied. “And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?” They answered, “Seven.” He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”

And the Lord says to the church in this hour, “Do you still not understand? Therefore TURN! Turn your eyes away from that which is of this earth and towards that which is eternal and supernatural. Only in this will you succeed in the move that is to come.”

“I am taking you out of the first gear of the Lord into the second gear of the Lord. And the church has yet to see the third and fourth gear of the Lord. But the second gear of the Lord requires the manifest Presence of the Holy Spirit in order to come to pass. Only churches with eyes to see and ears to hear will see it. I am coming to key strategic churches in key strategic cities in this key strategic hour!”

The Lord says we are at a crossroad. We can go down the highway of ineffectiveness to the left, or we can go down the narrow winding road of the End Time Church that turns to the right. But the Lord says that to pass down this road we must seek His face like never before, and we must die so that we might truly live.

And here is they key:

Vs 22-25 They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?” He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.” Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

And the Lord says, “What is far more important is that you first be restored to your spiritual vision, before you see in the natural. He says, “receive your spiritual vision so that you will be able to see the move that is about to come to pass”. And again, who has eyes to see and ears to hear?”

What Is Coming?

And so, what is the move of God that is coming? I believe it can be found in this scripture:

2Co 3:16-18 But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

This is the move of God, “ever-increasing Glory, in a constantly shifting River.”

We will see things we have never seen before for the purpose of the restoration of the fullness of the local church, and to prepare the local church for the end time harvest. Much grace comes with this, because we will stumble along the way as in Nahum Ch 2. And the Lord says its O.K. to stumble from time to time.

Because the Lord says, “Behold, in my house I have prepared for you a banqueting table full of things you have never had before! I am drawing you in to eat. But I will not have but a spotless bride in this room.”

Time to let faith well up and be willing to die, even desperate to “see”. For if we know we can see and then believe, we will see in the Spirit realm in the short years ahead.

Jn 11:40 Then Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”

Soon is the day that we shall truly and very literally begin to see the glory of the Lord! For as revival comes to stay, so then will come a true reformation of Fathers End Time Church. It’s the very desire of Fathers heart to see His Church move in great power to reap this great harvest.

Blessings in Christ by the infilling of the Holy Spirit!

T Scott Morton

That which occurs in the unseen has far greater, far broader, and far more important effect toward changes that manifest into the natural than what is done in the natural. That which is unseen, sometimes instantly, sometimes over time, invades the natural to change the natural according to Father’s plan.

Intercessors must know that many times, even most times when a prayer is released, we don’t see the results just yet. But damage against the camps of the enemy is happening. Change is happening. God is responding. God’s plans manifest in such ways.

How we ask (His heart, His mind, revelation prayers) is key. The unified effort behind such intercessions (non-religious, non-legalistic, not based in fear or worry) will be most important.

Intercession is progressively becoming absolutely invaluable. It must come out of intimacy. It will do great damage in the unseen realms. It will turn things around though we might not see it in the natural. It will set things in motion, though we might not feel it. It will set fire to many churches that are touched as a result… this we will see.

We are progressing/graduating to a point where everything of the Church will totally depend on the prayers of the Saints. This is nothing new, however I sense a renewing of this principle as a call from the Father for this season, and of which has great importance in the days ahead.

We need to know not to concern ourselves with whether or not we are effective in what we are doing. If we don’t see it, it does not mean that there has been no effect in the spiritual realms. We cannot judge our effectiveness by what we see. We cannot judge Kingdom effectiveness through earthly means. Keeping a record of success is at best flawed because we cannot see into the realm of the second heaven to know what unseen success has taken place lest the Lord show us spiritually. We are tempted to say we are in error and to stop if we do not see the results as we expect the results to happen. Just pray and prophesy in faith.

For the Saints, for the Kingdom to rise, worldly result must be shut out of our minds. For, when the world arises, the supernatural of the Kingdom gets shut out by the minds of people. It is true that the world is diametrically opposed to the Kingdom of God, a 180-degree opposite to what is important in the eyes of God. The kingdom of this world is in enmity with the Kingdom of God. As the world falls, God will protect His church so as to reap this great harvest. We must not fear what is to come, but in the Holy Spirit and in power, be ready to reap!

When a word comes to me that I sense is from God, it is true that if I don’t accept that word, it passes me. Likewise when a corporate warning comes, it is true that if we pray against it, or pray repentance, it’s effect too can pass without happening. I sense the word of the Lord saying, “It’s time to be proactive, to listen and then pray what you hear.”

A Testimony

I was at the Toronto Revival at the TACF during the years from 1999 to 2005. I visited there many times during that period because my job as pilot took me there. Our layover hotel at the Airport was within walking distance of the TACF Church.

John and Carol Arnott are two of my all time hero’s of the faith. For they have undergone more criticism and judgment from so many in the Church and still they carry the Spirit of Revival with mercy and with grace. They have taught me what it is to love the Presence of the Lord even in the face of volumes of persecution. I honor them greatly for carrying this great torch of light!

I have volumes of testimonies from my times at TACF! One Sunday service at TACF, the Spirit of the Lord was manifesting right in the middle of John’s sermon. I witnessed this even in person. There were people laughing, people crying and some people were even being quite vocal due to the manifestation of the Spirit upon them. It seemed a little distracting, disruptive, and “out of order”. John very gently stopped mid stream in his sermon. He said this to the audience, paraphrased:

“You know, many of you are here for the first time. Some of you are Pastors and leaders. And some of you might be wondering why I, as the Pastor, am not stepping down to these people who are making these noises and kindly asking them to take it into another room. You might wonder why I am allowing this to go on while I preach this message.

I’m not totally certain that what these people are manifesting is of the Lord. Most times we do know. And when we do know that someone is manifesting darkness, we do make the effort to stop and remove the disturbance. But when I am not sure, I never get in the way to stop it. Because if I choose to step in and stop it, because I might be offended at what I am seeing, who is it that I am getting in the way of (referring to God)? By stepping in and stopping this, I very well might be stopping what Father is doing for this person, or even in this room.

I don’t worry about the devil in this room. Because I know that God created the devil and that Jesus has all authority over him. So I don’t worry about him. If the Spirit is in control in this room and I am not, what do I have to be concerned about? I will never take the chance of getting in the way of God.”

This is why revival remains in Toronto, and is the very reason why revivals have failed throughout world history. Leaders who became offended at the “strange” works of the Holy Spirit, who chose to rend out of God’s hands the reigns of control, stepped in and stopped what the Holy Spirit was doing. I have read about this in many accounts of past revivals. It has happened time and again and from generation to generation.

Revival is never meant to end. Historically, man has brought them to an end by fear, in questioning and stepping in between Jesus and His Bride to stop what they did not understand.

By whatever means we do it, if leadership chooses to not allow Father to lead His meetings by the Holy Spirit, there will be no revival, and whatever revival manifests will quickly come to an end.

This is what is meant by the “Church with no roof”. There no longer remains the religious “coverage”, which filters what God wants to bring down and which filters what the people want to send up to the Father. Leadership gives up the reigns of control and allows the Holy Spirit to come and to lead.

John and Carol Arnott understood this from the start. They would testify that they by no means got it perfectly right… But it was the condition of their hearts to give God full control. And to this day, God continues to respond to that.

And this is the result of 18 years of revival at TACF: Tens of thousands of Church plants, millions upon millions of souls reaped for the Kingdom, thousands upon thousands of healings around the world and hundreds of souls literally raised from the dead. And since 1994, this revival remains. All because two dear leader Saints refuse to get in the way of God even if they do not understand what He is doing or how He is doing it…

As was the fruit on the day of Pentecost, 3000 souls saved… so it is also in places of revival. Life from the dead.

The Greatest Product of Revival: Revelation Truth

Did the flow of supernatural revelation from Father God stop the day that the writing of the Bible was finished? Certainly not. For to say so is to say that God stopped speaking when the Bible was complete. To say so is to say that God stopped doing new things after the Bible was finished.

The Bible is the unchangeable, inerrant and complete word of God by which God has spoken to the world, and continues to speak to those in the world. By no means do I come against the validity and ultimate importance of the word of God! The word of God explains so much of who God is, what He does and how He does things. However the word of God does not contain God.

What I say here is in no way to add to or take away from the Holy Scriptures of God!

God never violates His word. He just violates our understanding of the word. This is one extremely important reason that Father gave us the Holy Spirit! He would not leave us to our own ability to be guided into truth:

John 14:15-18 “If you love me, keep my commands.  And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

 He was saying, “I will not leave you Fatherless. I will not leave you to conclude on your own. By my Spirit, I will come to you and guide you into all truth…”

One can speak of the absolutely obvious and even perform miracles directly before people, but unless the people have eyes to see and ears to hear, they will not see it. Such was the case when Jesus was ministering before the Pharisees. Such was the case so many times as He was ministering even to His apostles! Therefore revelation truth comes only to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. But revelation truth is absolutely necessary!

John 16:13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth…

John 14:26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

If the Holy Spirit is the bringer of all truth, then what truth do we presume to be moving in if it is not first given in times of revelation?

The Apostle Paul received the full gospel of Christ by supernatural revelation, and not by the teachings of any man. It therefore is implied that all he gained in Christ after his initial conversion was by the Holy Spirit’s revelation anointing, not by any mental argument or man based teaching. His understanding came by way of relationship with God and by supernatural revelation understanding:

Ga 1:11-22 I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the Church of God and tried to destroy it. I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers. But when God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, my immediate response was not to consult any human being. I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went into Arabia. Later I returned to Damascus. Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days. I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother. I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie.

Who was the bringer of this revelation to the Apostle Paul? The Holy Spirit…

Kingdom revelation knowledge is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit is the very aspect that differentiates Christianity from all other religions of the world! For, only in Christianity is there a power that manifests God’s business into this world. Holy Spirit is a supernatural avenue of power that reveals that which is false as being false and that which is true as being true.

Without revelation knowledge, we are left to the conclusions and presumptions of the mind of man. Such is the basis for all error in religion.

While there is error that comes from those who honestly seek supernatural revelation truth within the Church, far greater error comes from those who reject supernatural revelation power out of fear or concern for false theology. Error comes when we reject God’s supernatural transference of Kingdom knowledge.

It, therefore, becomes incumbent upon leadership to seek the manifesting Presence of the Holy Spirit within the Church. For if He is accepted, He will come. But if He is rejected, He will not come.

If it is true that the Holy Spirit is the Counselor who leads us into all truth, then with the Holy Spirit OUT of the Church, what truth is that Church operating in? The answer is, the meaningless conclusions of the mind of man, and a descent into religious error.

Right truth comes by way of the word of God revealed by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Ma 22: 29 Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.

2 Tim 3:5 …having a form of godliness but denying its power.

Who is the “power” of God? He is the Holy Spirit of God. Jesus said it, the word and the power of God are required to be out of error. Therefore, the word alone is insufficient.

Revelation does not come by reading and knowing the word, then concluding it’s meaning. Satan knows the word of God better than any man on earth today. But for those whose hearts are dependant, revelation comes supernaturally as a gift from God to those who accept the Holy Spirit. Only then does the word come alive in the mind of the believer. Only then can one understand what Father is trying to say.

The Holy Spirit comes into those on the day they have first accepted Christ Jesus. (The Baptism into Jesus). The Holy Spirit comes upon those who understand the need for His supernatural work. (The Baptism into the Holy Spirit)

I like how the New Living Translation speaks this passage:

John 14:17 He is the Holy Spirit, who leads into all truth. The world cannot receive him, because it isn’t looking for him and doesn’t recognize him. But you know him, because he lives with you now and later will be in you…

Two clear manifestations of the Spirit are identified by Jesus in this passage. “With you now” is the move of the Spirit to bring all forms of equipping and teaching. “Later will be in you” is the mark of salvation through the completed work of the Cross. On the day of the Cross, “in you” was established. Also by way of the Cross, and manifested on the day of Pentecost, “with you” became dramatically increased. Those that waited by Jesus direction in the “Upper Room” were baptized into the Holy Spirit. Only then did they understood the truth!

I’m reminded of the state of the minds of the apostles before Christ died on the Cross. Jesus spoke in parables. They did not understand. Jesus spoke plainly and most times they still did not understand. They would argue amongst themselves about Jesus’ true meaning, but most times be completely missing what Christ was trying to say. Even as Jesus was upon the Cross, His very mother Mary still did not understand why. In John 14-17, we hear Jesus giving the apostles His final instructions prior to the Cross. Jesus spoke these words:

John 16:12-13 “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.”

Were the apostles stupid? All through the gospels we hear of how continuously the apostles did not understand even some of the most basic of Jesus’ teachings. Did Jesus pick a group of apostles that were intellectually challenged? Of course not! These men and women were endowed with the very same mental capability as we are today. They kept on with arguments that were completely irrelevant and completely out of line with what Jesus was trying to say to them.

What the apostles and followers did not have was the full measure understanding that only the Holy Spirit would soon be giving.

Jesus said, “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear.” They were not of poor intelligence. They were simply in need of the Great Revelator who would lead them into all truth. They could not comprehend God’s understanding, they were only able to make cranial conclusions! And those conclusions were almost always in great error.

Is this not the very state of today’s Church if it is not moving in the fullness of the Holy Spirit of God?

What Jesus was saying to His followers was this: “Right now you are incapable of understanding, because you have yet to receive the Holy Spirit. I have to go and complete what I came to do on the Cross. When I die, the curtain of the inner court will be ripped from top to bottom so that even you can receive the Holy Spirit, so that even you can come directly inside to hear Father’s truth in intimacy. By this, you will be filled with the Holy Spirit upon you. By this, you will understand by supernatural revelation. By this, what you think will become insignificant. By this, you will be able to do supernatural things. By this, you will go out and reap the nations.”

The apostles could not understand Jesus, simply because they had yet to receive the Holy Spirit. All the parables of Jesus were mostly confusing to them. Even the basic teachings were above them. They needed the power of revelation knowledge to understand. Mary did not understand. But when the Holy Spirit filed the upper room on the day of Pentecost, they all understood in an instant!

Today we have a choice to receive the Holy Spirit or not. For the believer who loves Jesus, he has the Holy Spirit within him. But Christ died for more than just salvation. He also died so that we would be supernaturally equipped to understand and then effectively complete our calling before we go to Heaven. He died so that we would receive the Holy Spirit as in the day of Pentecost; the Holy Spirit upon man.

Since the day of the Cross, we have always been given the choice to receive the Holy Spirit in this same way, or to choose not. So we can be in His Spirit or devoid of the Spirit. It is our choice, the choice of the leadership of the Church.

Jesus instructed His followers to wait. He said, “Go to the Upper Room and just wait there.” And they did so. Then the Holy Spirit came. Then they understood. How simple this process of understanding is!

So it is today. Father is calling us to wait. Come together corporately and to wait upon Him. In the waiting, He will come. When He comes we will be brought into unity by One Mind.

Acts 4:31-33 After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly. All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all…

This is the Church that Father is raising up in this day. This is the Church that will operate in revelation knowledge. Everyone will think alike simply because everyone gets the same Spirit. But it starts with a choice… from the top down.

Lord let this be said of us today?

Other Discussions on Revelation

Knowing God requires revelation knowledge:

MA 11:27 “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

All successful works of the ministry of the Lord into this world requires this manifestation of the Holy Spirit:

Luke 4:18-19 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

1 Corinthians 12 talks about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the first two are wisdom and knowledge. Daniel understood that these things come by way of revelation:

Daniel 2:20-23 Daniel answered and said: “Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, for wisdom and might are His. And He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings; He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding. He reveals deep and secret things; He knows what is in the darkness, and light dwells with Him. “I thank You and praise You, O God of my fathers; You have given me wisdom and might, And have now made known to me what we asked of You, For You have made known to us the king’s demand.”

Paul talks about the revelation of wisdom and the secret things of the Father given by way of the Holy Spirit:

1 Cor 2:6-13 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God’s secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him”– but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.

Revelation brings life. It’s not mans head knowledge. The natural mans mind craves knowledge. That’s information or knowledge of the physical man. But revelation is the language of Heaven and what the Spirit man craves. Revelation is knowledge straight from God which bypasses mans natural understanding. One is Holy, the other, where Heaven is concerned, is meaningless. Reference all of Ecclesiastes.

Where there is no revelation, no one thinks the same! No one is unified. There are endless theological arguments and division within the Church and between man:

Pr 29:18 Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint…

Revelation knowledge, as defined by scripture refers to revelations of what God knows connected to what God wants us to know. It is a supernatural transference of what is of the Kingdom, in the Kingdom, brought down to us in this world. It is what is the will of the Father, spoken by Jesus that is delivered by the Holy Spirit. It can be summed up like this; the mind of Christ.

1Co 2 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned…  “For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.

All discernment of Kingdom truth is by the Holy Spirit, not by what we think. And if we choose to operate in what we cranially conclude, that which is spiritual cannot be rightly discerned. Because what is spiritual truth almost always conflicts with what is true in this world. Therefore, God’s “balance” in any issue, as He would define it, rarely aligns with worldly definition or worldly balance!

When the Church operates in man’s wisdom, Kingdom wisdom cannot reside. Leven has entered into former revelations and false theologies ensue. We hear not with an open mind to learn. We hear from a closed mind that has been locked into the tiny box of man’s intelligence.

When the Church operates in revelation knowledge, it is operating in a total state of dependence. This is the way of John and Carol Arnott. They depended in all things upon the Holy Spirit of God, not willing to get in His way.

The dependant heart waits for the next word, moves only as directed and acts upon only that which has been given in line with the Scriptural word of the Bible. This kind of Church has become under the yoke of God. Jesus said this:

Mt 11:29-30 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

To be yoked means to become totally obedient and dependent upon the One who holds the reigns. Our minds are not the driver; Jesus is, by the will of the Father and the power of the Holy Spirit.

But when we, as Church leaders, choose to go a different direction than what the Lord says, or, by the fear of man or the devil, silence what we do not understand, we have cast off the yoke and then run forth in whatever ways our mind chooses. In such cases, and which is the state of the vast majority of today’s religious Church, we run out of control and unyoked. The Spirit departs. We enter into a state of spiritual lack and multiple divisions result. We miss the mark of God’s Kingdom truth. Like an archer wearing a blindfold, we shoot arrows everywhere but at the target, doing damage and establishing wounds wherever our arrows strike.

The religious Church is blind and unspiritual. It has become irrelevant as to Kingdom business for lack of Kingdom truth. Without revelation as its’ life blood, the Church is all but dead. Though God is forever awaiting a way back in… He is always willing to bring renewal to a people who will wait for Him.

Christ died that revelation be given. How we cheapen the cross if we reject the One who brings that revelation to us, the Holy Spirit of God, even if He violates our understanding.

The gospel truth cannot be taught or transferred in any way from man to man outside of manifest workings of the Holy Spirit.

In 2 Timothy 15, we are exhorted to be ones who “rightly divide” the word of God. So many quote this verse in defense of their own theology. How quickly people forget how Timothy was exhorted before this word:

2 Tim 1:13-14 What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us.

And:

2 Tim 1: 6-8 For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline. So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner. Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God.

Paul was telling Timothy that the only way to success in anything we do to further the expression of the Kingdom of God into this world is successful only by way of the work of the Holy Spirit.

The Apostle Paul understood, the “logos” written word alone is simply not enough. The power behind the word was absolutely necessary.

The right understanding of the gospel truth, for Paul, came by revelation knowledge. As it is with all believers who get it for the first time. The Holy Spirit revealed it…

Therefore inseparable from the truth of Christ is the power of His cross. Inseparable from the written word of God is the Holy Spirit. For one cannot even understand Christ and Him crucified lest the power of His cross manifest the revelation. And again:

Ma 22: 29 Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.

This is the beginning of wisdom, the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in and upon me; in and upon the Church.

Some get wisdom and others knowledge, and many don’t. Not all are wise men in the church. But the revealed word is not disqualified by those that don’t get it.

Each of us have a part to play and a portion to give within the Church Body. That is why the whole Church Body is required to bring the whole word. But for those who don’t see, how damaging it is to reject the word due to lack of vision or willingness to learn. If I am truly dependent of spirit, then I am willing to receive from another even if it violates my understanding.

Likewise, some revelation words require right timing. For many words are unlocked in due season. In such a case, the rejection of a word can also be damaging. Discernment is the key… NOT by the mind of man, but by the Holy Spirit of God.

The bottom line is this… How pliable and teachable are we? Regardless of how long we have been in the business of doing Church, are we willing to hear the fresh revelation of the word of God? Is not God always doing a new thing? Is He not forever increasing?

Isaiah 43: 18-19 “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.

Isaiah prophesying Jesus:

Isaiah 9:7 Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.

God is forever increasing and always doing a new thing. How can we ever perceive it if we are not willing to flow in the revelation knowledge of the Holy Spirit?

May you be filled with the Holy Spirit and with revelation power.

T. Scott Morton

The fruits of the Presence of the Holy Spirit last. And they have a particular blessing that also lasts. They stand the test of time, like road signs that direct us forward. How many times have I sung the hymns of old with warmth in my heart and a stirring in my soul? Time and again I remember my youth with fondness as I remember those old songs. But only now do I understand from where they came. It was the manifest Presence in a time of renewal! Only by the release of revelation that comes from that intimacy do such words as this come:

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Be Thou my battle Shield, Sword for the fight;
Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight;
Thou my soul’s Shelter, Thou my high Tower:
Raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise,
Thou mine Inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of heaven, my Treasure Thou art.

High King of heaven, my victory won,
May I reach heaven’s joys, O bright heaven’s Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

“They Presence My Light!” I want revelation like this for today! I want to be in His Presence and breath in the Glory of the Lord today! I want to be like Moses, who asked the Lord, “Show me your Glory.” I want to hear and understand what is on the Father’s heart for me. I want to know I am His son even in my failings.  I want to see the glory that this author saw in the day of His intimacy!

But I want the fresh word of God. I want the word that is for today and tomorrow. I remember the words of old, and they are timeless, those words of wisdom that the Lord had ordained out of His Presence. But those words point to our tomorrows, rather than remind us of our yesterdays. They beckon us forward, into fullness, into wisdom and revelation, into joy, into the fight and with effective weapons, into peace while all hell breaks around us. The seeds of our tomorrows can be found in yesterday’s words. But the fruit of our tomorrows will be released in the new things of the Lord.

“Behold, I am doing a new thing, always a new thing, says the Lord. But you must turn from the old thing to see it.” We must turn from our old things, our old ways, our familiar ways. To see the new thing, we must be fully aware of the “ever increasing” of the Lord.

Rev 1:12 I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands…

“When I turned I saw”. When we turn, only after we turn, we see.

And:

2Co 3:16-18 But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Ever-increasing means that God has an endless supply of new things for us that we have yet to see, that we have yet to partake of. This is the key to the new thing.
The religious are stuck in the old things, and fear anything that would come to change it. They drink from the stagnant waters of from where the River used to be… When God shows up with His wonderful Presence, things wonderfully change. But, when God does not show up, even if the old things was awesome in its’ day, nothing happens. We need faith for and an atmosphere in which the Holy Spirit is welcome to bring the new thing of God.

We need to have eyes to see and ears to hear the new thing, then be willing to turn not away from the old thing but to turn with the old thing in hand so as to add to the old thing the new thing.

We must always be willing to see the new thing, and be able to allow the new thing to both add to and then supersede the old thing. In reality, the new thing always supercedes the old thing. The old wineskin cannot contain the new wine. The question becomes, will we be able to yield to God’s new thing?

The new thing will almost always be preceded by the test of change. God is forever testing His leadership in the area of dependant trust and faith. “Here comes a change. Do you have eyes to see it? Do you have ears to hear of it? Do you discern it? Will you agree with Me, even if the new thing requires bigger faith, even if there seems no way, even if you don’t understand it, even if it looks strange? Will you receive it?”

“There is something wonderful in the state of mind that compels us to say, “He is going to violate my boarders again!”, Bill Johnson, Bethel Church Redding CA.

We actively enter into agreement with the truth that the Lord is forever in the business of change and increase! Then, in trust, we watch God do His stuff in the church that results in Kingdom effectiveness expressed into this dying world.

It is to all leaders who are willing to step out in the forever flowing new things of the Lord that will be given the keys to this end time harvest of souls. They are the ones who are so dead to themselves that no offense is feared, no fear manifests and through whom perfect love manifests in power.

I remember those wonderful old songs of my youth with love and fondness. But today, as I only now understand them in their fullness with their wisdom and encouragement, they only point to the future. Whatever stands the test of time from an old move always points towards the new thing.

Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

Vision requires dependency. Dependency requires sacrifice. Sacrifice leads to spiritual wisdom. Wisdom points man and the church forward.

However, vision is meaningless in the natural. The key to understanding the new thing is to align our minds with what is eternal. We must seek articulate spiritual vision, by which we receive Kingdom understanding and Kingdom strategy.

Mark 8:22-25 They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?” He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.” Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

Jesus saw it more important to first restore this man’s ability to see in the spiritual realm than to restore his natural eyesight. This speaks volumes to me!

Spiritual vision, this is what comes out of times of His manifesting Presence. Spiritual vision, this is the essence of all our successes in the here and now. Spiritual vision. Isn’t this what our life-walk on earth is really all about? And it always points us forward.

T. Scott Morton

In warfare, a good commander studies his enemy enough to know where the greatest, most effective targets of opportunity are. When the commander finds these targets, he prioritizes them with highest effort. As the Christian church is at war against the powers of evil, the church filled with the Holy Spirit is such a place. For, if by the Holy Spirit, 3000 souls can be saved in one day, such a place is of great importance to the Kingdom of God.

It is for this very reason that there is so much confusion as to the modern day workings of the Holy Spirit on earth. If the enemy of God can convince the church that there is no longer a need for the full manifestations of the Holy Spirit, he succeeds in rendering the church mostly ineffective. Sadly, satan has been very successful at doing so. But this is changing.

Power of Perfect Love

1 Jn 4:18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.

Love is a thing to be experienced in as full a measure as we can hope for here on earth, by faith. In Heaven we will literally be surrounded by this love that is so strong that no evil thing could possibly reside in such a place. Love is the power behind the light. As it is this light that chases darkness away, so it is that Perfect Love destroys all works of evil. Jesus is the Light of life. He is God’s greatest manifestation of love. Today, Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father. He comes to us by way of the Holy Spirit.

Here on earth we reside in a place mostly devoid of Kingdom perfect love. At best we express a partial love, for lack of a better term. For if the fullness of love were to be expressed on earth, everything evil would be utterly destroyed.

When Jesus came to earth, it was the greatest expression of love right in our presence. He lived and expressed the Father’s heart directly to man for a short period of time. He paid our price for sin and then returned to the Father. But, He made a promise for all mankind all thru the ages who would love Him from the heart:

John 14:16-18 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever– the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

Why did Jesus identify two manifestations of the Spirit? Why did He say, “with you” (current tense), “and will be in you” (future tense)?

Jesus said to the apostles, paraphrased, “I have been God right in your face. I have told you the truth in simple words. But I have to go now and die on the cross. Then I will go back to my Father’s side. In a little while you will no longer see me. But I will not leave you as orphans. I will not leave you alone without a way to be connected to me, or to the Kingdom of God. I will give you the Revelator who will express our hearts. He will lead you into all truth.”

Acts 1:8-9 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight.

Jesus said that we would be His witnesses. What would we witness to the world? What is it that Jesus would empower us to do… miracles, signs wonders? Yes… but far greater than that, Kingdom manifested love! The radical manifestation of signs, miracles and wonders follow the manifestation of love. They testify to love. The focus of our seeking of this Holy Spirit truly is the seeking of intimacy. How could we witness to this love but by the outward manifestation of the Holy Spirit upon a people who have the Holy Spirit within. Love therefore is the primary ministry of the Holy Spirit. And true love comes only through revelation and then a release of it.

This is why Jesus asked us to pray:

“Our Father, who is in Heaven. Holy is your Name. Your Kingdom come and will be done on earth as it is in Heaven!”

Jesus directed us to first acknowledge God as a Father. Second to praise His wonderful Name. Then to make the first request of Him, “Father God, bring down here to us your Kingdom… as it is where you are in Heaven!”

The Kingdom of God in nothing like the Kingdom of this world. God’s ways are so much higher, radical and different than our ways! Therefore it must be brought to us through revelation if we are ever to understand the ways of God!

How do we gain the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in Heaven? How do we gain this love revelation? The Holy Spirit upon us.

In and Upon

There are critically important differences between the Holy Spirit within a person and the Holy Spirit upon a person. Of all the understandings of theology, this very issue might well be the most important understanding of all.

If this understanding is not understood and enacted upon, the result will be religious lifelessness within the Body of Christ. The devil knows this well. For, the Holy Spirit is the power that destroys his works on earth. This is why he targets these issues with great effort.

Most every church understands what it is to have the Holy Spirit in a person. But there is a great misunderstanding of the ongoing need for the Holy Spirit manifestations upon the person. An argument needs to be developed in order to understand this issue.

Consider some scriptures that identify the works of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament. Notice very closely the disposition of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in each of these Old Testament passages:

Num 11:17 I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take of the Spirit that is on you and put the Spirit on them. (As a result…) They will help you carry the burden of the people so that you will not have to carry it alone.

Num 11:25 Then the LORD came down in the cloud and spoke with him, and he took of the Spirit that was on him and put the Spirit on the seventy elders. (As a result…) When the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied…

Num 11:29 But Moses replied, “Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the LORD’s people were prophets and that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!”

Num 24:2-3 When Balaam looked out and saw Israel encamped tribe by tribe, the Spirit of God came upon him and (As a result…)  he uttered his oracle: “The oracle of Balaam son of Beor, the oracle of one whose eye sees clearly…

Judg 3:10 The Spirit of the LORD came upon him, so that he became Israel’s judge and went to war. The LORD gave Cushan-Rishathaim king of Aram into the hands of Othniel, who overpowered him.

Judg 6:34 Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Gideon, and he blew a trumpet, summoning the Abiezrites to follow him.

Judg 11:29 Then the Spirit of the LORD came upon Jephthah.

Judg 14:6 The Spirit of the LORD came upon him in power so that he tore the lion apart with his bare hands as he might have torn a young goat.

I have done and exhaustive word search in the Old Testament to see if there is any place that the scripture identifies the manifestation of the Holy Spirit within a person. I found NO scripture, besides in Ezekiel that prophesies to the Spirit’s works after the completion of Christ’s cross, which indicates the manifestation of the Spirit within a person:

Ezek 37:13-14 “Then you, my people, will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the LORD have spoken, and I have done it, declares the LORD.'”

What I found in every Old Testament reference was that when the Holy Spirit came down to people, He manifested upon the people rather than within them. The result of this manifestation of the Holy Spirit upon them was a previously unattainable increase of effectiveness and victory along with a revelation of intimacy with God. The result was a supernatural measure of newfound effectiveness, a release of a supernaturalanointing, or an effect that no one could muster of themselves. God came down in the form of the Holy Spirit upon a person to see something done that no one could possibly do in the natural.

In Old Testament days and as it is today, it is the Holy Spirit upon a person that leads to increases of effectiveness that gets the physical and/or spiritual job done.

But how is it that there is no evidence of the Holy Spirit ever residing within a person prior to Jesus death upon the cross?

Scripture makes it clear that God cannot nor will not reside in the presence of sin.

First and Second Adam

Man became unclean because of the “Adamic flesh curse” inside. Because of the first sin Adam and Eve committed, sin was now in the world, and which has become the ultimate flesh curse that we all bare. Jesus made it clear, “No man is without sin, not one.” The fact is that because sin was now in the world, and prior to the death of Christ on the cross, there was no way into the Presence of the Father. There was no complete and effective means of cleanliness that would allow man to enter into the inner court Presence of God.

Scripturally, the only person to enter into His Presence was for the Chief Priest, and then only once per year, even then only by the express mercy of the Father to allow Him in. Even in this case, the Priest came into only a portion or representative measure of the Father’s Presence.

Even when Moses asked the Lord to show Him His glory, Moses was not allowed to see the Face of God and live.

In the Old Testament, the closest any man ever got to the literal Presence of the Father was the manifestation of God’s great Representative, the Holy Spirit upon man.

Moses asked the Lord, “Show me your glory.”

Exod 33:17-23 And the LORD said to Moses, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.” Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” And the LORD said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” Then the LORD said, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen.”

The Lord said, “You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” But the Lord did allow a measure of His glory to pass by Moses. However, Man could not enter into the full glory Presence of the Father and live because he was unclean with sin. Had man been without sin, he might be able to enter in, as was the case with Adam before the fall when Adam literally walked with God. However, because the Lord is perfect and without flaw, no flaw could then nor can sin now reside in His Presence and live!

This is why sin grieved the Lord so much. He wanted so much to be with His beloved and favorite creation. But our Adamic sin separated us. He is perfect, and our sin brought imperfection into His dwelling. But then came the Cross. In that, we became clean even in our flaws.

The manifestation of the glory of the Lord will not nor cannot reside in the presence of sin. Since man was flawed and in sin, the Spirit could not yet dwell in man.

Holy Spirit In Us

The Holy Spirit within man began on the day of the fullness of Jesus Christ death on the cross. It was brand new. It was to be the mark of eternal life:

Eph 1:13-14 And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession– to the praise of his glory.

John 14:17-18 …Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

Here Jesus was yet to die. He said the Spirit lives with you (present tense) and will be in you (future tense). He was saying that the Spirit would come into them in the days ahead so that they would not be left as orphans. The cross was yet to have happened. The infilling Spirit would be the mark of a persons salvation and an act that was previously unavailable until the finished work of the cross.

Before I accepted Christ, I was in line with Adam, and the curse he established for himself was established upon me. I wasn’t being bad… I was bad by nature. But through Jesus Christ death and resurrection, I took on His righteousness through the Power of Grace and became righteous in Him. Once again, not by anything I have ever done, but by my act of faith. To say I do bad things that lead me to hell, is an incorrect understanding. I was, by the nature I inherited from Adam, condemned. It is just as wrong to say that by my righteous acts, I establish salvation for myself.

The fact is, through Jesus Christ, I am made righteous by a new inheritance that completely trumps my old inheritance. My identity changed away from the first Adam, to the second Adam… namely Jesus Christ. Upon my acceptance of Christ as my Savior, that became my new inheritance given to me directly by the Holy Spirit’s act within me. The old Adam was the inheritance which lead to death. The new Adam, Jesus Christ is my new inheritance that leads to life eternal. And which can only be activated upon acceptance of Jesus Christ. See all of Romans 5.

Therefore, the Holy Spirit in us references the mark and guarantee of salvation. Below, Paul is speaking to those Roman’s who were already saved:

Rom 8:9-11 You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.

The Spirit in me marks me as righteous in the eyes of the Father. Now I can enter right in to the Holy of Holies where before I could not. Now grace covers my mistakes. What an amazing gift, this Spirit in me!

1 Cor 3:16 Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?

 Col 1:27 To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

 I Jn 4:4 You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.

How the Holy Spirit operated and manifested in the Old Testament changed radically the day Christ completed His work of the cross.

The fullness of Christ’s work of the cross could not have come about without the actions of the Holy Spirit. For, it was the Spirit who impregnated Mary with Jesus. It was the Spirit that came down on Jesus when John baptized Him, and not until then did Jesus begin His three years of ministry.

It was the Holy Spirit that led Jesus to be tempted by Satan. It was the Holy Spirit who enabled Jesus to endure the cross. It was the Holy Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, and it was the Holy Spirit that reseated Him in His place of Glory.

Jesus declared that the Spirit will not speak on His own but only what is from the mind of Jesus. Jesus also said that He (Jesus) does nothing but what is the will of the Father. We can say that this great mystery of the Trinity is fully unified, fully authoritative and fully submitted one to another. From Him comes all power and everything created.

By the Holy Spirit within me, I am saved and market for Heaven. But, it is through the Holy Spirit upon me that all the power moves of the Lord come forth on earth as it is in Heaven! Our agreement with the works of the Holy Spirit lead to a unified understanding of Kingdom theological truth here on earth.

Matt 22:29 Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.”

Jesus sacrifice made the way. But the Holy Spirit was the power behind His sacrifice. Jesus makes it clear; we need to be revealed to the will of God (Father’s Heart) the word of God (Jesus Heart) and the power of God (Heart of the Holy Spirit). Something magnificent occurred when the fullness of the Father’s plan came to pass thru Jesus Christ at the cross.

Today’s church reveals very well the fact that Christ’s death resulted in our salvation and the hope of our future. When someone gets saved, there is nothing the devil can do to change it. But the church is very week in the understanding of the power of the cross for the here and now. This the devil CAN change by the workings of religious demonic spirits within the church. Satan could care less if you are saved. What he cares about is you being filled to the fullest by the Holy Spirit, by which you can save thousands in a day.

Drawing Near Through the Torn Curtain

Christ’s finished work of the cross established a new and magnificent work of the Holy Spirit beyond that which was experienced in the Old Testament.

Here is a key scripture:

Matt 27:50-52 And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life.

The shedding of Jesus blood made the way for us to enter into the inner court of the Father’s Presence in Heaven where before there was no way at all to do so. Now we can come in where before we could not.

We see here that the bodies of many holy people came to life at the point of His death. Before this point, they rested in waiting. Ezekiel saw this event prophetically:

Ezek 37:13-14 Then you, my people, will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live…

They were loved of by the Lord, but there was yet to be a way for those beloved of the Lord to enter into His “Inner Court” Presence. There needed to be the completed work of the cross. When that was done, they came forth and were now able to enter into the Lord’s Holy of Holies, namely Heaven.

The blood of Jesus is like a veil of protection between us (our uncleanness) and the Father’s Face. Though we have sinned in our lifetime, and though our punishment should have been death, Jesus took all our punishment. Therefore, His shed blood has become our shield, a crimson red veil that forever stands in place between me and my beloved heavenly Father which allows me to come into His very Presence.

The Father looks at me thru the veil of His Son’s shed blood and sees me white as snow. This then is the only way I have been given right to enter into Heaven. Before His shed blood, there was no way for any man to enter into the Inner Court of His Holy Presence. But now because of His sacrifice, there is a way. Before Christ I could not enter into His Presence and live. Now, based upon my choice to agree in Christ, I can now do so, even in my flawed state.

This clearly explains why we must choose Christ as an act of our will in order to be saved. How marvelous and unspeakable is this gift!

Heb 6:19-20 We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf.

Heb 10:16-22 “This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.” Then he adds: “Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.” And where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin. Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart infull assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.

Through Christ we have been given permission to enter into the most Holy place of the Father’s dwelling, even in our flaws, to be loved to the fullest. Before Christ, we could not. After Christ, we are! Oh this is love manifested in Christ’s sacrifice so that we can enter into the inner courts of Father to be loved on in His glory! All provided for by the works of the Holy Spirit in us and then upon us.

Because of the complete work of Christ, there is a new manifestation of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit within us, marking us as righteous. For those that love the Lord, there is now a means to identify them, or mark them as saved. That is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. This work of the Holy Spirit inside a person was nonexistent prior to Christ’s death.

For the same reason that I was unable to enter into the inner courts of salvation, the Spirit would not, could not come into my sinful inner being without this amazing process of atonement.

In the Old Testament years, there was no scriptural statement of the Holy Spirit within a person. This, therefore, was never the case. No man was able to carry the Holy Spirit within him because the fullness of Christ death had yet to happen. No one was saved before Christ because the fullness of Christ had yet to happen.

The tomb’s bursting forth the former saints makes clear this point. Before Christ’s death, every man died. When sin was made known in the earth, we all died! But for those that loved the Lord, though they did not know Christ, there faith and love in God was credited to them as righteousness for the day of Christ’s finished work. God knew their hearts.

Truly… it is what is in the heart that saves a man. Only by a heart of love in God is a man saved. For faith births out of a revelation of love.

So, of those who lived in Old Testament times, those who acted under the unction of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit did so with the Spirit upon them. That portion of the function of the Holy Spirit did not change by way of the cross. However, I do personally believe that it was increased. After the cross, we saw more people filled with the Holy Spirit upon them. The stories of the book of Acts and beyond testify to this increase. And the result of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost raised such a ruckus that the church was born with 3000 people saved in one day. That occurred by the power of the manifest Presence of the Spirit upon those saints on that day.

Why is this so important?

Why am I making such ado about the difference between the Holy Spirit in us as compared with the Holy Spirit upon us? I tell you, this is of critical importance to the Body of Christ today!

The manifestation of the Holy Spirit in a person can be easily explained when looked at by the natural eyes of man. We can easily classify the works of the Spirit as some unknown mysterious undefined entity that works unseen and spiritually within to ensure our salvation. That is all well and good, and can easily fit neatly into the box of man’s limited ability to understand in the spiritual until we begin to talk about the manifestations that pour out the radical and the miraculous! That is when things become misunderstood.

The religious church has so fallen away from the manifestations of the Holy Spirit upon us that they have, by in large, defined all works of the Holy Spirit only as a work that occurs within a person, neatly tucked away until the day heaven is gained.

The church has all but rejected the idea that the Holy Spirit can come upon a person and manifest forth into the natural world. But this is beginning to change under the move of the Father upon the church to squeeze out the old things and bring in the new. The new thing requires the manifestation of the Spirit upon the church, not only to be understood but also to be accepted. The revelation of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit upon man is rising and being restored to those that have eyes to see it.

There is a huge difference between the works of the Spirit within a person’s spirit (inner man), and the works of the Spirit upon his soul and body (outer man). The church needs to understand this difference and embrace the radical and new moves of the Lord that come by way of the Spirit upon man in the days ahead.

John 16:13-14 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.

If all knowledge comes by the Holy Spirit, if anything new of the Lord comes forth by revelation of the Holy Spirit, how then can any fresh and new thing of the Lord come if the Holy Spirit is not welcome to manifest upon the believer or upon the church Body? It becomes clear then why the enemy of God is always at work putting such flames of God out when they appear! It is why revivals die…

The church that is moving in the manifest Presence of the Holy Spirit will be God’s end time church, both of the cross and the power of the cross. As a result, though they stumble from time to time, they will not be in error, but in grace!

They will be the ones that will see signs miracles and wonders that will testify Jesus Christ to a dieing world. They will be the ones with the Father’s revelation love and with great unity. They will go forth healed and in great joy even though they witness great atrocities. The church with the Spirit will see many souls won in a day.

The church that rejects the Holy Spirit upon people will remain the church that is dead and ineffective. Though they be large, they will be filled with people who have spoken to them what they want to hear.

2 Tim 4:3 For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.

Doctrine, or theology, was never meant to be people’s interpretation of the word of God! It was always meant to be an establishment of truth expressly given by the Holy Spirit in times of loving intimacy with the Father! This is what we get when the Holy Spirit manifests upon us.

The church without the Holy Spirit in this way will be the ones whose love has grown cold, and which will be filled with disunity and judgments. The church without the Spirit will put salve on the wounds that do nothing to heal and will see much strife and turmoil both inside and out.

The church without the Spirit in this way might see a few salvations in a month. I don’t deny that the Lord can work in such places as these, but where does man want to know the Lord? Will it be within a place locked in the tiny box of man made thinking, or from a place that is free from religious thinking by the revelation of the Holy Spirit unto the fullness of their individual and corporate call?

There is much argument that says that we need to not be interested in the “feel good” manifestations of revival. I have heard it said many times that we should not be seeking revival. How wrong and deadly is this statement! Such a statement borders on blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

There has been so much criticism against the manifestations of the Holy Spirit in places of revival. The fact is that those who criticize do not understand the purpose by which Jesus would bring the Holy Spirit upon man. They don’t understand that the Spirit upon man will always offend the natural senses. They don’t understand that the Lord just wants to love on His beloved in this way. They don’t understand that people get healed and delivered in this way. They don’t understand that this is how He manifests!

There is a mentality of the necessity for “control” in the church, worldly contrived submission to authority. Submission to authority is absolutely the right way, only when such authority is submitted to the Holy Spirit upon them.

When some people see the manifestations of the Holy Spirit, they fear, “This is out of control. What will people think of this?” But who is it that is in control? Is it the mind of man, or is it the mind of Christ directly delivered into the church by the Holy Spirit upon man?

We must know that what seems out of control in the natural is quite in control in the spiritual. When I am shaking on the floor under the weight of His wonderful Presence, shaking… crying…laughing… I am being loved upon and healed! But for those who are witnessing it, they are being tested. The Lord is testing their faith. The flesh is being offended. The Lord is asking two questions. “Do you think that is me? Will this be my thing or man’s thing?”

If the devil is a created being by God, does not God have all authority and power over his works? The fear of the devil is a religious argument. For in the natural, we have no authority over his works and should fear him greatly.

But in the Spirit of the Spirit, the devil is dealt with easily and with all the backing and authority of Heaven. Therefore when the scriptures tell us to be wise against the wears of satan, the answer is not of the flesh but to be filled with the Holy Spirit who leads us into all truth! For all wisdom comes from the Holy Spirit alone.

Some also say that it is by sacrifice that the Holy Spirit manifests. Though there is some truth in this, it is really only in the sacrifice of time and of intimacy that the Holy Spirit responds to. The problem is that many go beyond that and imply that it is by some amount of work that brings any measure of the Lord’s attention. This is just not true.

If it were by works, how much work then would be required? How much effort, how much sacrifice? How long do we need to pound on His door? Would any father imagine withholding his love to his son until a prerequisite amount of effort or crying outside his door has been done? Would he not rush to the door and open it in love? This is exactly what the story of the prodigal son was about. The father charged him nothing to be fully recovered to him.

I hear the Lord saying that the time is now to choose which way the collective church will go. The time is short because the harvest is at hand. Will it be man’s religious way or the radical spiritual fullness of Jesus’ way thru His ongoing manifesting Holy Spirit?

How He Will Come?

The Father simply wants our love and attention. That is what this is all about. Like any lover, He comes when He knows He is wanted. He comes when He knows He is believed upon. He comes when we are out of His way, and He stays when we stay out of His way.  In a word… dependence.

This is all He seeks in order to come with His Spirit upon us in power. I have personally experienced Him in this way too many times to believe anything different of Him! I have seen it in Toronto. I have seen it in Brownsville. I have seen it in Odessa, Ukraine and the northern boarder cities of Mexico. I have seen it in Oklahoma City. I have seen it in Central California. I have seen it in Portland, Oregon. I have seen in Boise, Idaho and Spokane, Washington. I have studied it in revivals over the last 300 years. It always happens the same way. God comes when a people are hungry for Him. He stays when the people give Him control.

His love is withheld when we do not express our desire for Him. His love is withheld when our minds remain un-submitted. This is the only reason the Spirit has ever been out of the church in power.

But even our expression of love can become legalistic. The question remains, what does the Father want in our meetings and will we give our meetings to Him in entirety? The answer in a word… intimacy.

Some cry out against the experience of Him. They say, “I am not interested in an experience”. For the life of me I cannot understand this statement! This is like saying, I want to love on my lover from far away! Goodness what error!

I want to experience Him again and again and again! Like Moses, the Presence faded upon Him. Like a suntan, it fades. Same thing with the Holy Spirit, I need Him, then I need Him again, then I need Him again and again and again! Like a lover in the intimacy of touch and contact, I want to love on my lover in His Presence time and again!  Are we not the Bride of Christ?

Like a baby that needs the touch of a mother in order to survive, I need the experience of the Presence of the Holy Spirit to know I am loved. I need that touch! We were made to be touched in intimacy. We were made to need the experience of love!

Faith without experience is a dead faith.

The argument against the desire for experience almost always includes the idea that if we are stuck on seeking the experience we defocus on the need to do the hard work. There is a mentality that the manifest Presence is not on the mission field, nor in the places of the harvest, but only in the church.

It is true that there are some who live for the experience and shun the work, but we cannot throw out the baby with the bath water. We limit the purpose of His Presence if we say that the Spirit does not manifest in the hard works of the Lord. I can testify, this is not true. If this is all we believe, that the Spirit manifests only on certain divine occasions or locations, this will be all we will be able to see.

It’s true that the harvest will be reaped in the fields of harvest. But how is it that we can say that the Holy Spirit will not be with us in the “hard works of the Lord.” Some say, “You need to come down off the mountain to do the hard works of the Lord.” “It’s not about the experience, it’s about the sacrifice.” We’ve been warned in the Word that in this world we will see troubles of every kind. But the heart of it is this, we don’t have to go it alone in the sacrifice! The Holy Spirit will be with us in the doing, even with us in that place of sacrifice, if we believe He is willing.

I think that there will be a way of going that we will be so filled with His love that He will literally be all over us as we go out into the fields. I know this is the very fact with Heidi Baker in Mozambique. 8000 church plants, thousands of salvations, thousands of confirmed healings and over 100 raised from the dead at last count.

Heidi would say, as I have heard her personally say many times, it all has been done in the joy of His manifested Presence right in the garbage dumps of Mozambique. Right there in the poorest spot in the poorest city in the poorest nation in the world, and she has seen the literal glory cloud of the Lord hover in that place with her own eyes time and time again!

How can one limit God by saying that the Holy Spirit is an experience that is and should only be in the church but by a heart that will not believe? How can one declare against the experience of the Holy Spirit in our meetings but from a cold heart that has not experienced the revelatory touch of intimate Kingdom love in this way?

Heidi and her husband Rolland Baker are where the church is going in the days ahead. And how they are doing it is ten times more simple than even many of today’s Charismatic churches are making it. They truly are simply obedient hungry and thirsty lovers of the Lord. And that is all it takes to go all the way with the bridegroom.

Did not Jesus say that His yoke would be easy and His burden light? By the mind of man, these things are impossible. But through Christ gift of the Holy Spirit, all things become possible.

Conclusion

Father God wants to express His heart in the manifestation of the Holy Spirit upon man. This is 100% about intimacy. Then the intimacy results in an outward expression of love and power into the harvest fields. Love in the church, which is perfect love cannot be contained, it will not be contained. It will burst forth outside the church to a dying world who are hungry for spiritual truth. The result will be a harvest reaped in love and in power.

As in all things of the Lord, faith must be expressed first before we ever see a spiritual thing from the Father. And so it is with this understanding of the Spirit in and upon man. No one will see Him who will be in the way of Him.

We must therefore understand who the Holy Spirit is and why He now comes upon the church. He comes into a person at regeneration. He comes upon those who have eyes to see and ears to hear for the purpose of effectiveness in the here and now.

The Holy Spirit in a man gets the man home. The Holy Spirit upon the man allows the man to bring many with him. The Spirit in a man is for then. The Spirit upon a man is for now!

Jack Hayford said, “ If we think that the “hope of heaven” is the sum of Christ’s gift, we will live out a spiritually juvenile experience, pointed toward heaven but pointless on earth.”

It’s no wonder then why it is that the enemy of the Lord fights so hard against any understanding of the Holy Spirit upon man. It is why there is so much judgment against He the Holy Spirit by those who either do not or willfully will not understand. For the Holy Spirit is the testimony of the Father’s heart of unconditional love. Holy Spirit is the great revelator of Kingdom wisdom and knowledge. He brings faith as a gift to those who have faith as small as a mustard seed. He is the power of the cross for healing, deliverance and new life, the very Spirit of revival and renewal.

He is the very Presence of the Father and of Jesus in our person, upon our person and within our meetings. He is the very great representative of the Father’s will and of Jesus word. Whenever the Lord manifests upon a place, it is the Holy Spirit who is doing it.

We must now understand who He is and why He must manifest in our churches in this hour. It is time for us to be restored to His Presence in the same way as when He came on the day of Pentecost. In so doing, the church will rise up to its rightful place in the world with authority and power rather than worldly submission and irrelevance.

This is the call of the Lord in this hour. “Be restored to my Presence by waiting. And I will come to you again in power. For the harvest is ready but the workers are few.”

T. Scott Morton

tscottmorton.wordpress.com

Familiarity leads to a redundancy that breeds a reliance on performance. This in turn, leads to a prideful way of independent religious excellence. If the heart of religious lifelessness is “order”, it’s blood is “familiarity”.

Familiarity causes us to look backwards at what worked in the past to copy and then recreate it. This is a wrong way in regards to the Kingdom of God because the Kingdom is always advancing into the new thing. By it’s nature, every new thing of God is unfamiliar simply because we’ve never seen it before. Spiritual perception followed by our first choice to act upon it overcomes familiarity.

2 Cor 3:17-18  Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.  And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Isa 43:18-19 “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.

A key strategy of the enemy of God is perverted familiarity. (I define perversion as an overall falsification of a particular truth.)

God placed in our soul a need for familiarity so that we would cling to the things that are true and important. Problem is that in our flesh, we experience ungodly things that we also tend to cling to. Herein lies the strategy of our enemy. It’s the ungodly stuff that wars against our soul and which draws us away from what is important in the Kingdom of God. A primary tool the devil uses to do that is familiarity. This is such an important strategy to the devil that he assigns demons specifically to deal in familiarity towards humanity.

Lev 19:31 ‘Give no regard to mediums and familiar spirits; do not seek after them, to be defiled by them: I am the LORD your God. (NKJ)

This reference to familiar spirits in the King James Bible references demonic spirits who are familiar with what is going on; in essence, “demons that know”. Is not familiarity, in its most simple form, a knowing?

My key point is that God is moving us from what we know into what we don’t know by faith. If we get stuck in what we know, we become unable to gain anything new or unknown.

For the Spirit filled Christian, familiarity is only valuable as it pertains to the principles of “God who never changes”. In “being familiar” with these principles, I stay out of trouble. By this familiar knowledge, I know who my Father, my Savior and my beloved Holy Spirit are. But as to “current events” of God, what God is doing now and tomorrow, familiarity tends to cause me to turn towards yesterday’s familiar experiences and reject the new things he is doing.

The new thing of God always flies in the face of familiarity. God does this for many reasons, not the least of which is this: In a word, trust. Or better said, faith.

He tests us. Will it be about us and what we know, or will it be about God and what he knows? So long as we remain here on earth, we must know, God will always put our faith and trust to the test.

Jer 11:20 …O Lord Almighty, you who judge righteously and test the heart and mind…

He does this by presenting us with the choice to accept or reject the unknown radical new thing of God. He brings new things in ways that offend our flesh.

What really is being offended is our sense of familiarity to what has been.

 We must know this: Living on the cutting edge of God means that we will offend the “wise.” We will offend the norm. And so, we must be as devoid of self and our own offendability as possible, so as to withstand the attacks that will most certainly come.

Truly the wise people of God are those filled with the Holy Spirit who understand the Kingdom need to be totally dependent. For the wisdom of the Kingdom of God is not concluded, it is given by way of revelation. All wisdom therefore is given not figured out. Independence blocks reception of knowledge from any source other than one’s own mind.

Those who move in the new thing of God thrive on the daily given manna of revelation knowledge. As it was in the desert, so it is with us. The manna that comes only lasts so long as to see the new thing come to pass. Then it goes bad. We become dependent for tomorrows manna tomorrow. When it comes tomorrow, we gain the new thing for tomorrow. God works in this way so that we will be forever dependant upon his means rather than our means, his thinking rather than our thinking.

Deut 8:3 He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.

Everything of the Kingdom of God is made known by the Holy Spirit, it cannot be concluded by the mind of man. So, the more we yoke our minds to the mind of Christ, the less effective the spirit of familiarity is against us. The more we listen and hear in times of intimacy and love with the Father, the more we know and move in the new thing of God.

As to the Kingdom of God, the renewing of the mind can only happen by revelation in the Holy Spirit. It cannot happen by anything we can do, either cranial or physical.

Whatever we are certain of in our minds, we defend to the hilt. And so the mind that is independent not only gets in the way of God, but over time becomes a wall to change.

True Godly wisdom and control in the church happens when people give up the reigns of control to Jesus in trust and in faith of the Holy Spirits manifesting Presence. The result is the manifestation of right order and right knowledge. We protect the church by hearing, not thinking (i.e. thinking is supposed to happen after the hearing!).

We learn of what is out of line by revelation, not conclusion. We grow the church by a firm supporting Foundation (capitalization intended…), not by a filtering intellectual coverage. I see a picture of the church to come… it has no roof!

What we become familiar to in the world and in the flesh, we cling to. But where the Kingdom of God is concerned, what we experience is what we are supposed to cling to, only in so much as to prepare us for the next new thing. We are then supposed to build upon yesterday’s thing and grow.

Familiarity kills inheritance! Paul understood this when he spoke the following words:

1 Cor 3:10-19 By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should be careful how he builds. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If any man builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, his work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man’s work. If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward. If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames. Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple. Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a “fool” so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight…

Paul was saying that all wisdom of any value comes from the foundation who is Christ, by way of the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in and upon us. What I, or the world thinks is meaningless, unless it is born out of revelation knowledge. What I build on my foundation, I will be charged for. Will I build upon my foundation what I or the world thinks? Or will I build upon my foundation while under the yoke of the mind of Christ, of what the Father thinks? The only way for me to rightly build is by revelation lest what I build fails under the test.

Familiarity causes me to rely on me. It turns me inward rather than outward or upward. It causes me to look backward rather than forward. It is a warped perverted way of thinking.

Familiarity is an easy and very comfortable way. But we are not to become comfortable in our faith. Earth is only a tiny portion of the whole of the Kingdom of God; but a grain of sand in the beach full of sand that is the eternal Kingdom of God. What we live in here on earth is very limited indeed.

Faith is the very essence of growth. But, we grow into ever-increasing maturity by way of an ever-increasing faith. Does not the Lord say, “I am doing a new thing, do you not perceive it?”

Faith says that there is more than what I see. I then experience up to what my faith allows. As I think with limited faith, I am incapable of seeing or thinking greater than the level of faith I am in. Therefore, my faith level must always be willing to experience the radical new thing of God. Then, with each new experience, my faith moves up.

Whereas 1 Cor 12 outlines the gift of faith, in the Spirit, our faith rises radically when we first believe with our mustard seed sized faith!

But then God comes with revival. Revival is chock full of things that we have never seen before! Among so many other things, revival is designed to increase our faith.

I have faith, and then I have experiences. But without faith, I am incapable of witnessing the experience even if it happens right before my eyes. Faith is the substance of spiritual vision.

Experiences increase my faith if I am willing to allow it. Experiences become my new words of testimony.

I have received the new thing that is supposed to become the substance of the inheritance that I am to give to the next generation.

I have a new testimony. That testimony, spoken to those who yet see, builds new faith for those who have ears to hear. They then move up! The result is the ever-increasing Kingdom of God manifested on earth as it is in Heaven. In a word, inheritance!

Ever-increasing! This is what the Christian life is all about. The comfort of familiarity is the bane of ever-increasing.

This Christian earthly life is a “forever becoming.” This means that we are not complete or “done” until we are home in Heaven with God. We are forever learning, forever seeking, and forever growing. In this earthly life we are always moving in the flow of God’s Presence for the purpose of the flow of God’s plan made manifest on earth. It is a fluid thing. If we stay in yesterday’s thing, we have gotten out of the River and onto the banks and have become motionless. Familiarity renders me spiritually motionless.

There are two Rivers of God.

There are Rivers that never change, such as the Rogue River of Oregon. It cuts through the rocky craggy mountains of Western Oregon to the Pacific Ocean. At its’ very end, it feeds trees that are thousands of years old, some trees that are older than the days of Jesus Christ! The Redwoods of Northern California and Southern Oregon. These Rivers are like the Word of God that never changes.

Then there are Rivers that always shifts position. Like the Red River of the North, the Ohio River or the Mississippi River. These Rivers always change and shift physical position, always overflowing their banks… These are like the River of the Holy Spirit. When they change position over time, they leaves behind stagnant dead waters that no longer move. Easily visible from the air, the dead waters of where the River used to be are like yesterdays moves of God. They represent what the Lord was doing yesterday. Lifeless, motionless and dead.

But Jesus is calling out! “The River has shifted! The new waters are over here, not over there!”

If I rely on what has become familiar to me, I signify to myself that “I have become.” I don’t need further growth because I am happy in what I have and know right now. It is a form of pride that says I need no more. Depending on familiar knowledge and familiar experience is a form of pride that shunts growth. It starts honestly but finishes pridefully.

Jack Hayford once said, “Nothing is more limiting than the self-imposed boundaries we clamp around our own lives when we require God to fit into our expectations.”

In reality, familiarity is the material we build our boxes with.

Familiarity blinds me to anything that does not fit the mold of what I know or have experienced. Familiarity is based in fear of the unknown. But perfect love casts out fear. One can also say therefore that perfect love causes us to trust God for the new thing.

So, true growth is found in the ever-increasing nature of God. It is found off the map of what I know.

I take what I know of God or have become familiar with of God and I apply it to the supernatural unknown of what God is doing or is about to do. In so doing I position myself on the very edge of what God’s wonderful current plan might be. I trust Him. I wait for Him. And, when the new thing happens, however good or bad in this world, I rejoice and move into the new thing easily! I am not offended when the world comes down around me. The radical new thing does not offend me because I trust in faith that God is much bigger than my flesh or the devil.

Therefore, we must learn to overcome our need to steer towards what we know of in the world and move towards what we don’t know of the Kingdom of God.

Right order is both embracing the knowledge of the unchanging principles of God and seeking the radical new thing that God wants us to move into for the future.

Simply said, familiarity is deadly as to our spiritual growth and effectiveness in our call here on earth. And so we must identify the insidious presence of familiarity and like any other demon, cast it out. Then we must trust in faith as God does mighty and wonderful acts in our day through us, His beloved Bride.

T. Scott Morton