BUILDING ZION’S ARMIES
(week 52/10)
OLUBI JOHNSON
Firstly, we want to wish all our readers a wonderful Christmas celebration and a healthy, wealthy, Christ-filled, destiny-fulfilling New Year.
Zion symbolically represents the perfect church:
Psalms 50:2 ESV: Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth.
The Church is also called an army, because an individual saint is called a soldier:
2 Timothy 2:3-4 MKJV: Therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. (4) No one who wars tangles with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who chose him to be a soldier.
The end-time 3rd day Zion Church has an army that is changing in 3 phases:
i. The Gideon army phase
ii. The Joel army phase
iii. The Ezekiel army phase.
The Gideon army phase is the first phase of the emergence of Zion‚’s armies. The Gideon army is small in number of the order of about 300-600 typified by Gideon’s army and David’s army in the wilderness:
Judges 7:7 ESV: And the LORD said to Gideon, “With the 300 men who lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hand, and let all the others go every man to his home.”
1 Samuel 30:9 ESV: So David set out, and the six hundred men who were with him, and they came to the brook Besor, where those who were left behind stayed.
Also the Gideon army is exclusively made of up saints from beyond the rivers of Ethiopia: sub-Saharan Africa from the land the rivers divide: Nigeria.
Isaiah 18:7 MKJV: In that time shall be brought to Jehovah of Hosts the present from a terrifying, a tall and smooth people, from it and onward; a mighty and trampling nation whose land the rivers have divided, to the place of the name of Jehovah of Hosts, Mount Zion.
Zephaniah 3:10 MKJV: From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, My worshipers, the daughter of My scattered ones, shall bring My food offering.
Zephaniah 3:14-17 MKJV: Sing, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel; be glad and rejoice with all the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. (15) Jehovah has turned off your judgments; He has cast out your enemy. The king of Israel, Jehovah, is in your midst; you shall not fear evil any more. (16) In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear not! Do not let not your hands droop, Zion. (17) Jehovah your God is mighty in your midst; He will save, He will rejoice over you with joy; He is silent in His love; He rejoices over you with joyful shout.
This Gideon army is a pioneer army: spear-heading God’s final end-time move to close the age, but it is only a beginning and must grow into the Joel and Ezekiel army stages which will include saints from every nation, tongue, tribe and kindred.
The Gideon army is birthed by the prophetic trumpet declaration in the church and earnest fasting and prayer for the glory of God:
Joel 2:15-19 MKJV: Blow a trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn gathering. (16) Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, gather the elders, gather the children and those who suck the breasts. Let the bridegroom go forth out of his chamber, and the bride out of her room. (17) Let the priests, the ministers of Jehovah, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Have pity on Your people, O Jehovah, and give not Your inheritance to shame, for a proverb among those of the nations. Why should they say among the people, Where is their God? (18) Then Jehovah will be jealous for His land and pity His people. (19) Yes, Jehovah will answer and say to His people, Behold, I will send you grain, and wine, and oil, and you shall be satisfied with it. And I will no more make you a curse among the nations.
The Gideon army has a tactical, strategic, military objective: the removal of the ‘northern army’
Joel 2:20 MKJV: But I will remove the northern army far from you, and will drive him into a barren and deserted land, with his face toward the eastern sea and his rear toward the western sea. And his stench shall come up, and his ill odor shall come up, because he was doing great things.
The ‘northern army’ symbolically represents the army of Christians in the Babylon, harlot church, whose spiritual idolatry (Col. 3:5) is being used by Satan to hinder God’s purpose for the perfection of Church. Many of these saints are deceived by Satan who is corrupting the power of God in their lives to give them material blessings but sending leanness to their souls:
Psalms 106:14-15 MKJV: but they lusted greedily in the wilderness, and tested God in the desert. (15) And He gave them what they asked, but sent leanness into their soul.
Like those who rebelled and worshiped the golden calf when Moses was on the mountain, these strange children will have to be removed from the Church by the Spirit, suffering loss, even though some may still be saved.
Exodus 32:25-28 MKJV: (25) And when Moses saw that the people were naked, (for Aaron had made them naked to their shame among their enemies,) (26) then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, Who is on Jehovah’s side? Come to me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves to him. (27) And he said to them, Thus says Jehovah, the God of Israel: Each man put his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the camp, and kill each one his brother, and each one his neighbor, and each one his kindred. (28) And the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses. And there fell of the people that day about three thousand men.
Psalms 144:11 KJV: Rid me, and deliver me from the hand of strange children, whose mouth speaketh vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of falsehood:
1 Corinthians 5:4-5 KJV: (4) In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, (5) To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
Gideon’s army has already been birthed since about 2007 by prophetic declaration and fasting and prayer and is currently being built up by the blood (Heb. 13:20-21), the Word (1 Jn. 2:5-6) and the Spirit (1 Jn. 4:12-13).
The objective of the Gideon’s army will be completed when God removes the Saul leadership in the Church in Nigeria and replaces it with a David leadership.
Then the Gideon army will grow into the next phase: the Joel army that will be in the order of hundreds of thousands and come from all over the world.
This growth of the Gideon army into Joel’s army after the removal of the ‘northern army’ will be like the growth of David’s army from about 600 (1 Sam.30:9) to tens of thousands after the death of Saul (1 Chr. 12:19-21):
1 Chronicles 12:22 MKJV: (22) For at that time they came to David day by day to help him, until it was a great army, like an army of God.
The objective of the Joel army is to restore the years the cankerworm has eaten and so remove the shame and reproach of the Church:
Joel 2:25-26 KJV: And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you. (26) And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you: and my people shall never be ashamed.
Zephaniah 3:19-20 KJV: Behold, at that time I will undo all that afflict thee: and I will save her that halteth, and gather her that was driven out; and I will get them praise and fame in every land where they have been put to shame. (20) At that time will I bring you again, even in the time that I gather you: for I will make you a name and a praise among all people of the earth, when I turn back your captivity before your eyes, saith the LORD.
After this objective has been achieved the Joel army will then grow into the Ezekiel army that will be numbered in the hundreds of millions of Christians from all over the world especially the Middle East and Asia (India, China, Japan and others). This will fulfill the fullness of
Joel 2:28-32 NIV: And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. (29) Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days. (30) I will show wonders in the heavens and on the earth, blood and fire and billows of smoke. (31) The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD. (32) And everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved; for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be deliverance, as the LORD has said, among the survivors whom the LORD calls.
This scripture was only partially fulfilled at Pentecost (Act. 2:17-21) because only a measure (the earnest; Eph. 1:14) of the Spirit was poured out on the Church. However, the universal outpouring of the Spirit that will result in the Ezekiel army will be of the Spirit without measure albeit limited in scope by the spiritual growth of the recipients.
The objective of the Ezekiel army will be to plant a perfect church in every tribe and tongue all over the world: when this has been achieved the age will close (Mt. 24:14)!
