DEMONSTRATING THE POWERS OF THE AGE TO COME 2
(mr/02/12/18)
OLUBI JOHNSON
Apostle Paul also said:
Ephesians 3:10 KJV: To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God.
The challenge of the hour is present truth that the Holy Spirit is bringing to the Church, but the body of Christ must have understanding in order to fulfill the scripture, as it should.
After the Lord Jesus was resurrected, He could not fully explain the details of these truths to the Church, though He did teach some of them. He said,
John 16:12-13 KJV: I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. (13) Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, [that] shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.
And He gave them some understanding of it, teaching His disciples for forty days after His resurrection things concerning the Kingdom. The Lord gave them a very important instruction: He said,
Luke 24:49 KJV: And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.
The Lord did not tell the disciples it was going to be on the day of Pentecost. He knew the feast of Pentecost had to be fulfilled. He had fulfilled Passover and had been resurrected. His disciples had partaken of the Holy Spirit when He appeared to them after His resurrection! The Bible says:
John 20:22 KJV: And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost:
Fifty days later, on the day of Pentecost, they got filled with the Holy Spirit. Two thousand years later, here we are! Just like for the disciples, the feast of Pentecost was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost, we are expecting, as I speak now (in 2018), the fulfillment of the feast of Tabernacles! All the prophetic signs and conditions for the fulfillment are in place! The ‘Good Morning Jesus’ prayer forum that has started is also a catalyst by getting a larger number of people to begin praying the Kingdom and in the last hour of the fourth watch every morning! They put on the armour of God and pray in the Spirit! God has desired this for a long time; to find a group, a critical mass of His people to do His will and begin the chain reaction that will spark the next and final move of God upon the earth! And I believe we have it! We must continue to pray and not stop the chain reaction!
We must understand the fulfillment of the feast of Tabernacles. It is somewhat different from the first two feasts; Passover and Pentecost.
The first two feasts were primarily gifts: you just prayed for salvation, a simple sinner’s prayer and you get born again. To be baptized in the Holy Spirit is to pray a simple prayer in faith. The Holy Spirit will fill you, and by faith you raise your voice, the utterance comes, and you begin to speak in tongues! This third feast is a gift too, because everything we have from God is by grace through faith. However, it has two aspects to it; it is called the feast of Ingathering for two reasons.
The natural nation of Israel has three harvests: the barley harvest at Passover, the wheat harvest at Pentecost and then a fruit harvest at the end of the year when they harvest grapes and make wine. These harvests differ one from another. They correspond to the three different feasts. This endtime Tabernacles feast is a feast of fruit. Prophetically, the feast has two aspects to it:
- You must bring in the fruit of the Spirit (Gal.5:22-23) in your life. That is why you must harvest fruit in your life. It is a condition for the second part. The fruit of the Spirit is the love of God. To fulfill the feast of Tabernacles, you must be on the road to perfecting the love of God. You may not yet have perfected but you must be perfecting, that is, bringing in the harvest of the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance! All these things we have been practicing for the last 10-15 years and emphasizing: the ‘Armour of Love’; ‘Putting on the Love of God’, “using the Blood, the Word and the power of the Holy Spirit to perfect the Love of God in your life.” All these are an essential part of the fulfillment of the feast of Tabernacles because it is a feast of fruit!
- The second part of the harvest is the harvest of the nations as revealed in:
Isaiah 60:1-3 KJV: Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the LORD shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.
Nigeria is destined to be the first of the firstfruits nation. That is why there is so much contention over the nation in the realm of the Spirit! It is amazing that today, September 30, 2018 is the last day of the feast of Tabernacles, and the following day, tomorrow (October 1), is Nigeria’s Independence Day! It is not by accident.
There were two significant times that God had intervened in the affairs of Nigeria. The first was the amalgamation by Lord Luggard of Southern and Northern Protectorates of the Niger Area. God knowing what He had prophesied in the books of Isaiah and Zephaniah, supernaturally created a nation that the river divides from beyond the rivers of Ethiopia and named the nation after the river. That is why the land is called Nigeria; “the area around the Niger”. That was the first part of our prophetic fulfillment! Secondly, when Independence was declared on October 1, 1960, it fell during the feast of Tabernacles, because God knew that Nigeria would be one of the first nations to fulfill the feast of Tabernacles by the Church in the land, thereby ushering Nigeria into her prophetic destiny! We are living in a cutting-edge, prophetic time!
The Lord Jesus said,
John 5:25 KJV: Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.
The fulfillment of the feast of Tabernacles is crucial to the fulfillment of Nigeria’s prophetic destiny, because it is in the fulfilment that God will manifest the Spirit without measure that will be not just the ‘tasting’, but a demonstration of the power of the age to come that will make manifest the glory of God. The purpose of the demonstration of the glory of God is to deliver creation from the bondage of corruption, and that deliverance will be a witness to all nations!
It will be a demonstration to principalities and powers and to all nations that will cause them to acknowledge that there is a people of God on the earth! This demonstration will far outstrip the ‘taste’ that we have had with Pentecost! There will be a people that will demonstrate the manifold wisdom of God as it has never been seen before; the ability of the mind of Christ! They will demonstrate the character of God in righteousness, purity and holiness. They will demonstrate the power of God in a manner that has never been seen before; and that is the season we are in now!
This threshold anniversary of the 58th year of Nigeria’s Independence, right at the tail end of the feasts of Tabernacles, is not an accident.
We, the firstfruits of this perfect Church are to demonstrate the powers of the age to come as a witness to all nations, so as to make disciples out of every nation; that is every tribe, tongue and kindred. The Greek word used in the original scripture is ‘ethnos’. There must be a crop of perfect disciples from every tribe, tongue and kindred before the end shall come.
Every disciple is a convert and believer, but not every believer is a disciple. The word “disciple” comes from the root word, “discipline”. Disciples will do all they have been taught. The Great Commission that the Lord Jesus gave the Church was not just a commission of evangelism, though evangelism is the first step necessary to bring the nations into the kingdom:
Matthew 28:19 NIV: Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
But that is not all, the Lord commanded as we can see in:
Matthew 28:20 KJV: Teaching them to observe ALL things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, Lo, I am with you alway, [even] unto the end of the world. Amen.
Disciples must be taught ALL things, to bring them up from baby Christian to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ! There must be disciples in every nation: Chinese disciples, American disciples, Indian disciples, Saudi-Arabian disciples, Iranian disciples, Iraqi disciples, etc! These will be born again, Spirit-filled, tongue talking, perfection Christians that will demonstrate the glory of God to their own people! Nigerian disciples, not just Nigerian believers, not just Nigerian Christians! Disciples are those who wake up at 3.00am, the fourth watch to pray with travail, embracing the discipline of the Lord Jesus in the days He was on earth:
Mark 1:35 KJV: And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed.
Hebrews 5:7 KJV: Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared;
The Bible tells us how the Lord Jesus prayed. That is the prayer of the disciple! Regrettably there are many saints who refuse to submit themselves to the discipline of getting up early in the morning, refuse to submit to the discipline of fasting, the discipline of praying with all types of prayer in the Spirit with groanings, strong cries and tears, the discipline of self denial, the discipline of taking up their cross daily. Discipleship implies all the above disciplines. It is the refusal to submit to these disciplines that the Lord calls wickedness. Wickedness, as far as God is concerned is defined in:
Psalm 50:16-17 KJV: But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or [that] thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth? Seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee.
When you refuse to make the decision to and start practicing getting up early in the morning and praying with strong crying and tears; that according to the scripture, is wickedness! Let us consider another scripture:
2 Chronicles 7:14 KJV: If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
To ‘seek’ means that you are looking for something. I preached a message some years ago, entitled, “Ask, Seek and Knock” (Matthew 7:7). When you ask for something, you just asked; you have not started seeking. There’s a difference between asking and seeking. Most Christians just ask and stop and expect something to happen. You need to move on to “seeking” and that is where praying in the Spirit comes in. When you pray in the Spirit you are speaking mysteries in the Spirit. What you are actually doing is that, in the spirit realm you are looking, you are seeking and you will not stop until you find! It is only disciples that know or learn how to seek; ordinary believers stop at asking. The disciple moves from asking to seeking, and then from seeking to knocking. You seek by praying in the Spirit and you knock by walking in divine love. That is what opens the door. When you walk in divine love you then receive:
1 John 3:22 KJV: And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight. (23) Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father: [(but) he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also].
Sadly, the majority of Christians are not disciples. They are believers and they will go to heaven because the condition for going to heaven is believing on the Lord Jesus; but they will suffer loss. They will not inherit the kingdom and carry the glory, because the glory is reserved only for those who are disciples! These are the Christians who get up early in the morning to pray, who are fasting and are praying and are not doing it only when they have emergencies and problems, but daily, like the Bible says, ‘Take up your cross daily’ (Luk.9:20). The spiritual complexion has changed and therefore the atmosphere that is required for the fulfilment of the feast of Tabernacles is now in place.
