A Reminder of the FMM Understanding of True New Covenant Disciples
(A Note from John: This article repeats remarks I made elsewhere. They were originally posted in the July-August 2013 ‘Letters From Home’ section of our FMM website. The content is important enough to merit duplication. Please take it to heart. If you know you’ve been summoned by our risen Lord to follow Him, then this is meant for you.)
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While the Lord was planting Follow Me in my heart, I believe His instructions were to continue…at a deeper, more-focused level…what we started to do with The Christ-Life Solution material (now entitled: The Ultimate Journey) in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. And although it carries forward what we began then, Follow Me has a different approach and methodology. Its focus is much narrower. And we operate within a much more confined venue than that of many other ministries. Follow Me concentrates on those whom the Lord has called to serve Him as His Last Days disciples. These people will have to be able to operate and fulfill their calling under dreadfully chaotic, brutal, violent and unstable circumstances.
So Follow Me is not a ‘relief-imparting,’ ‘feel good,’ ‘we’ll do it for you’, type of ministry. It is a discipline-imparting, toughening, skill developing, ‘boot camp preparation for deadly spiritual combat’, type of ministry. What we say when we try to explain the nature of Follow Me is not meant to demean any other endeavor. We merely intend to zero in on this ministry’s limited sphere of interest and activity, amid the vast panorama of available ministries. In no way should these remarks be interpreted as personal criticism or disrespect of what other ministries are doing. The Body of our Lord is vast, diverse and rich. Each member has its essence, function and purpose for the common good. So God in His awesome Wisdom has something for everyone and He meets us all right where we are, and takes us onward from there. He covers all areas and all of the diverse people types at their particular levels of need. And Follow Me is one small part of all that God is making available for us all.
Follow Me is not geared to help people begin their Exodus; it is meant to help them finish it! So this ministry is not for people that still identify with and focus upon interests and activities that have to do with ‘leaving Egypt’… but that are not directly connected to the Biblical disciple lifestyle. People that are still at the early stages of their Exodus need ‘pre-discipleship’ training and education. But actual training for the disciple lifestyle, that is, personal abiding and interaction with our risen Lord…is meant to help those that are further along the Exodus path, transform into what will be required to finish the journey and fulfill their God-given commissions. The training they need must be much more invasive, disciplined, specialized and exclusive. It will require them to develop full-time focus and obedient commitment to their Master and to becoming authentic, Bible-based New Covenant Israelites! And that lifestyle is much more focused and specialized. That’s why we must emphasize the full development of the skills of perseverance, endurance, and ‘to-the-death’ loyalty, faithfulness and wholehearted devotion to our Lord and Master.
Those that the Lord calls to this level of service will therefore be required to undergo massive spiritual and emotional stripping away of what they were in the past. This crucifixion-level liberation is necessary… in order to facilitate the enormous spiritual growth and maturity that their tasks will require of them. Our Master will not allow them to remain introspective or self-absorbed, or independent and individualistic. Nor will He allow them the worldly luxury of remaining preoccupied with untended, unhealed wounds from their past. He will require them to allow Him to do what it takes to heal from them, so that they will be free to outgrow them and be able to go beyond that stage and proceed into the Land of Promise, free and clear of all former worldly baggage.
At the levels into which He intends to take us, there’s no time for us to remain exceedingly needy and preoccupied with having all kinds of personal needs met. By the time we reach this stage of the Exodus, it is necessary for those types of needs to have already been addressed and resolved. So the Follow Me kind of disciple training is for those that are already fit and ready to be trained for ‘spiritual combat’ action in what we call, ‘The Arena of Testimony’. At that stage, it is assumed that we have already ‘died’ to whatever worldly, created things or ideas we formerly identified with and to which we once gave top priority, in the days that preceded the moment that the Lord summoned us to follow Him.
Colossians 4:1-3
“Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on Earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our Life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in Glory!” (Emphasis added.)
So, people that still struggle with personal issues and debilitating situations from their pasts will need other types of ministry, pre-disciple level ministries that are geared to meet such needs. Then, once they’ve been set free from the past…they’ll be free to follow their Master into their Kingdom of Heaven futures. And that is where Follow Me comes in.
So because Follow Me creates more of a ‘boot camp’ preparing-for-combat atmosphere, it is not for those that still think of themselves as, ‘exempt civilians’. That sort of uninvolved detachment will no longer be tolerated. People at that stage still think in terms of ‘sort of fitting’ the Lord of Glory into some convenient nook or cranny of their lives, while they remain primarily in control of their own time and worldly agendas, and continue to scatter their energies by devoting themselves to an array of competing temporal priorities. But disciples cannot afford to fall for that delusive ambivalence any longer. The Lord will no doubt assign most of His disciples to ‘in the world’ venues. Many of us will probably continue to work within our professions or fields of expertise or our trades and regular jobs. But we must no longer derive our identities from those things. From now on, our identity will be derived exclusively from our indwelling Messiah! Now, what we are and do must flow directly from our intimate, interactive union with, and exclusive dependence upon, Him! For us, to live is…our Messiah…the living Word of God, ruling over us and acting through us, from within our yielded flesh!
So, no matter where we are, or what our assigned fields of deployment may be, our real full time work will be to be ‘God-Bringers’. We are the ones assigned to bring the risen Messiah’s Presence and Authority and Preeminence into whatever situation or circumstance or region to which we are assigned. We are to serve as God’s ‘Royal Priesthood’. We are to bring ‘The Light of the World’ who indwells us, into every situation, circumstance and interaction we encounter so that He can continue to dispel the Darkness that engulfs the world and destroy the works of the Serpent, as only He can do.
Last Days disciples will not retain their previous identities; nor will they remain committed to and engrossed with wearing ‘many hats’. Everything they do will be an embodiment of their Master. So they can’t be committed to the mind-frazzling ‘multi-tasking’ mixture of worldly and spiritual pursuits to which the world around them devotes itself. The disciples of the Last Days will be required to be focused and single-minded. They will not indulge in worldly pursuits or try to juggle and do justice to arrays of mutually contradictory pursuits as ends in themselves. Regardless of what they may be doing, whether it be construction work, housework, or dealing with people from a sales office etc., they will be embodying their Lord…bringing His Presence and Influence into whatever they do. They will no longer indulge in the worldly luxury of refusing to change, now that the Lord has called them into His service. His call forces them to forsake their ‘pre-call civilian’ lives and gladly leave them behind.
Luke 14:26-27
“If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple! Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.”
So, if we’re truly going to follow Him all the way across the ‘Finish Line’ of God’s Exodus, everything about us will have to transform until we become the perfect image and likeness of our Master! So our Lord will not allow us to remain preoccupied with alien matters or involved with temporary worldly identities, ties, commitments and pursuits. Nor will He allow us to settle for being ‘religious,’ in an attempt to ‘sprinkle’ a little ‘spirituality’ onto what, essentially, are still worldly priorities.
John 3:7-12
“Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The Wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
“Nicodemus said to Him, ‘How can these things be?’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony. If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?’”
The Gospel is not about a new and improved version of the ‘same old me’. It requires the death of all I used to be. That must be entirely replaced by the Resurrection Life that only the Holy Spirit of our Messiah can impart to us. And this is what He is here to do. For that reason, Follow Me will focus on addressing the needs of those who hear and are ready to obey the Lord’s call to come out of whatever they were before, and leave it behind. We endeavor to offer such people Bible-based material to help them as they follow their Master into the Great Unknown of the Last Days, that the Book of Revelation briefly and generally depicts…those awesome cataclysmic events that will culminate all of human history.
Follow Me works from the belief that the Book of Revelation has, packed within it, the complete and perfect Fulfillment of what God began to reveal in the first five books of the Bible (the Torah). The books that follow the Torah explain and amplify it and lead up to the Last Days fulfillment of all that God first revealed in His Torah. So, by the end of this temporary earthly life, all that is packed into the indispensable Exodus model that God has given to the world through Moses. And by the end of this temporal world’s history, that Exodus is going to be completely and perfectly fulfilled. God Himself will do it, in and through His submitted people.
So, Follow Me is here to serve people of all backgrounds, from all regions, who are ready to answer the Lord’s call to hear and obey His voice. It will assist them as they follow Him OUT of their former rigid ties to the temporary cultural and ecclesiastical traditions and worldly ethnic and family lifestyle patterns, priorities, mindsets and lifestyles they inherited that have nothing to do with the Biblical Culture God commands His chosen ones to embrace and share with the world. In other words, Follow Me is not about ‘asking the Lord to accommodate Himself to MY life’. Our Master won’t allow us to get away with trying to invite Him to fit Himself into MY life, at MY convenience. We must learn to forsake ‘MY LIFE’ so that we can truly be free to follow Him, wholeheartedly, into HIS HEAVENLY ETERNAL RESURRECTION LIFE!
We realize that there are very few who care enough to be this serious about living out all that is implied in the command, ‘Follow Me!’ But the ones that the Holy Spirit is truly causing to be that serious are the ones this ministry is meant to serve. We believe that they, thanks to the awesome preparations the Holy Spirit is making in their hearts, will care enough to do whatever it takes to allow God to change them and make them fit for His purposes. They will be willing to devote the time and energy required to ponder, seriously, what is provided for them in God’s Holy Scriptures, and mull over what is on the Follow Me website and in the printed material that is shipped all over the world by members of our Follow Me Family members who live in Africa.
Philippians 2:12b-13
“…work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is GOD who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure!“ (Emphasis added.)
This is what is so different about this ministry: We will not attempt to do this FOR you! That would be impossible. We ask you to realize that your brain only listens to you! So you must assume responsibility for managing your God-given faculties. It’s up to you to train yourself to believe, and obey, God’s revelation about His Son’s Presence dwelling within you!
If you don’t train yourself to believe that Almighty God is abiding within you, He won’t ever be vitally real and actually present to you. And if He isn’t real and present to you, He won’t be able to lead you and train and correct and teach you; and you will have no Master to follow! So you’ll have to settle for looking to and following created, Sin-corrupted things. But none of that could ever take His place. You MUST have Him, or else, none of this will work.
How can you train yourself to abide in His Perfect Presence? You do it…by learning to think, act, react and interact in the wholehearted realization that the living creative Word of Almighty God is in you, and you are in Him. You do it by realizing, more deeply than ever before, that He is working in you at all times…giving you every cell of your makeup, every heart beat and breath and brain wave you will ever experience! You train yourself by becoming convinced in your gut, that He is with you at all times and in all things, to train and transform you…in Person! No one can do what He is here to do, for Him, in His place. We must have Him! And conversely, no one can do what you must do to follow Him, in your place. Only you can do what it will take for you…to follow Him. Your call to discipleship is a matter that is only between you and the Master that called you to it.
And so, since it’s true that your brain only listens to you, you are the one that has programmed it to this point. It currently does what it now knows you have wanted it to do. So now that you know you have to repent and change direction, your own ‘onboard computer will tend to resist you at first! It’s programmed to do what you know you can no longer keep doing! It’s doing all of that automatically because that is what you kept telling it to believe and do in the past. And since it only listens to you, only you can repent and do what it takes to teach and train it to stop doing what you told it to do in the past. Now you must teach it to believe and do brand new things. And that will require you to create and install brand new identity, thought, reaction and lifestyle patterns that coincide with the awesome Reality that Almighty God Himself now abides within you. Now, He is your Life and your Lord, and everything you will ever need, must come into you from Him! And you must install the new patterns to that effect with constant repetition… until the new data is properly wired into your brain and programmed into your soul.
Only you can train and reeducate your mind and brain with this New Covenant information and these new directives. And you can do it because the fact remains: Your brain only listens to you. So you can always choose to do something different. You can change any time you choose to do it. Thus you can replace what was previously installed in your inner workings. You can always choose new things. So now you must deliberately own what God offers you and deliberately appropriate it for yourself. Yes, you must OWN it! Work it continually into your own inner workings. Become one with it…and then…after your God-given equipment has had time to absorb and possess it…in Spirit and in Truth…it will actually be yours!
However, if you fail to renew your mind and update your computer, then the computer will automatically continue to follow the programming you gave it in the past. It will follow those old commands with awesome faithfulness and accurate precision…even if that information and the patterns you gave it to follow are wrong and out of date and even demonic and wicked! That’s why you must begin to follow your new Master, God’s living and written Word and update your ‘onboard computer’ with all that He reveals to you and commands you to do. He will tell you what to do and believe…BUT…only you can relay that information to your own soul and brain with the repetition your personal equipment will need to make it your very own. This is how your equipment can be updated and reconfigured. This is how you will be able to change the navigational headings for your future.
This is at the heart of true repentance. Once you have put the new data that your Master gives you into your ‘onboard computer’, with sufficient repetition…then your computer will switch over and begin to obey the new information you started to give to it. In time, it will begin to follow the new data automatically, just as it used to do with the original information you gave it. But you are the only one that can cause this transition to take place. If you do, you will replace and change that information effectively. God gave you free will, and He won’t take it away from you! You will always have the ability to choose new things. So YOU are the one that must choose deliberately, moment by moment and choice by choice. This is how you train yourself to set things right within the onboard computer that runs your life according to what your Master will be telling you to believe and to do, from now on!
Romans 12:1-3
“Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove (actually experience and demonstrate) what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. For through the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of faith.” (Amplification and emphasis added.)
This awesome process of repentance through mind-renewal is the new art and habit of ‘self-gardening’ that New Covenant disciples must learn to master for themselves, and teach to other new disciples-in-training. You must begin to sow the seeds of revelation and instruction that God has given to the world into your own onboard computer. Then, what God gave to you as objective Truth…will become your own personal subjective faith, and your personal response to His revelation.
Matthew 9:28-30a
“When He entered the house, the blind men came up to Him, and Jesus *said to them, ‘Do YOU believe that I am able to do this?’ They *said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord.’ Then He touched their eyes, saying, ‘It shall be done to you according to YOUR FAITH!’ And their eyes were opened…” (Emphasis added.)
Our Master’s Resurrection Presence must become that deep and strong within us. And when that happens, it will become easy and ‘second nature’ for us to focus on and abide continually with…Him. He will be our personal Commander in Chief. He will become so real and present to us that we will remain perpetually at His service and disposal! This is essential. We are called to become one with God’s living Word; and the Word only says and does what His Father sends Him to say and do! So, to be His image and likeness, we must learn to allow Him to obey His Father and say and do what He was sent to do…to us, in us and through us! [See Isaiah 55:8-11 & John 5:19; 30]
Ezekiel 36:24-27
“For I will take you from (out from) the nations (pagan idolaters), gather you from all the lands and bring you into your own (New Covenant Messianic) land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.” (Amplification added.)
The promises made in the text above are made to God’s True, New Covenant Israel. And this is the New Covenant Era that Messiah Yeshua instituted at the Last Passover Seder He attended and over which He presided, on the eve of His atoning death (Lk. 22:20; 1 Cor. 11:25). The Last Days will usher in the Fulfillment of the New Covenant prophecies and promises contained in God’s written Word. And the one that will fulfill them is God’s living Word, the Word that became flesh, the Word that serves as our Eternal High Priest and Covenant Representative – Messiah Yeshua. He is the one that now, through the Gift of the Holy Spirit, is here to abide in and work through, His New Covenant Last Days disciples. And those disciples are His True, New Covenant Israel! This awesome fulfilling interactive union with Him, is at the heart and soul of what we disciples are required to convey to our own souls and brains…which, for the sake of convenience, we call our ‘onboard computers’.
This is the lifestyle that Follow Me stands for and promotes. This is what we invite you to join us in absorbing. This is what we ourselves are striving to learn to do with our Master in our own lives. As His image and likeness, we are to mirror and embody His obedience to the Father; by the way we obey our Heavenly Father’s living and written Word. No other activity can equal or replace the results that will emerge out of the actual personal abiding, the interactive intimacy with His living Word, to which God Himself has called us. Nor must we think of allowing other men or women to take His place in our lives. There can be no substitute for any of us. Nothing can take the place of our personal interactive intimacy with Messiah Yeshua. We must not allow anything or anyone to prevent us from abiding in and drawing from Him, the way branches interact with and depend upon their vine!
Can you imagine the absurdity of trying to send a vine’s branches to ‘Vine School’ so that professors can give them lectures and assign books for them to read that talk about ‘Fruit-bearing’ and ‘Vine-Life’, and ‘Branch-originated Fruitfulness’? Would any of that ever produce one real grape? No, of course not! Only direct union and intimate interaction with the Vine itself would produce real results. Nothing can produce fruit for the Vine or like the Vine. Only the Life that is in the Vine can and must produce the fruit…from within, and through, those branches that are truly one with it! And this is what we are urging Last Days disciples to realize and admit. We must resign ourselves to the utter necessity of doing whatever it takes to be truly bonded and united to Him so that His Resurrection Life can flow into and through us and He can be our Life and we can bear the fruit that only He can produce. When it’s time for us to enter the worldwide ‘Arena of Testimony’…to serve as witnesses to His Resurrection Reality…the Risen One had better be out there with us…doing what only He can do…or we will be exposed as frauds and be torn to pieces!
So, with that in mind, ponder the Scriptures and what is on our FMM website and in our FMM booklets that are being distributed by FMM Family members that live overseas, in our Lord’s Presence! Use what is provided to train and update and reprogram and rewire your ‘onboard computer’ to be ever mindful of, and interactive with, our Master. How can this be done? It can be done if you take what is on the website or in your booklets…and ponder them in bite size chunks. Read each section; pray over it, and ponder it…always in your Lord’s Presence, discussing it with Him! Let Him be your Teacher and Trainer and Guide at all times!
You can do this alone, or with other like-minded disciples. Discuss what you read with Him…and with each other. Discuss what ideas come into your mind as you read the material in your Master’s Presence. Never forget or ignore Him as you read and ponder. He is always with you…giving you every breath, heartbeat and brain wave. So train yourself to that effect. Think everything through WITH HIM! Follow the ‘Marching Orders’ listed elsewhere on our website each time you ponder another bite-size chunk of what is contained in the articles. Let Him speak to your heart as you ponder the Scripture texts and the FMM articles and Biblical meditations. Expect Him to be there with you. Expect to hear His voice, even as you’re thinking. Ask Him to reveal Himself to you at that level of intimacy, and also to your fellow disciples. And encourage each other in learning to abide with Him, more and more.
This will take time. It may take weeks for you to work through even one Bible text or article. But if you’re doing all of that with Him, you will, all the while, be reprogramming and rewiring your computer to abide and interact with Him. And that interactive union with our risen Lord is what all of this is geared to produce!
What difference will it make if this takes a lot of time? Haven’t you already been set aside for Him and His full time service? Isn’t all of your time His anyway? So the time this will require should no longer be a problem for you. From now on, we have no time of our own. We are wearing His uniform. We are under His full time Command. All the time left for us to serve in this world is His anyway…isn’t it?
Preparing For The Arena
So, use the precious training time you have left to prepare yourself for The Arena. Submit to your Master’s teaching, training, directions and corrections. There is no substitute for doing the reading and everything else, with Him. We’re learning to live in HIS PRESENCE at all times and to do everything with and from Him! So reading the material with Him is great practice for learning how to interact with Him at all times and be able to hear His voice, in the midst of every other activity you will engage in throughout daily life, from now on. It will start with this material…but it will soon begin to spread and ‘bleed through’ into every other activity and pursuit of your life.
Our Master must be able to teach and train you Himself…in Person…to show you what specific things His Father sent Him to do to you, in you, for you and through you! There is no substitute for this if you’re going to be His disciple…on HIS terms! No created ministry, church fellowship, synagogue, or ministerial organization can take His place. No Movement, no human religious leader(s), and no organized structured, man-made religious organization or program or activity will be able to teach you to be your Messiah’s disciple, in His place. Disciples are always under the direct personal command of the Master Himself! He is the only one they must follow from now on. And just as no other human can take His place in your life…you, as His disciple, must never assume that you can take His place in anyone else’s life! Others must learn to abide with Him from you…as they see you abiding in Him. The disciple message must be: “Watch me abide in Him…now you try abiding with Him the way you see me doing it…and keep trying…until you get it and can actually do everything with Him and from Him for yourself.”
So ponder what is in Scripture, and what is on the Follow Me website, or in the Follow Me booklets…always in His Presence! Discuss every paragraph with Him. Ask for His views. Ask Him to teach you Himself about what His written Word means and what He wants you to gain from the Scriptures that are quoted and from whatever is in the material that He needs to emphasize with you. Do this with the Follow Me material so that you can gradually start doing it with everything else, all day, in the midst of any situation or circumstance or interaction you encounter. Get used to doing everything with Him. Don’t rely on your own wits or any other created thing to speak for Him or take His place in guiding your steps. Don’t forget about Him and ignore Him. Take sufficient time and effort to get used to this kind of personal interaction with your Messiah. Then…you will find out for yourself what Follow Me is all about and how vastly different from everything else disciple life really is. In this context, let me point out some facts that pertain to what we’re doing:
1. The era and conditions during which I wrote the Christ-Life (Ultimate Journey) material, and the world situation in which I wrote it, are no longer in existence! Today’s world and times are vastly different. All nations and cultures and societal attitudes and priorities have changed drastically, even since the turn of this twenty first century! And because of the vast improvements in communication and the advances in technology, it won’t be long before we are all pulled into a world-wide, Last Days ‘Ultimate Confrontation’ between the Powers of Darkness and God’s living Word and His Heavenly Hosts. And that confrontation and the ultimate defeat and downfall of the powers of Darkness will be followed by God’s Ultimate Judgment in preparation for the way things will be for all of eternity.
In other words, it appears as if we’re running out of time. So every temporary thing or situation we got used to in the past, and may still be comfortable with in the present…is going to disintegrate and blow away in the foreseeable future (Hebrews 12:25-29). And our training must prepare us for that inevitability and also prepare us to effectively and successfully ‘weather the storms’ that are surely ahead of us.
2. If this is true…then the training that Last Days disciples (like you) will need, must go much deeper than what previous generations knew or could have even imagined. Those who are properly trained to abide in and with Him will persevere to the end. But those who cannot abide with Him will be powerless to finish. They will cave in and fall apart under the intense spiritual combat and the physical chaos and pressures that will shake all of Creation during those dreadful, awesome, overwhelming days.
3. Even as recently as the 80’s, 90’s and the turn of this 21st. century, believers did not feel this Last Days urgency. This is because we live in a world that has lost its fear of Almighty God. This has even become true within Judaism and Christendom! But now, many people are beginning to see the ‘handwriting on the wall’ and they realize that the level of ‘serving God’ that we have all been showing to the world and were willing to ‘practice’ to this point…has to a large degree, fallen short of the mark. God is certainly not satisfied with it and the world is not impressed by it. There’s hardly any difference between what we call ‘the world’ and what we call ‘the Church.’ Many so-called ‘believers’ have no spiritual authority because they seek comfort and status in the world, IN ADDITION TO, the blessings of God’s Kingdom, at the same time. But that is like trying to straddle two canoes and ride them at the same time! Such a double-minded agenda ignores and bypasses the stringent crucified life and Spirit-led lifestyle responsibilities that connect disciples to the Kingdom of Heaven. We can’t have it both ways! Disciples must live the crucified life of their Master before they will be able to share in His Resurrection Glory. No one is exempt; there are no exceptions! And so we make no apology for continually repeating ourselves:
Colossians 3:1-4
“Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on Earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our Life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in Glory!” (Emphasis added.)
Why has the modern world lost its fear and awe of our Almighty God? Why, in most societies, is there so little respect for the awesome Authority and Majesty of His Word? And why is it so hard to find the Power of the Holy Spirit freely able to work in many places around this world? Do we not care that Judgment is imminent? Those of us that claim to believe, serve and obey Almighty God must provide an answer as to why God’s Spirit is not validating and testifying in Power to the way many of us religious people are living (See 2 Timothy 3)! I am speaking of Jewish people, Christian people, Muslim people and all others, without exception. We are all responsible for the condition of the world system we have allowed to arise all around us. And many of us who claim to be ‘believers in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’, must give an accounting for why we are NOT prepared to give the supernatural level of testimony that God’s True Israel will be required to give when all hell breaks loose and all created things begin to shake and disintegrate and the eternal issues pertaining to Eternity are all that’s left…and our fate for all Eternity is at stake. At that time, nothing phony and unreal will be allowed to survive. There will only be one thing left on our ‘Menu of Options’. God’s Holy Spirit of Truth will burn away whatever is false. And, as the Lord has warned, there will be a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth by a lot of shocked, traumatized, very religious people, who, in their Biblical illiteracy and self-will, lived their lives under the false assumptions that they had ‘arrived’ and ‘knew all the answers’. They complacently assumed that they were representing God and were following His ways and that they were doing exactly as he wanted. But take note of the dire warnings the New Covenant apostolic writings are giving to us (See Matthew 5, 7 and 25 and Revelation 3:15-22).
4. In the days of the apostles, when the Lord’s Resurrection and Ascension were fresh in the minds of believers…and the living testimonies of the apostles who saw Him in His risen state still rang in their ears, it was easier to abide in Yeshua’s risen, Spirit-imparted Presence. During the first few years of that post-Resurrection experience, as recorded in the Book of Acts, all believers were Messianic Jews, with a few Gentile proselytes to Judaism sprinkled in their midst! And in the excitement and joy that came from knowing that their risen Messiah was right there with them, the New Covenant believers would spontaneously gather in homes, or even in open spaces like Solomon’s Portico in the temple, to rejoice in Him and celebrate and demonstrate His living Presence in their midst. And any dispute that arose was promptly settled by the Holy Spirit…operating in their hearts…and in their midst. How different that was…from what we see today!
So their original Spirit-filled idea of ‘going to church’ was vastly different from the current commonly held idea that arose centuries after the apostles died and the influence of their Messianic, Remnant of Israel lifestyle, had faded. Those original gatherings were a natural outcropping of the vibrant, living, Tanach-fulfilling, New Covenant Messianic Israelite Family Life they all shared and enjoyed. These blessed New Covenant Israelites had the very one that Moses had written about… actually living within them! (See Deuteronomy 18:15-19; 30.) So they were always able to interact with their risen Lord individually and corporately. And naturally they would gather to celebrate and share their common Living Treasure as He circulated in their midst. The Word’s electrifying Presence was the unbreakable supernatural ‘Glue’ that bonded those Spirit-filled New Covenant Israelites together. And wonder of wonders! In every city, whether it was very large or not, there was only one Body, because only He was the Head of every believer!
Imagine that! Regardless of how great their numbers became or how diverse their backgrounds and locations were…those Messianic Jews abided as one multi-membered organism…joyfully, lovingly…under the Authority and Headship of their risen and vibrantly present Messiah!
5. But after a few centuries, the original glow of His living Presence had dimmed and faded. By then, other people groups had taken authority over God’s ‘Family.’ Their alien non-Biblical views and agendas caused the Family to disintegrate and the broken pieces drifted apart from each other…further and further away from the original revelations and commandments of God’s Word as He had first entrusted them to Israel. Man’s word and its worldly perspectives usurped the preeminence of God’s written Word and His Heavenly perspectives. So, the Biblically illiterate peoples lost the Reality and electrical glow of the Lord’s Resurrection Presence and the Messianic Family life that naturally developed around Him in the early days when all the believers were Spirit-filled, Tanach-fulfilling Israelites. When the believers were severed from their Biblical Israelite roots, a genetic defect appeared in the ‘Church’s’ DNA. It manifests itself as a demonic drive, a lust for radical independence and individualistic autonomy that causes believers to continually fragment, divide and separate from each other in a mad search for supremacy. Today, Judaism and Islam are fragmented into a variety of divided groups that are hostile to one another. And I hear estimates that say there are over 38,000 different ‘Christian’ denominations, groups, sects and cults that claim to be Spirit-led and Bible-based! Each of those groups claims to have God’s Truth. Each claims to be led by the same ‘holy book’. But…they have virtually nothing to do with each other nor will they share in partaking of the wisdom that God has entrusted to each group so that they can become one new Man in Messiah!
What a blatant contradiction! And this abomination will continue, as long as the so-called believers settle for habitual separation from their True common Head, the risen indwelling Lord, who was made flesh. That Word made flesh is Yeshua, the Messiah. And if it’s okay for them to remain separated (decapitated) from Him, they will most surely continue to allow themselves to remain separated from His dismembered Body parts, as well.
So to try to fill the vacuum left by our Messiah’s living Presence, the common practice today is for religious leaders to draw attention to themselves and their agendas. They continually devise vast array’s of created religious things and rituals and ‘events’ to try to fill that horrible ‘Messiah Yeshua Vacuum’. So even ‘Christians’ no longer look seriously to the risen Messiah Himself, to serve as their ‘Head’ and Source of Life. They looked to ‘church buildings’ and ‘Movements’ and, self-appointed leaders’ and highly gifted, charismatic personalities and soulish man-made religious organizations, objects, icons and rituals to take His place. That has been so common, that it is now considered to be NORMAL!
So, now that it’s normal for us to lack the utterly essential union with the indwelling Life of our common Head, the precious Body of our Messiah remains horribly fragmented and mutilated and disfigured. The inherited ‘genetic defect’ that came when Adam and Eve were decapitated from their Head, the living Word of God, continues to cause so-called ‘believers’ to disintegrate and crumble into thousands of conflicting, mutually-negating, divisive, ‘we’ll do it our way’ sects and groups! And throughout the post-Resurrection New Covenant post-apostolic era, that atmosphere and division continue to this day! And out of that confusing jumble, there has emerged the modern, very common, ‘go to church’ or, ‘go to synagogue’, or ‘go to mosque’ set of attitudes, and worldly religious practices and individualistic, self-adoring lifestyles with which we’ve become so familiar.
6. Over the centuries, people were led to believe and assume that “We’re just fine the way we are…as long as we embrace ‘the right denominational theology’ and attend the ‘right synagogue, church, or mosque’ (out of tens of thousands of possibilities). So, Christian people, for example, focus on getting sinners to say a ‘sinners prayer’ and be baptized, and start ‘going to their kind of church.’ But that pattern tends to ignore and omit what the Lord actually told His disciples to be and to do in the Scriptures. Yeshua wasn’t telling them to go out and make ‘more Jewish converts’ or to establish ‘churches’ or try to recruit and develop more ‘church-goers’ or ‘Christians’ or ‘Catholics’ or ‘Protestants’ or ‘Messianics’ by which to swell their memberships.
He told His Jewish apostles to show the whole gentile world how to abide with Him…as His disciples! He told them to show the whole world how to be and do with Israel’s Messiah, what Israel’s Messiah had taught them to be and do with Him after He called them and they began to follow and live with Him day and night. He commanded them to pass on to the whole world, the New Covenant, post-Ascension, supernatural Spirit-empowered, living Temple lifestyle and abilities that His abiding indwelling Presence would make possible for them…so that He could graft the rest of the world into Israel’s Salvation Root, and all men could interact with Him, the way He had taught His Jewish apostles to interact with Him!
7. Many, in this modern, post-apostolic era, have never been challenged or stimulated to wrestle with the puzzle and mystery involved in actually being grafted into God’s True Israel so that we could abide and interact with our risen Master as His Father chose to reveal Him. He has called us to abide with Him, by faith in the credibility of His Biblical promises and familiarity with His Biblical lifestyle and His Spirit-imparted Presence within us. But instead of wrestling with the challenge of being ‘grafted into Israel’s Root,’ and abiding in His Resurrection Presence, we’ve busied ourselves with a variety of other vapid, mindlessly inane, Messiah-bypassing pursuits. And meanwhile, our Yeshua-less mindsets and habitual self-centered routines keep us as worldly, self-centered and fragmented and separated from each other as ever. And that does not allow the one true God and Creator of all things, to build a true, Spirit-empowered, unified Body for His Son, His living Word!
8. Today, it is common and ‘normal’ for believers, even within the same congregations, to remain distant strangers to each other. The Blood Covenant depth of mutual love, care and concern that the Family of God enjoyed in apostolic times is a treasure that has been lost for centuries. Instead, people remain selfish, individualistic, worldly and sectarian. We remain lost in large crowds and never come to intimately know and follow our risen, ever-present Lord together…as the unified Family He has His heart set on having! (See Jn. 17)
But true Last Days New Covenant fulfilling disciples will have to undergo the unique discipline of living day and night with their Master…BY FAITH! He will require them to believe His revelations and promises, and to obey His commands and to trust Him so much, that they will actually be required to interact with each other in His Love, because each of them is part of Him and part of His personal Household and Family! He wants us to know and love and put up with each other, and love and forgive even our deadly enemies, precisely because we are all interacting with Him, as He lives and operates in and through each one of us! He is the Head and Life Source of every human ever created…and, like it or not, we are all His individual members, sharing in His life and capabilities and the responsibilities that He, as our Creator, has to fulfill on behalf of all of His Creation.
Now He has come to restore us all to His Eternal Life. He has called all of us to live and operate as His one unified Body! The one who died to redeem, regenerate and reconcile all of us to God, is the reason why we disciples are to stick together, to the death, as Blood Covenant brothers. That is why disciples of that caliber naturally want to be together. We are all called to be and do the same thing…to embody Him, and to care for His members for His sake! Disciples learn how to do everything with Him and from Him…24/7! And it is through us, that He intends to teach this blessed lifestyle to the rest of the world.
Abiding with His Personal Presence is the only authentic way possible for us to get to know Him and His ways with authentic precision and to help and encourage each other as we all learn to abide with Him, as His Body! He is here to be present to and live through, His own…to teach, correct, discipline and show each generation of this fallen world all that He is, and what He does, and how He does it…through His disciples! But without Him serving as our true Head, we all remain decapitated, divided, scattered, and DEAD! No substitute for Him can make us supernaturally alive and fruitful, or give us Divine Authority to speak and act in His Name. Only Yeshua Himself has the Authority to make us one so that He can live and operate in us and through us. And that is why we FMM people focus on Him exclusively.
9. There’s no substitute for abiding with our Master Yeshua, in person. Disciples can’t be formed and trained just by having them listen to other people talk about Him. It’s not enough to browse casually through the Bible or consume an endless series of ‘spiritual books’ or courses or classes that deal with things that are ABOUT Him. None of that will ever take the place of the Lord Himself…of living and abiding in His Presence and interacting with Him personally and intimately! We must have direct personal knowledge of, and access to, His electrifying living, indwelling Presence.
2 Corinthians 4:7-11
“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.”
10. Once we come to believe that He is really here with us all the time…then we will have a Master to follow and obey. And then we’ll have a chance to learn to be His disciples. According to Scripture (Hebrews 12:26-28), everything temporary, that is, whatever is worldly and man-made, is going to lose its grip and prominence and will disappear from the scene entirely in the near future. So if we’re relying on those things, what will we do when they’re gone? And what will we do if the Lord says to us…‘Depart from Me workers of Lawlessness; I never knew you!’
No, we MUST have HIM! Nothing short of Him will do. The world doesn’t need any more of us. It doesn’t need any more movements or theological constructs. It needs Him…ALONE! And it is our job to learn how to abide with Him and carry about and embody and demonstrate what it means to bear His actual, Torah-fulfilling and validating Presence, as He lives in us and reveals Himself through our yielded flesh. We must be able to dance with Him in the Arena of Testimony…and let the rest of the world watch us actually doing it!
11. If we don’t learn to abide with Him…IN PERSON…at all times and in all things…we will be as dead, empty and powerless as the world around us is. And we will not be ready to face the onslaughts of the powers of Darkness when they pull out all the stops at the end and use everything they’ve got to try to derail us and shoot holes in our testimonies. Only the Lord has defeated Satan and his demonic forces. He’s the only Human in whom the Father is well pleased! He’s the only Human…to this point…in whom the Eternal Resurrection Life abides. Only In Him and From Him does that Life originate. Only HE has all Authority in Heaven and on Earth. Only HE knows the mind of Father. Only HE can impart the Spirit of God to His own. And only HE is able to lead us through the demonic minefields that the Serpent has laid all across this world to destroy us. So we must learn to abide with HIM, and cling to Him – exclusively. He is our one and only Source for whatever is real, true and good! He is our one and only Hope for persevering and surviving and overcoming in the days that lie ahead of us all.
12. So, the Follow Me Ministry focuses exclusively on trying to help people connect with the Lord Himself, so that He can be their indwelling Life. If we succeed in that, it will be more than enough. The Lord Himself will take over from there. So we must realize that the Last Days chaos and terror that Scripture warns us about will undoubtedly strip away and destroy our comfort zones and all current religious man-made empires. And then, we will see whether or not we are truly still naked and Sin-corrupted and alone, or whether we’re securely covered and enfolded within the Presence, Righteousness, Authority and Well Being of the risen Lord of lords and King of kings, as God promises to do, in Psalm 91, for those that truly believe.
This is why we follow such a different course heading. We aren’t trying to get people to supply us with paychecks and a nice headquarters…and travel money and lots of equipment. We are not a fancy business-like enterprise. We have no books, CD’s or ‘courses’ for sale. We do not sponsor expensive conferences, classes or meetings. All of those things can be helpful to some degree…but we don’t want anything to get between people and the Presence of the Lord. We don’t want to create distractions that will monopolize their time, focus and energy and draw any of their attention away from Him. We want to make sure we are all primed and ready and loaded with the Lord Himself…before it’s time for us to be summoned into the Last Days’ Arena of Testimony…before we are put to the Ultimate Test…before we have to show the powers of Darkness what we’re really made of. At that time, we must be authentic, Power-filled, ‘God-Bringers’!
Matthew 10:16-28
“Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves. But beware of men, for they will hand you over to the courts and scourge you in their synagogues; and you will even be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles. But when they hand you over, do not worry about how or what you are to say; for it will be given you in that hour what you are to say. For it is not you who speak, but it is the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.
“Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. You will be hated by all because of My name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved. But whenever they persecute you in one city, flee to the next; for truly I say to you, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel until the Son of Man comes.
“A disciple is not above his Teacher, nor the slave above his Master. If they have called the Head of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign the members of his household! Therefore do not fear them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.”
We believe the Lord is telling the Follow Me Ministry to learn to minister to Him continually…while He lives in us and works through us. That will enable Him to minister to the world around us through our living faith in His Resurrection Presence. By remaining focused on serving Him, we will automatically draw everyone’s attention to God’s living and written Word…to the fact that He contains within Himself, the Fullness of Almighty God…to the fact that He became one of us and that He is Real and Risen from the Dead, and All-Sufficient in our midst. We are here to testify to the fact that He is always here with us, as our Messiah-King and High Priest, at all times…ready to be and do the things that only God Almighty Himself could do…to us…in us…and through us!
In the Last Days, it’s quite likely that there will never be Follow Me centers or schools or meeting places. The Last Days will probably eliminate such things. And Last Days disciples will be forced to become a mobile army without walls…and guerilla-like underground tactics and lifestyles may become the order of that era. Therefore, we will not insert ourselves between our Master and His people. We can’t make disciples FOR Him. Only He can make disciples for Himself. And so we’re trying to give the Reality of His Resurrection Presence the ‘Last Days’ attention, respect and trust that our resurrected Master and the urgency of the Last Days truly deserve.
On our website, you will see a section entitled ‘The Original ‘Marching Orders.’ Read what they say…ponder them…absorb them…and above all, do them! For God’s living Word to truly take us over, we must die to everything else, and live only to Him. He must become our one and only Life. He is worthy of our full attention. As we’ve said before, we’re not just another world religion with a dead founder! God has eternally anointed His own Son, His living uncreated Word made flesh, who has Supreme Authority over all of Creation, to be here with us, to be everything for us and to apply to us all of the benefits of His awesome Finished Work of Creation and Redemption. His Work is Finished, Perfect, Consummated and All Sufficient, and He is here, resurrected from the dead, to be all of the Fruit of it for us! So the time has come for His disciples to learn to avail themselves of this awesome Treasure and to demonstrate to the rest of the world, how real and awesome His living All-Sufficient Presence in our midst really is!
God is waiting for His people to believe what He said about wanting to send His Word to reveal and command and impart His grace into our innermost being. He has been yearning to impart all this ‘Daily Bread’ to us since the moment Eve and Adam fell into the Sin of rejecting and bypassing His living Word. So it’s time for us to close the distance that separates us from our Master, until instead of distance, there remains only…the promised New Covenant Fulfillment Oneness. (So I’ll say it again: Read and ponder John 17.)
That’s all there is to Follow Me. It’s all about Him, Messiah Yeshua, in all of His Eternal Perfection and Glory…being and doing what He was sent to do…to us, in us and through us…to our Father’s Eternal Glory! May this help you get a better understanding of what this ministry is meant to introduce, discuss, demonstrate and share with our fellow disciples.