Let’s consider one of the main skills our Last Days boot camp training intends to impart. It’s the skill of developing and living out from a deep understanding of the ‘Secret Weapon’ with which God wants to equip each of his disciples. He gives it to all of us; but not all of us realize that we have it. This is why we must develop the realization of what we have, as well as the faith-empowered skill needed to actually be able to use it effectively and triumphantly.
So here are two questions. If you ponder and pray over them, your training will get underway:
- How aware are you of the Secret Weapon God gave you, and of its purpose?
- How soon will you be ready and able to use that weapon amid even the most chaotic and deadly battlefield conditions?
You know that we call the Last Days disciples of today ‘The Stephen Generation.’ So let’s unpack more of the meaning behind that title. The Last Days disciples must master the art and skill of developing a continuous laser-like wartime level mindset on our risen Lord’s Spirit-given Presence within us, along with a corresponding sense of urgency that will enable them to place continuous attention upon Him. This will enable them to interact with Him continuously. This is the mental focus that we must have as we get used to living and operating in deadly ‘kill or be killed’ wartime conditions with the powers of Darkness.
That’s what Stephen and his contemporaries had to quickly learn. And this text from Revelation 12 refers to the same conditions that our generation will be experiencing. So we must be trained and prepared to face, endure, and deal with following:
“… “Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers and sisters has been thrown down, the one who accuses them before our God day and night. And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death.
For this reason, rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them. Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you with great wrath, knowing that he has only a short time.” (Revelation 12:10-12 NASB1995, Emphasis added)
The dire emergency conditions we see developing around us even now, as well as the ever-increasing opposition, hatred, defiance and rebellion being unleashed against God and His Living and written Word, will require us to stay firmly and consistently focused on our Triumphant Lord and Shepherd from here on out! By the Authority of the New Covenant God made with Israel, and the Power of God’s Holy Spirit, the risen Lord now always abides in, and works from, and reveals Himself through us! So, just like Stephen, we must keep our minds, wills, emotions and affections focused on God’s beloved Son at all times!
We can no longer afford to forget about Him for long periods, or lose sight of the incomprehensible inner Treasure He is here to be to us, and for us. He is our one and only Hope that we will join Him soon in His Resurrection Glory! And Holy Spirit enables Him to live in us to take us through whatever lies ahead of us, safely, in total triumph… all the way… into our Heavenly Father’s Eternal Embrace!
“… Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You have anointed my head with oil; my cup overflows. Certainly goodness and faithfulness will follow me all the days of my life, and my dwelling will be in the House of the Lord forever.” (Psalm 23:4-6 NASB)
So now, as our indwelling Lord leads us closer and closer to the Last Days climactic final Confrontation with Evil, we must be ever-prepared to faithfully fulfill our battlefield assignments that will be given to us. Now is the time for us to master of the art of receiving into ourselves Christ’s Life, Wisdom, Holiness, Righteousness, and Resurrection Reality that Christ is. Holy Spirit is always present to impart all that pertains to Him into us. For this reason, God-in-us is our unstoppable hidden weapon. And because He is our invincible Secret inner Fire Power; If we learn to release Him into everything we do and everywhere we go, our demonic and human enemies will be rendered absolutely combat ineffective!
This is why we must always be mindful that Holy Spirit is causing all His Heavenly Fire Power to flow into us, so we can cooperate with Him and allow Christ to come forth from within us to blast through every enemy stronghold and bulwark they keep trying to set up against us. Scripture assures us that all of this is already ours! And we must be aware of the adage that warns us to “Use it or lose it!”
In terms of how this applies to us and our Last Days disciple training, notice that we’re still blessed to have some relative peace and quiet remaining to us. So we can practice and develop proficiency and mastery in the use of our Secret New Covenant Last Days Weapon without too much interruption or interference. But our daily lives will soon experience enormous amounts of challenging situations and events. We’ll go through many trying interactions with people around us and the effects of what many of them will choose to do against us, or fail to do for us. So we need to practice now… how we will respond to all of that by using this awesome weapon Holy Spirit keeps giving us right now. We can and must become adept at releasing our indwelling Lord into every situation, circumstance, event, and interaction we may be part of. Christ Himself must be our response, in all that we think, see, hear, do, and experience throughout each day and night:
“Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we also have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we celebrate in hope of the glory of God. And not only this, but we also celebrate in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; AND HOPE DOES NOT DISAPPOINT, BECAUSE THE LOVE OF GOD HAS BEEN POURED OUT WITHIN OUR HEARTS THROUGH THE HOLY SPIRIT WHO WAS GIVEN TO US!” (Romans 5:1-5 NASB, Emphasis added)
We Can Release Christ into Everything in Which We Participate
So it is the invincible, unstoppable, Love of God that Holy Spirit is continually lavishing upon us and transmitting into us, through Christ. He is our abiding indwelling Life-giving Fire Power we can aim at any and all Evil! Because He is our Life, He can be our response to, and in, every situation, circumstance and personal interaction! What He is, and how He reacts must now be seen coming out of us continually and predictably! In this way, every part and portion of the Battle is His!
“Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Be of the same mind toward one another; do not be haughty in mind, but associate with the lowly. Do not be wise in your own estimation. Never repay evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all people. If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all people. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written: “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. “But if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” DO NOT BE OVERCOME BY EVIL, BUT OVERCOME EVIL WITH GOOD!”(Romans 12:14-21 NASB, Emphasis added)
So this is our weapon: we have the right and ability to abide with, and to work from, the Perfect Presence of the Fullness that is in our risen Lord… at all times. And we can embody and reveal Him in all things to whoever happens to be around us… without any limit or interruption whatsoever! This is what Stephen was able to do in Acts 6 & 7, right up to his very last moment in this dark, dismal fallen world! And this is what I believe the original New Covenant apostles (who were trained by the Lord Himself) were undoubtedly teaching to those new Spirit-empowered post Ascension disciples, like Stephen, that suddenly began to cluster around them after the events of Acts 2 took place.
God Himself is in us to instruct, prepare, and train us to respond to whatever goes on in this fallen world in the proper Heavenly, New Covenant way. He equips us to allow our risen Lord Himself to face, stand, and effectively oppose the enormously turbulent shock waves caused by all the radical changes that the tumultuous New Covenant Last Days Era is injecting into this fallen world, attacking and enslaving all the saved and unsaved people that currently inhabit it!
So as you ponder this Awesome Secret Weapon, remember that, when the New Covenant Era was just being birthed, the disciples in the book of Acts suddenly found themselves wedged in between ‘a huge uncomfortable Rock, and a very hard, and excruciatingly difficult Place’! The pagan idolatrous world saw them as, crazy Jewish religious pests. That was the ‘rock’ against which their God-given assignment to ‘preach Christ crucified and risen’ squeezed them. And the ‘hard’ violently hostile place that kept closing in on them from the opposite direction was the malice and opposition from their own Israelite unbelieving brethren, who wanted absolutely nothing to do with their Messianic Gospel message and the wild new Spirit-empowered lifestyle the Lord’s disciples were ordered to live out and demonstrate!
“Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be as wary as serpents, and as innocent as doves. But be on guard against people, for they will hand you over to the courts and flog you in their synagogues; and you will even be brought before governors and kings on My account, 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 what you are to say will be given you in that hour. For it is not you who are speaking, but it is the Spirit of your Father who is speaking in you.” (Matthew 10:16-20 NASB. Emphasis added.)
So the intensity level of the New Covenant Last Days training preparation we need will have to be even tougher and more intense than what Stephen and his generation needed! They had to develop levels of maturity, courage, authority, power, and persevering strength that were unprecedented because they were entrusted with having to usher in the very Beginning Stages of God’s revolutionary New Covenant! But the Last Days generations will have to be able to demonstrate the Fulfillment and Ultimate Consummation of the awesome promises to Israel that prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel foretold concerning this awesome New Covenant.
“Do not call to mind the former things, or consider things of the past. BEHOLD, I AM GOING TO DO SOMETHING NEW, NOW IT WILL SPRING UP; WILL YOU (who only focus on the Covenant of Moses) NOT BE AWARE OF IT? I WILL EVEN MAKE A ROADWAY IN THE WILDERNESS (that Israel currently inhabits, and you will even see the sudden emergence of unprecedented and unexpected New Covenant), RIVERS IN THE DESERT!” (Isaiah 43:18-19 NASB, Amplification and emphasis added)
“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a New Covenant with the House of Israel and the House of Judah, not like the Covenant (of Sinai) which I made with their fathers on the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.
For this is the (New) Covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord: “I will put My law (My Living Torah) within them and write it (Him) on their heart; and I will (truly and finally) be their God, and they shall be My people (when all of this is fulfilled). They will not teach again, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ FOR THEY WILL ALL KNOW ME (at a most personal, intimate, Spirit-to-spirit marriage-like level), from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for (thanks to this New Covenant I will make, they will be made to be perfectly righteous and acceptable in My sight for what My Living Word, the Living Torah will accomplish in their name,) I will forgive their wrongdoing, and their sin I will no longer remember.” (Jeremiah 31:31‑34 NASB, Amplification and emphasis added)
“Therefore say to the House of Israel, ‘This is what the Lord God says: “It is not for your sake (as a result of your personal performance), House of Israel, that I am about to act, but (I’m going to act) for My Holy Name, which you have profaned among the nations (that is, among the Gentiles) where you went. And I will vindicate the Holiness of My great Name which has been profaned among the nations, which you (in your inherited Adamic Sin-corrupted bankruptcy) have profaned among them. Then the (other bankrupt Sin-corrupted) nations will know that I am the Lord,” declares the Lord God, “when (thanks to the Performance of My Living Word made flesh coming out of you,) I show Myself holy among you IN THEIR SIGHT! For I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the lands; and I will bring you into your own land (as began to happen officially in 1948).
Then (at the very end of the New Covenant Era) 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 (that I will completely regenerate) within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you and bring it about that you walk in My statutes, and are careful and follow My ordinances. And (after I replace what is old and Sin-corrupted in you My New Heaven and New Earth will come down to you and My Creation will be utterly Perfectly Restored and made right forevermore) you will live in the land that I gave (promised to give) to your forefathers; so you (actually and legitimately) will be My people, and I will be your God (at last, in Spirit and in Truth)!” (Ezekiel. 36:22-28 NASB, Amplification and emphasis added)
So from these mind-boggling revelations, which Holy Spirit was sent to progressively reveal to the world, we have been chosen to serve the function of manifesting the ‘finishing touches’ of what God promised He would do. We’ve been chosen to be like ‘the whipped cream and the cherry on top of the ‘New Covenant Sundae’ that God has been preparing for His people. Ours is the generation that will have the honor and privilege of ushering in God’s Absolute Total Fulfillment of each of the magnificent Covenant promises He made to Israel! So, in God’s awesome Plan, we’re destined to appear with Him as ‘the Bride without spot or wrinkle’!
“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.” (Ephesians 5:25-27 NASB.)
God Always Keeps His Covenant Promises
God never intended to reject, forsake, and abandon His chosen people. No, He was telling them He was about to give them further, much deeper Revelation of Himself and His ways and of His Perfect Works that were already accomplished in eternity! He was saying that through Israel, and the impact His new Revelation would begin to have on this fallen world, He would be able to reveal Himself not only to Israel, but also to the rest of the world, which would, by the end of this age, be completely renewed, restored, and fulfilled to Perfection!
But this awesome revelation is being given in progressive stages. He isn’t overwhelming His own by deluging them all at once with the entirety of what He was going to reveal about Himself. Instead, He has been imparting this Treasure progressively, in manageable portions to give us all time to study, absorb, and gradually digest the endless depths of His Enormous Grace and Lovingkindness in due time. And the letters to the Ephesians and the Hebrews explain this further with these words:
“For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles— if indeed you have heard of the administration of God’s Grace which was given to me for you; that by Revelation there was made known to me the mystery, as I wrote before briefly. By referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into THE MYSTERY OF CHRIST, WHICH IN OTHER GENERATIONS WAS NOT MADE KNOWN TO MANKIND, AS IT HAS NOW BEEN REVEALED TO HIS HOLY (New Covenant Era) APOSTLES AND PROPHETS IN THE SPIRIT; to be specific, that the Gentiles are (equally and just as truly My) fellow heirs and fellow members of the Body, and fellow partakers of the Promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel, of which I was made a minister, according to the gift of God’s Grace which was given to me ACCORDING TO THE WORKING OF HIS POWER.” (Ephesians 3:1-7 NASB, Amplification and emphasis added)
“God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, (however, now) in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed Heir of all things, through whom He also made the world. And He is the Radiance of His Glory and the Exact Representation of His Nature, and upholds all things by the Word of His Power! When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, to the extent that He has inherited a more excellent Name than they.” (Hebrews 1:1-4 NASB, Emphasis added)
God is now about to give us the final concluding consummating final touches to His awesome Creation-transforming New Covenant stage of His Self-Revelation! In the beginning, He began His ‘Rescue Mission’ for the human race by choosing one family through which to begin setting things right throughout His Creation. From Abraham and his family, an entire nation would develop, through which the rest of the unbelieving world was intended to finally come to faith. And through that chosen nation, God would, at the right time (when the New Covenant Era came,) begin to reach out to and include all other families of the earth into His own Personal Familial Household. (The beginning of this Fulfillment can be first seen to appear in Acts 10 and then it developed throughout the ensuing stages of history.)
God really meant it when He promised Israel, through Isaiah, that, He would do something in the future that would shock and amaze the world. Yes, it would be unexpected, and shocking. It would devastate all spiritually blind, Self-adoring, Humanistic flesh! It was going to be the most mind-blowing, necessary, enormously exhilarating, and gloriously hope-giving News ever heard in all of Creation! But… God also warned that Man’s Sin-adoring fallen flesh would at first refuse to believe, embrace, and take the News to heart. Even most of Israel would reject it and turn away:
“He was despised and abandoned by men, a man of great pain and familiar with sickness; and like one from whom people hide their faces, He was despised, and we (Israelites) had no regard for Him. However, it was our sicknesses that He Himself bore, and our pains that He carried; yet we ourselves assumed that He had been afflicted, struck down by God, and humiliated.
But He was pierced for our offenses, He was crushed for our wrongdoings; the punishment for our well-being was laid upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed. ALL OF US, like sheep, have gone astray, EACH OF US has turned to his own way; BUT THE LORD HAS CAUSED THE WRONGDOING OF US ALL TO FALL ON HIM!” (Isaiah 53:3-6 NASB)
If you study the earlier prophecies and the first century historical context within which this massive unprecedented New Covenant Reality Shift began, it’s plain to see ‘the rock and the hard place’ between which that first century New Covenant generation would be placed. And, beloved, this is why God had to train His beloved Son’s New Covenant disciples at unprecedented levels that were not required of the former generations.
“But no one puts a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and a worse tear results. Nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wineskins burst, and the wine pours out and the wineskins are ruined; but they put new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.” (Matthew 9:16-18 NASB)
So now that we’re close to reaching the ‘Final Lap’ of this awesome ‘Race’ is it any wonder that the training of the final generations of New Covenant disciples will require the ultimate in intensity, seriousness, and thoroughness? Isn’t it clear to see why we will need to gain ultimate mastery in our personal discipline,training, conditioning, and ‘firing range’ practice proficiency from now on?
This is absolutely necessary because our generations will be included as our God is finishing off everything that led to the Climactic, Consummating Finalizing Touch to this age! By the time we reach the very end of this Story, God will have made it absolutely clear that no one can depend on himself or herself for anything! No Sin-corrupted human can afford to assume airs of being Self-made or Self-sufficient or Self-sustaining! We must all look to only One Man… the Eternal Living Word of God who became flesh! From now on, only He is responsible for fulfilling God’s Eternal Covenant… and His revelations, promises, and claims… both on the part of God, and also on the part of Man! And we Last Days disciples will have to be trained and equipped to draw all of Creation’s focus and attention to Him alone!
“But whatever things were gain to me, these things I have counted as loss because of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them mere rubbish, so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; if somehow I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.“ (Philippians 3:7-11 NASB. Emphasis added.)
“For He rescued us from the domain of Darkness, and transferred us to the Kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have Redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He (this Awesome utterly Unique God Man) is the Image of the invisible God, the Firstborn of all Creation: for by Him (as God) all things were created, both in the Heavens and on Earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or rulers, or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also the Head of the Body, the Church; and He is the Beginning(the Divine Creator and Sustainer; and also), the Firstborn (the Foremost Human who atoned for all the others and then rose) from the dead, so that He Himself (in all of His Divine Fullness) will come to have First Place in everything.
For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the Fullness (of God’s Authority, Power, Goodness, and Love) to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, whether things on Earth or things in Heaven, having made Peace through the Blood of His Cross.” (Colossians 1:13-20 NASB, Amplification and emphasis added)
Beloved, we all know, and must admit, that it takes boot camp level repetition, drilling, and practice. We’ll need a massive amount of repetition before any of us is able to master anything. It takes that kind of repetition after someone leaves his or her native land, and comfort zone, and migrates to a distant part of the world to relocate and settle in and ‘learn the ropes’ in the midst of a new, totally alien, nation culture, and ethnic atmosphere. This isn’t done merely by taking an oath of citizenship and finding a new place to start living. It takes lots of time, struggle, determined persistent focus and willingness to soak into oneself the utterly new atmosphere and lifestyle and mentality. And until that happens, the newcomer continues to make many basic and necessary beginner’s mistakes and blunders. And only over an extended time of months and years, can that person reach proficiency levels of operation that can equal those of the ones that are ‘native born’ inhabitants of that place.
That kind of repetition is needed to move from one earthly location to another. And while it is arduous and occasionally achieved, that is nothing compared to the mind-boggling Exodus God requires of those of us who must migrate from this fallen temporary earthly kingdom to God’s own Eternal Heavenly Kingdom! The transition from what we started to be here on Earth to actually transforming into having total union with God, by faith, and being adopted into His own Personal Family and Household as citizens of His Heavenly Kingdom is much, much more radical and far-reaching!
For the likes of us to make that Transition in our own strength and by our own devices would be utterly impossible! We must allow God Himself to take us, by the Power of His indwelling Presence and Omnipotent Power and Absolute Authority! And this is why we must be trained and drilled to deliberately, mindfully, abide and interact with our indwelling Lord… depending on Him to take us every step of the way until we cross the ultimate Finish Line that leads into eternity. We’ll never finish the journey on our own. It can only be done in, through, by, and from our indwelling Lord and Commander… with the full agreement and cooperation and submission of our brain, mind, will, heart and soul!
“And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were very astonished and said, “Then who can be saved?” And looking at them, Jesus said to them, “With people this is impossible, BUT WITH GOD (living and acting from within people by His Holy Spirit and Living Word) ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE!” (Matthew 19:24-26 NASB, Amplification and emphasis added)
So this is why it’s absolutely necessary that we develop a new paradigm, a New Covenant paradigm of ourselves that corresponds to the Reality of Christ’s Perfect Finished Works of Creation, Redemption, and Full Restoration. So as Paul wrote:
“FOR ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST… AND TO DIE (to myself) IS GAIN!” (Philippians 1:21 NASB. Amplification and emphasis added.)
Additional articles in this series are available at www.follow-me-ministries.org website)
- Operating in New Covenant ‘Resurrection Mode’ Part 1 – What God Wants To See In Us