My fellow disciples,
I cannot urge you strongly enough to take the contents of this article very, very seriously. World events have shown us that the war between good and evil in our days is ramping up quickly and we must be equipped and battle ready. I recommend that we repeatedly read the Scriptures contained here so that they can function as the foundation of our armament in this war. And then when our Commander in Chief gives the command to engage our enemies, we can advance from a place of assured victory.
In Yeshua’s great love and faithfulness,
Mum Nancy
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Beloved Family… in 2003 while I was on the staff of the Ultimate Journey Ministry, the Lord began to do something with me He had never done before. He began to draw my attention to the Last Days, and the prophecies concerning the end of this age. And that was a topic that had never captured my attention before.
But suddenly I began to develop a sustained interest in the unique kind of training that the Lord’s Last Days disciples would need to be prepared and fit to do their jobs and fulfill their commissions. And to this day, that has been the way it has been! My mind is always engrossed with the training disciples will need to receive… in order to be combat-ready in the days to come.
So, as I’ve mentioned before, in the last few years, I’ve begun to think of the Last Days disciples as ‘The Stephen Generation’. “Why Stephen?,” you may ask. It’s because of the prominence the Holy Spirit gives him at the beginning of the apostolic writings that God has given to help us prepare for the fulfillment of the Renewed Covenant Era our risen Lord launched and began to establish just after He rose from the dead and ascended to be back with His Father.
To me, Stephen is sort of like the ‘poster boy’ for the Last Days generation. I say that because they will be called upon to serve the Lord by putting the finishing touches on what God revealed and promised in the Abrahamic Covenant that He Renewed for Israel and the rest of the human race. In other words, what Stephen and his contemporary Covenant first century brethren were commissioned to continue… the final generations will be commissioned to finish.
So we’ll have to face, endure, and work our way through the maximum level of the same challenges and demonic opposition that engulfed Stephen and the other first century disciples. By the end of this age, the spiritual combat will reach its most violent, destructive and deadly levels!
So let’s consider the kinds of situations and conditions we should gear our souls to be prepared to face, deal with, and overcome. The following texts give us a good idea:
Birth Pangs Era Shaking:
“See to it that you do not refuse the One who is speaking! For if they did not escape when they refused the One who was warning them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject the One who warns us from heaven. His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens.” Now this phrase, “Yet once more,” shows the removal of those things that are shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude—through this we may offer worship in a manner pleasing to God, with reverence and awe. FOR OUR GOD IS A CONSUMING FIRE!” (Hebrews 12:25-29 TLV, Emphasis added)
“Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. But beware of men, for they will hand you over to the courts and flog you in their synagogues. You will be brought before governors and kings because of Me, as a witness to them and to the Gentiles. But when they hand you over, do not worry about how or what you should say, for it shall be given to you in that hour what you should say. For it is not you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.”
“Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; and children will rise up against their parents and have them put to death. And you will be hated by all because of My name, but the one who endures to the end shall be saved.” (Matthew 10:16-22 TLV)
“But understand this, that in the last days hard times will come—for people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, hardhearted, unforgiving, backbiting, without self-control, brutal, hating what is good, treacherous reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to an outward form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid these people!” (2 Timothy 3:1-5 TLV)
“I solemnly charge you—in the presence of God and Messiah Yeshua, who is about to judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His Kingdom—proclaim the Word! Be ready when it is convenient or inconvenient. CONFRONT, REBUKE, ENCOURAGE—with complete patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not put up with sound instruction, but they will pile up for themselves teachers in keeping with their own desires, to have their ears tickled. And they will turn away from hearing the truth and wander off to myths. You, however, keep a clear mind in all things, WITHSTAND HARDSHIP, DO THE WORK OF PROCLAIMING THE GOOD NEWS, and fulfill your service.” (2 Timothy 4:1-5 TLV, Emphasis added)
The Great Final Shaking:
“The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some consider slowness. Rather, He is being patient toward you—not wanting anyone to perish, but for all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. On that day the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the elements will melt and disintegrate, and the earth and everything done on it shall be exposed. Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what kind of people should you be? Live your lives in holiness and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God. In that day the heavens will be dissolved by fire, and the elements will melt in the intense heat.
“ But in keeping with His promise, we look for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.” (2 Peter 3:9-13 TLV, Emphasis added)
So, those of us who live in this Last Days Era have no choice. We must be trained to be ready to live and operate, and persevere and overcome, in the midst of these turbulent, violent, dangerous and very uncertain conditions! So, what exactly is it that we should be trained to be and to do in order to be ready? Is it about developing all sorts of martial arts and survival skills and techniques? Should we be hoarding tons of food and supplies and weapons and ammunition in underground bunkers? Is that the purpose for which God gave us the indwelling Presence of the Holy Spirit? Is that what the Lord told His disciples to do? (See Matthew chapter 10.)
When the Combat begins in earnest, it will start coming at us with such overwhelming force and rapidity that we won’t know what hit us!
And at that time, the pressures coming at us will be global in scope, and they will come at us simultaneously from all directions. And in that case, no matter what level of earthly cautions and worldly preparations we may have prepared for ourselves, they will not be enough. Nor will they do us any good!
The world around us will look and feel as overwhelmed and devastated and forsaken as it does in areas where people are surrounded by the ruins left by terrible violent geological or climate upheavals… like earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, or tsunamis! Naturally speaking, everyone will be stunned into various stages of traumatic shock. People will feel hopelessly desolate and totally clueless as to where to go, or know what to begin to do! Yes, that’s the way it will be for everyone in the natural physical realm. Everything that can be shaken, will be shaken… into disintegration. And there will be nothing left of whatever we once knew, and depended on. There will be no natural earthly source of comfort, security, and wellbeing! So then… to what will we turn, and from what will our hope come from?
We’re going to have to learn to operate on a completely different level than ever before! And what will that level be? It will be the supernatural level that our Messiah Yeshua was demonstrating to His disciples in the Gospels and in the book of Acts. That’s the level in which we too will have to learn to operate. We’ll have to become masters of the arts of relying on the imminent Presence of God, and His heavenly hosts, and we will have to become proficient in engaging our demonic enemies in spiritual combat! And those demonic enemies will be doing everything they can to get us so absorbed and preoccupied with the natural, physical, earthly emergencies that are all around us, that we’ll forget who we are and Who lives in us. They’ll try to shock us out of being able to focus on our Awesome God… to stop worshiping and serving Him, and relying on His infinite Perfection! If they succeed in pulling our souls away from the One who abides in our spirits, they’ll succeed in getting us to cave in and give up!
And if they to manage to shock and stun us that profoundly, we’ll forget about all the spiritual assets and weapons we’ve been given by God to use against the powers of Darkness! In other words, to be able to prevail, they have to try to drag us off of the Covenant Ground that God has given us to defend and hold. They’ll strive to pull us onto their Godless territory… that fallen, earthly, fleshly worldly ground that they control and where they are able to prevail.
So this is where we Last Days disciples can learn from Stephen and his fellow first century disciples about standing and holding our ground. We too must be trained the way in which they were being trained, disciplined, and led by the apostles that the Lord Himself had previously trained and disciplined and developed. We too must learn to know what they knew and do what they did, the way they did it. Then we’ll be equipped to fulfill our tours of duty in the Last Days Era.
Paul learned a lot from what he noticed that Stephen was able to do.
Paul was part of the gang that murdered Stephen. But afterward the Lord came after him… and saved him, and filled him with the Holy Spirit. Then Paul began to understand the great wisdom Stephen possessed. And he realized that Stephen’s ability to remain focused on His indwelling Lord is what enabled him to remain faithful and steadfast… and to give that marvelously supernatural testimony to his risen Lord… regardless of what it personally cost him.
And when Paul wrote his letter to the disciples of Colossae, he told them to practice and master the art that he had seen Stephen practicing even under the worst, most trying circumstances imaginable. This is what he wrote:
“Therefore, if you have been raised up with Messiah, keep seeking the things above—where Messiah is, sitting at the right hand of God. Focus your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you have died, and your (natural) life is hidden with Messiah in God! When Messiah, who is your (eternal) Life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him, in Glory!” (Colossians 3:1-4 TLV, Amplification and emphasis added)
This is what Paul saw Stephen doing! And he realized that disciples are trained by wholeheartedly embracing God’s Word and becoming one with Him. They drink in God’s written Word… but they also embrace, and submit to, and become one with, His Living Word made flesh, whose Living Presence is transmitted into them by the Holy Spirit.
It’s Holy Spirit’s job to live in us, so He can make Yeshua’s Resurrection Presence real, and fully alive, and supernaturally fruitful within us. He does this to equip and supply and protect us… but He also does it so that Yeshua’s Presence can be released and revealed and allowed to produce His supernatural Fruit from within our yielded flesh! And this is why we too must become extremely familiar with the Holy Spirit and His ways.
Stephen did all of these things, not because he could see or feel or touch the risen Lord. He did it by developing a military-level, totally focused obedience of faith in the Authority of God’s Word and the airtight validity of His promises. God, and His Perfect Nature, and His Absolute Authority, and Perfect Faithfulness to back and fulfill His Word, is what makes it possible for disciples to develop this airtight, unshakable level of faith. By trusting in God’s utterly Perfect All-Sufficient Nature and Presence, we can afford to develop an airtight faith. Knowing our God as He is, is what will make us become so totally convinced that our risen Lord is in us ,that we will be able to know we can interact with Him at all times… and receive everything we’ll ever need from Him. And He will then be able to protect us and guide and direct our steps and reveal Himself to others… through our yielded crucified flesh!
So let’s consider Stephen’s Example:
Stephen learned how to ‘magnify’ the Lord. What does that mean? Well, you magnify something when you focus on, and think about someone or something, day and night… habitually… with massive repetition. Each time you do it you sow another seed into your brain and mind. And with that kind of repetition, those little seeds really add up by the time the season for harvesting arrives! So… whatever you think about habitually, day and night, and the way you think about it… that is what you will eventually become! Massive repetition is the secret. And by following this law of ‘Sowing and Reaping’… it will be possible for us to ‘plant’ our way out of our radically independent past, and into our Messiah-embodying and revealing future!
This is how professional actors and actresses learn to perform a new part in a play they’ve never done before. They think about, and identify with, the new character in the script day and night. And they install new hardwiring and programming into their brains and mental ‘onboard computers’ with many rehearsals, and continuous practice, and drill, and still more practice until they can do it in their sleep!
“So I tell you this, indeed I insist on it in the Lord—walk no longer as the pagans do, stumbling around in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance in them due to the hardness of their heart. Since they are past feeling, they have turned themselves over to indecency for the practice of every kind of immorality, with greed for more.
“However, you did not learn Messiah in this way—if indeed you have heard Him and were taught in Him, as the truth is in Yeshua. With respect to your former lifestyle, you are to lay aside the old self corrupted by its deceitful desires, be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new (Messiah-in-you) self—created to be like (one with) God in true Righteousness and Holiness!
So lay aside lying and “each one of you speak (the one who is Eternal) Truth with his neighbor,” for we are members of one another.” (Ephesians 4:17-25 TLV, Amplification and emphasis added)
That’s how Stephen became one with his indwelling risen Lord, Yeshua. And he arrived at the point where this became the ‘default setting’ within his mind’s focus and what occupied his heart’s attention even in the midst of the furor that was raging all around his body! By that time, Stephen only had eyes for his risen Lord… and nothing else! And I’m convinced that this is what he and the other first century disciples were all learning from the apostles who had personally been trained by the Lord Himself prior to His death, resurrection, and ascension.
“The (Living and written) Word of God kept on spreading, and the number of disciples in Jerusalem greatly multiplied; even a great number of the kohanim (priests) were becoming obedient to the Faith.
“Now Stephen, full of (Yeshua’s Presence, and releasing His) Grace and Power was doing great wonders and signs among the people. But some men from what was called the Synagogue of the Freedmen—both Cyrenians and Alexandrians, as well as some from Cilicia and Asia—stood up and began arguing with Stephen. But they could not withstand the Wisdom and the Ruach by whom he was speaking.” (Acts 6:8-10 TLV, Amplification and emphasis added)
“Then they secretly instigated men into saying, “We have heard him speaking blasphemous words against Moses and against God!” They also incited the people, the elders, and the Torah scholars; and they rushed at Stephen, seized him, and led him away to the Sanhedrin. They set up false witnesses who said, “This man never stops speaking words against this holy place and the Torah. For we have heard him saying that this Yeshua ha-Natzrati will destroy this place and change the customs that Moses handed down to us. “Watching him intently, everyone who was sitting in the Sanhedrin saw that HIS FACE WAS LIKE THE FACE OF AN ANGEL!” (Acts 7:11-15 TLV, Emphasis added)
When we habitually magnify our risen Lord and abide in His Presence the way Stephen learned to do, we will be filled with Yeshua, and whatever it is that Father sent Him to be to us and to do to us, in us, and through us. He will register on our faces and reveal Himself through the members of our bodies! And in this way, Stephen and other Spirit-empowered disciples will be able to defer to the risen Lord, so that He is able to take over and live His Life and do what He has been sent to do in us and through us. And He (not us) will be the one that the people around us will be interacting with and by whom they will be affected.
“O you stiff-necked people! You uncircumcised of heart and ears! You always resist the Ruach ha-Kodesh; just as your fathers did, you do as well. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They killed the ones who foretold the coming of the Righteous One. Now you have become His betrayers and murderers—you who received the Torah by direction of angels and did not keep it!”
When they heard these things, they became enraged and began gnashing their teeth at him. But Stephen, full of the Ruach ha-Kodesh, gazed into heaven and (because his mind’s attention was permanently riveted upon his Lord. So even though his body was caught up in the midst of that turmoil, he) saw the Glory of God—and Yeshua standing at the right hand of God. And he said, “Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!”
“But they covered their ears; and crying out with a loud voice, they rushed at him with one impulse. Driving him out of the city, they began stoning him, and the witnesses laid down their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul. They went on stoning Stephen as he was calling out, “Lord Yeshua, receive my spirit!” Then he fell on his knees and cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them!” After he said this, he died. (And he finally entered into the total newness of the Eternal triumph of His resurrected Master and Forever Covenant Friend!) ” (Acts 7:51-60 TLV, Amplification and emphasis added)
Why Must We Deal with All of This Turmoil?
The powers of Darkness hate and oppose God on every level. And He chose to elevate us above them by making us to be His own image and likeness and Covenant friends and sons and heirs. So they are insanely jealous of us, and because they know the Lord plans to fulfill His Father’s Plan and will in and through His disciples… they can’t stand the sight of us either.
This is why they’ve always despised and tried to destroy Israel. And they’ll do it to anyone else who dares to stand with God against them! And since they can’t afford to allow God to work from within the earthly Body of His Son to fulfill His Plan and promises, the enemies of God are always seeking ways to destroy our faith and to separate us from God’s Living and written Word! And if they succeed in doing that, they know they’ll destroy us completely, thereby preventing God from fulfilling His Plan, and His promises, and His own Word!
So we’re caught in the middle of this War between Good and Evil whether we like it or not! We HAVE to fight! And if we dare to remain faithful and steadfast in serving our God, our terrified enemies are going to have to come against us with everything they’ve got! But if and when we fulfill our task of rendering our risen Lord present and active in our midst, they will have to confront and deal with our risen Lord, and not with us!
Therefore, We Must Make Sure We’re Combat-Ready:
“Finally, be strong in the Lord and IN HIS MIGHTY POWER. Put on (Messiah Yeshua, who is) the Full Armor of God, so that you are able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the worldly forces of this darkness, and against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
“Therefore, take up the Full Armor of God (which is the Word of God Himself), so that you may be able to resist when the times are evil, and after you have done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm then! Buckle the Belt of Truth around your waist, and put on the Breastplate of Righteousness. Strap up your feet in readiness with the Good News of Shalom. Above all, take up the Shield of Faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the Helmet of Salvation and the Sword of the Spirit, which (are all contained in the Fullness of God which is contained in Yeshua. In Him are all of these things, for He) is the Living Eternal Word of God!” (Ephesians 6:10-17 TLV, Amplification and emphasis added)
“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward man is renewed day by day. For our trouble, light and momentary, is producing for us an eternal weight of Glory far beyond all comparison, as we look not at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen. For what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is ETERNAL!” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18 TLV, Emphasis added)
The Final Ultimate Shaking:
“The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some consider slowness. Rather, He is being patient toward you—not wanting anyone to perish, but for all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. On that day the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the elements will melt and disintegrate, and the earth and everything done on it shall be exposed. Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what kind of people should you be? Live your lives in holiness and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God. In that day the heavens will be dissolved by fire, and the elements will melt in the intense heat. But in keeping with His promise, we look for New Heavens and a New Earth, where Righteousness (Himself) dwells.” (2 Peter 3:9-13 TLV, Emphasis added)
So as we continue to undergo our ‘Messiah-in-me’ training and preparation for this intense combat… this is what we can expect to experience, as everything we once considered to be normal and permanent continues to disintegrate and blow away right before our eyes:
Disintegration of our created temporary ‘false gods’ and our former ways of seeing, thinking, acting and reacting. (See Isaiah 1) We too will be shaken and as soon as it happens, we’ll be in shock and won’t know what hit us! But if we’ve trained sufficiently… the ‘muscle memory’ we developed through our repetitive training in magnifying and abiding and interacting with our Messiah, will kick in automatically, and we’ll do then, what we trained ourselves to do earlier! We’ll automatically revert to that Messiah-magnifying mode, even if and when our mortal bodies are being dazed and stunned by the shock and trauma of deadly combat! And He will make Himself known and felt through our yielded flesh!
Separation from loved ones and friends who choose to reject our Commander’s call to His service. (Matthew 10:21-39) We’ll have to be ready for the separation that will inevitably take place if and when people we loved and to whom we were close make the terminal decision to reject and turn away from our risen Lord. Because we’re one with Him, and they are not, we’ll have to deal with the inevitable separation that will take place between us.
Weaning, detoxifying, grieving all strong attachments we developed to our Self-life and its agendas. (Ezekiel 16:15-21) And so, we’ll have to go through a ‘drying out’ type of process similar to what addicts who are in the stages of withdrawal from various addictive substances or activities from whose bondage they are fighting to be free.
Cleansing, purifying, toughening, proper refocusing of our Sin-corrupted minds, wills, imaginations and natural affections. (Ezekiel 16:10-17) We’ll have to rid ourselves of the habit of wrong, God-less, Self-adoring thinking and replace it with thinking that is compatible with regarding our Lord’s Perfect indwelling Presence, and interacting with Him in all things, and drawing what we need from Him at all times.
Rigorous Testing and Assessment of our military training to determine the quality level of our combat readiness. (2 Corinthians 4) You don’t learn by reading about or discussing ideas that pertain to mastery of skillsets and developing them. You learn by actual doing… repetitive practice and drill and rehearsal of how to deal with the presence and activity of our demonic enemies. We learn to engage them in actual combat, by actually standing and holding our ground, and cutting through their lies and traps and holographic delusions and false information by holding firmly to God’s Living and written Word, regardless of how our enemies are trying to demean or debase or contradict what our God has revealed and promised to us.
Final Separation from whatever or whoever will not be allowed to enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Revelation 21) We will have to get used to abiding in an atmosphere of total Righteousness, Peace, Rest, Joy, and Celebration because that’s the way things will always be in our Heavenly Kingdom. We learn the ways of our Kingdom by making sure we keep bringing them down to Earth, even though our bodies have to continue to abide in this world for the time being.
So What Are We To Conclude Concerning All of This?
- Everything pertaining to this fallen world that is created is only temporary. Sooner or later, all of it will be incinerated and will completely disappear. So pity anyone that habitually idolizes and relies upon such ‘here today but gone tomorrow’ things.
- Every idol to which people look… for provision, protection, profit, and wellbeing… will be wrenched out of their hands.
- Everything temporal will disappear! We’ve got to come to grips with what that means! When we do, we’ll realize that we must master the art and skill of abiding as one-with-Yeshua, because only the Eternal One will be here to take us ‘through the fires of God’s Judgment’ that will be incinerating whatever is temporary! He will take us through all of that and separate us forever from every trace of it… so that Almighty God Himself can serve as our Eternal Inheritance and Endless, Limitless Reward and personally reveal to us all that is yet to come!
- This is why, like Stephen, we must be trained to ‘only have eyes for our glorified risen Lord’ EVEN BEFORE that final disintegration process begins in earnest! Nothing can be allowed to stop us from developing the default habit of beholding Him and interacting with Him, since He is the only one with the Authority and Ability to do it! And… He has already defeated His enemies and won the War against them! So as long as we are truly one with Him, and He is one with us, we’ll be drawing everything we will need from what He has already provided for us. And we will be enveloped and protected by what is eternal! And there will be nothing our enemies can do to separate us from our beloved Commander and His Everlasting Lovingkindness! He will be free to take us all the way into the Eternal Embrace of our Heavenly Father!
“Who shall separate us from the love of Messiah? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For Your sake we are being put to death all day long;we are counted as sheep for the slaughter.”
“But in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Messiah Yeshua our Lord.” (Romans 8:35-39 TLV, Emphasis added)
“Thus says Adonai: “Heaven is My throne, and the earth is My footstool. Where then is the House you would build for Me? Where is the place of My rest? For My hand has made all these things, so all these things came to be,” declares Adonai.
“But on this one will I look, one humble and of a contrite spirit, who trembles at MY WORD!” (Isaiah 66:1-2 TLV, Emphasis added)