The Big Surprise

Dear friend: Thank you for visiting our website. To help you understand who we are and what we do, click on the ‘About’ section tab that appears above. Then when a menu descends, select the, ‘What Are We?’ section. There you’ll see a general profile that describes those of us who make up the Follow Me Ministry team and what we do, and why we do it.

So… The short answer to the, ‘What do we do,’ question is… we do whatever we can to help disciples-in-training as they go through their Spirit-led ‘boot camp’ basic preparations for the global era of spiritual and physical strife and upheavals that lie ahead of us all. We assist and expedite the efforts of Christ’s disciples’ efforts to become as effectively ‘combat ready’ as possible, so that when they engage the spiritual powers of darkness, they’ll remain faithful to our Magnificent Commander and expedite His inevitable Triumph over all Sin, Death and destructive Darkness… regardless of what the cost may be.

In the picture above, notice that the geese are flocking together and determining their proper places in the formation prior to moving out and migrating to a new location. To us, these geese represent disciple candidates of the risen Lord Jesus who have heard the Holy Spirit’s ‘Call of the Wild’. That call they’re hearing is going to follow the template God put before Abram the Chaldean millennia ago:

‘Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country, and from your relatives and from your father’s house, to the land which I will show you; and I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1-3 NASB.)

Please notice this important fact that was embedded within the text above: When God sent His Living Word to summon Abram and commission him to move out and leave his familiar comfort zone… all that Abram had to go on, was what God’s Living Word (who later became one of us in the flesh) had placed in his heart. It motivated him to forsake and leave his life, as he had always known it, behind. And he was ready and willing to move into The Great Unknown. And after that, all the results were up to God! So that was it! Because Abraham believed and obeyed God’s Word… the Word took it from there. And now, notice this:

In God’s good timing, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the rest of us who follow and serve the Word, will eventually see that all the results and fruit that God intended to produce through Abram’s life, will show up in our lives and it will come to total fruition by the end of this age. Then every one of God’s revelations, commands, and promises recorded in His written Word will be fulfilled and consummated to Perfection. Beloved, this is true for Abram, Isaac, and Jacob who are still waiting for that fulfillment to arrive… and it is also true for Israel and for all of us who, through Christ, have been brought into God’s New Covenant with Israel. Now we, saved Jews and Gentiles alike, are all children of Abraham (Gal. 3:28-29).

God has already fulfilled much of what He promised to Abram. But in the fullness of His appointed timing, he and the rest of Creation will come to know how Perfect and All-Sufficient our God actually is. When it’s time for God to actually lay out His entire Plan before us at the end of this age, then we’ll see the Fullness of God’s Perfect Faithfulness to His Word. All of Creation will see it then, as human history finally reaches its ultimate climax!

This will be the awesome revelation of the eternal significance of God’s everlasting Blood Covenant with Abraham. But while we’re still en route, making our way through the course of our individual journeys, like Abram, we too must step out and follow God’s Word by faith, without God having to explain Himself to us in detail so we’ll know in advance what we’ll encounter in the future, every step of the way. So we must learn to live by faith and not by sight. And, if we trust God’s Word and Spirit, He will ‘jumpstart’ us and give us whatever we will need, step by step, until we finish the course that He has set before us.

So, just as He directed every one of Abram’s subsequent steps, God will direct ours as well. He made Himself responsible to provide for Abram’s every need, protecting and shielding and providing for him and his personal household throughout the course of their lives. And all disciples of God’s Word, will, like Abraham, always have to depend on Him. And He will not disappoint us. But we must not become arrogant and careless and fall back into our former Self-centered radical independence. God doesn’t supply us with clear pre-laid out maps or comprehensive plans. He doesn’t let us know in advance every detail of what we can expect. Everything our Commander does that includes us, will be given to us, step by step, on a need to know basis. We’ll know the Truth as God’s Word and Holy Spirit reveal it to us, not because we’ll be able to figure everything out for ourselves.

Our daily duty rosters will only contain what we need to know for each given day, no more and no less! This is the way God has ordained it to be. So we must come to know Him intimately… by daily experience… allowing Him to prove to us, and reassure us by letting us know how Perfect, Faithful, Credible, and Reliable His Nature and Character actually are, one step at a time:

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed FROM FAITH TO FAITH; as it is written: “BUT THE RIGHTEOUS ONE WILL LIVE BY FAITH!” (Romans 1:16-17 NASB. Emphasis added.)

SO, WHEN WE KNOW HIM AS HE IS, WE CAN ALWAYS AFFORD TO WALK INTO THE FUTURE WITH OUTRAGEOUS CONFIDENCE… KNOWING THAT OUR INFINITELY PERFECT, ALL-KNOWING, EVER-FAITHFUL GOD WILL ALWAYS BE WITH US, LEADING THE WAY. AND WE WILL SURELY KNOW THAT WE’LL SEE HIM PERFECTLY FULFILL ALL OF OUR NEEDS, ASPIRATIONS, AND OUTCOMES! WE HAVE HIS BLOOD COVENANT OATH AND INFINITELY PERFECT WORD TO GUARANTEE IT.

Every true disciple is summoned to embark on such a migration, with the same level of assurance, not because we always have everything figured out in advance, and not because we’ve been given the full picture of how everything is going to be worked out in the future, but solely because of how deeply and intimately we’ve come to know our God, and His Perfectly Trustworthy Character and Nature and Covenant. Yes, we now have God’s written Word to help guide us… but in Truth… the Reality before us still is… ‘THE GREAT UNKNOWN’!  So… we hang onto the Living Word through whom God has revealed Himself to us. We hang onto Him very, very tightly! And look only to Him… to guide our every step into the future. And those who learn to do this, are never disappointed!

“Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is comfortable, and My burden is light.” (Mt. 11:28-30 NASB.)

It’s certain that our migration will include our spirits, brains, nervous systems, and our soul’s intellect, emotions, and affections. And perhaps the Lord will also require us to redeploy physically and geographically as well. So if He calls you, be ready and willing to prepare your soul, body, and personal affairs, for a future that will be filled with radically unprecedented transformative changes, new experiences, challenges, problems and personal inconveniences! Radical migration and transformation always include such things. Our personal exodus will be no different! But when we come to know Him as He really is, we can also know in advance that whatever this may require of us, it will be well worth it!

We too will have to learn to stop obsessing over and idolizing our earthly birth origins, and former identities, priority systems, agendas, earthly ties, and aspirations. We must exchange our hope and trust in those flaky temporary things for an eternal Covenant Bond with our Lord, who will never leave, betray, forsake, or disappoint us. And once we make that transition from Self-life over to Christ-Life, He will free and rid us completely of our unfinished business and ‘past baggage’ from the past that impairs our ability to press forward unhindered in our Lord’s full-time service. We will no longer be part of, or be identified with, this world in any way or at any level! Instead, our God will endow us with membership in His own personal Family Household as His newly-regenerated sons and co-heirs with His Living Word made flesh, as natural born citizens of His Eternal Kingdom.

Then He will send us back for redeployment and combat duty into the very same fallen world that we’ve forsaken! In that capacity, the world will no longer be our home, but our Invasion Force combat assignment! And we’ll be commissioned to serve as the Lord’s redemptive Heavenly emissaries, representatives of our God. Our job will be to do His redemptive bidding, moment by moment, as He fulfills His Kingdom-establishing revelation, commands, and promises. He will entrust to us new ambassador-level responsibilities as we enter into each and every situation, set of circumstances, and interpersonal interaction that lies ahead of us.

In that capacity, we’ll need to be following Holy Spirit’s leading and the directives our indwelling Commander will give us through His Holy Spirit’s guidance. God will lead us into situations and Heavenly assignments we never before experienced and would have never imagined could be possible before the risen Lord came and summoned us, and made us to become His very own. So, after He comes for us, we must wake up to His Presence and the revolutionary, radically different Realities in which we’ll be serving Him.

He will progressively capture our full attention and the affection of our hearts, and our full allegiance. Then 100% of our faith, hope, trust and devotion will belong exclusively to Christ… for the rest of our earthly journey and on into eternity. Even amid great trials, troubles and tribulations, if we know Him, we’ll realize that God is working amidst what is evil… and progressively overcoming it all with the Infinite All-Sufficient Good that is in Him.

So, as they learn this awesome Reality in incremental stages, just like the geese in the picture, the disciple candidates that this Follow Me ministry family serves, will be engaged with the necessity of departing from their respective starting points and former familiar comfort zones in this world. We will be transferred to our designated basic training facilities and areas of future deployment. Then we’ll begin the awesome spine-tingling process of daring to venture into the enemy-held territories our Commander will assign to us. And we’ll follow His directions and His leading because we will have been trained to deal with what, for all of us, will prove to be… ‘The Great Unknown’ that will be leading us into Almighty God’s Eternal Realm and Destiny!

It is upon such handpicked Heavenly warriors-in-the-making as these, that our Follow Me ministry efforts concentrate. We help them wherever possible, but they are most definitely not our disciples! They belong exclusively to the risen Lord! And we do our best to help them get to know their Lord and Commander ever more deeply, personally, and intimately. We help them learn how to live with Him and follow His ways, and receive whatever they need exclusively from Him, day and night, just as the original apostles and disciples of the first century had to learn to do.

At first, before the Lord’s death, they learned to abide with Him in the ordinary way that people live and interact with each other in the flesh. But after He rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven, they had to learn a brand new way of ‘abiding’. For this purpose, God fused His own Spirit into the spirits of His disciples’ and completely regenerated them. That made them into brand new creations of the New Covenant kind, as we can begin to see, starting in chapter 2 of the Book of Acts.

And it has been that way ever since. As soon as disciples hear that call, and believe and submit to the risen Lord’s Absolute Authority over them, disciples can and must be, filled and empowered by God’s own Spirit. Yes, they will then become one with God at that point. God will include them into the New Covenant He made with Israel. And from that point onward, they will be required to learn to believe in God’s Living and written Word… living with, and always drawing from the actual Presence of God’s Word and Spirit for whatever they will need from that point forward. This can never be done by relying on our own wits or personal faculties and assets. It can’t come from our personal hunches, desires, or feelings. It can only be done by what Scripture calls, the obedience of faith (See Rom. 1:5; 16:26)… faith in knowing that the Presence of God Himself has become our new Life and Wisdom, Guidance, Power, Righteousness and Secure Covering… and the ever-present Hope of the Eternal Glory that awaits us all, at the end of our earthly journeys!

So get this: Disciples do not live by sight, touch, hearsay, personal hunches, or feelings. The first century New Covenant pioneers were forced to begin to learn the unprecedented New Covenant Spirit-empowered way of abiding with their Lord by faith. By faith in His promises, and drawing from Holy Spirit’s abiding Presence, they actually learned to live and operate in the knowledge that the Perfect Humanity of Christ was actually, livingly, PRESENT and ALIVE, and, DYNAMICALLY ACTIVE within them! In this way, our risen Lord can make His Presence in us to be known. And He can reveal Himself to the world around us, through us! This is why we must learn to abide and interact with Him at all times, so that in every situation, we can become masters of the art of thinking, acting, reacting, and interacting on Earth, as one, with our risen Lord Himself!

“When the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. BUT STEPHEN, FULL OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, LOOKED UP TO HEAVEN AND SAW THE GLORY OF GOD, AND JESUS STANDING AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD!  “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” (Acts 7:54-56 NASB. Emphasis added.)

All disciples must now get used to abiding with, in, and from our indwelling God, day and night, on a permanent basis, not by sight or by feeling, or endless mental, theological, or religion-based pursuits, but by faith in God’s actual, abiding, dynamic indwelling Presence. Yes, the apostles, and the newly arrived disciples, like Stephen, did live by faith in God’s written promises and revelations, but they moved beyond that! They began to learn to develop total faith-based trust so they could live from moment to moment fully aware of His abiding indwelling Presence! This is the awesome Spirit-led New Covenant way we must all learn and master in these Last Days. It’s not enough to cram our heads with theological facts and propositions about Him. Nor is it enough for us to congregate in church or synagogue buildings so we can endlessly talk and sing about Him, as if He were just another dead founder of one of the world’s false dead religions.

No beloved, He’s alive! And He’s here, living in us and through us at all times… as much as we will believe this to be true and as long as we choose to allow Him to rule, live, act, and reveal Himself from within us. When we live by faith FROM Him, His Perfect Presence within us will finally enable us to live and work as one with Him. And He’ll be free to actually serve as our Life and Wisdom, Courage, Strength and invincible Ability!

“So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to desire and to work for His good pleasure!“ (Philippians 2:12-13 NASB.)

This is why our former addictions to reliance on our own natural intellects, opinions, hunches, understanding, feelings, passions, and instinctual earthly devices must no longer be our means of guidance and navigation. Now our lives must be grounded and based upon the Dynamic Presence and Absolute Credibility of God’s Living Word and Holy Spirit! And we must realize that if we’re one with Christ and the Holy Spirit, we’re also one with the Father who gave and sent His Word and Spirit to become one with us, and to make us to be one with the Father who sent them to us!

And especially now that we’re in the Last Days Era, we must master the art of living ‘by faith’ and not by sight. We must move beyond the early stages of ‘dabbling’, and develop full mastery of this awesome Art of being one with our God’s Presence within us and in our midst. This new, ‘Christ lives and acts in me (us) and through me (us)’  lifestyle will equip us to prepare the way for our Lord’s Return to Earth, in whatever part of this earthly wilderness He may want to deploy us. And from our assigned part of this earthly Wilderness, Holy Spirit will work from within us, to prepare the highway upon which our Glorious Risen Lord, will return to Earth to reclaim all that truly belongs to Him!

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation: for by Him 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.” (Colossians 1:15-17 NASB.)

Beloved, the Truth is, that no one who believes and serves the God of the Bible has ever yet seen even a trace of the Magnitude of what God still has waiting for Abraham, Isaac, Jacob (Israel) and their true ‘born again’ physical and spiritual descendants! The patriarchs and prophets of Israel didn’t see the whole of it, nor was any generation of believers that followed them able to comprehend the magnitude of what God has waiting for us all. Not even the New Covenant apostles, and every succeeding generation of believers ever since, leading up to the present, have even come close to grasping all that God has in mind for all of us when this present life is done.

“For from days of old they have not heard or perceived by ear, Nor has the eye seen a God besides You, Who acts in behalf of one who waits for Him.” (Isaiah 64:4 NASB.)

We are all, both the dead and the living, still waiting together, on our awesome God. In Father’s good time, He will lead us, all together, in our Messiah, across the Finish Line of our earthly Exodus from Death to Life. And then… all together… once we’re all clothed and endowed with our new and eternal Resurrection Humanity and faculties, we’ll finally be equipped to know and begin to grasp the Fullness of the Wonders God has been holding in reserve to bestow upon Abraham and those myriads of other believers that are coming after him. And all together, we’ll witness the Return to Earth of our Resurrected Glorious Messiah. God’s Magnificent Living Word will then usher in all of His Father’s completely renewed and restored Perfect New Heaven and Earth before our eyes! 

“… But just as it is written: “Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the human heart… all that God has prepared (waiting) for those who love Him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9 NASB. Amplification added.)

“And all these (who went before us), having gained approval through their faith, did not receive what was promised, because God had provided something better for us (who are part of the last of the Last Days generations) SO THAT APART FROM US THEY WOULD NOT BE MADE PERFECT.”  (Hebrews 11:39-40 NASB. Amplification and emphasis added.)

And since only God knows all that lies ahead of us, we keep directing the focus of everyone’s attention to the Lord who lives within all New Covenant disciples of God’s Word. We receive the ‘downloads’ the Lord chooses to provide for us, and do our best to transpose the downloads into legible Follow Me material that remains always-aligned with Scripture, for the benefit of those with whom Father commissions us to share it. And, just like the Lord Himself did before us when He lived on Earth, we too rely on Holy Spirit to impress on each of us whatever pertinent relevant portions of God’s written Word and the material He gives to us in order to minister to each person according to his or her needs.

We also respond to personal requests for personal and online interaction and help. In this way we can monitor and expedite the spiritual growth and progress of those who reach out to us. Thus we can impart personal face to face, and online Zoom session times of encouragement. And we can offer cautionary insights from the Scriptures, to help people avoid as many pitfalls as possible and get used to recognizing and following the ‘narrow path’ that leads to Eternal Life.

Please notice that in Mt. 22:14, the Lord said: “Many are called, but few are chosen.”  We believe our job is to concentrate on helping those who not only were called, but who have also been chosen and summoned by the Lord to follow Him as His Last Days disciples. Yes, God calls many people. But only those whose hearts are truly His, and who are ready and willing to follow Him for real… on His terms… will be chosen. He chooses them because they are actually ready and willing to leave behind, for His sake, everything they previously used to be, and do, and cling to.

We serve those who no longer have to be ‘sold’, coaxed, or persuaded to consider whether or not they might want to follow the Lord. We serve those for whom this issue has already been settled. They are His all the way, and they’re ready to go… ready to forever leave behind their former lives, and the former false idols that previously dominated and swallowed up their lives. Once they’ve forsaken all of that, we can then be of service to them because they already know that when Christ died, they died with Him. They died to everything they were, and had, and used to pursue in this world.

And having settled this in their minds and hearts, these candidates are truly ready to start learning how to focus on their risen Lord and deal with the fact that from now on, He is their New Life, Lord, Master, and Owner. From now on, His Agenda, will be their Agenda because He has been given full ownership and First Place in their heart of hearts. So now they’re ready to wholeheartedly submit to Holy Spirit’s discipline whenever He has to apply the Cross to anything remaining in them that still gets in the way of Christ being Number One to them, in them, and through them… at all times!

“He is the Image of the invisible God, the Firstborn of all Creation: for by Him 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 Firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself, (and what He is here to do to them, in them, and through them, will come to have FIRST PLACE IN EVERYTHING! (Colossians 1:15-18 NASB. Amplification and emphasis added.)

“Another also said, “I will follow You, Lord; but first permit me to say goodbye to those at my home.” But Jesus said to him, “NO ONE, AFTER PUTTING HIS HAND TO THE PLOW AND LOOKING BACK, IS FIT FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD.” (Luke 9:61-62 NASB. Emphasis added.)

So we’re here for disciples:

• That have already chosen to exchange whatever they were or aspired to be in the past, for whatever God will provide for them from now on.
• They’ve opened themselves completely to God, and to what He has in store for them.
• And now, since their ‘decks have been cleared for future action’, they’re authentically free to concentrate on learning how to ‘FOLLOW’ their Lord’s leading, identifying with Him and His ways, and living permanently with Him, and from Him, day and night, as His devoted, wholehearted ‘Blood brothers’ … solely on HIs terms!

 

This is the radical difference that separates the many who have truly been called, from the relatively few that truly qualify to actually be chosen by Him.

“Now large crowds were going along with Him, and He turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, 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!“ (Lk. 14:25-27 NASB. Emphasis added.)

“Therefore, everyone who confesses Me before people, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven.  But whoever denies Me before people, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven. Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword! For I came to turn a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a person’s enemies will be the members of his household.

The one who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and the one who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And the one who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. The one who has found his life will lose it, and the one who has lost his life on My account will find it.“ (Matthew 10:32-39 NASB. Emphasis added.)

Beloved, what you see in what the Lord uttered above are, ‘Battlefield Fighting Words’! And hopefully, understanding this will amplify your understanding of what ignited and got this Follow Me Family endeavor started in the first place. So I’ve posted an article that immediately follows this introduction to give you a true ‘gut feel’ for what FMM is all about… and a clear understanding of the very specific audience for whom our efforts are intended and directed.

The article added below was entitled:  ‘The Big Surprise’.  And I wrote it way back in July of 2003, seven years before this Follow Me Ministry actually came into existence! (And by the way, in case you haven’t already noticed, for short, we call the Lord’s Follow Me Ministry: ‘FMM’.)

I wrote ‘The Big Surprise’ after something that I was not at all expecting, suddenly began to invade my mind and plague my thoughts. For want of a better term, I have to say that it really ‘bugged’ me! It was like a pesky, unwelcome, buzzing ‘insect’… a maddening pest… that kept flying in my face and invading my awareness. No matter how much I tried to ignore or swat it away, it would not leave me alone! It was so disturbing and contrary to my normal comfort zone routines, that I began to wonder if I was going crazy, or experiencing a ‘mid-life crisis’, or being oppressed by demons, or maybe… just maybe, it was God… trying to get my attention and alert me to something to which I needed to wake up and really take to heart!

So to make sure I wasn’t ignoring and rejecting something Father wanted to show me, I stopped trying to escape. I resolved to face it  and do my best to try to understand it. I began to ask Father for Guidance so I could begin to ‘unpack’ its meaning and I also began to read, pray over, and ponder Scripture texts that referred to Last Days issues and prophecies. I did whatever I knew to do, to try to grasp what was being said and be able to articulate it to myself… so I could get a clearer picture of what was seething and boiling in my insides.

And, as I wrote out what I was envisioning on my computer, the finished article below finally took its present form. And that, as well as all of the other related material I’ve written for the Ultimate Journey Family can be obtained in written manual form from Christ-Life Ministries under the name, ‘The Ultimate Journey’ (See:  https://www.clcenter.org/ ).

And what I’ve written for the Follow Me Family is posted on this website. All of that material is the ongoing result of what the Lord has been conveying to me in through His ongoing download that He began to transmit to me back in September of 1988. And to this day, that ongoing download continues to come… in intermittent stages. I have no control over the pace at which it arrives. The information always comes on a ‘need to know’ basis. So I simply ‘stand by for any new orders’ that my Lord may choose to send me. But before you go on to read the ‘Big Surprise’ portion of the ongoing download that began to arrive in 2003, I owe it to you to supply the following additional background information:

The reason why what I began to envision in 2003 was so unsettling and disturbing, is that it came so suddenly that it hit me like the proverbial ‘ton of bricks’! I sensed that it was a continuation of that ‘Marching Orders’ download that began in 1988. But this new 2003 portion was filled with something brand new… in my mind’s eye I began to see streams of flickering pictures of… scary future events… unwanted premonitions of great troubles… violent global destructive strife… and the overwhelmingly dire tribulations that Scripture has warned will one day overwhelm and stun the entire world, and bring the entire human race to a total end of itself!

God’s Word warns us that those trouble-filled days will drag the entire unbelieving world into a state of total ‘free fall’ and utter desperation. It will be so overwhelming, sudden, oppressive, and incomprehensible, that all humans, saved and unsaved, will be brought into a total state of personal bankruptcy and helplessness! Once that happens, everything we thought we knew about anything, will evaporate! And… when everything we were so used to relying on is suddenly wrenched from our hands… then what will we be able to know, or do, or control? And what will enable us to recover and get back on top of what we used to call, ‘My life? Where, except to Almighty God Himself, will we then be able to turn for help, safety, and guidance?

 

In addition to all of that fearsome foreboding that had begun to roil inside of me, the following haunting persistent questions began to form and develop and take over within my heart of hearts. I never thought of these things before, but now they took on a prominence and level of importance that continues to grip my heart to this day:

“WHAT KIND OF TRAINING AND PREPARATION WILL THOSE LAST DAYS DISCIPLES HAVE TO RECEIVE IN ORDER TO BE PREPARED TO FULFILL THEIR GOD-GIVEN LAST DAYS COMMISSIONS?

WHAT WILL THEY NEED… TO BE PREPARED AND FITTED TO RESIST AND OVERCOME THE POWERS OF DARKNESS… AND FULFILL THEIR GOD-GIVEN COMMISSIONS… AND ENDURE, OVERCOME, AND PERSEVERE… ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE FINISH LINE THAT SERVES AS THE GATEWAY TO ETERNITY?”

Needless to say, I wasn’t used to thinking about such heady stuff. By default, I tended to focus on pleasant manageable things that were right in front of me, things I naively assumed I could manage and control. Yes, that’s right: I had a habit of trying to manipulate my situations, circumstances, and challenges in ways that I hoped would enhance MY life, and keep it as safe, rosy, stable, comfortable, peaceful, easy, and predictable as possible! Of course now, thank God, at this late stage of my journey, I have finally come to take the clear warnings the Lord gave to His disciples much more seriously than ever before:

“Then they will hand you over to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of My Name.  And at that time many will fall away, and they will betray one another and hate one another.  And many false prophets will rise up and mislead many people. And because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will become cold. BUT THE ONE WHO ENDURES TO THE END IS THE ONE WHO WILL BE SAVED. This gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.” (Matthew 24:9-14 NASB. Emphasis added.)

The Truth is, that in the Last Days, none of us will be able to manage or control anything! What will be coming at us in waves, from all sides, will eventually bring all mankind to a point of total overwhelm, confusion, and disorientation. Nothing any of us can think of trying to do will enable us to control anything. No one will be able to escape this…  because… we will all be caught up by the strong current of the Last Days Era that will be bringing all of Creation, as we know it, closer and closer to its final demise!

Yes, the end of the age is actually at hand beloved! So there’s no use wasting time looking for escape hatches! There aren’t any! No one will be able to avoid what has already begun to engulf the entire world!

“And 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 heaven.” This expression, “Yet once more,” denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, so that those (uncreated) things which cannot be shaken may remain.“ (Hebrews 12:26-27 NASB. Amplification and emphasis added.)

So now we’re decades beyond what I began to receive in the (‘Marching Orders’) download I received in 1988, and the download continuations that followed in 2003 up to the present. And now… this Follow Me Ministry actually exists! It was officially birthed on January 1, 2011. And it’s clear to see that those early premonitions were much more than mere idle musings. I believe the Lord was actually starting to prepare me, and those who stand with me, for what the two sister ministries, ‘Ultimate Journey’ and ‘Follow Me’ would be commissioned to help people prepare for in the future.

So, in hindsight, I see that the original ‘Big Surprise’ article I envisioned in 2003, was going to serve as a ‘blueprint’, or ‘template’, that would give me a hint about what that yet-to-arrive Follow Me Ministry that now exists, was actually going to be commissioned to do to serve Last Days disciples of today. That ‘Big Surprise Template’ provides us with a sense of direction. And it helps us to better understand why disciples need such uniquely intense and specialized wake-up call, and begin to undergo unprecedented kinds and levels of training and preparation. We will need unprecedented depths of training to be able to survive, thrive, and overcome amid the unspeakable upheavals that will inevitably bombard this fallen, agonizing and about-to-end world! Dear friends, no one alive today has even a trace of an inkling of a hint about the enormity that is even now beginning to engulf the cosmos in which we live!

So FMM focuses on those who know for sure that they have been chosen and called by the risen Lord to live with Him, and FROM Him, day and night, from now on. They have already settled in their minds and hearts that they have definitely been called to transform into brand new ‘image and likeness of Christ creations’. In other words, they are already in wholehearted agreement with the process Holy Spirit must use with us to configure and equip us to serve God properly and with excellence throughout the most strategic, critically important climactic era of history!

FMM isn’t for the casually curious or the mildly interested. We won’t be supplying people with ‘spiritual comfort food and candies’ or administering anesthesia-like emotional relief treatments. This boot camp training is meant to prepare and discipline souls to face, embrace, become one with and operate from God’s Awesome Last Days Realities, just as God’s written Word warns that they will actually be! So FMM won’t try to satisfy the curiosity of the casually interested who will only skim over the writings superficially and then leave them behind. And it certainly isn’t for those who simply want to amass more head knowledge ABOUT Jesus, but intend to hold Him off at arm’s length so they can keep following their Self-enhancing, ‘business as usual’, routines. There are many other ministries that are equipped to deal with such matters, but our assignment occupies a different altitude level.

FMM is not for ‘converts’, or occasional ‘dabblers’, or those who are somewhat willing to ‘give Jesus a try’. Nor is it for casual ‘churchgoers’, uninvolved ‘spectators’, or people that think of themselves as being, ‘exempt civilians’! The day you sign up to be in the service of this Commander is the day you die to your former radically independent Self-life. You die to living for yourself so that your risen Lord can be the one who will be living and operating in you, through you, and as you, from now on!

“THE LORD IS A WARRIOR; the Lord is His name. Pharaoh’s chariots and his army He has thrown into the sea; and the choicest of his officers are drowned in the Red Sea. The waters cover them; they went down into the  depths like a stone. Your right hand, Lord, is majestic in power; Your right hand, Lord, destroys the enemy.  And in the greatness of Your excellence You overthrow those who rise up against You; You send out Your burning anger, and it consumes them like chaff.” (Ex. 15:3-7 NASB.)

“Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, SO THAT HE MAY PLEASE THE ONE WHO ENLISTED HIM!  And if someone likewise competes as an athlete, he is not crowned as victor unless he competes according to the rules.” (2 Tim. 2:3-5 NASB. Emphasis added.)

Dear friend, never forget that God identifies Himself to us as a Warrior in combat! (Ponder Joshua chapters 5 & 6) So, when He says to any of us today, “Follow Me,” the implication is that He’s summoning us into service as a member of His Last Days Invasion Force. We’re being summoned to participate as warrior combatants who will participate in  Christ’s total Retaking of all of God’s Territories that His demonic enemies usurped in the past!

God’s written Word informs us that the universe has been caught up in a continuous  state of war in the spiritual unseen realms that existed before the physical universe in which we live was even created! This War is between the Heavenly Kingdom of Light and the angelic rebellious Kingdom of Darkness! And, whether we admit it, or like it, or not, we humans have all been caught up into the midst of this deadly cosmic conflict!  And even if we don’t understand or realize this, the fact is, that before the Lord seeks us out and summons us to be His disciples, we were actually by default, unwittingly, wearing the uniform of His enemies and serving their purposes, in opposition to Him! So, in Truth, He is here to save His enemies…from what they are in themselves!

This being the case, there’s no such thing as an ‘exempt civilian! We either wake up and realize our true state before God… and deliberately choose to leave the side of God’s angelic and demonic enemies into whose clutches we were born… and we cross over to become united to our Creator and join His Invasion Force. Or… we refuse to obey His summons, remain as we are, and continue to serve God’s enemies! And this is why the Lord Jesus gives this warning:

“The one who is not (deliberately and wholeheartedly choosing to side) with Me is (thus automatically choosing to continue to be) against Me; and the one who does not (proactively and wholeheartedly cross over to join Me and decide to begin to) gather with Me, (is choosing to continue to be one who) scatters!”(Mt. 12:30 NASB. Amplification and emphasis added.)

FMM is a training aid for people whose lives have been completely upended, spun around, and disoriented once they’ve been hit by the sudden lightning bolt of the Reality of the Presence of the risen Christ. After that happens, that person will never be the same! And we’re called to serve such people, just like the Lord asked Ananias of Damascus to visit and reach out to Saul of Tarsus, in chapter 9 of the book of Acts. The Lord sent Ananias to Saul, at a time when Saul was desperately in need of spiritual direction. Very recently, Saul had been one of the ringleader Pharisees that had taken it upon themselves to rise up against Stephen, the risen Lord’s faithful disciple, and stone him to death. They of course assumed they were serving God and doing Him a favor by ridding Israel of another one of these infuriating ‘Yeshua following’ heretical pests. After that, they initiated a violent persecution against Yeshua’s followers in Jerusalem, and caused the disciples to scatter in all directions, leaving the apostles, who had chosen to remain in the midst of the turmoil to continue to man their posts.

Then Saul sought permission from Israel’s high priest to go to Damascus to hunt down and arrest people like Ananias and all other disciples in that vicinity! And he was in hot pursuit, when suddenly the risen Lord appeared to him and pierced him to the quick with His Awesome Truth and Reality! And at that instant, Saul’s former life as an arrogant, legalistic, self-righteous religious thug and ‘hit man’ was blown to bits! And all that remained was for his travelling companions to lead him, distraught and blinded, into Damascus. Then all he could do was to sit in a room in a house in Damascus… totally stunned… unable to see… and at a total loss for what to think, do, or say next!

So now that Saul was finally brought to an end of himself, it was time for the Lord to take the initiative and begin to reveal to him who and what he really is… in the mind and intention of Almighty God! The time had come for the Lord to summon him into His service and let him know that He had a special purpose and commission for this man… for which he would now have to be properly and thoroughly reamed out and completely emptied of himself, so he could be refilled with God’s Presence, and ‘rewired’ and ‘reprogrammed’ for the future God had in store for him. Now Saul had to be made to be compatible with God’s Spirit and prepared to serve the risen Lord amid still unknown issues, situations and life-assignment that awaited him in the future!

The Lord allowed Saul to languish in that silent dismal room in Damascus… for three days and nights… blind…totally devastated, overwhelmed, undone and unable to eat or drink! The realization of how abysmally wrong and spiritually clueless he had been all of his life, was overwhelming! Now all he could do was wonder if God would ever be able to forgive him for what he had been doing to the Messiah God had sent to him and to His chosen people! The enormity of the guilt, hopelessness and despair he must have been experiencing will always be impossible for any of us to fathom.

But… it was at that critical point that the Lord sent Ananias, a New Covenant Last Days Jewish disciple… to reach out to that devastated and humbled man… and lay healing hands on him… and help to bring him into God’s New Covenant as a brand new, born again, Spirit-filled Family of God member, and spiritually regenerated son of his Heavenly Father! If anyone was ever in desperate need of a period of re-orientation and updating and renewal of the mind, it was poor, devastated Saul of Tarsus! And God brought Ananias into his life so that the process could get started.

The Spirit of God had recently made the risen Messiah Yeshua (Jesus the Christ), so shockingly real, present, and electrifyingly alive to Saul, that the explosive revelation stripped away all of his delusional presumptions and exposed his desperate neediness before all of Creation! Despite his prior religious training and the arrogant pride and self-righteous assumptions he had developed because of it, he now knew that he had been totally clueless all of his life! He had no idea that the Man he had been denying and persecuting was actually the Living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in human flesh! Nor had he suspected that God could be so Present, and electrifyingly Real, and Different than he could have imagined… and so Divinely Confrontational!

Truly, Saul was no longer the same person. No longer would he perceive, or think, or do what he had been used to doing before the Lord accosted him! Now, he was like a little child that had to unlearn much of what he had accumulated to that point, and learn what the New Covenant God made with Israel was all about. He knew his former life was over and that at present he was totally bankrupt and would have to start over. And to do that, he had to get to know his risen Lord from the ground up. And because all of this was so utterly new to him, he needed help from some authentic veteran New Covenant disciples before he could even get started. He needed help getting used to the realization that Yeshua would forevermore be his sole Source, and the Center and Life and Agenda of his heart… from that point forward! So he had a tremendous amount of exploring, and reconfiguring and retraining to undergo that would soon begin to take place in his home city of Tarsus and in Arabia. But Ananias was the first one sent to reach out to Saul, as Holy Spirit began to prepare him to venture out into, ‘The Great Unknown’.

So beloved friends, FMM is sort of like Ananias and his ministry. We too are here for people exactly like Saul… those whose lives have been completely upended and destroyed after the Lord reveals Himself to them. We’re here for those who have been totally shocked and stunned by the risen Lord’s awesome overwhelming Actual Reality and unbelievable Nearness! From that point forward, they’ll be compelled to get to know Him as He really is! And they’ll be willing to learn to adjust and begin to live with Him and FROM Him, solely on His terms. And this is where the FMM boot camp training comes into the picture. We’re here to help today’s disciples enter into it so they can begin to understand what it means to have been called and chosen, and know about preparing and making all the necessary adjustments they’ll have to make to be ready and able to fulfill the future commissions and assignments the Lord will entrust to them in the future.

We help those who have been forced by the Truth Holy Spirit has begun to impart to them… requiring them to finally reach an end of themselves… and to fathom the depths of what it means to know Christ… in Spirit and in Truth. True Last Days disciples will have to die… authentically… to their former radically independent attitudes and habits of Self-trust, Self-reliance, Self-adoration, and Self-promotion . Now they’ll have to come to grips with the real Gospel that spoils people for this world so thoroughly, that  they’ll no longer be at peace with their former lives of laziness, cowardice, selfishness and Self-assertion, Self-enhancement, Self-gratification, and Self-preservation! Self must truly die… so that the risen Lord may come in and take us all over, COMPLETELY!

FMM reaches out to those who are ready, willing, and free to actually ‘migrate’ and learn to follow and obey their Lord and Commander, so He can transform them into what He was sent by His Father to make of them… which is… HIS OWN IMAGE AND LIKENESS! So the FMM sphere of influence is not wide, broad, or general in scope. It’s more like having to pass through a large funnel that gets progressively narrower and more specialized and restrictive in scope. This is what Holy Spirit’s boot camp training atmosphere will undoubtedly be like for all new recruits. This training leads us all into a very narrow path… a closed, highly selective world, in which flabby self-indulgent spiritual civilians must be willing, ready, and geared to focus intently on dying to their pasts and transforming into highly effective, uniformed, military-level, combat-ready future Christ-embodying warriors… and nothing else!

The Last Days disciple training ‘Funnel’ will progressively force candidates to jettison one thing after another from their past baggage as the passageway they travel through becomes narrower and narrower. And finally, the pathway will become so narrow, that only their bare, naked, God-created self will remain. And it will no longer be able to use, or rely on or hide behind any created Sin-corrupted covering or disguise or shame-based false front we relied on in former times. God will strip us down to the very bare minimum so that He can begin to clothe and refit and reconfigure us with what He is. And believe me, that will cause us to become brand new creations!

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad and easy to travel is the path that leads the way to destruction and  eternal loss, and there are many who enter through it. BUT SMALL IS THE GATE AND NARROW AND DIFFICULT TO TRAVEL IS THE PATH THAT LEADS THE WAY TO [Everlasting] LIFE, AND THERE ARE FEW WHO FIND IT.” (Matthew 7:13-14 AMP. Emphasis added.)

Our disciple training is not primarily physical, earthly and self-centered in nature. It doesn’t aim for worldly, ego-centered, self-striving improvement or ‘anything goes,’  and,  ‘be all that YOU can be’ , types of pursuits. Nor is it geared to make effective military grade killers out of former civilians. Instead, it is geared to help you transform into a living temple that carries and releases and exalts the Perfect Presence of Christ! This training is geared to transform you into a ‘GOD-BRINGER’ that is empowered to transform any situation or place you may occupy at any given time, and overcomes the evil around you with the Good that is in your indwelling Lord! The focus is always on Christ – being what He actually is, and doing what only He can do – from within the depths of your spirit, mind, heart, will, and physical attitudes, emotions, actions, reactions, and interactions! So we bring God and His Living Word into every situation, event, and personal interaction we engage in… so that He can be all that He is and do what only He can do… to us, in us, and through us!

“HE MUST INCREASE, but I must decrease!” (John 3:30 NASB.)

Holy Spirit works this Christ-enhancing process deep into the souls and hearts of those who know they’ve been called and chosen by the Lord to serve Him during these incredibly trying, scary, violent and perilous Last Days, regardless of the circumstances or what the personal cost to them may be! This is because only His Perfect Indwelling All-Authoritative Presence will be able to get us through whatever the forces of Darkness throw against us! For that reason, FMM helps called disciples prepare their hearts to transform into authentic Christ-embodying Kingdom of Heaven warriors. (Notice that the word ‘disciple’ comes from the same root as ‘discipline’. So the disciple lifestyle is not a self-pampering vacation or stay in a luxurious comfort-giving spa. It’s the product of living with and being trained and disciplined by, the Spirit of our resurrected Commander!)

Warriors, in our sense of the word, train to be spiritually, mentally and emotionally ready and able to resist, endure, and overcome the relentless, ever-intensifying death-dealing barrages that the spiritual powers of Darkness will direct at the human race in the future. So FMM won’t try to help anyone become safer, or more comfortable. No, we must all become much tougher, more focused and very resilient. We must be so tremendously in love with God and so focused on and faithful to His Word, that we’ll love, serve and follow Him no matter what it may cost or lead us into! But we’ll only be able to do that after we learn and master the art of living and operating with and in, and FROM our risen Lord, on the Resurrection side of the Cross!

“The Lord your God is in your midst, a victorious warrior. He will rejoice over you with joy, He will be quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.” (Zephaniah 3:17 NASB. Emphasis added.)

We operate on the Resurrection side of the Cross when Christ is actually free to live His Perfect Life and interact with us from within our flesh… without any unconscious, automatic resistance or opposition-like competition from our personal Self-adoring agendas! Disciples must be crucified to all of that so they can then be trained and equipped to see, think and operate from this profound elevated ‘Lord Jesus you now live in and through me’ basis. Only when that happens can we actually be ready to oppose God’s enemies regardless of what the cost to them may be. It must be the Lord who opposes the enemies of God in our name. Only His Wisdom, Holiness, Righteousness, Resurrection Life and Love… burning in our hearts incessantly… can make us fit and ready to live by faith in and from Him, regardless of the situations or circumstances we encounter here on Earth. So, at this ‘Climactic Showdown’ level of intensity, our love for our Heavenly Father, and His Living Word, and Holy Spirit, and our fellow disciples, will have to have become – totally Self-less and totally preeminent within us!

“Such hope [in God’s promises] never disappoints us, because God’s love has been abundantly poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” Romans 5:5 AMP. Emphasis added.)

And because Holy Spirit equips us with everything we’ll need to fulfill our commissions, we must stop relying and depending on, or being led by, our natural self-preservation urges and feelings, or by the natural outward appearances of things, or by what other people around us are saying, doing, or failing to so and say. And no longer can we led by what we naturally think, feel, desire, or once identified with, in former days. God’s Holy Spirit and His Love Power and His written Word must be our Guide and Motivation and Identity and Purpose, from now on. So disciples pay no attention to what worldly people around them say, do, or omit. Out task is to learn to remain focused only on our indwelling risen Lord and be fully attuned to what He is being, saying, and doing to us, in us, and through us, as He serves and obeys His Heavenly Father here on Earth, in our name!

“For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.

Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in the same way. For the Father loves the Son and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing; and the Father will show Him greater works than these, so that you will be amazed.” (John 5:18-20 NASB. Emphasis added.)

So imagine what it will be like to have the risen Lord, who only does and says what His Father does and says… living and operating within you… with your full obedience and cooperation! That’s what Last Days disciples will have to be trained, equipped, and prepared to be and do! So the people we serve must learn to be ready to do what it will take to prepare the way (in their own hearts and lives and assigned battlefield sectors) for Christ’s Imminent Return, Invasion, and Total Takeover, to bring Full Restoration to His Sin-damaged Creation!

“The voice of one calling out, “Clear the way for the Lord in the wilderness; make straight in the desert (of your own heart and soul) a highway for our God. Let every valley be lifted up, and every mountain and hill (within your own heart and soul) be made low; and let the uneven ground become a plain, and the rugged terrain a broad valley; then the Glory of the Lord will be revealed (in you and through you), and all flesh will see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” A voice says, “Call out.” Then he answered, “What shall I call out?”

All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; the people are indeed grass! The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever.” (Isa. 40:3-8 NASB. Amplification added.)

“This is what the Lord says: “Heaven is My throne and the earth is the footstool for My feet.  Where then is a house you could build for Me? And where is a place that I may rest? For My hand made all these things, so all these things came into being,” declares the Lord.

“… Be strong IN THE LORD and IN THE STRENGTH OF HIS MIGHT. Put on the full armor of God (which is God’s own indwelling Presence within you), so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. FOR OUR STRUGGLE IS NOT AGAINST FLESH AND BLOOD, BUT THE (spiritual angelic and demonic) RULERS, AGAINST THE POWERS, AGAINST THE WORLD FORCES OF THIS DARKNESS, AGAINST THE SPIRITUAL FORCES OF WICKEDNESS IN THE HEAVENLY PLACES.

Therefore, take up the full armor of God (which is our Father, and His Living Word and His Holy Spirit living and working from within you), so that (as God fights for you from within,) you will be able to resist on the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore, having belted your waist with (His) Truth, and having put on the breastplate of (His) Righteousness, and having strapped on your feet the preparation of the gospel of (His) Peace; in addition to all, taking up the shield of ( His) Faith (and drawing from His Perfect All-Sufficient Finished Works working through you) 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 (Christ’s Messiah-revealing Spirit who speaks and acts through you), which is the (Living, Creative, All-Authoritative) Word of God (always operating from within you). With every prayer and request, pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be alert with all perseverance and every request for all the saints…” (Eph. 6:10-18 NASB. Amplification and emphasis added.)

“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that a person will lay down his life for his friends.

You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, because all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain, so that whatever you ask of the Father in My Name He may give to you. This I command you, that you love one another!“ (Jn. 15:12-17 NASB. Emphasis added.)

If you are one of those who have heard Holy Spirit’s ‘Call of the Wild’, then realize this: when the Lord was giving me the ‘download’ for what you are about to read, He actually had you, and the other disciples with whom you’ll be serving, in mind!

And that means that the download I began to write out in 2003, that became the following article, was actually about you! And it was intended for you, and for the present and future members of your combat unit! So be ready to share and absorb these considerations with each other, as a unit, for maximum effect!

So now… here at last, is that series of premonitions that I was moved to write out for you, so long ago…

We are at His disposal… and at your service,

John Marquez

 

********

 

THE BIG SURPRISE

(Originally written in July, 2003)

Luke 17:24-30

“For just like the lightning, when it flashes out of one part of the sky, shines to the other part of the sky, so will the Son of Man be in His day. But first He must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. And just as it happened in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: they were eating, they were drinking, they were marrying, they were being given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all…”

“… It was the same as happened in the days of Lot: they were eating, they were drinking, they were buying, they were selling, they were planting, they were building;  but on the day that Lot went out from Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all.  It will be just the same on the day that the Son of Man is revealed.”

IS THE WORLD REALLY IN FOR A BIG SURPRISE?

Since this year of 2003 began, I have been feeling a sense of dread, a foreboding of massive global upheavals to come. My flesh doesn’t like to dwell on such things. It wants to focus on rosy vistas and positive, comfortable expectations and ignore any thought of scary, brutal and unpleasant things. But the foreboding won’t go away. It’s like a message in red letters…flashing on my internal ‘viewing screen’ –

‘… RED ALERT, RED ALERT, RED ALERT: SERIOUS TROUBLE AND TURBULENCE AHEAD!…’

So I sense that it’s time, for those who are called to follow the Lord as His disciples, to receive appropriate training from the Holy Spirit. That training will be equal to, and, it will even surpass in its difficulties and excruciating testings, whatever the actual combat that may lie ahead of us will have waiting for us!

Our Lord knows everything that will happen. We can take great comfort in knowing that He is Perfect… Perfect in His Ability and in His Loyalty to His own. He will do whatever it takes to prepare, sustain, and see us through to the end… if we will only trust Him and cooperate and allow His Spirit to do whatever must be done to take us through the necessary ‘boot camp’ preparations.

God Himself will do it. In fact: in His Eternal Omniscience, HE HAS ALREADY DONE IT! IT IS FINISHED! And so we, who are members of His Personal Blood Covenant Family, know that everything we’re going to need has already been covered and paid for, and provided! (See Gen. 1:31; 2:1-3; Heb. 4:1-7) And only God knows what it will take to properly build up, and teach, and effectively prepare His beloved and highly valued, ‘Blood brothers and sisters’. And whatever that may be, we can know that He’ll be giving it to us in bite sized portions, on a ‘need to know’ basis, in the form of what Scripture calls, ‘our Daily Bread’.

So yes, only God knows all that lies ahead of us. But at least we know this much: Our Commander will have us perfectly covered even when everything with which we are now familiar is being shaken and what is familiar and habitual begins to disintegrate and fall apart, even then He will be our Perfect Provider and Shepherd.

So yes, our earthly reality will change drastically, right before our stunned eyes. And the closer we get to the end, everything we relied on that is created, will be taken away by God, who is an ‘All-Consuming Fire’. And, what is now currently present… will soon be completely replaced by a new Heaven and a new Earth that none of us has ever seen or even been able to imagine! (See Rev. 21) And this is what the following text is clearly leading up to. And when all of this actually starts to happen… then what will we do? To what or to whom will we turn for comfort, answers, and relief?:

“See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on Earth, much less will we escape who turn away from Him who warns from Heaven. And 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 Heaven.” This expression, “Yet once more,” denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, AS OF CREATED THINGS, so that those (uncreated) things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we receive a Kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our God is a Consuming Fire!“ (Hebrews 12:25-29. Emphasis added.)

Our God, who is The Consuming Fire and who abides within us is the only one to whom we will be able to turn when all of this ‘shaking’ begins in earnest! This is why I say that only Almighty God can fathom the depths of what we will need in order to be properly prepared. And He will do it through, and by, His Living and written Word, and His Holy Spirit. And if these nagging premonitions of mine have any merit, then Father has probably already begun to ‘reshuffle’ a seemingly random array of people… taking them out of their former comfort zones, groups and associations – to begin developing them into a sort of ‘first fruits’ group… a ‘first wave’, that will serve as the ‘spearhead’ of the End of the Age Invasion that the Kingdom of Heaven will surely launch when the time for that is finally at hand.

This ‘first fruits’ group will be the ones that establish a solid ‘beachhead’ to prepare for the arrival of the units that will follow, until the Full Manifestation of the Body of our Messiah finally appears in full battle array, ready to go. (See Isaiah 40 & 43. Notice what Holy Spirit was promising to the people of Israel, about how the Lord of Glory would be ushered into this world, and the ‘New Thing’ He was going to do. See also Isaiah 43:19; 53; 61-66: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Ezekiel 36, 37, & 38; Daniel 11 &12; Mt. 24 &25; Mk. 13; Lk. 21; 2 and Timothy 3: as a few examples of the many prophetic warnings God has given concerning this final age of the New Covenant Era.)

So… what will that first fruits gathering look like in its first stages? Well, most likely it will come as a result of an intense culling, pruning, weeding and polarizing process that will take place in the lives of an increasing number of people. They will be like a ‘Gideon-type’ force for which many will feel called, but few will be chosen (see Mt. 7). The Chosen won’t do the work. The Lord has already done it! But He’ll manifest His glorious results through them. Their numbers won’t be anywhere near as important as what the true state of their hearts and the attitude of their souls toward God’s Word, will be.

The state of their hearts will determine those whom God’s Incarnate Son, the Living Word of God, will choose to be formed into the authentic members of His earthly Body, and which ones will be bypassed.

“I am the vine, you are the branches; THE ONE WHO REMAINS IN ME, AND I IN HIM BEARS MUCH FRUIT, for apart from Me you can do nothing! If anyone does not remain in Me, he is thrown away like a branch and dries up; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. IF YOU REMAIN IN ME, AND MY WORDS REMAIN IN YOU, ASK WHATEVER YOU WISH, AND IT WILL BE DONE FOR YOU!“ (Jn. 15:5-7 NASB. Emphasis added.)

Note the highlighted parts of the text above with great care! The state of our hearts toward our risen, indwelling Lord, will determine which of us will be chosen to follow Him and receive from Him what it will take to endure and persevere all the way to the end!

As the global turmoil erupts and continues to spread and intensify, God will invade and soften the hearts of more and more people that are yet to be redeemed. And when their time comes, they too will begin to respond to Him, in unprecedented numbers. But before that can happen, He must first invade the hearts of the ones that He will have in position to receive, welcome, and orient those newcomers. The welcoming party has to be prepared first.

That’s where the company of Gideon troops comes in. Boot camps need trainers or drill instructors, to demonstrate and model God’s New Covenant ways. The new recruits must be able to see their veteran instructors actually proving – by the evidence of their own personal lives, and their obvious wisdom and knowledge of God’s Word, and personal experience and Spirit-empowered skill sets – that they have earned the right to teach, lead, and train others, and that what they teach is true, God-approved, and battle-tested, valid, reliable information.

The veterans will teach exactly as the Lord taught His apostles and other disciples in the first century: “Watch Me interact with My Father through the Holy Spirit. Watch Me as Holy Spirit does this through Me, and watch Me as Holy Spirit does that through me… and now… you try it!  It’s time for you to learn how to work with and from our Father’s Spirit too!”

So obviously, the training of the trainers must come first. And that will include the most thorough cleansing, purifying mind-renewing process of all. It was that way in the beginning, when the Lord was preparing to institute the New Covenant prior to His death, resurrection and ascension. The Lord chose a select band from among His original disciples, whom He would train thoroughly and excruciatingly to develop them into His New Covenant apostles. They would form the nucleus around which the Spirit of God would bring new fledgling disciples in the near future, when it was time to launch God’s massive New Covenant Invasion of enemy-held territories. The Invasion would move out, from Israel, to the rest of the world, and back again. So, as it was at the beginning of the New Covenant Era, so will it continue… to its God-intended Fulfillment, now that we’re approaching the end of this final age.

In the first century, as this Last Days era was beginning, the fully trained, Spirit-filled and empowered apostles, began to train and help to prepare other Spirit-filled and empowered disciples to learn to abide and interact with their risen Lord, and transform into His image and likeness. They did it by demonstrating to them how the Lord Himself had taught them to do the very same things He had been doing. And after the first wave of world outreach disciples, like Stephen, Phillip, Silas and Timothy had been trained and Spirit-filled, was it time for the Gospel, to begin to spread, out from Israel… to reach out to the other people groups… all those Jews and Gentiles that were scattered in distant places throughout rest of this poor fallen world!

 

AN AUTHENTIC BODY THROUGH WHICH OUR MESSIAH CAN REVEAL HIMSELF TO

THE ENTIRE WORLD!

But having begun it, the Lord is now preparing to finish it. Unfortunately, over the last 2000+ years, much of what the apostles passed down concerning the New Covenant disciple training and lifestyle was forgotten and replaced by other man-conceived substitutes. And so that’s where the pristine ‘Christ-in-us’ apostolic level of training of the Last Days disciples comes into view. We must come to know their risen and indwelling Lord, so intimately and deeply, that we, like their apostolic forbearers in the first century, will also be able to embody, radiate, and exude His Perfect Presence! And we must learn to live, abide, interact with, and allow Holy Spirit to form the Living Christ in us! Then we will be ready to live and act as one, in perfect unity, cohesion and synchronization with each other.

In this way, the risen Lord will be truly free to operate in and reveal Himself through, these faithful ones, as their Master, Owner, Commander and indwelling Life. And together, they will finish what He started with the original apostles, when the New Covenant Era was just beginning! So please keep this in mind:

The hand-picked Last Days disciples will transform into living, fruit-bearing members of His Body. When they really come under His full Authority, then they will be ‘God Bringers‘… emanating the risen Lord’s actual Presence into this world so He can be free to execute His Last Days Invasion of the world. These disciples will become a true, authentic Body for Him that will actually reveal Him as He really is! The Holy Spirit must have total freedom to do whatever will be necessary TO these disciples. Then He will be able to work IN them, at unimaginably deep levels, to cleanse and purify them so thoroughly that the Glory of the risen Lord will actually shine and radiate THROUGH them without any blockage, interference or opposition on their part. And this is the Secret that Stephen, and his fellow first century post-Ascension disciple colleagues learned and lived out during their time of service in the book of Acts.

When they are trained, fully yielded and willing to embrace their disciple calling to this degree, these end time disciples will become ‘points of entry’ through which the risen Lord can appear and work on Earth and obey His Father and do everything He is sent to do with total effectiveness. Such crucified disciples will then serve as Spirit-empowered bases of operation… from which their Master will be able to reach out to others, to pierce, penetrate and impregnate more and more unbelievers with His Truth, Authority and eternal Life…all over the world…  simultaneously!

So the Last Days Invasion must start with a very deep, ‘Believers FIRST’ penetration of hearts. Their flesh… that is, their natural soulish Sin-corrupted minds, wills and affections will be like a New Covenant version of the original ‘clay pitchers’ that the 300 hand-picked troops in Gideon’s army used in their battle with the Midianites and Amalekites in Judges chapter 7. The 300 were given lit torches that they concealed within the clay pitchers. And at the right time, the trumpets (rams’ horns) sounded and then the pitchers were broken, and the light of the torches suddenly flashed into view, piercing the darkness of the night. And that sudden explosion of light, accompanied by the eerie piercing blast of the ram’s horn ‘trumpets’ reverberating throughout the darkness, threw the slumbering enemy camp into total confusion, chaos, self-destruction and absolute defeat and destruction!

But the ‘soul pitchers’ of these modern day disciples-in-training are concealing a different kind of ‘torch.’ Their torches are the regenerated spirits that God gave them. And within those spirits, the Life and Light of Christ’s indwelling Presence has been quietly abiding for some time. And at the appointed hour, finally, those soul pitchers will shatter suddenly and completely. And then the Light of the World Himself will be utterly free to explode into view and, through that awesome corps of Covenant friends that will accompany and serve Him, the Lord of Glory will then go into action and do what only God’s All-Sufficient Word can do to finalize everything.

And this is the outcome for which Holy Spirit’s ‘boot camp’ training I envision will be preparing the Last Days disciples: Their soulish ‘jars of clay’ must be rigorously trained and readied — for TOTAL breaking! And when their Sin-corrupted minds and wills are completely broken down to total submission to their risen Lord’s Authority, they’ll be ready to be deployed. And they will begin operating from their proper God-assigned positions.

So when that D-Day hour arrives, ‘the trumpets’ will give the signal and what is left of those ‘clay coverings’ will fall away completely. Then the ‘torches’, consisting of the Life and Light of the indwelling Lord, will explode into view all over the earth, simultaneously… revealing the Lord of Glory in all of His true Resurrection Splendor! And the final ‘mopping up’ process will proceed to its inevitable end.

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.)

The Invasion begins when that divinely appointed, strategic ‘kairos’ moment arrives. But until then…the training provided by living in this broken, fallen world will continue. It will inflict increasing oppression, persecution and chaos on the trainees…to toughen and get them ready to overcome what is yet to come, but most importantly, to force them to look to and draw exclusively and continually from their indwelling Lord, whatever they will need throughout the urgencies of the conflict so that He can guide them through it all.

If this premonition is accurate, only God knows the precise plan and the zero hour of its execution and how much time we have left to prepare. But prepare we must. The various candidates for the first wave are currently scattered in separate locations, in various stages of training. Many still have not come to grips with the nearness and inevitability of the troublesome days of God’s Last Days Plan. Nevertheless the seeds of something huge, supernatural and world-shaking have already been sown into them and they will grow and mature to complete fruition! And at the appointed hour, all of the fruit of what God is now doing in them will be released into the world — from within their God-filled spirits. It will be a revelation of our risen Messiah Himself, in all of His Glory!

Psalm 2

“Why are the nations in an uproar and the peoples devising a vain thing? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers take counsel together against the LORD and against His Anointed (His Messiah and His Last Days disciples), saying, ‘Let us tear their fetters apart and cast away their cords from us!” “He who sits in the heavens laughs, the LORD scoffs at them. Then He will speak to them in His anger and terrify them in His fury, saying, ‘But as for Me, I have installed My King upon Zion, My holy mountain.” “I will surely tell of the decree of the LORD. He said to Me: ‘You are MY SON, today I have begotten You. Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations (pagan Jews and Gentiles) as Your inheritance, and the very ends of the Earth as Your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron, You shall shatter them like earthenware!”

“Therefore, O kings, show discernment; take warning O judges of the earth. Worship the Lord with reverence and rejoice with trembling! Do homage to the Son, that He not become angry, and you perish in the way, for His wrath may soon be kindled. HOW BLESSED ARE ALL WHO TAKE REFUGE IN HIM!”

When the D-Day turbulence and chaos begin, it will appear, to those that do not have the spiritual ‘eyes’ to see and recognize what God is doing, that all Hell has broken loose. The world will be taken completely by surprise and overcome with confusion and terror. People will view what is happening as being demonically induced.

But God’s enemies won’t be initiating anything. They too will be shocked. And they will be reacting in terror, once the enormous initiative of Almighty God is suddenly unleashed! The Lord will be on the move… and everything will happen on His Father’s terms and according to His timing… for His Eternal purpose. And our stunned and thoroughly routed enemies will react violently, even while they are being forced to backpedal, helplessly!

2 Corinthians 4:6-10

“For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the Glory of God in the face of Christ. 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.” (Emphasis added.)

Many of those destined for these ‘Gideon units’ are still mostly unaware of their calling. They’re scattered across the world, marking time within a great variety of cultures, and unrelated pursuits, religious affiliations and local fellowships. But even though many are still deeply entangled and engaged with this carnal Self-adoring world and its priorities, nevertheless, at staggered intervals, they will begin to hear the ‘Gideon Call.’ Suddenly they’ll begin to feel like misfits within their current habitual haunts and comfort zones. An inexplicable restlessness, similar to the urge migratory birds experience prior to takeoff, will arise within them. What felt so comfortable and familiar and precious to them before, will suddenly begin to feel strange, alien, disturbing and unappealing.

The ‘timing devices’ contained in the spiritual equipment Holy Spirit previously put into them, will become activated at the proper time, at staggered intervals. And these progressive inward events will cause the affected disciples to suddenly begin to feel so restless and out of place, that they’ll finally be ready to be uprooted and removed from their comfort zones! And they will begin to migrate to wherever their basic training regimens are scheduled to take place. And these ‘boot camps’ will force them to deal with their fallen fleshy, self-pampering ‘civilian’ soulishness, as never before.

The training will increase in toughness, thoroughness and intensity, so that by the time D-Day arrives, they will be completely emptied out of themselves and their delusions of being ‘exempt self-governing civilians’ will have disappeared completely. The individualistic rebellious streaks among them will be gone, and in place of that there will emerge ‘One New Man in Christ’… a thoroughly prepared God-filled and empowered Warrior… because Holy Spirit will be moving and directing them to live and think from the mind of Christ so that they will act, and react – as His embodiment!

Of course the majority of God’s people do not currently have any interest or stomach for such a tremendous uprooting mental and emotional transition. But this unique breed of those who are being summoned to leave their places amid this world’s masses, will begin to feel an intense Spirit-given attraction for this kind of radical changeover, from total Self-life to the glorious freedom of Christ-Life!

Most will not know what to expect or be able to understand what has begun to happen within them. At first, many will interpret and explain their growing inner sense of ‘homesickness’ and its accompanying stress and turmoil, in a variety of negative ways. A large number will become frightened and discouraged and will turn back in an attempt to recapture what they thought they had, before they began to sense and feel ‘the Call of the Wild’. But it will be too late. They will have already been spoiled for this world’s status quo by the unexplainable hunger that is developing in their hearts… hunger for what God has waiting for them… in the Great Unknown that lies ahead.

Those who stand firmly and persevere will eventually take to the changes, like ducks to water. They will go all the way through the crucible of change wholeheartedly. Just like salmon who feel compelled to return to their original spawning ground, these chosen ones will keep swimming against the current of public opinion and that of their own laziness, selfishness and cowardice, knowing that those once-revered things must die so they can finally connect with the true authentic identity, purpose, and destiny their Creator has waiting to impart to them! Inexplicably they will rejoice and press all the more into their indwelling, risen Master! They will absorb His perfect self-less Love, and His supernatural Wisdom, Holiness, Righteousness, Resurrection Life perspectives, Thoroughness, Integrity, Maturity, Courage, Toughness, Faithfulness, Skill, Boldness and Mastery in living out the Last Days New Covenant ways of Almighty God. No one will have to coax them; and nothing will be able to deter them… for the Risen Lord will be their LIFE!

Holy Spirit will motivate and empower them from within. And they will stand and hold their Covenant Ground! They will  learn and grow, and be able to help the others that have begun to follow their leading. And together, they will all persevere through the painful, humbling difficulties and hurdles that their training will impose on them all. But in the midst of the turmoil, they will experience the Perfect Peace that always emanates from the Perfect Presence of the indwelling Life of their Master with whom they have  become one. And His Joy and Eternal Sabbath Rest will continually throb within them and work unceasingly and relentlessly, out from each one, and amid them all. His Life will change them and do awesome things in and through them. And they will know that they cannot take any of the credit for the awesome things that will be flowing into this world from within them and changing what is going on all around them. They will know for sure that Everything that will be happening from now on will be all about Him and will be coming FROM HIM!

CAN YOU RELATE TO ANY OF THIS?

The results will be totally supernatural! Any past training they may have had will pale in comparison to what they will now be required to undergo. But so also will the inner peace and joy they’ll begin to feel, increase. This Peace and Joy will surpass anything they’ve ever experienced in the past. The Lord will take them deeper and further… through the Mother of all boot camps, to prepare them for the ultimate climactic combat with the demonic powers of Darkness that awaits them. The intensity level of the training will even surpass the enormity of the challenges they will actually have to face! Regardless of whether they are trained by Christ-Life (Ultimate Journey) teachings, or by any other venues of God’s choosing, the training of the Last Days disciples will exceed anything that believers of previous eras ever had to face.

When the time arrives for them to enter ‘The Last Days’ Arena of TESTimony,’ supernatural demands will be made on them all. But by then, an astounding, enormous anointing will have begun to flow into them from Christ their Head. And what was previously ‘drill, practice and training,’ will suddenly become actual Living Triumph! And the Light of the Lord who lives within them will radiate in all directions… and it will progressively penetrate and dissipate the Darkness as their Advance continues against the powers that are lurking in the ever-diminishing Darkness. They will  transform into an invincible Invasion Force, capable of penetrating and goring the very bowels of the Darkness that has had such a strangle-hold on this fallen, broken world and its occupants for so many eons!

Troops being prepared for yet undisclosed missions can’t see why they must endure such apparently meaningless and difficult training. (See Heb. 12.) What they will be enduring won’t seem to have any relation to whatever will be currently going on. It won’t fit the paradigms or comfort zones to which they previously became accustomed. But because God’s risen Word and Holy Spirit will always be leading further into the Great Unknown, God’s plan will, just like the advancing of dawn, unfold progressively until it reaches the full noonday level of awareness and understanding in these disciples. They will have to master the art and skill of ‘following’. They will receive their orders and assignment details only on a ‘need to know’ basis. And that will force them to remain fully attentive to and in perfect step with the Word and the Spirit of Almighty God!

So for now… in this present day… most of the ‘Gideon Force’ are still living banal, routine lives. All they can do at this time is occupy themselves with doing the obvious that is right in front of them. But the Holy Spirit is already preparing their soulish ‘clay pitchers’ for that total future breaking that is inevitable. He will be leading them into excruciating experiences… imposing gut-wrenching challenges and stripping them of many temporal, worldly things they once clung to and held very dear.

He is freeing them all from their former worldly entanglements. He’s preparing and freeing them up to do their appointed jobs by allowing them to be exposed, abased, thwarted, stymied, abused, undermined, betrayed, neglected, deprived, disoriented, frustrated, misplaced, forsaken, scourged, persecuted, broken, and—yes—completely crucified! And isn’t that what happens to new recruit trainees as they endure the crucible of boot camp training? The training and preparation are deliberately designed to be so taxing, draining, and gut-wrenching, that the actual future combat will seem to be easy by comparison!

John 12:24-26

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal. If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him.” (Emphasis added.)

The desolation they will experience will even make them feel ‘unsaved’ at times. That’s because the Holy Spirit is carefully forging them into a living, Psalm 22 image and likeness of our crucified Messiah! The actual experience of seeds falling into the ground and dying will prove to be much different than what their cozy, comfortable ‘bless me’ church meetings and Bible study discussions of the past, kept leading them to expect. But the Sin-corrupted Self-life within these human seeds must and will, fall into the ground and die… for real! That radically independent Self-life will not be allowed to ‘improve’ or move higher up on the world’s false scale of 1 to 10. Like their Master, these disciples will also be taken all the way down to zero! Their former addiction to Self-preservation and Self-enhancement, will really die!  Their self-adoring radical independence will begin to rot and come apart. It will fail and look terrible, and smell even worse! And they will turn away from it in horror and disgust (Cf. Isaiah 6:1-5; 52:13-15; 53).

There will not be a speck of anything left in them that will be desirable or of any use to this fallen world’s system! They will hit the Zero Point for good! Thereafter, nothing will ever again be about them. After they’ve been completely stripped of reliance on themselves, they will be forced to focus on and depend upon Another—their Lord—and the Perfect Finished Work He has already done, one hundred percent of the time! From that point forward. He will be their ALL… in all things… FOREVER!

Once they reach that state of helpless dependence upon their glorified Head, once He is truly their one and only Life, they will never stray from Him again. And, like Stephen and the others, they will be ready for the Holy Spirit to take them into The Last Days Arena of Testimony. As their training proceeds, the trainees will not understand what is happening to them. The more they lose their grip on their former self-reliance, their personal, self-made empires and agendas will fall of their own dead weight and crumble. And all they’ll have left will be… THE LORD OF GLORY!

At first, the more it happens, they will instinctively blame someone else. Some will blame God; others will blame people around them; others will blame Satan… and most of them will whine and wallow in self-pity and assume that they’re losers. But Holy Spirit will enable them to outgrow that. They will not be losing! The trouble will arise from their old paradigms that they formerly followed. They will still be in place… ‘hard-wired’ into their brains. And that obsolete data will naturally continue to mislead and misdirect them occasionally. It will prompt them to keep assuming that what is happening to them is all about them, and how they feel, and what they do and how they do it! But the truth will be this:

As their self-life and its corresponding paradigms are trashed, along with their comfort zones, THESE DISCIPLES WILL BE WINNING! THEY WILL BE UNITING WITH THEIR LORD, UNTIL THEY LIVE AND ABIDE AND OPERATE AS ONE WITH HIM, AND THEY LIVE ONE HUNDRED PERCENT – FROM HIM!

God must detoxify them of their original living death radically independent identities, viewpoints and agendas. And He will exchange all of that pathetic temporary stuff for the Perfection of His Word’s Finished Work and the Glory of Christ’s Perfect Eternal Resurrection Life and the incomprehensible Heavenly Inheritance into which He is here to bring them, and share with them, for all of Eternity!

This is why every speck of their former temporal self-adoring corruption must be stripped off like cocoons, so they can be free to embody the Perfection of God’s Eternal Living Word… and soar with Him into what is Eternal and Perfect and can only come to them from God! In time they’ll get used to such high altitude spiritual territory as the Lord conditions them to appreciate, desire, and learn to embrace and embody—the perfect Humanity of the Crucified and Exalted Lamb and His Spirit-led way of operating on Earth.

After they learn these ABC levels of the Gospel, God will train them for the big league, XYZ levels of resisting Satan, standing on and holding their God-given Blood Covenant Ground, and staring down and overcoming and routing the entire host of the demonic powers of Darkness! Then those disciples, who formerly insisted on being placed first, according to their worldly, self-life mandates, will now gladly choose to be last, so that Christ, Whom they formerly rated and placed last, will from then on, be FIRST IN EVERYTHING! Now they’ll be so weak in themselves, that there won’t be anything else for them to do but embody the risen Lord — Exalted and Triumphant — in God’s awesome supernatural Power. The living Word Himself will emerge gloriously, out from the little that is left of them!

2 Corinthians 12:8-10

“Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, ‘My Grace is sufficient for you, for Power is perfected in weakness.’ Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the Power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong!”

So while most people continue to strive to deodorize, primp, improve, enhance, increase, better manage, and ‘spiritualize’ their self-centered temporal earthly lives, relationships, feelings, positions and circumstances, these Special Forces are even now being trained to do just the opposite! They are being prepared to operate superbly in arduous, humanly impossible circumstances and conditions that aren’t even here yet! That’s why they currently feel like total misfits in the comfortable, materialistic, self-indulgent religiosity of the status quo and the ego-centered, self-adoring trappings of the phony humanistic world that still operates all around them. The humanistic world is obsessed with its quest for self-gratification and Perfect 10 status. Man and his self-adoring happiness and fulfillment, remain the end-all and be-all of everything the fallen world does. The world’s war cry is, ‘I’ll do it MY way!’ But in this crucified, supernatural Gideon army, everything will be about the Glory of God and the revelation of His Son. Their war cry will be, ‘OUR LORD, THE WORD OF GOD, IS EVERYTHING!’ (See Philippians 2:5-8)

So as the teeming billions in the ‘Me First’ parade seek to attain a‘Perfect Ten’ status level, these misfits will be hobbling by twos and threes, into the loneliness of the opposite, crucified, direction… the direction that leads to the ‘ZERONESS’ of Christ-crucified… and then they will abide with Him… in the Eternal Glory of His Resurrection! By the Holy Spirit’s empowerment, they will begin to joyfully and aggressively allow God to humble, decrease and pour out every speck of their Sin-spawned self-life (Cf. Isaiah 53, 66:1-2; Matthew 10; John 12; Revelation 12).

As our Master taught His disciples in Matthew 10, so will these troops learn to forsake everything they’ve ever been, ever had, or ever desired, or tried to do by nature, in their own strength. All of that will have to be exchanged for what God wants to make of them by applying to them the fruits of His Perfect already-Finished, Spirit-imparted Works of Creation, Redemption, and Restoration. They’ll become the incarnate embodiment of God’s beloved slain, but resurrected, Lamb (Revelation 12:10-17).

And the Lord will weave them together, into an enormous, living, mobile, interconnected, spiritual ‘Fishnet’ that He will protect and maintain and supply from the Infinite Treasury of Grace that flows out of His Perfect Finished Works of Creation and Redemption. He will release His Life and Light and all that pertains to Him, into them. And this is how He will work through them, to save those myriads of former enemies that now are beginning to hear His voice and heed His commands… and be drawn more and more into His Kingdom of Light! And this will be done in and through the example and guidance of our Messiah’s well-prepared Last Days disciples.

At this present stage, many of the ‘candidates’ still have trouble seeing and thinking ‘outside the box; of the universally accepted, traditional, religious, theological mindsets and lifestyles we have all inherited from previous generations. But the enormity of what is approaching will blow away all current traditions, denominational mental boxes, world religion structures, secular humanistic expectations, priorities and comfort levels. Predisposed or not, when the shaking of all things temporal begins, every one of us will see what we’ve never seen; and we’ll hear what we’ve never heard, and feel what we’ve never felt — and go where we never dreamed the Lord would ever take us (Hebrews 12:25-29). So at this critical time in human history… may we all see the need to prepare our souls to face the enormity of what lies ahead of us. And may we all learn to trust exclusively and endlessly in the living God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob…and nurse continually at our Creator’s all-sufficient ‘breasts’, like totally trusting, secure nursing babes.

A TIDAL WAVE OF CHANGE

We’ll probably have to explore spiritual vistas that prior generations never imagined possible; and we’ll undergo heart-rending separations… as the tidal wave of change sweeps away loved ones that insisted on remaining unprepared. But the Lord will have His Gideon Force ready to ‘ride The Wave’ of change instinctively, when it finally comes to pick them up. The Wave is God’s Holy Spirit! And these troops are being trained to interact constantly with Him during these precious, quiet, excruciating, controlled-agony days of ‘boot camp’ training that still remain for us.

Those that the Lord has called, culled and is qualifying, must be trained to thrive amid MASSIVE, horrendous reality-shifts, without missing a beat! They must learn to be so at one with Holy Spirit that they are effectively reduced to a perpetual state of toddler-level dependence on God!

The Cross, that they’ll one day come to love, cherish and rest upon in total peace… will be the instrument upon which they must be trained, even as more and more of this fallen, broken world falls apart and blows away. The trouble is that most of us are conditioned and wired to live in relative stability, ease, strength and comfort in a very materialistic, naturalistic, Self-promoting world. But these troops are not being trained for the current status quo. They’re being trained for the way it’s going to be after the world’s man-made houses of cards have begun to come apart in earnest. Most of that Christ-Supremacy is still in the future and so, at this time, it still remains mostly unknown to us.

That makes it very difficult for those who live around these trainees to know what to do with them in the present. Why don’t they cooperate and help to strengthen, cultivate and maintain the status quo? Why are they so weird, stubborn and contrary? Their families and neighbors can’t understand them because at present it’s very difficult for them to even understand themselves! It will be difficult for them to know how to be and act in the present, because these troops will be in the process of actually being weaned from the way things are in the present! And the Reality for which they’re being trained, is still in the future and remains, ‘Top Secret.’

So how can they navigate in the present, without becoming, or appearing to be, disoriented and out of touch with current ‘reality?’ In fact, to some, they will appear to be insane! To others, they will come across as arrogant, elitist, controlling, standoffish, and Pharisaical. That’s because a mere foreboding such as the one I’m trying to articulate will only make sense to those who have begun to hear ‘The Call of the Wild’ in their heart of hearts. Only they will be able to feel and sense what this ‘Gideon Force’ senses. But to those that do not sense it, it will seem to be totally crazy.

But even the tension this will cause will serve as wonderful training for the groups that, at first, will be divided by their vastly different viewpoints. The tension will do wonders for all of their ‘clay pitchers’ since in any event, they will all have to be broken, one way or another. Iron sharpens iron, and the interactions between these two conflicting groups will have a similar positive effect in the end.

Thus many who suspect and resent these ‘misfit nuts’ today will hear the call to join them tomorrow. In time, they’ll all become ‘fox hole buddies’ and true, ‘to the death’ Covenant friends and comrades. And many of those ‘weird ones’ that now irritate and rankle their complacent neighbors, will soon welcome those very same people into their midst, and they will come to love them as the closest, dearest friends they’ve ever had! It has to happen if they’re all going to share the same fate, and fight for each other and transform into our Messiah’s one Body, under His absolute Headship.

So the Lord lovingly uses healthy tension to strengthen flabby mental, emotional and relational ‘muscles.’ All of this is ‘raw material’ to be used for learning to deal with our ‘clay pitchers’ that are all on death row and must all be broken, sooner or later. Even as our imperfections and inadequacies are magnified for the world to see, from within our nothingness, the absolute eternal PERFECTION of our indwelling Lord is ready to begin to shine forth… brighter and brighter… from within each one of us. And the day is coming when our risen Lord will be clearly seen and experienced by the world as He operates in our midst… AS HE REALLY IS!

 

AN END TIMES EARTHLY BODY FOR OUR RISEN LORD, THAT IS ACTUALLY HIS! 

In the midst of Christianity’s current understandable confusion, division, mutual misunderstanding and suspicions, I see God quietly building the unique ‘end times’ Body for His Son. It will be the enormous New Covenant ‘ARK’ that will, in a very short time, receive billions of panicked, unredeemed, Jews and Gentiles into itself as they begin to fear and heed God’s warning of the ‘flood’ of enormous Judgment that has already begun to engulf the horizons of this world.

The tranquil window of opportunity we now enjoy is God’s mercy — giving us a quiet, peaceful span of time in which troops can drill, practice and prepare together, before the unspeakable chaos of the coming tsunami of changes breaks out fully all across the horizon. Our brains and mental ‘on board computers’ only listen to us. So we’re responsible for renewing, rewiring and retraining them. It’s easy to say we should do it. It’s easy to read, study, think, talk and sing about doing it.

But it’s another thing to produce effective, competent ‘drill instructors’ that can say, in spirit and in truth, ‘We’ve been there; so watch us interact with God in this… watch Christ in us deal with that… watch the Holy Spirit guide us through this while we remain crucified and dead to self-life and draw exclusively from what our awesome God has already created and supplied and paid for in the past… watch us rewire and program ourselves for transforming change… and… now YOU TRY IT!’ I believe God wants to produce an authentic Biblical, disciple-level corps of ‘Watch us… now you’ trainers for this critical time.

That’s why the first wave is being assembled. When they become fully trained, competent veteran instructors, more busloads of future disciples will begin to appear. The Holy Spirit will have built an infrastructure and have it in place by that time… ready to receive newcomers and help them begin their preparations in earnest. The increasing stream of recruits God will place in the care of these original instructors will in turn mature and begin to reproduce what they learned from their teachers. And they will do what they were taught even bigger, better, and faster than their teachers! They too will become fruit-bearing instructors, teaching and training still others, how to interact with and draw exclusively from the risen Lord who lives within and among them all. The Gideon Force will learn to thrive amid the pressures created by the massive tsunami of radical change that is going to hit the entire world with unprecedented force, while those who oppose them will become more and more ‘unhinged and unglued’.

These disciples won’t be victims of their circumstances or feelings. They won’t allow unexpected changes or disappointments to intimidate or deter them. They will be God’s carriers of heavenly changes. They will be innovators and beneficiaries of what God will be free to do through them. But their demonic enemies will be confounded and devastated at every turn because of the relentless unpredictability of these Spirit-led and empowered ‘God-Bringer’ disciples:

John 3:5-8

“…Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 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!”

They will develop such faith-filled hearts that they will overcome things in their hearts even before they appear in time and space! And regardless of circumstances, natural feelings or past habits, they’ll be able to ‘travel light,’ be flexible, highly mobile, faceless, anonymous and totally free of slavery to circumstances. And because they’re all being taken into brand new territory, it will be psychologically impossible for any of them to see themselves as ‘experts’ or ‘big shots’ or ‘big names.’

The Cross will reduce them all down to the level of little children. All of their focus, at all times, will be on their indwelling Lord and His infinite Perfection and All-Sufficiency… and no longer on themselves. Together, they will embody and magnify and reveal Him, as one New Man in Messiah (Cf. Ephesians 2-5). God is the only real Minister and Ministry to all fallen flesh. Only He can deal with it. So these troops will not rely on themselves; nor will they focus on other men or any human devices. They will be weaned of their former cravings to cater to the desperate needs of their fallen flesh. The poor are always with us (Matthew 13: 10-17). And they are poor only for as long as God is not yet free to be their one and only Source for what is real, true and good. So we must make that awesome Exodus, from Self-life… to Christ-Life and serve as examples for all others to they also can unite with Him while they still have time.

The focus of these fully-trained disciples will always be on our indwelling Lord and His continued revelation and the increase of the establishment of His Authority and Glorification. The more the Living Word of God prevails in them and through them, the more He will shine forth and draw men to Himself and meet the needs of the people that will continue to cluster around His disciples. And because of the depths to which these disciple troops have come to know Him, in themselves, they will appear to be like weak, crucified children. They will always remain insignificantly small and utterly weak before God and men.

But as they operate from the power of their indwelling Lord in the spiritual realms, God’s demonic enemies will recognize and fear them tremendously – for the awesome spiritual, Resurrection-Life titans they really are. These Last Days troops will be much more focused and determined than even the terrorists we hear so much about in the media today. They will be equipped and able to confound and put terrorists to rout. They will be weaned of any attachment to material, comfortable, static, sensual, sectarian, racial, religious, ethnic and worldly concerns.

They’ll be trained to maintain LASER-LIKE FOCUS on, and interaction with, their indwelling Lord that will obliterate any of their former priorities and considerations. They’ll maintain a constant Colossians 3:1-4 mindset and agenda. They’ll be prepared for the wave of change because they will have already cut off all ties to and dependencies upon the man-made, worldly things that will be crumbling and disappearing. These disciples will lose nothing when temporal worldly things are blown away, because they will have already been deeply grounded and connected into everything that is eternally permanent. They will be transplanted and rooted into the richest Soil imaginable… God’s Heavenly Ground that can only be found on the Resurrection side of the Cross. It is the Ground of being one with — THE RISEN MESSIAH HIMSELF AND HIS INFINITE, PERFECT FINISHED NEW COVENANT WORK THAT CANNOT FAIL!

By the end of their training, these disciples will terrorize terrorists! Both they and the terrorists will be anonymous and faceless. Both will blend in anywhere. You won’t know who they are until after they pass through. Terrorists are known only by their fruits — death, destruction, terror and desolation. These disciples will operate in a similar way. They’ll be a highly mobile, low profile ‘Church without walls.’ Their thrust will go counter to that of their death-dealing terrorist counterparts. They will embody and release supernatural LIFE AND LIGHT — HIMSELF into everything they touch! They’ll scorn death, hardship and discomfort even more than terrorists do, because they will already be dead to this world — living out from and thriving in Christ — on the resurrection side of the Cross!

CHRIST’S INTEGRATED, SYNCHRONIZED, COORDINATED BODY

They’ll draw no attention to themselves. Christ will be their ALL, in all things. Their common Christ-mind focus will make them transcend all man-made denominational, organizational, ethnic, religious and cultural walls. They’ll leave all that petty competitiveness behind, and spread out in all directions under the Holy Spirit’s direction. They’ll infiltrate everything and blend into wherever He leads them. They won’t obsess over things ABOUT Christ; they’ll embody CHRIST HIMSELF!

So they won’t be rigid, petty or argumentative. They won’t continually divide and split apart or undermine one another. The Cross will break, soften, melt, mold and unite them all, into Christ’s one synchronized, coordinated Body. Their focus will be on embodying and revealing their Head alone, as living members of His one, fully-integrated Body. You won’t know they’ve been here until they’ve passed through.

You won’t remember their names, or even, in many cases, what they looked like! But after they pass through, you will never again be able to forget or ignore the risen Lord that they serve, proclaim and embody. The fruit in their wake will be — Christ, Christ, Christ, The Glory of the risen Messiah, the Fruit of the risen Lord, and the Absolute Takeover of all things, by the living Word of Almighty God! You’ll never lose sight of the risen Messiah again, once His New Covenant disciples have touched your life. The Messiah died first so that they might live. But now, they die so that He might live.

I know that in saying this publicly I may prove to be the most deluded fool on earth. I’ve tried to forget this and just ‘be normal’ and mind my own business. But the burn inside won’t stop. It is more real than anything I currently see around me. If I’m wrong, I will be dreadfully embarrassed and in desperate need of intercessory prayer. But if this Last Days D-Day really is bearing down upon us, then there’s not a minute to waste!

So I’m going with my intuition. If later on, I am proved to be dead wrong, so be it! In fact I pray that I am wrong, for the sake of everyone’s safety and security! But I can’t risk the gamble. I’m much more afraid of what it would mean to miss the window of opportunity — that we have in this time of relative peace and calm — to make the needed preparations. I’m much more afraid of missing our window of opportunity to prepare ourselves than I fear being considered to be a fool in the eyes of this world. If I’m wrong (and even if I’m right)… I remain in myself, a monumental fool. But even if I’m wrong… then at least I will have been trying to do what the Lord said He wanted us to do, which is to – ‘GO OUT AND MAKE DISCIPLES!’

I admit that I tremble – wondering if I misheard God. But I tremble even more at the possibility that maybe — just maybe — I didn’t mishear Him. And if this intuition of mine is correct, then —

OUR ONLY SAFETY WILL LIE IN BEING SPIRITUALLY, MENTALLY, AND EMOTIONALLY PREPARED TO DEAL WITH, ENDURE, AND OVERCOME IN THE MIDST OF THE ENORMITY OF WHAT IS COMING! 

 

********

 

If any of the above resonates with what Holy Spirit has put into your spirit and soul, then I offer some links to videos that will give you more pertinent and timely information and encouragement. They will, I believe, give you a taste of what those Last Days ‘bullet head’ disciples that are now beginning to appear on the Last Days scene are like, and how the Spirit of God is gearing them to think. Like the rest of us, they too are ‘under construction’. Their training process is still continuing and has more ground to cover up ahead. Nevertheless, they are cut from a different bolt of cloth than what most of this world and the current generations are used to seeing and dealing with.

For example, I know the young man who is teaching in the videos listed below. I believe he, and those who are being called into service at this time, must receive from Holy Spirit the inner mindset and makeup that disciples of the Last Days ‘Stephen Generation’ must have to be ready and equipped to fulfill their God-given commissions amid the unspeakably difficult and climactic stages of the end of this age. It will far exceed anything believers of previous eras have ever known, experienced, or had to deal with in their lifetimes.

In themselves, these Last Days disciples-in-training will be no better, worthy, or spiritually advanced than any previous generation. But the final portion of the Last Days ‘War of the Seeds’, (Gen. 3:15) in which they’re destined to play such a prominent part, will be the most terrible, dangerous, painfully excruciating, and gloriously fulfilling part of God’s awesome Story of Salvation and Redemption! Therefore, their ‘boot camp’ preparatory training will be unprecedented in its thoroughness, depth, and degrees of difficulty. Holy Spirit must prepare and equip them to follow their risen Lord’s leading into, and through the utmost level and depth of His own personal experience of being separated, pruned, purified, tested and forged by the Refining Fire of God’s Perfect Righteousness, Truth, and Justice.

Only God Himself knows what they will need, and only He will be able to get these precious Last Days disciples fully and adequately ‘Combat Ready’. Nothing short of our Risen Lord, abiding and operating from within them, will be enough to train, toughen, fine tune, and make them fit, ready, wise and strong enough to fulfill their commissions… and usher in the Ultimate Takeover and Triumph of God’s beloved risen Son!

So dear ones, pray for this generation that the Lord has chosen for His service in these last days beloved. And pray for yourselves, and for all the rest of us who have been destined to be among the number of these Last Days disciples. We are all going to need every bit of the spiritual intercessory artillery covering the Body of Christ is able to supply… as the Lord prepares us to fulfill our parts in God’s Last Days Final Invasion of all that the powers of Darkness usurped in the past!

 

 

 

 

********

And finally, what follows is another article I wrote for a different section of this website. I place it here in hopes of helping those that need a tool that hopefully will help us all to undergo a massive and necessary ‘paradigm-shift’ that helps us grasp the meaning and impact of ‘the Gospel of Salvation’, and exactly what it is from which God has to save us.

I pray this will give you a real gut feel for why everything must be about Christ in us, and nothing can ever again be focusing on and highlighting us… and what we think we’ll be able to be or do FOR GOD… or LIKE GOD! God doesn’t need any help or advice from His creatures. But He does require us to rest, rejoice, and trust fully IN HIM AND IN WHAT HE HAS ALREADY DONE FOR US, IN OUR NAME, THROUGH HIS LIVING WORD MADE FLESH: