Dear FMM Family: This article is by no means new. I wrote it in July of 2003, seven years before the Lord planted the seed of the Follow Me Ministry into the conscious portion of my heart. At that time I was trying to put something new and totally unexpected into words, something that had recently begun to, for want of a better term, ‘bug’ me. It was like a pesky, unpleasant and unwelcome distracting ‘gnat’ that kept getting in my face and wouldn’t go away.
So I thought it would help if I tried to face it, and think it through, and write it out. And this article was the result of that process. And, as I’ve gone back to review it in recent days, I have begun to realize, that now that FMM actually exists, based on what began to happen throughout the world in the years since then, and how the FMM Family has grown and developed throughout the world since it began in 2010, I can see that this article was not just an exercise in idle musings. Even though at that time I had no way of knowing this… the Lord was actually already preparing me for the Follow Me Ministry that we have today! In other words, He was giving us the blueprint for the Follow Me Ministry, and showing me the inner workings of the hearts of the people He would be drawing to become part of our Lord’s Last Days Invasion!
Now I can see that this article, although I had no way of knowing it when it was being written, was actually a description and a warning of what we’re all seeing take place in the present day. It was describing, not only members of the Follow Me Family of disciples, but also other kindred-hearted groups and individuals that I’m beginning to meet and hear about with increasing frequency. The Lord is actually assembling, organizing, training, and equipping His Last Days Invasion Force… just the way this article was envisioning and describing it!
So now I can see that when the Lord first placed this info in my heart, He was supplying the specifications that the Holy Spirit would be actualizing… as He gathered, trained, equipped and developed the people He was going to draw into the Lord’s Last Days service in the future.
That future is now actually unfolding before us in the present! And what was contained in the article is actually emerging in present day Reality! So now many among us can see that what was written way back in 2003, is actually taking place in the lives of many real disciples of this present time! So that’s why I’ve begun to consider this article to be the ‘Preview of Coming Attractions’ that Father so graciously and mercifully placed in my heart in 2003.
Now it can serve as a reference guide for us because FMM now actually exists and is in full global operation. And, now that we’ve actually entered the Last Days Era, we can refer to this article and use it as a reference guide and a reminder… as we continue to follow the leading of our Supreme Commander into the Great Unknown.
In 2003, I think it’s safe to say that none of us had any inkling that the world would be changing as much and as radically as we’re seeing it doing at this time. I know you know what I’m referring to. We’re all experiencing a very crazy roller coaster ride that is picking up speed and velocity at a shocking and alarming rate. So now it’s obvious that many of the premonitions I began to sense in 2003 are actually real, present and active.
So I believe it will be helpful to highlight and bring this data to your attention at this critically strategic time. The subject matter has suddenly become very relevant and extremely important for our future operations and purposes. And I believe what is contained in it will help us to better understand what we are all experiencing, and why what we’re seeing is taking place. It will also help us to better understand the Follow Me Ministry, and its purpose, and how to interpret all of the material that has been made available on this website and in our translated and printed booklets that are being freely distributed around the world. Thanks to the booklets, this information can benefit people that do not have computers or Internet access. And now in retrospect… what is in the article is beginning to make a lot of sense!
Our FMM material is specifically intended for the kind of people I was envisioning in this ‘Big Surprise’ article. And no doubt the Lord intended our FMM Ministry to serve and assist the current generation of disciples through whom God intends to fulfill His New Covenant promises. So, if you know you have been called to be part of our Master’s corps of Last Days New Covenant disciples-in-training, then this article, and the material being offered on this website are especially meant for you to ponder and absorb. Perhaps you too have been called by the Lord to follow Him… as a member of one of our FMM battle units that are part of the Lord’s Last Days Invasion Force! If you have, then the time to receive Holy Spirit boot camp training in order to make you ‘combat-ready’ is NOW!
I believe the serious training of these Last Days Special Forces of God’s Kingdom on Earth is now fully underway and proceeding with full-speed intensity. It’s also obvious that events are accelerating, and the conditions that will lead to the Final Showdown between God’s Heavenly Hosts and the powers of Darkness, are beginning to emerge and become physically real and apparent.
The spiritual and cultural war, between ‘The Son’s of Zion’ (followers of God’s Biblical Self-Revelation) and ‘The Sons of Greece’ (the humanistic proponents of ‘globalism’, is now raging in earnest, and neither side is about to back down or quit until the final attack has been mounted and concluded. So there will be no let up or rest for any participant until the conclusion prophesied in God’s Word has been reached and the din of battle has turned into total silence, and the smoke caused by the demise of whatever is temporary, has finally cleared.
But in the meantime, the Son’s of Greece are preparing the way for the appearance of the Antichrist… and the disciples of God’s Word are commissioned to prepare the way for the Return of the resurrected King of kings and Lord of lords! And the enormous changes that will build up to the final climax of this cosmic conflict are beginning to appear on the horizon. And soon, waves of ever-intensifying turbulence will overtake and deeply affect the entire world.
So it’s obvious that the Lord must now provide the same quality level of authentic disciple training, to our generation of His followers, that He once gave to His original band of disciples in Israel, in the first century. He must now abide with us and teach and train us to abide with Him. And He will have to correct and discipline us as needed. And we will have to learn to interact with Him in real life, and draw everything we will need from Him through our obedient faith by the Power of God’s Holy Spirit! I say that because we’ve been chosen to serve the Lord in the era that will unpack and display the complete Fulfillment of all the seeds of revelation and prophecy that God placed in His written Word in ages past.
So if you choose to read and ponder this article, ask the Lord to give you His Wisdom, Guidance and Direction while you do it. Ask Him to show you if, and how, you are meant to fit into all of this. Ask Him what He sent His Holy Spirit to do to you… and in you… and through you… during this most awesome and spectacularly significant era. And let Him guide you into the company of those disciples with whom He has chosen you to serve Him, so that you can begin to bond with them, in God’s Blood Covenant union and learn to work together as one unit, in supernatural, Spirit-directed cohesion, synchronization, and awesome precision. You will need to be able to love and uphold and encourage and watch each other’s backs all along the way. And you’ll learn all of that under the Holy Spirit’s pressure-packed hands-on Guidance.
So I’m asking you to read what follows, with the understanding that back in 2003, when the Lord gave me the ‘download’ for this article, and I was doing my level best to try to understand what I was seeing, and articulate and write it out… even back then… the risen Lord of Glory had you, and the other disciples with whom you will be serving Him, in mind! So in that sense, although I didn’t realize it then, I was actually writing that article about you!
In His service, and yours,
John
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THE BIG SURPRISE
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 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 will be equal to, and even surpass, whatever lies ahead. 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 us… 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. We are His Covenant Family and He alone knows what it will take to properly build and teach and effectively prepare His Covenant Family.
Only God can know what lies ahead of us because everything with which we are now familiar is going to be shaken, and the familiar and habitual will begin to disintegrate and fall apart. And our reality will change drastically, right before our stunned eyes. And so by the end, everything that is currently present that is created, will be completely transformed and what is present will be replaced by a new Heaven and a new Earth that we have not yet seen or even imagined! And this is what the following text is clearly saying:
“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 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.)
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 this nagging premonition of mine has 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 a Last Days Invasion by the Kingdom of Heaven. They will be the ones to establish a solid ‘beachhead’ to prepare for the arrival of the units that will follow, until finally the Full Manifestation of the Body of our Messiah will finally appear. (See Isaiah 40 and notice what the Holy Spirit was promising to the people of Israel, about how the Lord of Glory would be ushered into this world. See also Isaiah 61-66.)
So… what will that first fruits gathering look like? 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. 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 which ones the Living Word of God will choose to be formed into authentic members of His Body and which ones will be bypassed. It will also determine which of them will 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, personal experience and Spirit-empowered skill sets – (that they too will also have to learn, absorb and become as their training regimen progresses) is true and valid. 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!”
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. A select band from among His original disciples, had to be trained thoroughly and excruciatingly by the Lord Himself, for the purpose of developing them into the New Covenant apostles who would launch God’s massive New Covenant Outreach from Israel, to the rest of the world, and back again.
Then the fully trained apostles in turn, trained and helped to prepare other 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 they themselves had been taught to do the very same things by the Lord Himself. And only after the first wave of world outreach disciples had been trained and Spirit-filled, was it time for the Gospel, to begin to spread, out from Israel and into the rest of the people groups that populated this poor fallen world.
An Authentic Body Through Which to Reveal Our Messiah
But having begun it, the Lord is now preparing to finish it. And that’s where the apostolic level of training of the Last Days disciples comes into view. Once the present generation of recruits knows the risen Lord so intimately and deeply that they too will be able to abide in His Perfect Presence, and live and abide and interact with Him in the Holy Spirit, the Lord will be truly free to operate as their Master, Owner, Commander and indwelling Life!
These hand-picked disciples will transform into living, fruit-bearing members of His Body. When they really come under His full Authority, He will be free to execute His Last Days Invasion of the world. These disciples must 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.
When they are trained, yielded and willing to embrace their disciple calling to this degree, these 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 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 ‘trumpets’ reverberating throughout the darkness, threw the enemy into total confusion, chaos, self-destruction and total defeat.
But the soulish ‘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 explode into view and, through that awesome corps of Covenant friends that will accompany Him, the Lord of Glory will go into action.
Psalm 2
The Lord says to my Lord: “Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.” The Lord will stretch out Your strong scepter from Zion, saying, “Rule in the midst of Your enemies.”
Your people will volunteer freely on the day of Your power; in holy splendor, from the womb of the dawn, Your youth are to You as the dew. The
Lord has sworn and will not change His mind,
“You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”
The Lord is at Your right hand; He will shatter kings in the day of His wrath. He will judge among the nations, He will fill them with corpses, He will shatter the chief men over a broad country. He will drink from the brook by the wayside;
therefore He will lift up His head.”
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. 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 too 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 back-pedal, 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.”
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 at staggered intervals, they will begin to hear the ‘Gideon Call.’ Suddenly they’ll feel like misfits within their current 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 before, will suddenly begin to feel strange, alien and unappealing.
The Holy Spirit will cause so much discomfort that they’ll finally be ready to move out and relocate to wherever their training is to take place. This boot camp 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, their delusion of being ‘exempt civilians’ will have disappeared completely. The individualistic streaks among them will be gone, and in place of that there will emerge ‘One New Man’… a thoroughly prepared God-empowered Warrior… because the Holy Spirit will be moving and directing them to live and act as one!
Of course the majority of God’s people do not currently have any interest or stomach for this. 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 radical change. Most will not know what to expect or be able to understand what has begun to happen within them. 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 had before they began to sense and feel ‘the Call of the Wild’.
But those who stay and persevere will eventually take to the changes, like ducks to water. They will go all the way through, wholeheartedly. Just like salmon returning 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! Inexplicably they will rejoice and press all the more into their indwelling, risen Master! They will absorb His supernatural 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.
The Holy Spirit will 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 surrounds the Perfect Presence of the indwelling Life of their Master… His Joy and Eternal Sabbath Rest will continually throb within them and work unceasingly and relentlessly, within each one and in the midst of 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 happening from within them and all around them. They will know for sure that Everything that will be happening from now on will be all about 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 that is 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 in the full noonday level of awareness and understanding of the 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 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, broken and—yes—completely crucified!
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! They will really die! They will completely ‘lose it.’ Their self-adoring radical independence will begin to rot and come apart. It will fail and it will look terrible and smell even worse! People will turn away from it in horror and disgust (Cf. Isaiah 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—100% 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.
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 they will not be losing! The old paradigms that they formerly followed will still be in place… ‘hard-wired’ into their brains… and they will naturally continue to mislead and misdirect and continue to make them assume 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! 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 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 His all-sufficient breasts, like totally trusting, secure babes.
A Tidal Wave of Change
We’ll probably have to explore spiritual vistas that prior generations never imagined possible and undergo heart-rending separations as the tidal wave of change sweeps away loved ones that insist 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 the 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 the Holy Spirit that they are effectively reduced to toddler-level dependency 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, self-actualizing 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 is still in the future and is still 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, 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 also 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.
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 transform into our Messiah’s one Body, under His total 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 He will be clearly seen and experienced by the world as He operates in our midst… AS HE REALLY IS!
An End Times Body
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.
Then they too will become fruit-bearing instructors, teaching and training others in how to interact with and draw exclusively from the risen Lord who lives within and among us 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.
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 faithful hearts that they will overcome things in their hearts even before they happen 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 lead the way for all the others.
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, 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. 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 — 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 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 ease and comfort! 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, 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 we will be trying to do what the Lord said He wanted us to do, which is to – ‘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 turns out to be correct, then — our only safety will lie in being spiritually, mentally and emotionally prepared for what is coming!