In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, I began the Christ-Life Ministry. The Lord had put me in a unique position, as a Teen Challenge staff member. I was given a job to do that had never been tried before. Instead of being assigned to work for and with the live-in students that came to the Teen Challenge program, I was entrusted with the task of creating an outreach ministry to the general public. It was my job to try to help people of all backgrounds deal with very difficult, agonizing personal and family problems. Thus I began to see a mountain of needs among people that believed in Jesus Christ, but yet remained maddeningly ‘stuck’ in old patterns from the past, unhealed wounds and life-controlling addictions. So I did my best to address those pressing needs, that sadly, were so common among believers. And thanks to the Lord’s grace and mercy, the result of that turned out to be – ‘The Christ-Life Solution’ which later, was renamed: ‘The Ultimate Journey’.
But as early as 2003, my focus began to shift to the near future and the Last Days Era Scripture has prophesied. Then, in the months leading up to the year 2011, the Lord began to make me aware that something was radically changing within me. As I look back on it, I can see that the Lord was nudging and letting me know that He wanted to take me aside and begin to show me what He wanted to do next. And since He planned to include me in it, He firmly and persistently let me know that I was to resign from my position with the Christ-Life and Ultimate Journey Ministry, so that I could concentrate on following the Lord into the creation of what has now become, the ‘Follow Me Ministry’ .
I believe He did this because we are now living in times that are vastly different from the way it was in the 1980’s and 1990’s era when Christ-Life began. Because of the enormous changes that have taken place in recent years, the conditions and dangers and pressing needs of the Church are vastly different than they were twenty years ago. Now we have new generations that were born into vastly different times. And, because of them, our time-honored cultures and societies and institutions are changing drastically.
Now, we believers face a world that is increasingly antagonistic to our God and His Word and His ways. We see a great increase in religious persecution, and ever-mounting economic troubles and a spike in the maddening confusion and instability levels that always follow massive economic, political and religious change and turmoil. Now, like it or not, we are all being forced to face and prepare to deal with… the coming era of tribulation…and the coming Judgment that the prophets and New Covenant apostles of Israel foretold.
So, throughout 2010 and the first part of 2011, I sensed that the Lord wanted to get His people ready for the awesome turbulence and uncertainty and dangers that suddenly began to appear on our horizons. Now He wants us to become aware of this all-important fact: the world, as we know it today, and our individual cultures, traditions, national economies and comfort zones that so many have worked so hard to establish, protect and maintain, will soon begin to undergo a process of complete disintegration and total replacement. The Last Days handwriting is most definitely on the wall! It is as if the world as we know it…including ‘The American Dream’, is in the path of the most gigantic, enormous, Heavenly ‘glacier of change’ imaginable. And any opposing elements that may lie in its path, are inevitably going to be crushed, ground to powder, and replaced…by something brand new and eternal.
“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.)
I believe our Heavenly Father has reached a point in His Plan in which it is time for Him to prepare His people to follow His Son, the living Word, at much deeper, more serious and authentic discipleship levels. Therefore, it’s time for the Holy Spirit to equip His own for massive, radical changes and upheavals, and prepare our souls to say ‘Good bye’ to our cherished comfort zones and personal empires. Just prior to 70 C.E., when Israel underwent the utter agony of seeing her temple destroyed again, and so many of her people were slaughtered and the rest scattered all across the globe, God inspired the author of the Letter to the Hebrews to warn them and help prepare them for what was about to happen. And I sense that something like that is about to happen again. Only this time, it will not be only the Jewish people that will be affected… the entire world is going to have the rug pulled out from under its feet! So, if this is true, we must give our faithful Father the freedom He will need to prepare us to deal with unprecedented changes and trials…things we’ve never experienced or even had to think about before.
So part of that preparation will depend on our willingness to undergo and complete ‘the Exodus Journey that God has set before us. In that sense, He needs something from us…agreement, submission and practical, real life obedience. We must truly allow God to do whatever He knows He has to do TO us and IN us…to prepare us to be fitting vessels for what He wants to do for the world…THROUGH us! But…are we willing to offer ourselves to Him without holding anything back…so that He can do whatever He must with our current mental, emotional, theological and lifestyle comfort zones? Will we keep saying ‘Yes’ to Him, regardless of any inconvenience, cost and sacrifice that may require? I hope we’re ready to do that because…that’s what it’s going to take in order to follow our Master into what is coming.
Yes, I know that by His Perfect Nature God is transcendent and perfect in Himself and needs nothing from us in order to be complete. But He does reveal in Scripture that He will not force us to love and serve Him. In His Kingdom He does everything out of His self-less Love. And we are to be His image and likeness. So the selfless love He will give us to work from is something we must freely give back to Him by our own heartfelt choices. His Plan will be completed and fulfilled to Perfection, with us or without us. But if we choose to allow Him to include us, we’ll have to keep saying ‘Yes!’ to His initiatives on our behalf. If we say ‘No’, He will simply go around us and continue to move to the ultimate fulfillment of His predetermined course. So He does not need our obedient, wholehearted willingness and trust in order for His Plan for Creation to succeed But He does need our cooperation in order for us to remain in position to receive what He intends to impart to us, so that we may be included in what He is about to do at this critical climactic time.
We know from His Self-revelation that our Heavenly Father feels things that take place between Him and His chosen ones, deeply and passionately. For example, read what He reveals is in His heart for Israel, His Betrothed future Bride. Read ‘between the lines’ of Ezekiel 16. If you do, you’ll get a sense of the depths of grief He must feel over the pall of sinfulness and the selfishness, poverty, wickedness, desperation, agony and the on the brink of collapse conditions that so many of His beloved humans have to endure all across the world. And you will sense His great frustration over the enormous distance that still remains between His beloved living Word (His Son) and those of us to whom He sent Him and with whom we are supposed to be ‘as one’.
If the Last Days era is truly upon our generation, then there is an enormous need for trained disciples that can serve as points of entry for the Life, Love and world-changing Presence of Father’s Life-giving Word. If the world ever needed disciples that are worthy of that name…it is now…now that the climax of human history approaches! Now we will need disciples that will be adequately prepared to actually embody the risen Lord, because nothing short of His actual Presence in our midst will see us through what is approaching the human race!
Unbelieving people are distancing themselves from God and His Word more and more. That’s why we need disciples that are trained to do exactly the opposite. We need disciples that will actually serve as His Royal Priesthood…and move exactly counter to the world’s rebellion. They must obey God’s living Word and proclaim Him and focus attention on Him more and more! And the levels at which they get to know and interact with Him will be deeper and more intense than any previous generation has ever known or experienced before!
And there’s another need…
The Need for Increased Accuracy and Faithfulness in our response to God’s written Word.
The written Word reveals and unpacks the significance and purpose behind why Father sent His Living Word to become one of us and live and operate in our midst. (See John 15.) But the truth is that most people in the world (and even entire denominations of believers, who, under the leadership of their church leaders and teachers) continue to distance themselves from major portions of Scripture and from the Bible’s original Hebrew/Israelite matrix.
But modern day disciples must learn to move in the opposite direction – into deeper intimacy with the Word of God and much greater precision, authenticity and accuracy in understanding and interpreting the original Hebrew Root Matrix out from which Israel’s Messiah emerged. To know Him as He truly is, we must truly become familiar with the context and original content of the written Word of God that He has entrusted to our care and which He commanded us to promulgate and share with the entire world. That holds true not just for the parts and portions of it we personally prefer, it holds true for ALL OF IT, from Genesis 1:1… to Revelation 22:21!
I believe that is why, in the very beginning, the Lord instructed me to use the Exodus in the Bible as the pattern or template by which to model the original Christ-Life material and training structure. It is my firm belief and conviction that the things the last generation of disciples will be seeing and experiencing at the end, will be the total Fulfillment of the seeds that God sowed into the Genesis and Exodus portions of His written Word! And so, to know what His Living Word made flesh is all about, and what He is living within and among us to do and fulfill, requires that we have a thorough and intimate knowledge of God’s entire canon of Scripture. But many still focus only on the Hebrew or Israel Part, and many, many others only focus on the New Testament part, as if Israel had been left behind and forgotten by God! But doing that actually grossly mars and disfigures and obliterates our ability to know our risen Lord as He really and truly is! He will never betray or violate His Blood Covenant bond with Israel, nor will He ever fail to fulfill every promise He made to her. And so that’s why I believe the Lord told me to focus my Christ-Life material on the Exodus Pattern God required Israel to demonstrate for and share with, the rest of the world. I did that as well as I could with what little I knew, at that time.
But in recent years, the Lord has begun to show me more of the depths of revelation that is contained within His Exodus pattern and the other books in which it is unpacked and further developed. There’s so much packed into that pattern that we can’t see when we’re just beginning to follow God out of Egypt. And there’s more to learn once we finally break free of Egypt and make it deep into the wilderness. And there’s more than we can see once we finally reach the edge of the wilderness and are preparing to cross the Jordan and venture into the Land itself. And…yes, brace yourselves: there’s even much more to unpack after we’ve set foot in the Land! The Truth is that we’ll never come to the end of getting to know our Awesome God and His inscrutable ways and the depths of Glory into which He is relentlessly leading us!
So it will be the duty of those called to be His disciples for this era to discover and benefit from and demonstrate the richness of the New Covenant treasures that God has made available and continues to offer to this broken, empty, dying world! Disciples of the Last Days will have to be ready to embody the Fulfillment of all that is contained in the Bible! But how can we do that, if we remain Biblically illiterate and distant from the cultural matrix out of which it emerges? In that case, will we not continue to misunderstand and misinterpret it as has been done for so many generations before us?
Thanks to what we learned from our experience in Christ-Life, or, The Ultimate Journey, we all know how we used to see, think and do things when we were still in ‘Egypt’. But now we must specialize in exploring and getting to know the new Reality into which we’re about to venture. So we’ll have to ‘learn the ropes’, concerning the new lifestyle we’ll be expected to learn and adopt once we begin to live in God’s own Household. The way it will be in God’s New Covenant Israel will be light years beyond anything we’ve ever experienced in this fallen broken world! Yes, The difference between point A and Point B of our Exodus Journey is enormous! And since our Christ-Life Family has come such a long way and knows much more than it did when we first began, it’s time to consider what still lies beyond us. Our training must now prepare us for all the new matters and brand new experiences we’ll encounter once we’ve actually entered the confines of our destination…The Land of Promise…New Covenant Israel…and will be forced to face, and deal with all of the entrenched demonized, gigantic forces that are preparing to attack us and halt our Invasion of the territories they are not about to willingly give up, simply because our Commander told us to follow Him into the Land. And then it will be utterly necessary for us to have true, actual, continually interactive knowledge of, and oneness with, our risen Messiah…exactly as He has revealed Himself to us!
Our Generation Has a Unique Opportunity and Responsibility
We’ve experienced and understood many wonderful things throughout the course of our Christ-Life journey. But many of God’s New Covenant promises are yet to be fulfilled. We’ll partake of them in God’s good time, in the future. But at present, God is giving us time to learn about them and to make sure we’re properly aligned, on course, and in proper position to ‘dock’, accurately and precisely…with the awesome era of the Ultimate Fulfillment of His promises that we are now approaching and entering.
These turbulent times require us to live the disciple lifestyle much more authentically than the generations before us have. If the Last Days are as imminent as many prophetic people say, we must allow Holy Spirit to align us with what God is here to do …with the perfection only He can manifest and share. And that brings me to something that I find fascinating: Because many of you have been faithful and diligent in using what was provided for you to work with since the 1990’s, I see an unexpected phenomenon emerging that I could not have imagined in the beginning. It seems as if the Lord has been assembling and training an ‘army’ all this time…and preparing it for some very important, strategic service in the future! We were not aware it was happening…but it was…and the formation and development of this army is underway to this day! It is now becoming a multicultural, international army!
Since I only began to see this recently, I feel a ‘DUH!’ kind of amazement. Why didn’t I see this before? This ‘army aspect’ has always been a major part of the Exodus pattern. The whole thing is about – warfare and God transforming former slaves into an invincible military force to prepare them for the future invasion of the Land of Promise. It was always there…but I didn’t realize how serious the Lord was about making sure that every generation of believers would be sure to follow the Exodus pattern of transitioning from the identity of whipped slaves, over to the identity of invincible warriors that He took such great pains to provide for us. I used to assume that the Exodus was just a historical pattern that was given to a past generation that I could follow, as I was planning the layout of our Christ-Life/Ultimate Journey material; but I was wrong. The Exodus is the pattern He intends for disciples of this era to live out, personally… and embody… and FULFILL! What God laid out in Exodus, He is going to fulfill and bring into Reality… to the last detail…when the Last Days events that are foretold in the Book of Revelation will have run their course.
And if we truly are among the generations that will finish the course and cross the Finish line at the Climax of the Last Day, we must become very aware of and prepared for what that awesome Destiny that is ours, is actually going to mean as it becomes our personal experience and destiny! In 1991, when I conducted our very first official Christ-Life group cycle, I wasn’t too serious about applying the ‘military invasion force’ or ‘fighting to take the Land’ aspects to what we were beginning to do. That’s because I was unfamiliar with the ‘being grafted into the Root of Israel’ portion of the journey. We were just getting started, so I focused on Point A, the leaving Egypt part of the trip. We were all wounded, stuck people, very similar in condition to that company of whipped, beaten, disenfranchised group of newly-freed slaves! So I began to address the hurting, still-wounded, ex-slave condition that had been programmed into us… so we could gradually strip all of that off and leave it behind. I knew that until we actually ‘strip off the old man’, we wouldn’t be free to begin to learn put on the new Man and absorb His ways and install His mindset, perspectives, identity and thought, action, reaction and interaction patterns into ourselves. Only when we became truly free from our past bondage would we be equipped to leave our original ‘Egypt’ origins far behind is in the distant past.
Yes, of course God cared about how wounded, hurting and stuck we were. He’ll always care about our wounds and old patterns and the emotional needs that must first be addressed, so we can finally be free to move beyond them. But even from the very beginning, the Lord had more than the current needs that pertained to our starting point in mind. He also had our destination in mind and what we would eventually be required to grow up to become. He had to, eventually, begin to prepare us to enter, take over, and occupy Point B…the ultimate, eternal destination of our earthly Journey. The Egypt in us had to actually die, before we’d be free to realistically transform into citizens of God’s Land of Promise!
So in the beginning, as He draws wounded people to Himself…He tends to their wounds and immediate needs…but at the same time, He patiently and strategically begins to lead us all into His specialized New Covenant Last Days Boot Camp’! There were many clues to what we could expect that were embedded in the Exodus story. But I didn’t zero in on them at the time. Here’s one example of a clue I overlooked:
“Now when Pharaoh had let the people go, God did not lead them by the way of the land of the Philistines, even though it was near; for God said, ‘The people might change their minds when they see war, and return to Egypt.’
“Hence God led the people around by the way of the wilderness to the Red Sea; and the sons of Israel WENT UP IN MARTIAL ARRAY from the land of Egypt.” (Ex. 13:17-18 Emphasis added.)
See what I mean about ‘unpacking’ more of what is revealed in the Exodus pattern? There’s much more to it than we realized in the beginning. God took His time before exposing His newly liberated chosen people to the terrible enmity, opposition and conflict that would always be their lot in this fallen world. But in the beginning, He separated and gave them time to rest and recover from the rigors to which their former oppressive, abusive taskmasters had subjected them. At that time, they were totally unprepared to stand up to any formidable opposition or deal with trained, well-equipped military opposition. So He isolated them, and revealed more and more of Himself to them, but even so… He began to gently, gradually expose them to the beginnings of their ‘Boot Camp’ training out there in the Sinai wilderness. He was getting them used to moving in martial array, to ready them for the new realities that awaited them in the future.
And I believe He intends to do something very similar with our Last Days generations. We too are unprepared for deadly combat with the powers of Darkness and the human forces they dominate and deceive and manipulate into serving their anti-God purposes. We’re soft, self-absorbed, individualistic and divided from one another on many levels. We resemble a disorganized mob of exempt ‘every man for himself’ civilians. So, sooner or later, He will have to transform us into one, thoroughly trained, highly-disciplined, combat-ready New Covenant Fighting Unit that knows how to think, act and react as One New Man, under the sole Headship of our risen Messiah and by the Power of the Holy Spirit! In other words, we are in desperate need of Last Days boot camp training!
This is becoming very obvious to me because we can all see that the Lord is shaking things up throughout this entire world! And I believe He’s bringing our Destination into much clearer focus – more than ever before. And so for those of us that are learning the ins and outs of our Exodus Trek, and since we’re being trained together, with the same experiences and training tools, and since we’ve already progressed far beyond our original starting point, it’s time for the Lord to begin to teach and train us to get ready to enter and possess the Destination to which He has always intended to take us, which is… New Covenant Israel!
We have many Phase 3 veterans now. And it’s time for them to be trained to take hold of our destination. It’s time for us to be equipped and prepared for spiritual combat…to be trained to withstand and overcome the powers of Darkness and become God’s true, New Covenant Israel! Our enemies will do everything possible to make sure we never finish our Journey! That’s why we must zero in on our destination with laser beam intensity!
I don’t mention your growth and development to puff up egos. And I don’t bring up the idea of ‘boot camp’ and spiritual combat to scare you. I’m stating clearly revealed Biblical truths and linking them to some wonderful observable facts about how far our Family has come since we began. And because I was given a unique position in the Christ-Life Family, I feel a need to act. My role is to cooperate with the Lord to do my best to supply some written material. That is a daunting and very humbling task because I’ll be writing about something I’ve never seen or been taught or experienced myself! Nevertheless, we need God-given wisdom and guidance level material that will deepen our understanding of God’s ultimate purpose for leading us out of Egypt. He didn’t do it just to free us and send us on our merry way! He did it to include us in His world-redeeming purpose…as part of His Fulfilled New Covenant Israel! And here is another clue for us to ponder:
“Now it came about when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a Man was standing opposite him with His sword drawn in His hand, and Joshua went to Him and said to Him, ‘Are You for us or for our adversaries?’
“He said, ‘No; rather I indeed come now as Captain of the Host of the LORD!’
“And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and bowed down, and said to Him, ‘What has my Lord to say to His servant?’
“The Captain of the LORD’S host said to Joshua, ‘Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.’ And Joshua did so.” (Josh. 5:13-15 Emphasis added.)
The Captain of the Lord’s Host is the same Living Word of God that had appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and to Moses in the burning bush! God’s Word appeared in the midst of His chosen people to teach, train, guide, discipline and lead them into the skilled mature ways of God they would need in order to persevere and overcome at last. And that same Living Word of God that Moses and Joshua encountered, later became flesh and appeared on the Earth as the Messiah-King of Israel and the resurrected Supreme Lord of the world and of all Creation! And He is the one that has sought each one of us out and has called us to be His personal disciples! And that means that He’s calling us to live and interact with Him as His close personal family members, day and night! He expects us to get to know Him, and His Warrior ways and ethos so intimately, accurately, and precisely, that we’ll actually transform into His image and likeness!
And He is the same Word of God that appeared to His apostle John in Revelation 1 and what John saw was enough to kill him, had the Lord not sustained and strengthened him. So the future holds much more unpacking of what God began to reveal in Genesis and Exodus. And as God’s Word revealed Himself to Joshua, on the wilderness side of the Jordan River, notice what our Master was holding…a drawn sword. What does that tell you? Isn’t that another clue that pertains directly to the boot camp combat training God intends to provide for us, as we prepare to follow Him across the Finish Line of the Exodus and enter into the Eternal New Covenant Israel part of it? Do you remember what our Master said?
“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, BUT A SWORD!” (Mt. 10:34 Emphasis added.)
Can you see a connection between the one that appeared to Joshua in order to lead him and the Israelites into the Land, and the risen Lord that says, ‘Follow Me’ to prospective New Covenant disciples? The one that led Joshua and the second generation Exodus Israelites into the Land and the One that will lead us into the climax of the End Times is the very same Living Word of God! I believe that the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and the teachings of the prophets and New Covenant apostles will be fulfilled in the Era described in the book of Revelation. All of the books of Scripture are essentially connected to each other. Genesis and Exodus laid the groundwork and explained the issue…and the rest of Scripture unpacks it more and more. And the book of Revelation completes and fulfills every bit of it. So our boot camp training will be concerned with equipping and preparing us to usher in the Lord of Glory as He returns once more to Earth… and His Ultimate Fulfillment of all Creation… the Fulfillment of every jot and tittle of what God has revealed and commanded and promised to the human race through His Living and written Word!
So the Last Days disciples will be taken into the full revelation and Fulfillment of all the issues concerning our Fall into Sin and Death, and the Exodus issues of being set free from Sin and all its consequences, always in mind, and the Total Eternal Resolution and Fulfillment of all that has came before and was leading up to the End. For this reason, the Follow Me Ministry will also maintain a laser-like focus on the preparation of God’s chosen disciples to persevere and overcome gloriously anything the powers of Darkness may try to throw against them. So these will be our Last Days objectives:
1) To bring us into an intimate knowledge of and relationship with Christ – God’s Living Word and Captain of His Host,
2) To train, prepare, equip and transform us until we’re primed and ready to interact with Him and follow Him into the inevitable Last Days combat.
3) To develop the discipline, strength, authority and skills needed to draw continually from Him and His Infinite Treasury of Grace that flows out of His Perfect Finished works of Creation and Redemption.
4) And finally, to be equipped, by the way we have come to know our Awesome, Infinitely Perfect God, that we’ll be able to stare down the powers of Darkness and even the Serpent himself… resisting and overcoming every one of their last ditch efforts to deceive us, and stop our advance, and chase us all the way back to Egypt.
It’s time for our disciple training to develop further. It’s time for the necessary ‘identity-switch’ to take place. No longer can we afford to think of ourselves as we did in the beginning. We are not merely retreaded ‘former slaves’. God has made us into brand new creations in Christ! We are New Covenant Israelites, equipped by the Holy Spirit to embody our risen Lord Himself! We are His New Covenant Royal Priesthood, a company that has been set-apart for His service. We are a holy nation made up of regenerated sons of God who are destined for the personal service of our Heavenly Father and His Living Word who is our Supreme Lord and Commander! Now it’s time to own and embody the fullness of what God has made us to be. We’ve got to catch up to, and put on, the full appropriation of what it actually means to be the ‘sons of the Living, All-Triumphant God’!
The closer we get to ‘The Land’, the greater the desperation of the prince of Darkness will become. He knows his time is almost up! He will fire everything he has at us. So the Lord must train us (and, through us, also our children) to face, withstand and overcome whatever may happen. We must become skilled in overcoming satanic evil with the infinite GOOD our indwelling Lord is here to be for us and through us! His Presence in us is the most awesome Good News imaginable, but tragically, many in Christendom are still not aware of it and do not believe it. Many among us are still focusing on ensuring their ongoing comfort, ease and safety in this fallen, crumbling world and maintaining totally selfish interests. They refuse to gear themselves for war, and get ready to stand and fight for issues that are much greater, deeper and important than their tiny personal interests. So they’re not yet equipped with the overwhelming love and devotion that flows out of being united to be and to act as one with our indwelling Lord. Only that real union can equip and empower us to interact at all times with the Captain of the Lord’s Host, in Spirit and in Truth. And until we are equipped to that extent… we won’t be able to draw what we need from Him when the awesome Last Days changes finally overtake us.
The Lord Has Been Leading Up to Something Big!
Many of you are Phase Three veterans, and many others are right behind you. You’ve all been taught by the same material and experienced the same training. You speak the same lingo and when you gather with other Christ-Life people from other areas, you immediately fit and mesh as if you’ve been family members all your lives! You’re like universal interchangeable parts! Doesn’t that seem as if the Lord is executing a strategic, big picture, military-level, master plan? Doesn’t it look like an army under construction…in preparation for future deployment? Notice the array of changes that have taken place in this ‘disciple army’ that the Lord has quietly been creating ‘under the radar’, for over twenty years:
- Many of your soul wounds have been healed. You’re fit and ready to roll.
- More lives and families than we can count have transformed beautifully. Your children are reflecting the many wonderful changes that have taken place in you since you first began.
- You’ve grown, matured and developed in God’s grace and well being.
- You faithfully paid your disciple-training dues by fighting for and winning your freedom from the past and sharing the fruits of that freedom with your family, friends, colleagues and co-workers.
- You’ve won spiritual, physical and emotional victories right and left. Little by little, the Lord has gotten you used to overcoming and enjoying the taste of habitual victorious living.
- You’ve gained wisdom, maturity, courage and strength by enduring your ongoing training trials’. You’re much more combat-ready now than you ever were before! But there’s still more to learn and more skills to develop.
- You experience God’s grace, lovingkindness and tender mercy at deeper levels and you’re hungry for more.
- The depth at which you know the Lord now, enables you to withstand tougher times and more pressure. You know more about persevering and remaining faithful. You exercise compassion and mercy on behalf of those that now are where you used to be.
- Many of you have grown to be vessels of God’s ministry. The desert begins to turn green as you pass through it! Desert-dwelling unbelievers need more people like that in their lives, don’t they?
- Because the Lord is free to work in you, and give you what you need, He’s free to work through you…for the benefit of those around you. You’re becoming God’s Good News in the flesh…to and for others!
So Where Do We Go From Here?
Beloved, is that not an army of disciples in the making? And when many of you completed Phase 3 (in many cases, several times), did you not ask: “Where do we go from here?” and, “What’s next?”
I heard some of you ask those questions; and they’ve weighed heavily on my mind because I wrote the material that the rest of you…thousands of you…have diligently, faithfully pored over for twenty years! You have no idea what being able to see God work in you means to me, or how grateful and crushingly unworthy I feel at being included when I don’t in any way deserve it. Nevertheless…I heard your questions, and I ‘passed the buck’ to our Master: “Lord, what about it; what are YOU going to do with us now?”… And mercifully, I believe He is answering…loud and clear. That’s why I started this second ministry. It’s as if He said: “Christ-Life is not broken, so don’t try to fix it. Leave the chemistry and structure as they are. They’re working beautifully. Instead, come away with Me to a quiet place. Learn to abide with Me…and as you do that, I will show you what is yet to come.”
I deserve the title of ‘Most Reluctant Ministry Founder of All Time’. But I also know that God in His mercy, has most definitely included me in His beautiful ministry. And along with my unique position comes a unique responsibility. The Lord and I did start this; and we do need to finish it. So…God have mercy…I’m back at square one…waiting on Him to supply us with more material…so He can guide us through the most dangerously violent and uncertain era of human history…the Last Days!
I’d like to tell you about some of the current needs I see. I’ll elaborate on them in other places in this website. But for now, I’ll try to list them briefly:
- The days we live in are extraordinarily dangerous. Time seems to be running out and the eternal salvation of billions is at stake. Most of Christendom seems to be unprepared. That’s why we need disciples that are equipped and ready to: 1) face and overcome the increasing dangers with overwhelming supernatural ‘Fire Power’. 2) Thrive spiritually, mentally and emotionally, with great God-given Wisdom, in the face of increasing opposition and persecution. 3) Fulfill their God-given commissions even in impossible situations. Their training must equal and surpass anything the enemy will fire at them. But at present, I don’t see such training readily available. That’s a big need!
- The Lord must teach and train us to operate with Him …in The Arena of Testimony. We’ll have to prove to the rest of the world…especially the younger generations…under combat conditions…that what we believe is true and that we are for real. That requires more than mere church membership and an accumulation of head knowledge’. It requires hands-on training, leading to massive life-changes…orchestrated and created by the Lord Himself, as He begins to live and lead us from within. We must now back up our talk with supernatural results! So it’s time for us to wait on Him…to show us what He wants us to learn. If we don’t learn and live it, we won’t be able to share it with integrity and authenticity. Our Family needs what is utterly and truly from God. It must be tested and proven to be authentic and substantial, before the Lord leads us into the Arena of Testimony. We’ll all have to be trained, tested, corrected and trained some more to work as one with Him and FROM Him! He must be the one that is acting and speaking and reaching out through our yielded, crucified flesh! This is not something any of us would ordinarily choose for ourselves; but what choice do we have? We’re in uniform…under orders…and in the midst of a deadly war!
- There’s more to our Exodus Template that I can now share. It’s important that your understanding of it be enriched and deepened as much as possible. The more we understand the Exodus pattern, the more accurate, powerful and effective will our future battle performance be. God has sworn to fulfill every jot and tittle of what’s in that Template…in the Last Days! Jesus, the Word of God, is here to fulfill all of it…through His New Covenant disciples. And that would be…people like us!
- We must learn to interact with our Lord’s Resurrection Presence in a living, world-changing way. The original Exodus people could not have survived without Moses. But through Moses’ life, the Exodus pattern is revealing the life of our Messiah and the utter need Last Days believers will have for Him! Nothing short of the Lord will save us! And that’s why He said, point blank, that Moses, who gave us the Exodus Pattern, was writing about Him! (Jn. 5:39-47) To know Christ as He really is, we must become much more familiar with what Moses wrote! At present, most of Christendom doesn’t realize this. Ignorance and lack of training and substitute man-made religious traditions prevent them from finding the Messiah-revealing treasures embedded in the five books of the Bible that Moses wrote.
- Ignorance also prevents many of us from having a living faith in the Lord’s Resurrection Presence! The first time our Lord came to Earth, He came in the humblest of circumstances. He came as ‘Messiah Son of Joseph’. He came as the rejected, suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. But now, we must become prepared to usher in ‘The Lion of Judah’, the Glorious Risen Son of David, the One in whom our Eternal Father is well pleased! He is the one who is about to make His Psalm 2 fulfilling return to Earth! And because this time, He will come as the risen Lord of Glory… the King of kings, Lord of lords, and Master of all Creation, there is still a tremendous amount of His Reality that we have yet to probe, explore, experience and absorb into our heart of hearts!
- And the tragedy that exists in so many people of today is that even many so-called ‘believers’ do not realize that they still do not really believe in His Resurrection Presence! Oh, they may give it lip service and include it in their doctrinal statements, but they do not really interact with the risen Lord in the living way described in our Follow Me Ministry ‘Marching Orders’. They put faith and expectation in created things…instead of in Him! But if we can’t believe and interact with the risen Lord, according to our ‘Marching Orders’, we’ll have no real Master to ‘follow’, will we?
- The ‘Marching Orders’ are an excellent ‘job description’ of authentic Spirit-led, New Covenant disciples. But if we don’t really believe in the reality of His Presence, how can we carry out those ‘Orders’? (The Marching Orders are listed in other parts of this website.)
- To be truly combat-ready, we must become the image and likeness of our Master. That requires us to behold, know and interact with Him Person-to-person, through Spirit-empowered New Covenant, Biblically-based Faith. We must know the Scriptures in order to embody the One they reveal. The Christ we proclaim and embody must be the very one Father actually revealed in Scripture; otherwise we can’t interact with God on His terms! But if we obey and interact with God’s written and Living Word, in Spirit and in Truth, He will guide us safely through the demonic ‘mine fields’ of confusion, temptation and division that afflict and neutralize the Christian World. Observe the confusion generated by the jumble of 38,000-plus divided denominations, groups, cults, sects and conflicting theologies that make up ‘Christendom’. Can you see the enormous need? Which version of ‘Jesus’ is the real one? How can we recognize Him amid that morass of competing man-made ‘Jesus as you like Him’ versions? The Spirit of AntiChrist is furiously working to turn the world into a chaotic bedlam filled with confusion, error, division, and deceptive false versions of our Messiah! So we must be trained to recognize and cling to the real Lord, the risen Messiah of Israel, exactly as Father chose to reveal Him. We must not merely serve Him out of religious emotionalism and man-made traditional habits and good intentions; we must serve Him in Spirit and in Truth! (Cf. Christ’s warning in Mt. 7:13-29).
- To know our Master as Father revealed Him, and serve Him on God’s terms, we must know the ‘Exodus Template’. All of Scripture and the Messiah and His New Covenant disciples must, and will, be working together to fulfill what Moses wrote! So it’s no wonder the Lord wanted us to follow His Exodus pattern in the writing of our material. Until recently, I had no idea how important and strategic His original instructions that He gave me in the 1980’s would prove to be now. Nor did I have any suspicion of how magnificently they would begin to serve us now and in the foreseeable future! The truth is: the Exodus pattern puts us in perfect position to fulfill our God-given tasks from this point forward, as they appear in the book of Revelation!
- In the gospels, the disciples couldn’t afford to settle for what ‘the religious multitudes’ settled for. In that day, the Jewish multitudes came occasionally to connect with Jesus. But most of them did not follow Him. They settled instead for the ‘go to synagogue’ pattern. Relatively few embraced and followed their Messiah as His personal, ‘Follow Me’ New Covenant disciples. Today, we have the gift of the Holy Spirit. That enables all believers to abide with Him in awesome ‘Follow Me’ intimacy. But unfortunately relatively few know how to do that. Yes, it’s vitally important that we gather together for corporate public worship. But God also requires us to embrace and learn the ‘Follow Me’ pattern which is much more intimate and personally invasive than most people realize! Christ’s disciples must abide with Him and do everything He says! They can’t settle for visiting man-made temples; they must actually BECOME His Spirit-formed and empowered mobile living New Covenant Temple and serve as God’s royal priesthood! That’s why we must recover and embrace the original pattern our Master gave us. There can be no substitute for what He has already revealed and continues to require. If we go all the way in receiving the required Last Days combat preparation training, we will not end up to be lost within the long list of ‘casualties’. We will persevere, and make it all the way across the Finish Line… and will receive the honors and commendations and citations and decorations that our Commander has waiting to bestow upon us!
- Even if the whole world ignores His ‘Follow Me’ pattern, His personal disciples must embody it. It’s the only pattern that will equip them to go all the way…even if that requires their martyrdom! If each individual disciple truly follows Him…THEN when two or three or more of them gather to worship God and encourage each other as God’s corporate Family, the Presence of the Lord and His Heavenly Hosts will be gloriously obvious and active in their midst. Such Spirit-empowered congregations will be on fire with the Love of God, and they will joyfully be impelled to set the whole world on fire with the revelation of their Messiah! Through them, the Lord will be able to transform entire regions!
- Our risen Lord is here to live and work in and through us. So we need a very clear understanding of what His ‘job description’ is. If we’re not clear on that, we’ll ignorantly and unwittingly operate at cross-purposes to what He’s actually here to do! We must be properly aligned with His purposes and embody whatever Father sent Him to do with precision, accuracy and authenticity. His Life must be our life and His agenda must become our agenda (Cf. Isa. 55:8-11; Mt. 12:46-50; Jn. 5:19, 30).
- Many believers still do not realize that we’re caught up in a terrible spiritual war between God’s Living Word and the spirit of AntiChrist. But disciples must not be caught napping. Our Master was and is ‘dead serious’ when He orders us to come out of the idolatrous, self-adoring world system. So we must forsake and die to, and completely outgrow, all former self-serving perspectives, habits, relationships, entanglements, and agendas that oppose, resist or distort what He is here to be in and through us! Selfishness and individualism are self-life traits. They have no place within our ranks! No, our indwelling Lord contains the Eternal Life of God within Him! And that is what He is here to impart to us and to reveal and display through us! So He, and He alone, is our LIFE! Sin-corrupted and Death-ridden flesh and its Self-life are the characteristics of unsaved people! But we must learn to see, think and act as…one New Man in our Messiah. That’s why any racial, sectarian, cultural and sexist walls that prevail in our minds and hearts, thanks to contrary traditions of men we’ve inherited, must come down. We must learn God’s supernatural, totally Heavenly blood covenant corporate perceiving, thinking, acting, reacting, and living. That’s how our Master sees and thinks. And that’s what new arrivals in the New Covenant Land of Promise must be exposed to, learn, embrace, and absorb. They must learn this brand new way in which things are to be done in His Spiritual and totally supernatural Heavenly Kingdom so that we can be ready to live it out, when the time for His New Heaven and New Earth to descend from out of His Eternal Heaven, to finally descend upon this Earth. (Revelation 21).
- The disciple lifestyle makes us very, different and ‘peculiar’ in comparison to this world. The world thinks it is exempt from having to obey God’s orders. But we wear His uniform and are under His command…during wartime! That difference between the two groups is precisely what God uses to open blind eyes and penetrate and impregnate granite-hard hearts! What makes us so different is…Christ is actually present and manifest from within us! And He is the Light of the World! And as we lift Him up and allow Him to obey Father through our flesh…He shines forth and draws many others to Himself, through us. We’re not to be compatible and friendly with the world and its rebellious ways. We’re here to demonstrate the indwelling Presence and Authority of our Redeemer King. His absolute Dominion over us must be obvious to us first…and then when we’re convinced that He is here, His Presence can radiate from within us and spread out in all directions until it is established through our abiding faith… over all the rest of Creation!
- As the Last Days warfare intensifies, the dangers, pitfalls and casualties will increase. We are not casual, exempt, non-combatant civilians and mere observers or victims. In this war, no one is exempt. We’re all in it, one way or another – on one side or the other. And comatose, ‘business as usual’ attitudes will prevent us from assuming our responsibilities and being prepared. In combat, that will prove to be fatal. We’re not here to fall asleep… we’re here to persevere and overcome!
In light of all this, for the foreseeable future, I’ll be spending my time doing three things:
1. Communing with the Lord and waiting for His guidance. I will ‘take notes’, as He shows me what His new material is to be and how He wants it presented. I’ll wait on Him for the content, wording, sequence, format and strategy. Then I’ll write and present whatever I believe He is giving me to share, as faithfully as possible.
2. A large portion of time will be spent composing and preparing the material for future distribution. I’ll be presenting this relevant material on our website and wherever else the Lord makes it possible. And I will explore and discuss what the Lord give me with the trusted friends and fellow disciples that volunteer to serve as a ‘Scripture-Truth checkers’ that will make sure I am staying on track and remaining utterly faithful to our Heavenly Father in what I do and say and share. They will supply the feedback and input I will need during this creative process.
3. I’ll spend the other time I have available, caring for my family and and our home fellowship congregation and our personal friends.
By default, I am the chief ‘guinea pig’. I must learn and experience now, what the Follow Me army will receive later. This is an extremely sobering prospect. I can identify with the entombed, enshrouded Lazarus, as his remains waited in dark silence for something to happen. The remains could do nothing. They were helpless, bankrupt and utterly dependent on the one that stood outside the tomb. Like Lazarus, I too am helpless and waiting for God’s living Word to say, “Come forth!”… and…“Follow Me!” So hopefully, that is not the end of the story. In the case of Lazarus, after the Lord resuscitated him, this is what was added:
“Jesus, therefore, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. So they made Him a supper there, and Martha was serving; but Lazarus was one of those (disciples who were) reclining at the table with Him. (Jn. 12:1-2)
The urgency of our times and our need to interact with our Lord’s Resurrection Presence, compel me. If we ever needed the Lord to train us, it is now. In days to come, we will be required to actually prove, in the Arena of Testimony… with supernatural authority and power…that the Lord really is with us and in us. And we would do well to remember now what He said a long time ago: “Without Me…you can do NOTHING!” (John 15:5)
My family and I must now depend on the Lord to supply us as we move into the new Follow Me Ministry matrix. In one sense, this is a giant leap of faith. But it isn’t new. We’ve done this before, and in the process, we’ve learned that our Lord can be trusted with an airtight, outrageous level of faith and trust. I say this because He is Perfect in His Eternal Nature and He is Airtight in His Credibility and Covenant Faithfulness! And we know, from much past experience, that His Lovingkindness is infinite, everlasting, airtight, and more dependable than anyone could ever imagine! So when your Master is that true and awesome… to keep following Him is easy and the burden truly is light! So I ask you to intercede for us… so that we remain faithful to HIm. And rejoice with us because He has called us into His service… and He already has everything foreseen, factored in, covered, and fully paid for. And now all that remains is for Him to unpack it from His Eternal Treasury of Grace in Heaven’s Eternity… and release it to Holy Spirit, so He can dispense it to us on Earth, step by step, moment by moment, on a need to know basis.
So if Holy Spirit ‘nudges’ you…to continue your disciple training and partake of the new material I’m preparing…please consider investing in our pioneering effort. It’s going to take determined effort on the part of everyone of us, to carry out our ‘Marching Orders’, faithfully. If you feel led to support our efforts, you can use the ‘donate’ link on this website, or mail gifts and correspondence to:
Follow Me Ministries, Inc.
P.O. Box 540826
Omaha, NE 68154-0826
Be assured that I always bring you and your loved ones to the Lord’s attention when He and I are enjoying each other’s company…and working on what is yet to come.
Your Blood brother always,
John