The Big Surprise

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

We do whatever we can to help disciples-in-training as they go through their ‘boot camp’ basic training regimens. We assist and expedite their efforts to become as effectively ‘combat ready’ as possible.

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

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

Every true disciple is summoned to embark on a similar migration. It’s certain their migration will be one of the spirit. And perhaps the Lord will also require them to redeploy physically. So they must be ready and willing to prepare their souls for radically transformative changes. They will leave their earthly birth origins, and former agendas, priority systems, and earthly ties and aspirations, to free themselves for the Lord’s service. And they’ll venture into the brand new territory of knowing, loving, and following God’s Living Word into realities they’ve not yet explored and would have never imagined could be possible before the Lord came after them. But after He comes, they wake up to His Reality, and He captures their full attention from that time forward.

So, just like the geese in the picture, the disciple candidates we serve are in the process of departing from their respective familiar comfort zones in this world… to their designated basic training facilities where they will begin the awesome adventure of venturing into and exploring what, for them, is… ‘The Great Unknown’!

And it is for these Heavenly warriors-in-the-making, that we concentrate and devote our time and energy. We do what we can to expedite their progress and lend spiritual encouragement, and share insights from God’s Word and our own experiences to assist them as much as possible.

Notice also that in Mt. 22:14, the Lord said: “Many are called, but few are chosen.”  We concentrate on people who not only were called, but who have also qualified to be chosen and  summoned by the Lord to follow Him as His Last Days disciples. Yes, God calls many people. But only those whose hearts are truly His, and who are ready and willing to follow Him for real… on His terms… will be chosen. He chooses them because they are actually ready and willing to leave behind, for His sake, everything they previously used to be, and do, and cling to. They’re at a point where they no longer have to be ‘sold’, or coaxed, or persuaded to consider whether or not they might want to follow Him. They are His all the way, and they’re ready to go… to forsake and leave behind their former lives, because they already know that when Christ died, they died with Him. They died to everything they were, and had, and used to pursue in this world. And having settled that, they’re now truly ready to focus on their risen Lord and deal with the fact that He is eternally going to be their New Life. And His Agenda, will be their Agenda because He will occupy First Place in their hearts from now on!

“He is the Image of the invisible God, the Firstborn of all Creation: for by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or rulers, or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also the head of the Body, the Church; and He is the Beginning, the Firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have FIRST PLACE IN EVERYTHING! (Colossians 1:15-18 NASB. Emphasis added.)

“Another also said, “I will follow You, Lord; but first permit me to say goodbye to those at my home.” But Jesus said to him, “No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:61-62 NASB.)

So we’re here for disciples that have already chosen to exchange whatever they were or aspired to in the past, for what God has in store for them from now on. Now that their ‘decks have already been cleared’, and they’re authentically free to concentrate on learning how to ‘follow’ the leading of their Lord, identifying completely with Him and His ways, and ready to live with Him day and night, in His Kingdom, and solely on HIs terms! This is why although many have been called, relatively few are chosen.

“Now large crowds were going along with Him, and He turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.” (Lk. 14:25-27 NASB.)

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

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

To amplify your understanding of what ignited and got this Follow Me Family endeavor started in the first place, I’ve posted an article below that will give you a ‘gut feel’ for what this ministry is all about and the audience for whom it is intended. The article is entitled:  ‘The Big Surprise’. And I wrote it way back in July of 2003. That was seven years before this Follow Me Ministry even existed! (For short we call the Follow Me Ministry: ‘FMM’.)

I wrote ‘The Big Surprise’ after something I never expected suddenly began to invade my mind and plague my thoughts. And for want of a better term, I will say that it really ‘bugged’ me, like a pesky, unwelcome, buzzing ‘insect’, a maddening pest, that kept flying in my face and invading my awareness.  And no matter how much I tried to ignore or swat it away, it just would not leave me alone!

It was so disturbing and contrary to my normal comfort zone routines, that I began to wonder if I was going crazy, or experiencing a ‘mid-life crisis’, or being oppressed by demons, or maybe… just maybe, it was God… trying to get my attention and alert me to something to which I needed to wake up and really start to take to heart!  So I stopped trying to escape. And I began to face it  and do my best to try to understand it. And I began to try to ‘unpack’ it, by thinking it through, and doing my best to articulate what I was seeing and sensing by pulling it out of my inner workings, and letting it see the light of day as I wrote it out on my computer.

The article you will see below, as well as all of the other material that I’ve posted on this website over the years since, is the result of that ‘download’ I received. then. But before you start reading ‘The Big Surprise’, it will help you to better understand it, if I supply you with a little more background information.

The reason why I found the content to be so unsettling was that it came out of nowhere and hit me like a ton of bricks! Suddenly my mind began to visualize a stream of flickering pictures… I envisioned scary future events… unwanted premonitions… that had to do with the great trouble and violent destructive tribulations that Scripture warns will one day start to overwhelm the world and drag every human to a state of total helpless desperation. It will be so overwhelmingly overpowering, that all humans on Earth will be brought to a total end of themselves!

I certainly was not used to thinking about stuff like that. I preferred to focus on pleasant and manageable things that were right in front of me… things that would enhance my existence and keep it as rosy, stable, comfortable, peaceful, and easy as possible! But now it’s clear that nothing any of us can do will enable us to avoid the things that lie ahead of us any longer. We have now actually entered the Last Days Era! It’s here! So there’s no use wasting time looking for ways to escape! No one will be able to escape what has already begun to engulf the entire world!

And now that decades have elapsed, and this Follow Me Ministry actually exists! It’s clear that those premonitions were much more than idle musings.The Lord was actually starting to prepare me for this ministry that would come into being seven years into the future. In hindsight, I can see that this article was actually a kind of ‘blueprint’, or a ‘template’ to let me know more about this yet-to-arrive Follow Me Ministry that has now actually been entrusted to our care today.

That ‘template’ was letting me get a sense of what kind of unique specialized training and preparation these Last Days disciples would be needing in order to survive, thrive, and overcome amid the unspeakable upheavals that were about to start hitting this poor fallen, agonizing and about-to-end world! This Ministry serves those who know for sure that they have been chosen and called by the risen Lord to live with Him, and FROM Him, day and night, from now on. They have already settled in their minds and hearts that they most definitely have been called to be His ‘image and likeness’ disciples! Follow Me is not for the casually curious or mildly interested. It’s not meant to impart anesthesia-like emotional relief treatments. Instead it gears and disciplines us to face, embrace, and deal with God’s Reality, just as it is.

So FMM is not here to satisfy the curiosity of the casually interested who will only skim over the writings superficially and then leave them behind. And it certainly isn’t for those who simply want to learn more stuff  ABOUT Jesus, but intend to hold Him off at a safe distance so they can keep follow their ‘business as usual’ routines… and learn stuff about Him from safe, anonymous, distant vantage points’. FMM is not for ‘converts’, or occasional ‘dabblers’, or those who are somewhat willing to ‘give Jesus a try’. Nor is it for casual ‘churchgoers’, uninvolved ‘spectators’, or people that think of themselves as being, ‘exempt civilians’.

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

“Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him. And if someone likewise competes as an athlete, he is not crowned as victor unless he competes according to the rules.” (2 Tim. 2:3-5 NASB. Emphasis added.)

Dear friend, never forget that God identifies Himself to us as a Warrior in combat! So, when He says to someone, “Follow Me,” the implication is that He’s summoning us into service as a member of His Last Days Invasion Force. We’re being summoned to participate as combatants who will participate in the Total Takeover of all of God’s Territories that His demonic enemies have usurped!

God’s written Word informs us that the universe has been caught up in a continuous  state of war that has been raging since even before the creation of our physical universe! The War is between the Kingdom of Light and the Kingdom of Darkness! And, regardless of whether or not we admit, or like it, we have all been caught up in it! We were born into the midst of it!  And even if we’ve never understood or realized this before the Lord sought us out and summoned us, we were even then, actually wearing the uniform of His enemies and serving their purposes! So there’s no such thing as an ‘exempt civilian! We either choose deliberately to leave the side into which we were born, in order to become part of  the other, or we choose to stay where we already are! And this is why the Lord Jesus says:

“The one who is not (deliberately and wholeheartedly) with Me is against Me; and the one who does not (proactively and wholeheartedly decide to begin to) gather with Me, scatters!” (Mt. 12:30 NASB. Amplification and emphasis added.)

FMM is a training aid for people whose lives have been completely upended, turned around, and redirected by the Reality of the risen Christ. We’re called to serve the Lord like Ananias of Damascus did in the book of Acts, chapter 9. He was the disciple that the Lord commissioned and sent to assist Saul of Tarsus, who had very recently been sent to Damascus to abuse and arrest people like Ananias and his fellow believers!

But now that the risen Lord appeared to Saul and had pierced his heart to the quick, his former life was blown to bits on the road to Damascus. And Saul, stunned out of his senses, and unable even to see, was led by his companions into the city to rest and hopefully to recuperate. And so he sat for three days and nights, blind, devastated, and overwhelmed by how wrong he had been and wondering if God would ever be able to forgive him for what he had been doing to the Messiah He had sent, and the disciples that had received Him and were serving Him! And that’s when the Lord sent Ananias to reach out to Saul and help to bring him into God’s New Covenant Family as a brand new, born again, Spirit-filled member!

The Spirit of God had recently made the risen Messiah Yeshua (Jesus the Christ), shockingly real, present, and electrifyingly alive to Saul. That poor man had previously had no clue that the Man he had been denying and persecuting could be so Present, and so electrifyingly Real, and Divinely Confrontational! And after that happened, Saul was never the same. He could no longer perceive things, or think, or do what he had been used to doing before the Lord accosted him! Now, he was compelled to be totally devoted to his risen Lord. But since all of this was so utterly new to him, he needed help from a disciple to get started. Now he would have to get used to realizing and acknowledging that Yeshua was the entire Source and Center of his existence and whatever pertained to him, from that point forward!

FMM is here to serve people who have been upended like Saul was. We’re here for those who have been totally shocked and stunned by the risen Lord’s awesome overwhelming Reality and Nearness. Because they now feel compelled to know Him as He really is and are ready to adjust and begin to live with Him and FROM Him on His terms. We can help them know what to expect and how to prepare for all the adjustments they will need to prepare themselves for what now lies ahead of them. We help them finally reach an end of themselves. They die to their former Self-trust, and come to grips with the real Gospel that spoils people for this world so thoroughly, that  they’ll no longer be at peace with their former lives of laziness, cowardice, selfishness and Self-adoration and preservation!

We help those who are ready, willing, and free to actually ‘migrate’ and learn to follow and obey their Lord and Commander so He can transform them into what He was sent by His Father to make of them! So the FMM sphere of influence is not wide, broad, or general in scope. It’s more like having to pass through a funnel. It gets progressively narrower and more specialized in scope, just the way boot camp training atmospheres do. It’s a closed highly confining world in which flabby self-indulgent spiritual civilians focus intently on transforming into highly effective, uniformed, military-level, combat-ready warriors!

But our disciple training is not primarily physical and earthly in nature. It focuses on what goes on within a person’s spirit, mind, will, attitudes and emotions. It works deep within the souls and hearts of those who know they’re called and chosen by the Lord to serve Him during these incredibly trying, scary, violent and perilous Last Days! FMM is here to help these ‘chosen ones’ prepare their hearts to transform into authentic Kingdom of Heaven warriors. (Notice that the word ‘disciple’ comes from the same root as ‘discipline’. So the disciple lifestyle is not a vacation or a stay in a luxurious comfort-giving spa.) Warriors, in our sense of the word, train to be able to resist and overcome everything and anything the spiritual powers of Darkness will be directing against the human race in the future. So they won’t focus on becoming safer, or more comfortable; no they’ll have to become much tougher, more resilient, and tremendously focused and faithful to the death! They’ll be able to do that because they already live and operate with and in their risen Lord, on the Resurrection side of the Cross!

Disciples must be trained and equipped to oppose God’s enemies regardless of what the personal cost to them may be. They must be made fit and ready to live by faith in, and self-less love for, God’s All-Sufficient Living Word and their fellow disciples. They must no longer rely and depend on, or be led by the natural perceptions they receive from the outward appearances of things, or by hearsay. They are no longer led by what they naturally used to think, feel or desire. God’s Holy Spirit and His Love Power  and written Word will guide and motivate them from now on. And they’ll learn to pay no attention to what others are saying, doing, or failing to do. They’ll learn to remain focused only on their indwelling risen Lord and remain fully attuned to what He is being, saying, and doing in them and through them, in obedience to His Heavenly Father!

The people we serve are learning to do what it takes to prepare the way (in their own hearts and lives and assigned battlefield sectors) for Christ’s Imminent Return, Invasion, Total Takeover and the Full Restoration of His Sin-damaged Creation!

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

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

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

“… Be strong IN THE LORD and IN THE STRENGTH OF HIS MIGHT. Put on the full armor of God (which is God’s own indwelling Presence within you), so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. 

Therefore, take up the full armor of God (which is Christ in you), so that (as He fights for you from within you,) you will be able to resist on the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand firm therefore, having belted your waist with (His) Truth, and having put on the breastplate of (His) Righteousness, and having strapped on your feet the preparation of the gospel of peace; in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith (in His indwelling Presence) with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit (which He is as He speaks and acts through you), which is the Word of God (always operating within you). With every prayer and request, pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be alert with all perseverance and every request for all the saints…” (Eph. 6:10-18 NASB. Amplification and emphasis added.)

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

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

If you are one of those who have heard Holy Spirit’s ‘Call of the Wild’, then realize this: when the Lord was giving me the ‘download’ for what follows, He actually had you, and the other disciples with whom you’ll be serving, in mind! And that means that the download I began to write out and that became the following article… was actually about you… and what it says was intended for you and for the members of your future combat unit!

So, at last, here is that article from 2003…

At His service, and yours,

John Marquez

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THE BIG SURPRISE

(Originally written in July, 2003)

Luke 17:24-30

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

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

IS THE WORLD REALLY IN FOR A BIG SURPRISE?

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

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

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

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

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

So yes, only God knows all that lies ahead of us. But at least we know this much: Our Commander will have us perfectly covered even when everything with which we are now familiar is being shaken and what is familiar and habitual begins to disintegrate and fall apart, even then He will be our Perfect Provider and Shepherd. So yes, our earthly reality will change drastically, right before our stunned eyes. And the closer we get to the end, everything we relied on that is created, will be taken away by God, who is an ‘All-Consuming Fire’. And, what is now currently present… will soon be completely replaced by a new Heaven and a new Earth that none of us has ever seen or even been able to imagine! (See Rev. 21) And this is what the following text is clearly leading up to. And when all of this actually starts to happen… then what will we do? To what or to whom will we turn for comfort, answers, and relief?:

“See to it that you do not refuse Him who is speaking. For if those did not escape when they refused him who warned them on Earth, much less will we escape who turn away from Him who warns from Heaven. And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the Earth, but also the Heaven.” This expression, “Yet once more,” denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, so that those 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 these nagging premonitions of mine have any merit, then Father has probably already begun to ‘reshuffle’ a seemingly random array of people… taking them out of their former comfort zones, groups and associations – to begin developing them into a sort of ‘first fruits’ group… a ‘first wave’, that will serve as the ‘spearhead’ of the End of the Age Invasion that the Kingdom of Heaven will surely launch when the time for that is finally at hand.

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

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

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

“I am the vine, you are the branches; the one who remains in Me, and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in Me, he is thrown away like a branch and dries up; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you remain in Me, and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” (Jn. 15:5-7 NASB.)

The state of their hearts will also determine which of them will have what it takes to endure and persevere all the way to the end. As the global turmoil erupts and continues to spread and intensify, God will invade and soften the hearts of more and more people that are yet to be redeemed. And when their time comes, they too will begin to respond to Him, in unprecedented numbers. But before that can happen, He must first invade the hearts of the ones that He will have in position to receive, welcome, and orient those newcomers.

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

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

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

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

AN AUTHENTIC BODY THROUGH WHICH OUR MESSIAH CAN REVEAL HIMSELF

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. They must come to know their risen and indwelling Lord, so intimately and deeply, that they, like their apostolic forbearers in the first century, will also be able to embody, radiate, and exude His Perfect Presence! And they will live and abide and interact with Him in the Holy Spirit, acting as one, in perfect unity, cohesion and synchronization. And in this way, the risen Lord will be truly free to operate in and reveal Himself through, these faithful ones, as their Master, Owner, Commander and indwelling Life. And together, they will finish what He started with the original apostles, when the New Covenant Era was just beginning!

These hand-picked Last Days 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 in the book of Acts.

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

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

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

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 will be reacting in terror, once the enormous initiative of Almighty God is suddenly unleashed! The Lord will be on the move… and everything will happen on His Father’s terms and according to His timing… for His Eternal purpose. And our stunned and thoroughly routed enemies will react violently, even while they are being forced to backpedal, helplessly.

2 Corinthians 4:6-10

“For God, who said, ‘Light shall shine out of darkness,’ is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the Glory of God in the face of Christ. But we have this Treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the Power will be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the Life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.”

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 ‘timing devices’ contained in the spiritual equipment Holy Spirit previously put into them, will become activated at the proper time, at staggered intervals. And these progressive inward events will cause the affected disciples to suddenly begin to feel so restless and uncomfortable that they’ll finally be ready to be uprooted and removed from their comfort zones! And they will begin to migrate to wherever their basic training regimens are scheduled to take place. And these ‘boot camps’ will force them to deal with their fallen fleshy, self-pampering ‘civilian’ soulishness, as never before. The training will increase in toughness, thoroughness and intensity, so that by the time D-Day arrives, their delusions 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 in Christ’… a thoroughly prepared God-filled and empowered Warrior… because Holy Spirit will be moving and directing them to live and think, and act, and react – 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 perfect self-less Love, and 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 motivate and empower them from within. And they will stand and hold their Covenant Ground! They will  learn and grow, and be able to help the others that have begun to follow their leading. And together, they will all persevere through the painful, humbling difficulties and hurdles that their training will impose on them all. But in the midst of the turmoil, they will experience the Perfect Peace that always emanates from the Perfect Presence of the indwelling Life of their Master with which they have  become one. And 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 flowing into this world from within them and changing what is going on all around them. They will know for sure that Everything that will be happening from now on will be all about Him and will be coming FROM HIM!

CAN YOU RELATE TO ANY OF THIS?

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

When the time arrives for them to enter ‘The Last Days’ Arena of TESTimony,’ supernatural demands will be made on them all. But by then, an astounding, enormous anointing will have begun to flow into them from Christ their Head. And what was previously ‘drill, practice and training,’ will suddenly become actual Living Triumph! And the Light 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 until it reaches the full noonday level of awareness and understanding in these disciples. They will have to master the art and skill of ‘following’. They will receive their orders and assignment details only on a ‘need to know’ basis. And that will force them to remain fully attentive to and in perfect step with the 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! And isn’t that what happens to new recruit trainees as they endure the crucible of boot camp training? The training and preparation are deliberately designed to be so taxing, draining, and gut-wrenching, that the actual future combat will seem to be easy by comparison!

John 12:24-26

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

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

There will not be a speck of anything left in them that will be desirable or of any use to this fallen world’s system! They will hit the Zero Point for good! Thereafter, nothing will ever again be about them. After they’ve been completely stripped of reliance on themselves, they will be forced to focus on and depend upon Another—their Lord—and the Perfect Finished Work He has already done,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. And all they’ll have left will be… THE LORD OF GLORY!

At first, the more it happens, they will instinctively blame someone else. Some will blame God; others will blame people around them; others will blame Satan… and most of them will whine and wallow in self-pity and assume that they’re losers. But 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, AND THEY LIVE ONE HUNDRED PERCENT – FROM HIM!

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

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

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

2 Corinthians 12:8-10

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

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

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

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

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

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

A TIDAL WAVE OF CHANGE

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

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

The Cross, that they’ll one day come to love, cherish and rest upon in total peace… will be the instrument upon which they must be trained, even as more and more of this fallen, broken world falls apart and blows away. The trouble is that most of us are conditioned and wired to live in relative stability, ease, strength and comfort in a very materialistic, 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 have begun to hear ‘The Call of the Wild’ in their heart of hearts. Only they will be able to feel and sense what this ‘Gideon Force’ senses. But to those that do not sense it, it will seem to be totally crazy. But even the tension this will cause will serve as wonderful training for the groups that, at first, will be divided by their vastly different viewpoints. The tension will do wonders for all of their ‘clay pitchers’ since in any event, they will all have to be broken, one way or another. Iron sharpens iron, and the interactions between these two conflicting groups will have a similar positive effect in the end.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John 3:5-8

“…Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; SO IS EVERYONE WHO IS BORN OF THE SPIRIT!”

They will develop such 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 to unite with Him as well.

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

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

CHRIST’S INTEGRATED, SYNCHRONIZED, COORDINATED BODY

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

So they won’t be rigid, petty or argumentative. They won’t continually divide and split apart or undermine one another. The Cross will break, soften, melt, mold and unite them all, into Christ’s one synchronized, coordinated Body.

Their focus will be on embodying and revealing their Head alone, as living members of His one, fully-integrated Body. You won’t know they’ve been here until they’ve passed through. You won’t remember their names, or even, in many cases, what they looked like! But after they pass through, you will never again be able to forget or ignore the risen Lord that they serve, proclaim and embody. The fruit in their wake will be — Christ, Christ, Christ, The Glory of the risen Messiah, the Fruit of the risen Lord, and the Absolute Takeover of all things, by the living Word of Almighty God!

You’ll never lose sight of the risen Messiah again, once His New Covenant disciples have touched your life. The Messiah died first so that they might live. But now, they die so that He might live. I know that in saying this publicly I may prove to be the most deluded fool on earth. I’ve tried to forget this and just ‘be normal’ and mind my own business. But the burn inside won’t stop. It is more real than anything I currently see around me. If I’m wrong, I will be dreadfully embarrassed and in desperate need of intercessory prayer. But if this Last Days D-Day really is bearing down upon us, then there’s not a minute to waste!

So I’m going with my intuition. If later on, I am proved to be dead wrong, so be it! In fact I pray that I am wrong, for the sake of everyone’s safety and security! But I can’t risk the gamble. I’m much more afraid of what it would mean to miss the window of opportunity — that we have in this time of relative peace and calm — to make the needed preparations. I’m much more afraid of missing our window of opportunity 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 is correct, then —

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

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If any of the above resonates with what Holy Spirit has put into your spirit and soul, then I offer some links to videos that will give you more pertinent and timely information and encouragement. They will, I believe, give you a taste of what those Last Days ‘bullet head’ disciples that are now beginning to appear on the Last Days scene are like, and how the Spirit of God is gearing them to think.

I know the young man who is teaching in the videos I listed below. What the Lord is putting in his heart at this time, is, to me, an example of the kind of disciple training material I began to sense would be what Holy Spirit would have to impart to those Last Days disciples I was beginning to envision back in 2003. So check it out and see if any of this resonates with your own heart of hearts…