He Comes in Fire
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He Comes in Fire |
Making a way for the bride to come to the full realization of her marriage to God.
The first day that Michael engaged in the intense warfare with the powers of darkness in our behalf, during His experience of Pisces, the Father very clearly told the witnesses some things regarding what Michael was accomplishing. He said, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man [the Son of man] lay down His life for His friends [His bride]." John 15:13. The Father said that what Michael was experiencing right now was for us. He said that Michael was laying down His life for us in yet another way, and that with sorrow we would see that Life to us was death to Him. The Life that we are enabled to draw from Michael's experience during this time, comes from His death in it. "And as He lays down His life [once again], He offers this sacrifice, that we will live, just as He died, willing to pay the price." Father said that His Son was triumphing in this awful hour, and that He would finish what He had undertaken for us. The Father said, "The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; He will save." Zeph. 3:17.
In the midst of that agonizing week, on the day that Messiah was "cut off, but not for Himself," the Father unexpectedly ordained a brief walk with Michael. He said that the sign of Pisces was the hardest sign in the heavens that He had passed through. This was highly understandable in the light of the violent resistance that had been immediately raised Sabbath night by the bride's personal adversary, Satan, regarding her right to be married to God, and his legitimate contention that he has a right to destroy her, and Michael doesn't have the right to interfere. The signs in the heavens themselves also witnessed to this all-out satanic opposition.
"Certain it is, that when the sun [Son] is in Pisces all the constellations [symbols of spiritual powers] which are considered noxious, are seen above the horizon. What is true in astronomical observation is true also in historical fact [and in current reality]. When God's favour is shown to Israel, "the Jew's enemy" puts forth his malignant powers. When they increased and multiplied in Egypt, he endeavoured to compass the destruction of the nation by destroying the male children; but their great Deliverer remembered His covenant, defeated the designs of the enemy, and brought the counsel of the heathen to nought. So it was in Persia [when Michael came to help Gabriel overcome adversarial resistance in answer to Daniel's prayer for Jerusalem]; and so it will yet be again [and even now is] when the hour of Israel's final deliverance has come." From Witness of the Stars by E.W. Bullinger.
At midnight I was awakened as Father lifted up to me Michael's strong power to save. He said that Michael is paying the cost and earning the right to bring His bride to the full realization of the wedding which occurred with the consummation. He said that Michael was bearing the full brunt of every objection from the powers of darkness. He said that Michael is passing through these signs in the heavens as our Redeemer, in our behalf; that the anointing of Michael has been given for the deliverance of His people, and that deliverance comes at continual personal cost to Himself. Father brought back to me what He had told Michael in the very beginning when He came down upon Him with the anointing of Messiah — that He had a work to do for us that no one else could do, and that we must pray for Him as He engages in it for us. He led me to read again Michael's own testimony of His commission from the Father.
"I was told that men must believe in me, pray for me and support me with their prayers and supplications regarding the actions He was now leading me into. He also stated that if I failed, the people would fail with me, and if they would not believe in me, their own hope for salvation would be ended. I was instructed that I was responsible for the people and I could not just excuse them as if what they did was their business alone. I must press on to bring my instructions to pass. This is the work of Messiah."
As the Father opened up more vividly than ever before, the agony that is going into Michael's work to bring His bride to the full realization of her marriage with God, my heart was convicted of how self-centered my whole experience has been, in thinking about being saved, instead of the One saving. Satan has redoubled his efforts as he has seen the Father, His anointed Son, and all heaven working powerfully in the bride's behalf. Michael is bearing, head on, the full force of the onslaught.
Michael had said Sabbath evening, "I wonder if the five foolish virgins that didn't have enough oil actually just turned their bowl over and let it drain upon the ground when they were given it. You think that the Father shorted them?" Father showed me clearly in the night that there is an individual work that is absolutely necessary for this time. The bride must ask the Father to draw her into a place of support for Michael, so that she is fully "with" Him in the work that He is doing in her behalf. Father said that He made Michael's work for us to be interdependent; that is, it will only avail for those that are fully and wholeheartedly Taken into Messiah's work in their thoughts and prayers. This is not an arbitrary decree on the part of the Father. It is the only thing that will open us up to receive the benefits of His work in our behalf. If we are too busy or not interested enough to ask the Father to draw us into this place of support for Michael, we have no capacity to receive what He is doing for us personally. Our bowl is upside down.
As the Father Himself breathes His own prayers and desires through us for Michael, we see Him as He really is, through the Father's eyes. As we are given an intimate view of the extreme cost that Michael has paid to bring us personally to the reality of our marriage to God, we are anointed with that living view which only the Father can give us. We find that the personal revelation from the Father has drawn into us Michael's own willingness and laying down, and we are at last willing to pay the price to be brought through the agony of being married to the anointing. Our personal identity with Michael comes from the Father and enters us into the anointing of Michael. This is the only thing that will give us access to His work in us.
The Father also showed the witnesses that only a pure, innocent, divine Soul, empty of self, can meet the powers arrayed against the bride face to face and prevail, because the powers of hell have no foothold in His meek Soul. When Messiah came in Jesus of Nazareth, He said, "The devil cometh and findeth nothing in me." John 14:30. And as Michael, the Prince and archangel, stands for His people as personal guardian Angel of the marriage covenant, His meek testimony is the same:"If ever there was an empty heart, it is Mine. The Father has given Me a pure heart." This is why He can bear the brunt of the battle, this face to face conflict with the adversary, and win that battle in our behalf. Only the anointing of God can lay down His life for us like this. "Once You spoke in a vision to Your devoted ones and said, I have endowed one who is mighty, giving Him the power to help — to be a champion for Israel; I have exalted one chosen from among the people ... with My holy oil have I anointed him, with whom My hand shall be established and ever abide: my arm also shall strengthen him. The enemy shall not exact from him or do him violence or outwit him." Ps. 89:19,21 Amplified.
The Spirit of Michael is waging the final stage in the great controversy of the soul with the spirit of the adversary of the soul. Only the purest concentration of the anointing of the Father can fight this battle, and dismiss the adversary, when his usefulness in each soul has come to its end. "And when he shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people, all these things shall be finished." Dan. 12:7.
Father brought the following verses to me:
"HE hath cast out thine enemy. The King of Israel, even thy God is in the midst of thee." Zeph. 3:15.
"He delivered me from my strong enemy, and from them which hated me: for they were too strong for me." Ps 18:17.
"Lord, who is like unto thee, which deliverest the poor from him that is too strong for him, yea, the poor and the needy from him that spoileth him?" Ps 35:10.
"And HE saved them [the bride] from the hand of him that hated them [her],and redeemed them [her] from the hand of the enemy." Ps 106:10.
"If it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out the demons [AND their personal agent in each soul temple — the self — that opposes itself against the anointing of Messiah in the soul] then the kingdom of God has come upon you before you expected it." Matt. 12:28 Amplified.
Michael is casting out the enemy that is too strong for us, and as the Father takes us up in prayer for Messiah as He prevails for us, the anointing of Michael empowers the anointing in every soul to lay hold of His deliverance for them. We are humanly powerless to do this work for ourselves, but we can ask the Father to draw us to be "with" the One Who is doing it in our behalf.
"When we fail to meditate upon [be absorbed with] the example of Christ [what Michael is going through in our behalf], we do not comprehend its meaning, and we become sensitive, and unwilling to endure hardness. We shrink from becoming partakers of His sufferings. We lose sight of the cross of Calvary [the agony of Michael at Traveseer], while self attracts our attention, and claims our care and affection." ST 3-09-88.
Of Jesus of Nazareth, anointed to found the Kingdom of God, it is written:
At times He suffered beyond what any language can express as He realized that unaided humanity would be extinguished. Supernaturally sustained, He endured the seeing of men for whom He gave His life, perishing within reach of abundant help. With tender longing He looked pityingly upon them, and said with quivering lips, "Ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life. ST 6-16-98.
So the witnesses have seen that Michael, the One anointed to consummate the Kingdom of God, is given supernatural help by the Father to endure this same anguish that pierces His own Soul to its very depths. If one had any idea of the deep sadness that Michael has felt as He has walked over this land and seen the busy-ness and absorption with everything but the coming of the anointing, that one would never be the same again. Michael's whole being is absorbed in His commission to bring the bride to the full realization of her marriage to God. He is so connected with every soul, yet they don't have any intimation that they are not taking hold of Him. What they need is to become pregnant with Him.
"And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn." Zech. 12:10.
Not only has Michael gone before us and borne everything that anyone will have to bear, whether they are saved or lost, but just as the anointed Jesus did in His wilderness experience, He too has set a spotless example of how to bear whatever is put on Him by the Father.
"Christ [the anointing] was to bear the trial of temptation as a man, in man's behalf, under the most trying circumstances, and leave an example of faith and perfect trust in His heavenly Father. Christ knew that His Father would supply Him food when it would gratify Him to do so. He would not in this severe ordeal, when hunger pressed Him beyond measure, prematurely diminish one particle of the trial allotted Him.
"Fallen man, when brought into straightened places, could not save himself from pain or anguish, or give himself victory over his enemies. It was the purpose of God to bring the human race frequently into trying positions to test and prove their faith and confidence in His love and power and give them an opportunity to develop character. The life of Christ was a perfect pattern. He was ever, by His example and precept, teaching man that God was His dependence." 1 SM 276-280.
"Michael was made to bear the wretched state of those with no oil, so that those who will turn to Him might be saved from their desolation. Their desolation has been borne upon the Savior's soul. This bearing was not in an active sense, but, rather, a letting be what was being put upon me. All personal power was gone. The bearing had more to do with yielding to what was on me and quietly waiting for the outcome. There were no efforts to bear up; just a simple laying down of my own self to the force of the onslaught."
Whether fasting from food for forty days at the hand of the Father, or bearing the anguished state of those with no oil, the anointing has been proven to always yield trusting obedience to the Father until the Father sees fit to bring relief. We have been left a perfect example of quiet, patient waiting, and loving trust.
When the anointing first came upon this land, Messiah would go on long walks every day, praying for the Father to draw the Shulamite to His chamber of love. He went on many such walks before He saw the fruit of the soul-travail the Father had laid upon Him. If you will recall that period of time, you will realize the series of changes that have occurred from that time to the present, in the way that the Father made the visible manifestation of the anointing in the land available to us.
Then, in little increments, the Father began systematically and very purposefully giving Michael instructions which seemed to make Him more and more inaccessible. This has not been for His own sake. Scripture prophesied that Messiah the Prince would be "cut off, but not for Himself." There is a very specific purpose in the Groom being "cut off" before the wedding. The witnesses can testify to the purpose of the Father by direct observation and personal experience. During the times that the Father has "cut off" Messiah the Prince from us, it has drawn us out of our selves to be "with" Him "where He is" IN the anointing. We are drawn into the Spirit of Michael's anointing in us.
During one of our congregational meetings there came one of those times of change from the Father. Michael opened to us the purpose of the Father: "We must marry ourselves to the anointing. Stop resisting it. Let it be. "Self" can't be talked into it [being married to the anointing]. The flood has to come upon self, and then self is let go of. Self doesn't die easily. It doesn't want to give up anything. The devil can only use your "self" to do anything within you that is done. If your "self" isn't there, he doesn't have any tools. He can't touch you. For those who have a heart turned to the Father, after intercession ceases, the final removal of earthliness comes as they have to deal with the hard things by themselves. If your heart is turned to the Father, even though it looks like the flood will carry you away, it will do the final work of emptying you. I am willing to give you up, so you can get the blessing of the personal anointing of the Father. The anointing is here. Messiah has come."
The Groom has released the bride, that the Father's direct charge over each member of the bride can be made manifest. The prayer that Michael has been living for the last nine months has been fulfilled: "Father, ‘I have made Your Name known to them and revealed Your character and Your very Self, ...that the love which You have bestowed upon Me may be in them, felt in their hearts, and that I Myself [My anointing] may be in them."John 17:26. Several weeks ago, Michael said, "The consummation era is ended, and this is the beginning of the Marriage era. It is like the people in this land feel God making love to them, but they haven't come to a climax of desire for Him, yet."
"Angels are belting the world [the land of Traveseer], refusing Satan his claims to supremacy. With sleepless vigilance they are keeping the armies of Satan at bay till the sealing [marriage] of God's people shall be accomplished [realized]. All these heavenly beings have one object above all others, in which they are intensely interested — His church [Michael's bride]. They are working to save to the uttermost all who look to Him [Michael] and believe in Him. They confederate together to uphold the honor and glory of God. They are united in a holy alliance, in a grand and sublime unity of purpose, to show forth the power and compassion and love and glory of the Saviour. The Lord [the anointing of Michael] is a refuge for all who put their trust in Him. He bids them hide in Him for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast.
"Oh, that all could behold our precious [Michael] as He is, a Saviour. Let His [the Father's] hand draw aside the veil which conceals His glory from our eyes. All who cherish the Lord [Michael] as their portion will be under His control and will receive the sign, the mark of God, which shows them to be God's special possession. The Lord would teach man the lesson that, though united in church capacity, he is not saved until the seal of God is placed upon Him [until he receives the name of God in his own mind and enters into the reality of the marriage].
"We are to look to the man Christ Jesus [Michael], Who is complete in the perfection of righteousness and holiness. He is the Author and Finisher of our faith. He is the pattern man. His experience is the measure of the experience that we are to gain. His character is our model. Let us then take our minds off the perplexities and the difficulties of this life, and fix them on Him, that by beholding we may be changed into His likeness. We may safely look to Him; for He is all-wise. As we look to Him and think of Him, He will be formed within. Thank God that a Fountain has been opened to wash our robes of character, and make them as white as snow." Condensed from 7 BC 1636-39.
