2. Called to Firstfruits

If God’s two witnesses of Revelation 11 began their prophetic ministry, of truth and for real, this very afternoon, what would be your response? Would you call them heretics? Or would you obey them?

It doesn’t matter if these are two individuals or not, for they live and walk just like the Lord Jesus Christ, with no thought of disconnection from God who fills them full and with no sufficiency in themselves. The full measure of being the witnesses of Christ is that they love their Christian brethren just as Jesus loves them. For that reason, they include all who draw near as a vital part of their own ministry out from God.

Part of the meaning of “clothed in sackcloth” is that they are on their knees before the least of their brethren as the very Face of Jesus to them.

The three-and-one-half year ministry is the second part of the seven years prophesied by Daniel, with Jesus’ ministry of three-and-one-half years being the first part.

Consider the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. He was baptized in water by John, the Spirit came upon Him as a dove, God spoke, “This is My Beloved Son,” the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness to be tested by the devil, and in His return, His first miracle, that is, the first thing God did through Him to get people’s attention, was to turn water into wine.

Consider the ending of Jesus’ ministry. He prayed the prayer that birthed the Kingdom, He received us into Himself in Gethsemane; He carried us inside Himself all the way through death. He joined us with God our Father inside His own Soul. He was raised out from death by the Spirit of God and returned into His Church as a Life-Giving Spirit on the Day of Pentecost.

Now let’s consider another “what if.”

What if Jesus had not ascended ten days before Pentecost, but had continued in full in the second part of Daniel’s seven years. What would have been the trajectory of His ministry then?

It is evident that Jesus’ second three-and-a-half year ministry would have begun as RESURRECTION LIFE and gone up from there. But what would He have done? What would have been the driving purpose of this “second ministry?”

Would Jesus not have established His Resurrection Life by the power of the Spirit inside the lives of those who believed into Him? Would His purpose not have been to bring forth many just like Himself? The Scriptures are clear that this is what Jesus is doing, yet He could not have done so had He remained physical and on the outside of us. Jesus had to return in the form of a Life-Giving Spirit on the inside of us, as He said.

Let me assert that this is exactly the trajectory of the ministry of the second witness of Christ. From the very moment Jesus releases them, they move out from His Resurrection into the completion of His purpose, into the reason why God sent Jesus into our world.

They have a job to do, and they begin their ministry with incredible intensity and drive; they begin it in the POWER of Resurrection faith. Their job is to call God into His Church, which is what “to prophesy” actually means.

God sent Jesus into our world and then into us to make us to be just like Himself in all ways, inside of His glory and inside the celebration of His Victory. Enabling this to happen inside the lives and experience of thousands and millions is the purpose of the second ministry of Christ.

There cannot be any other purpose than to fulfill the Desire of God.

John’s vision presents us with a pattern of three numbers: 2 witnesses, 144,000 firstfruits, and a great number beyond count.  The second witness of Christ is presented as the Source of that flow of Pure Spirit Word out from God into His Church. The firstfruits are the ministry of Christ who come under the covering of “the two witnesses,” that they might then turn and be a true covering to “the great number beyond count.” That great number is a glorious Church, clothed with the Lord Jesus Christ, bringing forth the knowledge of God into the knowledge of all.

I have had a desire for some time to write a very specific book focused on what it means to be a true ministry of Christ to His Church. I have run through a number of different titles and created a number of different outlines, but nothing began with any kind of spark until now.

This desire became visible in the early months of 2014, and gave its first clear expression in my book The Feast of Tabernacles, Chapters 3 and 4, “The Humility of Christ,” and “Defining the Apostolic.” Yet it had shown itself as a deep groan inside of me through such letters as “Dealing with Deception,” “On Deception and Truth,” “God of the Cup,” “Two Women or One,” and “Face,” all of which were written inside the wrenching dealings of God with me, His bony finger piercing through every part of my soul. And all of them were written as the agony of my soul regarding those who were misrepresenting Christ and Salvation, speaking death and not life.

Recently I had the title of “Ministering Christ Together,” which is a very good title. This series I have placed in a folder titled “Being a Witness of Christ,” which is another very good title, meaning the same as the first. The purpose of this series, which is in the form of free flow writing and in which I intend to bounce all over the place, is to write about what it means to be that “in-between ministry, called to receive a Pure Spirit Word, under authority, and then to turn and lead God’s people into all the life of Christ.

The purpose of this series is to bring that same bony finger of God into your soul also, that you might contend with God until He prevails absolutely in your life. – And a sword will pierce through your own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts might be revealed (spoken to Mary, who brought forth Christ into our world).

Now, before continuing, I must set into place the great backdrop happening upon this earth that is being revealed as the very opposite of God our Father and of Christ Jesus. We are inside the fulness of times, and God has required that which most contradicts Christ our Lord to become fully visible to all.

As we set into place that great backdrop, I want to share three things that God is bringing into ever greater clarity for us, three things we must know in order to move with God inside the Apocalypse. These three things actually work together, that is, one builds to the next.

First is concerning the prophetic word. Let’s set out two such words. Then, when the Lamb removed the seventh seal, there was silence inside of heaven for about half an hour. – And a mouth was given to the beast, speaking great boastings and slanders… (Revelation 8:1 & 13:5).

The prophetic word is a Word first inside of and then spoken out from God our Father. It’s meaning inside of God comes first before it ever enters the consciousness of humans. Then, it is spoken with purpose into those who are sons, who hear God by the Spirit and are about their Father’s business. That word then becomes part of the Spirit personally leading them inside their present moment and circumstances. The Words that I speak into you are Spirit, and they are Life.

When those same words enter a mind that defines everything by good and evil, however, they become something ridiculous, something turned aside, something even hostile against God’s true meaning. The more we share Hheart with God inside of Life, the more caustic all the “normal” Christian interpretation of these things becomes to us.

There are two distinct realms of the heavens with which we are concerned right now. The first line, 8:1, is fulfilled in the heavens of the Church, the realms of Spirit inside of which true believers in Jesus live and move. The second line, 13:5, is for the sons of God to comprehend the unfolding stupidity of this present hour.

We have come to know that “silence in heaven” speaks of that wondrous moment when all accusation against God, that He “knows evil,” CEASES inside the Church, inside that glorious woman clothed with the Lord Jesus Christ. The second realm of the heavens that concerns us right now is called “the world,” in the sense of that realm of the present ongoing relationships among humans and demons in their refusal of God together. As all shadow of placing evil upon God vanishes from our consciousness, so God is finally released to deal with this second realm of rebellion.

The Church becomes all Christ first before that which is anti-Christ can be exposed and removed. The problem is that everyone is obsessed with anti-Christ before that which is Christ becomes seen by all. That is, anti-Christ appears first even though it is never first.

The prophetic Word, then, is a tool in the hands of the Devoted Spirit in leading the sons of God in every present hour of the entire Church age in the fulfillment of that business of the Father given to each. As such, it is speaking of a reality of the heavens, whether of the realm of the Church or the realm of the world, a single heavenly reality that shows itself in many different ways in the human experience.

The mind of good and evil images a single outward human event or circumstance or individual, always in the future, that is the only “fulfillment” of a word such as Revelation 13 because it cannot understand God or His ways.

God has one purpose inside the present moment, inside the fulness of times and the completion of the age, regarding the world. That one purpose is – that every mouth might be closed, and the entire world-cosmos brought under judgment before God (Romans 3:19).

God is DETERMINED to shut the mouth of every human soul with the profound words, “I am WRONG.” Inside the meaning of “I am wrong,” is also found the connotation of “I have been utterly, utterly STUPID.”

When I hear and read the “tweets” of the President of the United States over the last few months, great proclamations that are treasonous to the Constitution, terroristic threats against other nations in open violation of international law, and other equally bizarre and narcissistic utterances, one line from Scripture keeps coming to me inside of the Spirit. – And a mouth was given to the beast, speaking great boastings and slanders…

Is the present president part of the final fulfillment of these things? Absolutely. Is Donald J. Trump the Antichrist? There is no such thing, yet everyone lusts after such a ridiculous concept, including Christians.

The thing about the fulfillment of prophetic word concerning the unveiling of all that is false is that everything is NORMAL to humans in this world. The mind of good and evil seeks for something totally contrary to their present lives to be “the Antichrist,” in its refusal to know that such thinking is always anti-Christ.

Two recent “boastings and slanders” served to place me into ever greater readiness for a God coming through exposing all that is false. The first was the horrific slander spoken against Tucker Carlson, a deep betrayal of friendship against a man who had made Trump look human to us and who did as much as any to win him the elections. The second was the bizarre stunt of blowing up some rocks in another country in open defiance of the Geneva conventions, etc., which are an integral part of the U.S. Constitution. This stunt has slandered “America” in the eyes of the whole world and placed this false entity into the ranks of the most criminal regimes of history.

Now, I am wording these things very starkly for a purpose, that is, that we might be aware of God’s purpose for the boastings and the slanders of this world. Before we can arrive there, however, we must next revisit God’s definition of “anti-Christ.” Here are the ONLY definitions given to that term in the entire Bible.

You have heard that anti-Christ [that which speaks against Christ] is coming, even now many anti-Christs have become, whereby we know that it is the final hour. These [many anti-Christs] went out from among us, but they were not really from among us. For if they had been from among us, they would have remained with us. Rather, that it might be made visible to all that these [anti-Christs] are not part of us. – Who is the liar, but the one speaking against and contradicting, that Jesus is not the Christ? This is that which is anti-Christ, the one speaking against, contradicting the Father and the Son (1 John 2:18-19 & 22).

Do not believe every spirit, but prove the spirits, whether they are out from God, because many fake and dishonest prophets have gone out [from us] into the world. By this you know the Spirit out from God: every spirit that speaks the same word with Jesus Christ having come now inside the flesh [Christ, not I] is out from God; and any spirit that does not speak the same word with Jesus Christ having come now inside of flesh [I, not Christ] is not out from God. And this is that spirit of anti-Christ, which you heard is coming, and is now already inside the present world-cosmos (1 John 4:1-3).

Just as Christ Jesus is the anointed speaking of God inside of creation, so that which speaks against Christ is a plurality of spirits operating primarily inside of two groups of people. The first group is those Judaics who deny that Jesus is God’s Messiah sent to them. The second group is Christians who in one way or another speak “I, not Christ.” Thus anti-Christ is first a spirit and second a word that splits-apart between Jesus and “Christ,” and between Jesus and each one of us, that Christ Jesus is NOT made visible inside the weakness of our mortal flesh, as the Gospel says.

The Greek word John uses is, in fact, antichrist, with “anti” meaning “in place of” or “instead of.” Everyone tries to make this to be one individual person far, far away from themselves. This is the perfidy of the mind of good and evil always at war against God, always REFUSING to be wrong, the wicked refusal to give thanks. It means to speak any self-story that denies Christ Jesus our only life, simply by replacing Him with other things.

This brings us to the third thing I want to see ever more clearly, and that is what I have called “the story we speak about ourselves.” Some might imagine that this is not a Biblical concept, but here is God’s way of saying the same thing. – For the Word of God is living and energeoing and sharper than any two-edged sword, even penetrating through as far as the dividing of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and is capable of judging the pondering and purposes of the heart. And there is no created thing unseen in His presence, for all are uncovered and laid bare to the eyes of Him to whom is our word of account [our story of self] in return (Hebrews 4:12-13).

Our “word of account” is spoken by us in every present moment inside the very presence of God, inside all staggering Devotion. “The story we tell ourselves about ourselves” is just another way to say, “our word of account.” Many more verses can be brought into this same picture.

It is a war inside the mind (Romans 8 & 12), between “Christ, not I, yet I live, for it is Jesus now, my every word,” versus “I, not Christ, in whatever pretending nonsense I want to speak concerning who and what I am, who and what God is, and the meaning of my world.” It is all one, through faith, or all the other, for it must be all Christ first before human stupidity can cease.

One of the most deceitful and destructive anti-Christ slanders that can be spoken is the claim, “They’re just words.” There is no such thing as “just words.” All words are attended by some spirit, whether the Spirit of God or spirits that speak against Jesus. This is John’s entire argument in 1 John.

If you want to know who anti-Christ is, just look in the mirror. Have we not spoken great boastings about ourselves? Have we not slandered other people? Have we not lied against the Truth? Have we not refused to give thanks? This is why we RUN every moment into “God saves me right now,” this is why “Jesus saves me” is found inside our every breath.

All words in any self-story, in any ramblings inside the mind of any individual person, Christian or not, that are not Jesus sharing all with us, are anointed by a spirit of darkness. This is why they become very religious.

Yet the strength and hardness of the demonic story of self found in all humans who do not speak Christ does vary greatly from one human to another according to both the form given to them at birth and the practice in which they engage throughout their lives. Some humans have become very hard in their self-story against God, far harder than most can comprehend. Some humans today have made themselves to be the very fulness of that story of self that is the OPPOSITE of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb for others, that it is possible to become.

And so, here is the great showdown happening now, in full, across the whole earth. “Come, let us kill Him, that the inheritance might be ours” – the words Jesus ascribed to the Pharisees, the ones who would write The Talmud.

Here are the two opposing forces, both setting themselves before all right now in full. – The stealthy thief does not come except that he might steal, kill, and destroy. I come that they might possess life and possess it abundantly, excessively – and beyond all expectation (John 10:10). The showdown is between those who steal and those who give life.

The mind designed by the teaching of the Pharisees and by the false claim to the inheritance is as far away from the mind that is inside of Christ Jesus, the mind Paul commanded us to place upon ourselves, as any human mind could ever stake out in its wicked claims against God.

Now, this letter is about “called to firstfruits,” and we must return to that topic. Thus I must reserve more of my thoughts about the hour in which we now live for later discussions. Yet I have not left the topic of called to firstfruits, because such a calling takes place entirely inside this great setting, the showdown of the ages, for God is determined to demonstrate before all creation that stark difference between those who believe into Jesus and those who contradict.

And God proves Christ faithful and True by the impartation of the anointing from Jesus to us, just as it passed from Elijah to Elisha. In fact, that story is in our Bibles specifically for us to understand the fulfillment of Revelation 11 and 7 in our lives today.

When they had crossed over, Elijah said to Elisha, “Ask! What may I do for you, before I am taken away from you?” Elisha said, “Please let a double portion of your spirit be upon me.” So he said, “…If you see me when I am taken from you, it shall be so for you… And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it… Then he took the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and struck the water (the Jordan), and said, “Where is the Lord God of Elijah?” And when he also had struck the water, it was divided… and Elisha crossed over. …They said, “The spirit of Elijah rests on Elisha.” (2 Kings 2:5-19 – reduced).

The ”mantle” is the anointing, not the Spirit overall, but the Spirit UPON a man or a woman. The Spirit of Jesus rests upon us as the normal Christian life. When we see Jesus as He is, we are just like Him, and His ministry of taking a people into LIFE (the Jordan) is now ours.

Here is the fulfillment, a paraphrase of Jesus’ words in Revelation 11. “I give Myself, in all that I am, to you, My second witness, and you will speak Me into My Church and into this world. Then, just as I impart Myself to you, so you will give that same knowing to many, that I might move through the many to impart Myself to My Church, enclothing her with My Glory.”

Thus, “I will give Myself to My two witnesses” becomes a woman “clothed with the Son.”

The second witness of Christ, whoever they might be, are first humans. As humans, they function in two ways. First, they receive from God that they might give to others, and second, they receive from others that which God has given them.

In their ministry, they are a catalyst, designed for one purpose only, that the same receiving, of all that Jesus is, might pass quickly to others. Yet in their regular human lives, they are just the brother and sister next door, part of the firstfruits, part of the Church. There is no “elitism” in God or in them.

Yet they are and continue to be God’s open door and highway into His Church. And their concern is the flow of Personal Spirit Word, the “Golden Oil,” that it be utterly pure, that it might find faith in the earth. Their power is in that Elijah moment, a moment in the life of each one of the thousands called to firstfruits, a moment of immense power filled with great simplicity.

Do I love Jesus or not? Becoming – Do I see Him as He is?

The power is what makes that question to be all or nothing in one blinding flash. RUN into all that is Christ Jesus, into every Gospel Word fulfilled, into God as Salvation coming through you now into His Church. Or – draw back right now into all that perdition means, your pointless and foolish story of yourself.

That “Elijah moment” is the call into firstfruits. It is the same as when Jesus said, “Follow Me,” and they left their nets and followed Him.

Then a great sign was perceived in heaven, a woman enclothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and upon her head a garland of victory, a crown of twelve stars.

The impartation of Jesus Himself goes from a few – to thousands – to millions, in that order, in power, and very fast. The few do not live for themselves, but for the Father, and their determination is set upon the Church.

The firstfruits, then, sealed in their foreheads, are a means to an end.

You see, Jesus can give Himself to “His two witnesses” all He wants, but the Church, His Bride, remains a prostitute without the in-between. That in-between is thousands of Christian ministries all across the earth, the firstfruits of Christ, those who “follow the Lamb,” that is, who become just like Jesus, setting forth their souls for the sake of the Church.

Before continuing with what it means to be part of God’s firstfruits, the full ministry of Christ to His Church, we must know again that which comes through Jesus’ second ministry, a Pure Word, always together with a Compelling Spirit.