There is a serious call being sent to the Church in this hour. Most would agree it is a critical time for the Church. Many are at the point of decision, destiny and crossroads. They're hearing a call regarding their part in the final purpose and plan of God. They are sensing an urgency to become everything God has said they should be. If anything is evident right now, it is that God is asking His people to change--NO, He is REQUIRING that we change.
Amos 3:7-8 "Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets. The lion hat roared, who will not fear? the Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy?"
As we listen to what the Spirit is saying, we hear a call to war and a call to be a demonstration of the Kingdom of God on earth. We are being called by the Spirit to hear the sound of the trumpet of God's prophetic voice.
The sound of the trumpet is a type of God's prophetic voice proclaiming the Word of the Lord. Paul the apostle said, "For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to battle?" We must have both a clear prophetic word and ears to hear it.
In Numbers chapter ten, four things were proclaimed by the trumpet:
1. The assembling of the camps. This represents the Body of Christ being drawn together around the presence of the Lord, regardless of group, race, or denomination. The unity of the Spirit we are to pursue is a coming into agreement and submission to the Lordship of Jesus, not a compromise agreement with each other. Jesus' prayer for His Body to "be one" will be answered as we make Him Lord and follow the cloud of His Spirit.
2. The journeying of the camps. Each group in the Church is being called to go on with God into new realms in the Spirit. God is calling His people to go where no one has gone before. This requires faith, obedience and a ruthless COMMITMENT to leave our comfortable, systematic theologies of serving God.
3. The preparation for war. God is gathering His army together to go out to "utterly destroy the inhabitants of the land." It's time to stop fighting one another and to assemble together as one man. We must stop persecuting others in His Body and declare war on the real enemy--the devil! This is an hour of warfare and confrontation with the kingdom of darkness, but we must hear the clear and certain sound of the trumpet.
4. The celebration of the feasts. The Church has experiences a spiritual fulfillment of the Feast of Passover and the Feast of Pentecost. The trumpet is sounding for the third and final feast, the Feast of Tabernacles, to be fulfilled, Each feast that Israel celebrated in the natural, the Church is to experience in the spirit. It is evident that the Church is aboutb to enter the most intensive spiritual experience it has ever seen. We are about to see the manifestation of the prayers and prophecies that have been spoken throughout the ages.
With the fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles will come great unity and joy among His people. There will be a great ingathering of souls and the glory of God will be seen upon His people. We shall enter the times of restoration of all things in preparation for His final appearing.
All of this may sound exciting (and it is), but it is overwhelming in the power of our own might. We must learn to do all things by His Spirit, under His command and with the anointing.
Isaiah 10:27 "And it shall come to pass in that day, that his burden shall be taken away from off they shoulder, and his yoke from off they neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing."
This anointing, the power of the Holy Spirit, has always been symbolized with oil, especially the "holy anointing oil" of the Old Testament. Each ingredient in this oil has a special significance to our lives. This is a very expensive oil and represents the process of God's anointing being poured out in our lives. Gethsemene means "oil press," revealing that the way we can be anointed for our divine call is to yield totally to God's will and deny our own.
When our will is "pressed" into doing His will, it will produce this expensive oil known as "the anointing."
We, as God servants, are called to walk as He walked and to carry on the work of the Kingdom as Jesus patterned for us to do. He (Jesus) was anointed to preach the gospel to the poor, heal the brokenhearted, preach deliverance to the captives, bring sight to the blind and set at liberty those that were bruised. (Luke 4:18, 19.) If Jesus needed the anointing to minister to others, don't you suppose that we must have it also?
It was the anointing that made Jesus effective and successful, not His education, appearance, talents or connections with important people.
God has given the anointing to each believer, that each may be taught, led and empowered for His work. You may be a teacher, a pastor, and evangelist, or a prophet. You may be a mother, student, or a construction worker. You may be a doctor or a song writer. It makes no difference. God's plan for His people doesn't change because of the methods or the vessels. His desire is to use every gift, every calling and every available tool for one purpose: to minister His love to a lost and dying humanity.
1 John 2:27 "But the anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is not lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him."
No matter what He has called you and me to do on this earth, it will mean nothing unless we abide in Him. We must lay down the armor of the flesh and put on the complete and powerful armor of God.
Now is the time for this army of people to arise in the image and likeness of the Son of God. (which man was originally created in) This will be a generation that will do all that God puts in their hearts to do. It will be a people that will pay any price do whatever it takes to walk in this anointing.
