A short word about manifold grace. We have to realize that the grace we experienced once manifested to us in a certain way, and it continues to manifest in different ways. Grace is like a diamond that gives its rays of radiance – one can behold and enjoy a pure diamond for hours, which was made so specially, and it’s so hard to mine, and it is very precious. Experts examine it very carefully, if there are any faults or spots or particles. If it’s pure, its price leaps up.
So the grace is like this diamond, great, grand and large, which shines with all the rainbow colors. Rainbow is the grace, which unfolds in our lives in different colors. Sometimes it reveals with the strictness of God. God’s strictness includes punishment, which is common for us all. If anyone follows God unpunished, then he is not likely a son. It is love, because it means the Father is giving His attention to you. And if you are watchful with God then you must know what punishment is.
Some preach the grace wrongly. They say, all God does is bless, He never punishes – this is a very primitive heresy, because it is written, “whom He loves, He chastens and whips”. The Lord chastens me often, and I hope He will keep chastening me to the last hour, I really want Him to chasten me, because when He is chastening me, He is drawing me closer to Him. Yes, today the chastening feels painful and uncomfortable, but after it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness. Through every chastening, if you humble yourself, the Lord makes you closer of His own. Therefore, do not regard as strange the chastening of the Lord as if something strange were happening to you, because the chastening of the Lord is a blessing. So, what I desire is not the punishment, but I desire God. And if in order to draw me closer He has to apply chastening, let Him do it. Just only so that He wouldn’t let me go from Him. David said, “Your judgments are good” – he knew that. “It is good for me that I have been afflicted, for now I keep your commands”.
Therefore, do no fear God’s chastening. I think, God expects it from us to lift up glory to Christ. What does it mean, “This is My Beloved Son, in Whom all My love is”? All of God’s, all His love was deposited in the Son.
This time I had a powerful experience. I can’t say I was scared, but your flesh, it’s just burning, it can’t endure in the presence of immortality. Mortal flesh starts to rot as soon as you take the spirit out of it, it gives bad smell and corrupts into ashes. In an instance human body becomes a corpse. Even if it’s your dear one, you feel pushed away, because it’s death, he is not there anymore, the face of death is horrible.
So flesh can’t endure, when this immortality is coming, coming from afar, but you feel this tsunami impending, it is inevitable. It is coming with huge power, carrying the inevitability of the pressure of the glory.
This is the way the Kingdom is coming, do you understand? The Universe is trembling – so the Kingdom is coming, in great power. The heavens will roll down like a scroll, the earth and all works on it shall sparkle like paper and shall burn. All the Materia shall burn, the heavens shall roll down like a scroll; all the elements, those cosmic winds, comets, asteroids with the planets – all these shall burn. The heavens being on fire shall dissolve, and the elements shell melt with fervent heat (2 Peter 3:12) And the earth and all works on it shall burn. Only the unshakable shall remain.
Today we hear very little of this, because one has to be accurate while speaking of this, and also speak with love, because this is the way how we shall enter the immortality. And the flesh shall not endure.
So the Kingdom is coming with the glory. And even John fell as if dead, he was a faultless disciple, whom Jesus loved, to whom He spoke those words, which other disciples understood as he would never die. The Lord entrusted him His mother from the cross, and I think John did it all very well, when Mary was in his care.
And there he meets his beloved Teacher, at whose bosom he leaned, and falls like a dead man. What I s this? He is still alive, he isn’t in the eternity yet. He is in the vision, he is taken in the vision, his spirit is in his flesh, and he falls like a dead man, he can’t control himself.
So this is the experience when you are shaken like a leaf, you can’t control yourself because you are a leaf in the storm wind – you can’t pull yourself together, can’t return to your senses, this is impossible, because you are on the edge of life and death, on the edge of the transition.
And suddenly comes Jesus, and He brings you peace and protection, He brings entire covering and safety. And you think, “I have not known anything about this. This is what You are like, Jesus”. This is what Jesus does – can you imagine? He is the Intercessor, He is the Savior. He is the Savior from the inevitable, because no flesh can endure in God’s presence. It is impossible to see God and stay alive.
And He lifts up the weight of the guilt from you! He comes not simply to protect you, but He removes from your spirit, from your heart, from your soul this mountain, which was pressing on you, and you didn’t even know it.
I started breathing! I started walking in the hotel room, breathing!!! What is this with me? Have I been living under the burden? This is impossible? Have I been living with a mountain on my spirit? I preached and did all other things…
I couldn’t get, it is impossible to explain what was happening, but through the Word and your intuition you understand that something gets accumulated in man, making layers. Many of us live under fear…
And… JESUS… you start speaking His name, because it becomes sweet. It is Him doing this, Jesus is doing this – do you understand? He takes this mountain of sin, mountain of guilt from you; He removes this mountain of darkness, and you go ahhh taking a deep breath. What is after this? – LIVE!!!
I woke up the next morning, and it was the same – deep breath and no mountain, do you understand? As if my back bone became different as well, and you breathe differently. And you think, “Lord! This is Christ! I didn’t know He did this”.
What’s now? Is this it? Now I am all Yours.
And your routine returns. But as David writes this: “And you’ve removed the guilt of my sin”. David the king, who is on the throne, who is the sweet singer of Israel, says, “When I acknowledged my sin to you and said, I will confess my sins to the Lord, and You removed the guilt of my sin. For this shall every one that is godly pray to you in a time when You may be found”.
Pray, brothers and sisters, now, in the time when He may be found.
Christ, the high priest of the good things to come, is the Intercessor of the New Covenant, He is the Savior of His own people, He is the One who intercedes for us before the Heavenly Father. I wonder what Christ says to the Father about me.
This is such a mystery. But when you encounter with the eternity – this is always stirring – you shall be given a white stone, not a black one, though some will be given a black one. You don’t know if it’s white or black, you stretch your hand, and if it’s white, there will be a name which no man knows, except the one who receives it and who gives it, the stone of salvation. But to some He will say, “I never knew you, go away from Me”.
Brothers and sisters, I want to address us really seriously, so as we can be truly confident whether we are saved or not. This is so serious. I don’t want to persuade you that you are saved. I want to inspire you, that you may find it with God, whether you are saved or not. Do you think you will get saved for going to church? No, I don’t think this is enough. Because when that fear with its immortality comes near you, those things don’t matter at all. What matters is where you stand, who you are when you are naked. When you fall on your face before Him, and all those Scripture places come to your mind, and you realize that this Inevitability still gives time to you, like you can go and get dressed and bring yourself in order before the Angels. But this Inevitability is growing with the power of a million tsunami, which smashes all things and burns all things on its way! The immortality is coming towards you.
And you think, “Lord, Have You come to me?” This is very serious.
Find yourselves in the eternity, so that you are confident that you are saved. I think without this confidence it is very difficult to rejoice, to be happy. You keep looking back not sure whether the Father have accepted you or not, and it is difficult to speak about God’s love, because in order to speak freely of God’s love you have to be confident in your salvation.
Yes, the preachers persuade that we are all saved. But we do not know the lives. I don’t know how greedy you are, how much you lie, how impure and unrighteous you are, how filthy you are in regard of morals – I don’t know. But God knows. And you are in church… These are serious things. Perhaps that little lie that you allow every day would be enough not to accept you – I don’t know.
I know that Christ saves, but it has to be personal, that He comes to you.
So, I was thinking, Lord, You have removed such a mountain off me. And you keep taking the deep breath and can’t have enough. You breathe the Holy Spirit.
Can you imagine? – VISITATION…
And we can be supernatural beings on this earth, or we can be carnal people, who are always miserable, defeated and simply carnal. Sons and daughters who are permanently ill with weakness – why live so? Why believe so?
But I want to say it to any of us today: If you are still breathing, there’s a way out, a way to be set free and enter in Christ.
Religious people have even more difficult situation – they judge others, they have decided that they have a right to judge others. Suddenly they decided they have a right to evaluate another person. I think their feet are deeper into hell than any other, because they are cruel. They don’t appreciate the love of Christ, they neither accept it themselves nor let others accept.
True people of God – if you want to test them – are kind. But ungodly people are cruel. Using God’s word they can offer sacrifices, they can make some moves, but there’s no love with them, there’s no face of God, smile of God, kindness of the Lord. Therefore, watch carefully that you don’t judge your neighbor, when you evaluate him. Hold to the light, run to the light, hold to the people of light. Walk before God, delve into God’s will and revelation; delve into your own paradise, find your own paradise, so that this paradise is within you, and you are happy in it.
Do not depend on man. Who are you that you put a man on your head? Why do you need a man on your head? Get free! Christ is our head.
This is an amazing life with the Lord, which I started over thirty years ago. What I was captured by is that I could love Christ with all my strength, and there are no limits to that! I can praise you infinitely! On my knees, in the nights, run up the mountains, do it when no one can see. There’s no limit to my love, it can even be insane. Incredible freedom and infinity in love. I was overwhelmed that He had given me this access to a boundless sacrifice to Him.
Years went by, when I realized I was becoming already an engineer of the church, chief builder or architect, chief supply man, mechanic, staff manager, guard, teacher etc. All those roles wouldn’t fit in me. I recently mentioned to brothers that I dream to become a foolish man, so that I finally could so decrease into the bliss that I could walk like a foolish one and speak only about Jesus.
Your mind stands in the way, it really does, especially sober mind.
I want to stay in this, like John did – John kept his John’s childhood.
Imagine you could see Christ down the walk way, in His crown of thorns, walking slowly, bleeding… What would we do with Him? Many people in church wouldn’t know what to do. Many wouldn’t rush to Him, this is amazing, but many wouldn’t move from their place, they would wait till others help. Some would go to watch what others were doing – you can see yourself there. Some of you know for sure you wouldn’t rush to Him, you would rather watch others do things.
Some would rush to Him indeed. And what would you do when you rushed?
“And he brought forth the king’s son and put the crown on him, and gave him the testimony; and they made him king, and anointed him, and they clapped their hands, and said, God save the king!” (2Kings 11:12)
What would we do with Christ? It probably has to be done with a brother or a sister, as we are now for one another, just the way we are, we didn’t choose one another. Some are always guests, others watch around. But what if we all saw Christ now – what would we do with Him?
Here’s Him standing. Some would rush, some would make it harder for Him touching His wounds one shouldn’t touch causing Him pain, some would go on their knees while He needed help; but some would watch from aside thinking what to do. Yes, this is Christ, but I’ve lived far from Him, and I am far now – such would keep going and watching from a distance, not desiring to get closer.
This is the way we live, the way we walk.
Let us make a shift. Let us shift our hearts towards Christ! This is all living thing! He is the Living Lord! This is the most delightful thing man can have – this is Christ with us Emmanuel, God is with us.