Ability of the Church to Live under Judgments – Telegraph

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.” (James 1:16)

I was pondering today what His “lights” mean and saw various translations: radiance, gleam, inner illumination, daylight—in short, all kinds of “lights.” There are so many! I thought about how even gems are called “self-colors” (Russian). This refers to color, but also to light. Some stones absorb light and then glow in the dark. There are elements on earth that always glow. What did God mean when He created this metal, this element? It is written that our Father is the Father of lights, and every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from Him.

I thank the Lord so much that God is not only in the “churched church” and that He is not only in you and me. I so thank God that God is where we never even dreamed. I thank God that God is even where we believe He cannot be. God is the Father of lights.

Remember this. And every good thing – of cat, dog, oak, apple, of mother, grandmother, grandfather, granddaughter —

—it comes from the Father of Lights. This passage of Scripture speaks of good things and of light. Evey good thing is “light.”

Imagine how many of these “goods” there are all over the planet! The planet lives solely by feeding on these “goods.” These are God’s lights. And, of course, there is the Light, one of the most fundamental Lights, which enlightens every man who comes into the world—the Light of the Scripture, the Light of God’s Word, the Light that illuminates all darkness, and He gives us life. This is both the Bread and this is the Living Water, and this is the Light without which we cannot see things right today.

Let’s turn to the Word. The first passage of Scripture is from the book of the prophet Zechariah. In the nations among which you labor, whether they be tribes, or languages, or peoples, or even tribes, this must change our preaching to them.

“And I took my staff, Favor (Beauty), and cut it in two, that I might break the covenant which I had made with all the peoples. So it was broken on that day. Thus the poor of the flock, who were watching me, knew that it was the word of the Lord. Then I said to them, “If it is agreeable to you, give me my wages; and if not, refrain.” So they weighed out for my wages thirty pieces of silver. And the Lord said to me, “Throw it to the potter”—that princely price they set on me. So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord for the potter. Then I cut in two my other staff, Bonds, that I might break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel. (Zechariah 11: 10-14).

Today I want to talk about what is written here. He says that He will take and break the staff of favor. If this was true for a certain period of Israel’s history, if God could do it once, then He can do it many times, because He can only not do what He never wants to do. And He says that He will cut it in two that He might break the covenant He made with all nations.

The question is, “What kind of covenant is that? What is this rod of favor that must be broken?” It can be broken because the Lord said He could reverse judgment if the people repented. This is how He speaks of Himself. And what is this covenant with the nations? This should change our preaching to the nations today, because it turns out that in the past, the Lord once made a covenant with all nations!

And I will add: with all means with all —Udeghe, Indians, Slavs, Africans, Mongols, northern indigenous peoples, southern indigenous peoples, Mexicans, Spaniards… When did the Lord make His covenant with you all? What happened? When? What is the Lord talking about here?

Brothers and sisters, listen! This is incredible! Do you realize what a covenant is? A covenant is God’s oath. In a covenant, God swears. He swears by Someone Higher. As the Bible says, God, having no one higher than Him, swears by Himself. That’s what a covenant is. It’s God’s oath, an oath by Himself.

When did the Lord make a covenant with all nations? We speak of God’s traces on earth, understanding that certain signs were left in ethnic groups. If we research this question in ancient times, we’ll get to the truth—in fairy tales, in folklore, we’ll find His traces. That’s true. But there’s something greater here. It speaks of a covenant. I believe the Bible. And this small passage of Scripture speaks of the covenant “which God made with all nations.” That’s why He goes on to say, “I will come and shake all nations. And then the Desire of all nations will come.” This means He will shake until the nations remember the covenant.

When you need to be sobered up, you get shaken. “Remember!” They slap on your cheeks. “Remember! Wake up! Wake up! Recognize! It is I! It is I, God!” And God will shake the nations and cry out: “It is I, God! I once made a covenant with you! I am in covenant with you! I am your God! Your God! Your God! Remember!” He writes this in the book of the prophet Haggai.

This is a powerful word today. It must change our preaching to the nations. When we go to the nations, especially to indigenous peoples, we can say, “Listen, God once made a covenant with you. Why do you worship spirits? Why have you abandoned the great God who made a covenant with you? You have betrayed Him. You have apostatized. No, this is not about Israel. Before you began worshiping spirits, God made a covenant with you.”

I want to ask the question I already asked: What is this covenant that was made with all the nations? Perhaps the covenant with Noah? When all the nations—in Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth—became the founders of a new generation on earth, a new era, after the flood. For all who had breath in their nostrils perished in the flood, and from these people the entire human race descended anew. The first world was destroyed. But God gave new life. Noah brought an offering out of the animals he had saved. The first thing he did when he was able to set foot on land was build an altar.

This is what we must do when we plant a church. This is what we must do when we move to other cities. And this is what we must do when we move to other apartments—build a spiritual altar. As soon as Noah set foot on the ground, he immediately built an altar—and a fragrance rose to heaven, smoke and fire—and the offering was burning upon that altar, and God gave a rainbow in response. And that was the covenant.

God promised that never again would the world be destroyed by water. Never. And the Lord, of course, will keep His word. Praise God for that!

Perhaps then He made a covenant with all nations? Perhaps. Or perhaps He made a covenant in Abraham when He said, “…in you all nations will be blessed,” and when, as it is written, “God made a covenant with Abraham,” and when He said, “…take a three-year-old heifer, a bird, take a goat, cut it in pieces, and lay it down.” And remember, when the birds of prey attacked, Abraham drove them away from the sacrifice. And then terror came over him, fear, as at the Cross of Calvary, and fire passed, as from a furnace, between the parts of the sacrifice, and a Voice came. God then made a covenant with Abraham and promised him descendants. All nations will be blessed in Abraham. And he is the father of all who believe. Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.

Or perhaps the covenant with the nations was in Moses, when the Ten Commandments were given on Mount Sinai so that the Gentiles would understand the will of the God of Israel, who created heaven and earth. After all, the God of Israel is God, the true God, and there is no other God. He is the true God, who created the entire universe! The only God! And whoever dares to say there is another one says a lie; another is a demon.

The Great God, who created the entire universe, the one God, is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Whatever one may say, the God of all nations is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Therefore, I certainly recommend: love the Jewish people as soon as possible. If you still have anti-Semitic sentiments and something inside you is “tossing you around,” deal with it immediately, because God will judge these things. The Scripture says that God appeared to Abraham and said, “Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation;

I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

(Genesis 12:1-3).

Therefore, whoever curses God’s people, the Jewish people, will be cursed. God said so in Scripture. I am amazed how people read the Bible and don’t see what is written there. There is a heretical doctrine, the doctrine of substitution, that God chose the Church instead of Israel. No. As Paul says: ” I say then, have they stumbled that they should fall? Certainly not! But through their fall, to provoke them to jealousy, salvation has come to the Gentiles… For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: “The Deliverer will come out of Zion, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob; for this is My covenant with them, when I take away their sins.” (Romans 11:11, 25-26).

God speaks of the covenant He made. The covenant He made with all nations. This gives me the right today to direct my preaching towards any nation. I say, “Have you forgotten?” He says, “Forgotten what?” “Guess what you’ve forgotten! The covenant!”

“What covenant? I’m not married, I have no children!” “That’s not true. You’re in the covenant, you just don’t have a ring.”

Think about this and change your message. Remind the nations of the covenant they’ve forgotten. Otherwise, God will shake. God will shake you so you’ll remember. And then you’ll say, “Oh, come, the Desired One!” Yes, His name is the Desired One. Have you forgotten His name?

And then the Lord speaks of the price they set for Him. Do you see how precise this is? Zechariah is the last prophet. How come the word “church” is present here? The church storehouse. The potter’s house. I’ve never read that the word “church” is in the Old Testament! And here it is in Zechariah: “Cast it into the church storehouse. The great price at which they valued Me.” If the Holy Spirit doesn’t reveal it, you understand nothing at all.

Glory to our Lord! Everything is written exactly as it is. Everything was fulfilled precisely.

I’ll repeat briefly: “Then I cut in two My other staff—’Bonds,’ to break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel.” What a terrible word. What do you mean, break the brotherhood between Judah and Israel? That’s it, the end. Does that mean there will now be enmity and division between the brothers? No. You made an alliance on the basis of division. And built a bridge. After the sins of Rehoboam, son of Solomon, Israel was divided for these sins. But the Lord says He will destroy this alliance. Because His will was for Israel to always be one. These bonds were wrong. And the Lord wants to break the bridge to create one people. Judah and Israel must merge.

Today, the Lord will break these bonds. He will destroy the wrong connections. He will destroy the natural ties. And He is already destroying up these broken connections so that there will be one pure Body of Christ. Glory to our God for this! Let it be so.

The Lord says: ” Once more (it is a little while) I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and dry land; and I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the Desire of All Nations, and I will fill this temple with glory,’ says the Lord of hosts.”

Yes, yes, yes, that’s great! But where do we get the money? We have to move forth all these things. And the Lord says, “The silver is Mine, and the gold is Mine.” All the gold and silver that’s in banks today, that’s in papers today—it’s all God’s gold and God’s silver. He can take it all away in a split second. Pow! And the person is gone. Pow! And an entire tribe is gone. Pow! And an entire nation is gone. Like a grain of sand, He’ll overturn the islands, and the gold will be carried away into the ocean. Remember how the tsunami carried gold into the ocean? Just like that. “It is Mine!” And He took it.

Therefore, when the Lord fulfills His will, there’s no need to worry too much about it. When a man follows His will, the Lord

will provide for him. But if you’ve stopped believing, of course, and started relying on your own strength, everything is carried away by your own efforts. You leave the Spirit, you leave the Spirit’s platform, you begin to believe in your own strength, you look at people, and of course, everything flows away. And there’s nothing left but hope in yourself. So a believer sings songs about God in church, but inside, his spirit cries out, “Trust only in yourself, the Lord is Lord, and I live within my own strength.” Don’t do that. Place all your trust in God. You do things, but trust in the Lord. And don’t abandon your faith.

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And one more message. I was praying, thinking about what to share. I believe the Lord gave such a serious, stern word about how we need to learn to live in times of judgment. You know, in the Bible there are three types of judgments when God judges people. The first is war. And when there is war in your land, it is God’s curse. This is not a casualty; it is God’s judgment. He allows war. The second judgment is famine, when the land fails to yield fruit. And the third judgment is disease, epidemics, which man cannot resist. These are also judgments.

Today, the Lord speaks these words, Ezekiel 13: “Because, indeed, because they have seduced My people, saying, ‘Peace!’ when there is no peace…”

The Church must have the ability to live inside countries that are under God’s judgments. In other words, how can one live and serve God under the weight of judgments? Because there are cheap positions today that deny that these are judgments that are happening. But we say, “These are judgments.” Others will say that we are not judged that way and teach on how to avoid judgments. No! Sometimes judgments are difficult, even impossible, to avoid, because they are not because of you, but because of the people you live in. It’s like Jeremiah’s Mantle. God judged the people of Israel and led them into Babylonian captivity not because of Jeremiah, but because of Israel. But the prophet was within Israel, and he had to learn to live under the weight of the judgments of the nation around him. This is the kind of ability I’m talking about today – live under the weight of judgments in lands judged by God.

How to live? How to serve? How to bear fruit in this time? How not to lose God’s joy, how not to lose God’s grace, living in a place where judgments prevail? We must reinforce to act in the Lord’s work. And it is written, “One builds a wall, and they plaster it with untampered mortar.” Everyone wants to build walls today. Today is the time for building walls. Everyone is isolating themselves. And they plaster it with mortar. “say to those who plaster it with untempered mortar, that it will fall. There will be flooding rain, and you, O great hailstones, shall fall; and a stormy wind shall tear it down.”

Walls, the strengthening of walls, is being done an unrighteous way.

And there is another passage in Scripture—Micah 2:8. “The people who were Mine before have risen up as an enemy. And you pull off the robe with the outer garment from those who pass by you in peace, who abhor war.”

Today, the prosperity gospel has one main point. You know these “prosperity and wealth preachers”: spirituality through wealth, the love of God through wealth. You see, this is the essence of prosperity. Today, such preachers preach that the main point of prosperity is to give in order to prosper. But this is not the main point to prosper. Prosperity is intimacy with God. You don’t play roulette, you don’t play cards, you don’t gamble with God, you don’t pay Him a price, you don’t buy a blessing with money, as prosperity teachers teach today, that the more you give, the more you receive. We don’t give in order to receive. And so it is written, “You take away the outer garment and the inner garment of those who pass by in peace, who abhor war”.

“Surely, when the wall has fallen, will it not be said to you, ‘Where is the mortar with which you plastered it? ”

Do you understand? Mud is false prophecy, and those who “plaster with it” are false prophets. The people of the world no longer believe in the “prophetic church.”

Today there is a need for true people of God. Others prophesy peace, but there is no peace. We are not fortune tellers who come to Him and receive according to our needs. We are God’s people who humbly walk before Him, striving. We may not always succeed, but simply follow Him!

Whoever you are, keep crawling, keep walking, continue serving just as you are. God chose you, knowing everything you would do, knowing all your mistakes, knowing how you would struggle. He chose you anyway. This was no accident. He knew everything that is happening to you now. And yet He chose you anyway, loved you, and today He is bringing God’s desire—your salvation—closer to hand.

If He is the Almighty God, and He desires you, believe me, He will prevail. Thank God! Otherwise, what kind of God is this? Has he defeated everyone but you?!

“Lord, I’m going to hell! My last breath, I’m about to choke on my last millimeter of air. Why couldn’t you save me? You saved everyone, but not me, because I’m the most vile, the most despicable, the most disgusting person?” Is that how you imagine it?

Why does the Lord God say this? “There will be flooding rain, and you, O great hailstones, shall fall; and a stormy wind shall tear it down. Surely, when the wall has fallen, will it not be said to you, ‘Where is the mortar with which you plastered it?’ ” Therefore thus says the Lord God: “I will cause a stormy wind to break forth in My fury; and there shall be a flooding rain in My anger, and great hailstones in fury to consume it. So I will break down the wall you have plastered with untempered mortar, and bring it down to the ground, so that its foundation will be uncovered; it will fall, and you shall be consumed in the midst of it. Then you shall know that I am the Lord.

“Thus will I accomplish My wrath on the wall and on those who have plastered it with untempered mortar; and I will say to you, ‘The wall is no more, nor those who plastered it, 16that is, the prophets of Israel who prophesy concerning Jerusalem, and who see visions of peace for her when there is no peace,’ ” says the Lord God.” (Ezekiel 13).

Do you understand? There are no daubers—the prophets of Israel. That’s what He calls them. And the plaster is false prophecy. “They spoke peace to her, when there is no peace.” Thus says the Lord.

And still there is no peace. What is a man who believes in God to do in this land, among peoples under judgment? He is to bear the burden of the judgments, like Jeremiah. We need to take on Jeremiah’s mantle.

He says God will send the Babylonian king, who will take away the temple, devastate it, and carry the people off into captivity… “Kill such one!” They were afraid, thinking, “Okay, killing a prophet, it seems, is the end of everything… Let’s put him in a pit, up to his neck in mud. And feed him poorly.”

They were afraid. Do you understand? Jeremiah then hears someone calling. They lowered the ropes, he wrapped himself in rags, they lifted him by the armpits, washed him, and said, “You were right, now we’re going to Babylon, in chains.”

– No, stop, stop, stop, quiet! Hold! Where is Jeremiah? You?

– Me.

– Here, look:  here is a street, choose any house in this street. Live here. Any house is yours. You are a prophet of God. You prophesied what happened. You are free, you are not in captivity.

This is what the Babylonians say to him.

– No. I will go with them. As I was a prophet among them, so I will remain.

And so they ask what they should do: there are no synagogues, no services. Jeremiah answers:

– Look after the welfare of the city where you are, for because of its welfare you will have peace. You will live here for seventy years. You must endure here for seventy years.

— Jeremiah, is that so? Yes, indeed. Learn to live under the burden of the judgments.

This is a good Word today. The Church must be able to live under the burden of the judgments today. This is our position.

What to do? Scripture says: “But the people who honor their God will be strong and will do exploits.” When? In the time of those who practice wickedness. The time of troubles and apostasy—but they will be in labor. Don’t wait for anything. You must act. You won’t make it waiting. You will come to poverty. You must act now!

“And those who are wise among the people will instruct many.” This is the time to gain wisdom and understanding. This is understanding and wisdom. Not as everyone else instructs, but by the true picture of what is happening. Where are we?

And where are we in the book of Revelation—who can tell? How is the revelation of the cups, seals, and trumpets unfolding?

“And in the time of their suffering they shall have some help.” Grace is not withdrawn—not for the right and the wrong.

“Many shall be joined unto them, but out of flattery.” The quality of the church of the last days is flattery. What does this mean? When people come to church not for God, but for themselves. Prayers are not directed to God. And when preachers preach this way, they maintain flattery.

“Some of them that are wise shall suffer, for their purification, for their making white against the time of the end.” Trials, purification, making white. For there is yet time before the appointed time. Suffering is an integral part of Christian teaching, the Gospel. Suffering is not an accident. Suffering is a trial, a purification, and a making white. And it is the means by which we are made white, if we do not fall into complain. And this is part of God’s process of purification. That is why Moses said that our years fly by like sound, and the best time is toil and sickness.

Don’t wait for better times. I want to warn you. They may never come. But I know one thing: if we are faithful to God, the Lord will be with us.

Our brothers received such a revelation during their persecutions. The Lord said He would lead them into bonds, because not all were pure, and He would purify them there and prepare them for the victorious Harvest. And they were shown walking through barbed wire, through prisons, and emerging into a field on a white horse. This time lasted for decades. And they lived through that time of the Soviet Apocalypse.

These are the prophetic words for our time—as strange as it may seem: “Beloved, let us love one another. For love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” This seems like a banal word in our situations. But we have decided to carry out the Lord’s work, to carry the mantle of evangelism, the mantle of peacemakers, to continue the work of mission, to prepare the church not to wait, but to act. Glory to our Lord!