A BLESSED PENTECOST TO YOU
Dear Ones,
I began writing the following at Easter, hence the title. But a lot has happened since Easter, much of it bringing more questions than answers. And now it’s Pentecost — by the calendar at least. Of course, I don’t put much stock in the ‘religious calendar’ anyway, given its accuracy. It’s good to be reminded, and to have a handle for the world to grab onto, but I’m more interested in the reality that these celebrated events point to. As I’ve said before, what our precious Lord Jesus did, he did ONCE and FOR ALL It is an eternal reality, not an annual event. And his promised sending of the Comforter, His Holy Spirit to ‘take the things of His and make them ours’ and lead us into all truth is an ongoing and unfolding operation. But I suppose it’s good to be reminded of this at least annually because, though Easter still gets lots of press, most of Christendom seems to live as if Pentecost never happened — or that its reality only applied to those who were living at the time. So here goes…
EASTER IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS
Though many Easters have come and gone through the years, blurred by time into one celebration, this is one we’ll remember for years to come — if there are, indeed, years to come.
A deadly virus has spread across the world like wildfire — a tiny organism that ostensibly traveled from one obscure animal in one obscure marketplace in China and spread across the globe, carrying death and fear in its wake, closing down cities and economies.
We are in lockdown.
For over four years we have suffered the hue and cry of those who would ‘Make America Great Again’. Well, as the admonition goes, “Be careful what you wish for.” To become truly great is to become the servant of all. That is America’s destiny. And that requires humility. That one tiny organism seems to be making America humble again. America — and Italy and Spain and Great Britain and France are on their knees, as we soon shall be too.
And that’s a good place to be.
And this is where our only real hope lies — not in more respirators and facemasks, but in God alone. They are but man’s feeble attempts to mitigate the problem in the energy of the flesh. Perhaps that’s why why this possible blessing in disguise has come upon us. Everyone has been given a ‘time out’ and sent to their room — without sports, without concerts or parties, without golf, without travel or restaurant dining… without church even — to think about their lives and how warped their priorities may have become without Christ at the very centre of them. And in this great void surely many are pausing between the bombardment of conflicting fear reports to consider the big question, “What is the meaning of life, anyway?”, or more pointedly, “What is the meaning of my life?”
I recently watched one of my favourite movies, Restoration (1995). It is set in the 1660’s after Charles II was restored to the English Throne ending 11 years of Oliver Cromwell’s bleak Puritan rule. It was called the Age of Restoration, an era of scientific discovery, artistic exploration and considerable decadence, as well as a time of natural disasters and archaic medical practices. Science was pitted against superstition. Against this background the movie tells the story of a gifted, but hedonistic young physician named Robert Merivel (Robert Downey Jr.) and his journey through the light and dark of those times. Appointed to the King’s court as a physician to his dogs after healing his favourite spaniel, he gets carried away by the decadence surrounding him and through his foolishness and disobedience is banished from the estate the king has given him, just as the black plague threatens the British Isles. Like the times it is set in, the movie somewhat raw in places, but it is a beautiful story of redemption, as circumstances force him to return to London, where he finds the plague in full swing and steps up as a physician to help overturn archaic practices like quarantining the well together with the sick — until the great fire comes along and wipes out the plague, along with much of London.
But there was one memorable scene the Spirit brought to mind for me as the Coronavirus first approached our shores and prompted me to watch this magnificently filmed movie once again. It was when the king relieved Robert of his estate for disobeying his orders — giving him this stern warning: “The plague is coming, Merivel. And the plague rouses men from their sleep.”
That’s the line that I heard in my spirit that day.
We have been roused from our sleep. Everyone. Things we once took for granted, such as freedom of movement, a steady income, food on the table, a roof over our heads, we take for granted no more. We are rethinking our priorities and how we spend our time. None of this took God by surprise, and He is using it mightily to wake people. And clearly, He is ‘shaking everything that can be shaken’.
Someone recently sent me a prophecy, reportedly given to David Wilkerson (founder of Teen Challenge, pastor of Times Square Church, author of The Cross and the Switchblade, etc. ) in 1986:
“I see a plague coming on the world, and the bars, churches and government will shut down. The plague will hit New York City and shake it like it has never been shaken. The plague is going to force prayer-less believers into radical prayer and into their Bibles, and repentance will be the cry from the man of God in the pulpit. And out of it will come a third Great Awakening that will sweep America and the world.”
Well, if a thousand years is as a day (2 Peter 3:8), then we are well into the Third Day since Christ’s resurrection, spoken of in Hosea 6:1-2 and the Seventh Day since Adam.
Hosea’s words sound like a clarion call in these momentous times:
Come and let us return unto the Lord: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.
We could be on the verge of our longed for ‘Holy Spirit Reformation’ and it behooves us to be watchful.With most churches closed and only virtual services available for instruction and worship, many are finding that it’s not enough to satisfy their inner hunger for relationship. May this be a time when many come to a new and living relationship with our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. But even more importantly, may it be a time for those who have already entered into that relationship to know Him as their life in His resurrection power and operate fully as His light in this ever-darkening world.
For there has long been a hidden virus in the world and in mankind far more dangerous, elusive and sinister than the Coronavirus. A virus that has been passed down from the first Adam on — SIN. It’s main characteristic is total self-centredness, as demonstrated in the recent absurd toilet paper wars. It has been responsible for the rise of narrow self-interest between nations and states as they seek to secure their own safety instead of co-ordinating and mobilizing efforts for the common good. It is claimed that his peculiarly human virus was responsible for an estimated 50-60 million deaths, mostly civilian, during the Second World War alone.
And there’s only one cure, only one antidote for this deadly and pervasive virus. God has already made that provision — the saving life of Christ alone. He is the antidote. He is the vaccine.
Just as the body produces its own antibodies to fight infection and disease, the Body of Christ needs to rise up with the only solution to the real plague — a revival-producing Holy Spirit Reformation. We don’t need more respirators. We need more early church type healing, raising from the dead kind of faith as a witness to His resurrection power and presence in the world. We need to know not only that Easter power of His Resurrection, but the power that flows from His Ascension — the power of Pentecost — that blessed outpouring and infilling of the Holy Spirit, given as a sign that the Lord of Glory had not only risen, but had ascended to His throne at the right hand of the Father, from where He was destined to rule as King of Kings and Lord of Lords… and we seated there with him through the promise of His outpoured Holy Spirit. (Eph. 2:6)
I’ve always liked Watchman Nee’s illustration of the royal chariot that Joseph sent to pick up his father Jacob in famine-stricken Canaan and bring him to his side — a place of safety and provision in Egypt. It was a type of the Holy Spirit, being both a sign that Joseph had ascended to the throne, and the means of conveying Jacob there to his side. Jesus himself prayed that “they might be with me where I am, that they might behold my glory.” (John 17:24) We are seated there with Him in spirit, but we need a real quickening and outpouring of the Holy Spirit to make that real to us in our varying degrees of powerlessness and unbelief on the soul level where we live out His life.
Some are poised to ‘fly away’ in the face of current and future hardships in this time of great shaking and are looking for the ‘rapture’. But Jesus himself said, on his last night on earth, “I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil.” (John 17:15) Paul himself said, “I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” (Rom. 9:3) To me, that seems more attuned to the Father-heart than an “Audios amigos.”
Personally, I sense that He has been preparing us for this very moment. And personally, I feel very unprepared. But at the same time there has been an inner drive to shape up and focus on that which He has made real in my inner consciousness through these years of preparation, that I might be able to ‘give an answer for the hope (the vaccine) that is in us with meekness and fear.’ (1 Peter 3:15) With meekness and fear. To me, that sounds like we’re never going to feel adequate to the task. We were never meant to in ourselves. But He that is in us is adequate to the task. And where the Holy Spirit has gone before us to prepare hearts, he is well able to quicken us on the fly with a word in season if He has been ‘sanctified in our hearts’ and our hearts are thus focused on Him and those in need of His life within.
A Holy Spirit quickening seems to be the operative word here — both for us, and the lost. I have had a growing sense for some time now that no matter how useless, how powerless, how inept or discouraged we feel, HE could quicken us, not from the outside like those former outpourings of past movements, but by that indwelling Holy Spirit that he has placed within us — at any time, to accomplish any thing He desires. I believe that’s all it would take.
And maybe that’s where this is heading. We could be standing on the brink of the biggest rivival, the biggest turning to God the world has ever seen — a veritable Holy Spirit Reformation.
And I wouldn’t miss that for anything.
As you ‘shelter in place’, may it be ‘the secret place of the Most High’. (Psalm 91:1)
Love and blessings,
Gary
WWW.SOULSEEKINGSPIRIT.COM 