The tension continues building between the prophetic intercessions of God’s people for deliverance from society’s wicked tyranny and that tyranny’s increasing able defiance of all those prayers and decrees. The more the intercessors intercede and the prophets decree, the worse everything gets for us as God’s chosen people. What’s wrong with this picture?

The answer is, nothing is wrong with this picture. The only thing wrong is our failure to rightly divide the prophetic pattern of the time in which we live. The true prophetic pattern that accurately depicts our time in the world is the pattern of the exodus. Now we have written much about this before (as in here, and here, and here) but must continue doing so as time passes and the intensity builds, so as to encourage those on the edge of losing their faith because of it.

We want to step back and understand some broad realities that preceded and proceeded from the exodus. Those realities are obscured because of the romantic way our eyes read Old Testament stories and the way Hollywood re-portrays them. When we read these stories (and teach the dumbed-down Sunday School versions to our children) or watch the Charlton Heston movie versions, all we ever look at is the glory that operates behind the story as we are privileged to see it after the fact—all from the comfort of our middle-class bedrooms and surround-sound basement theaters. We never read these stories from the ground in real time under the conditions they were actually experienced, without the privilege of seeing the hidden glory. From there, we then pray and prophesy our romantic glory visions of the past story onto the present reality and wonder why there is no “presto change-o” in what we see happening—only the opposite.

So let’s strip away the starry-eyed glory vision and look at the reality as it actually took place on the ground. This we must do with the entirety of God’s dealings with Israel from before the exodus to every step through and out of it—all the way to and through the takeover of the Promised Land. The truth is this:

The story of God’s liberational dealings is a story of endurance that carried His people from one brink-of-death experience to another. Freedom only ever came as a result of such endurance. And when it came, it only produced more hardship under a new responsibility to be endured. In the midst of all that endurance, there was no experiential “glory.” Everything was under pressure, even when God’s glory was manifesting itself. (You couldn’t “bask” in the pillar of fire.) This is because everything about liberation and exodus is about birthing, and all birthing is hard (see Ex. 4:22 with Rev. 12:1-2). Any restful experiential glory only came after the endurance required for reaching each deliverance point was complete and after any new liberational responsibility was subsumed into the psyche. Again, this was the reality every step of the way out of Egypt and beyond.

It’s from this vantage that we must grasp what is happening now as we yearn for deliverance from this society and hope to keep that expectation alive. God has indeed heard our groanings in “Western Egypt.” But eye has not seen nor ear heard what He has prepared for us in the Land of Promise and true Liberation. Israel had no idea what Canaan was like before they got there. They only had an imaginative memory of what Egypt had been like under the more favorable times of Joseph. Any idea of liberation they could have had then was to go back to those times. (Sound familiar?)

But even Egypt under Joseph was not truly what their imaginations remembered it to be, and in any case, Egypt was never their place of destiny. The only reason Israel was in Egypt to begin with was to evade a famine, the deeper reason for which was to allow Canaanite wickedness to develop to the fullness necessary to justify God’s evicting those people from there. (See how God's requirement for mature waiting unto inheritance is synchronized to His requirement for ripeness of evil unto its removal. If the wicked haven't yet been destroyed, it's because our own maturity also has not been completed.)

What does this mean for us here on terra firma now, the place of our earthly dwelling—especially in North America and the West? Whether we view our estate from the prophetic perspective of “leaving Egypt” or of “taking Canaan,” the truth is harmonious:

On one hand, the land wherein we dwell now is not our final destiny. It must be given up altogether for our true heavenly glorified land. Yet for those for whom this land will remain their immortal “Promised Land” into the kingdom age, it cannot be so until its wickedness has reached complete measure to justify God’s extermination of it in sync with their own proven maturity to be able to steward it. (If the reader does not understand the difference between glorified heavenly immortality and earthly immortality to come, please study Bro. Earl’s prophetic revelations found here and here.)   

In all cases, we must endure God’s dealings with the wickedness of “Western Egypt” (which will never go back to something it never was) and otherwise we must endure waiting for God’s dealings with “West Canaan’s” evil (which must first come to full term) before we can enjoy either liberation or possession. We must meanwhile see that God’s glory remains at work behind the multiplication of the evil and of faith’s hardships between which we are trapped. (That increase of wickedness actually signifies the answering of our prayers, not God’s ignoring of them.)

As pertains specifically to mainstream intercessors and prophets, we must understand the deep quandary faced as they keep watching their decrees of “imminent turnaround” and “restoration” keep blowing up. God has come to penetrate these movements with very searching eyes to divide the false from the sincere but carnal. To the degree the visions of the carnal are real, these must accept that their visions will not be fulfilled on the terms of the past, without the fullness of iniquity coming to its harvest or unto eliminating all this pressure necessary to birth us into the next realm. Their visions will only come to pass on glorified terms not yet revealed. For this, they must let the Lord bring them to the cross. Meanwhile, all the fanciful visions of those whose prime motive is to preserve their own welfare in this world will fail.

Therefore know that the pressure attending our salvation will continue to a climax point known only to God. Until that point, we will be making more bricks with less straw while tasting God’s plagues on the culture. After we are “let go,” we will be led to precipices of death-defying faith amidst new responsibility. And even on crossing the Jordan, we will be killing off every last Canaanite standing in the way of restful inheritance. (We will be laboring to enter our rest.) No prophecy or intercession now will change God’s mind on this pattern. Yet God’s glory remains in directive force behind all! We have been heard.

So where is our encouragement then?? Our takeaway for encouragement is this: It is the glory within us by which God means to perfect and sustain our journey to the final restful freedom for which we groan. The inner glory defies all the external evil carried out under God’s watchful action concerning us. The inner glory enables us to pass all the tests. And in the end, it is from the inside out that our manifest deliverance into the glorious freedom and rest of the sons of God will be realized. It’s only a question of…

Can we stay true to that inner glory for enduring this exodus?

Yes, I believe we can. Moses could. Aaron could. Joshua could. Caleb could.

Why not us?

 

Chris Anderson

First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org

11/23

       

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