2011: GOING THE DISTANCE

January 17, 2011

Another new year and decade begins with First Love Ministry, as it does with all of you. In a moment, we’ll share some encouragement and comments on what is ahead. But first, I want to extend a warm welcome to several new Circle readers the Lord as brought our way to share fellowship together. Today we want to greet John H. from Australia, Ron W. and Philip M. from the Northeastern US, and also sister Janell from the South. Welcome to all of you! May you be blessed and edified together with all of us as we keep pressing into the Lord’s revelation for our time.

In an article to immediately follow this New Year greeting, I am going to share with you a very large picture of where I feel the Lord is taking this ministry over the next years. We are living in a time of exceedingly great movements and shifts in God’s revelation of Himself and His purposes. Older less complete prophetic paradigms are in process of being exceeded and outgrown. In the major article to follow, I will share the emerging understanding of “stewardship salvation” the Lord is coalescing in me as the outgrowth of 23 years of this ministry.

But first, I just want to offer some words of encouragement in the ongoing saga of your own journey. Times are tough for many of us in the discipleship community. People who have given their all to live for the Father have paid some steep prices this last year and are still enduring uncertainty and hardship. Some of you have seen loved ones suddenly taken. Some have endured economic deprivation. Some have passed through serious accidents or illness. I do not know but what some readers I have not heard from may have already been taken by the Lord beyond the veil over the last year. And for those of you who remain, I am impressed by the Spirit to say that this may be your last year also on the mortal side of the veil. For in all the new changes of the Lord, there is also a changing of the guard that is occurring.  

For those of us continuing to long endure in waiting under the hope of precious promises made still without fruit, wondering if we can still make it, the Lord has a song of encouragement to begin your year. This song was not written as a worship song, but to the prophetic ear it is a song of the victor in Christ. As the Lord gave it to me prophetically for encouragement, so I give it to you. I believe it is just a taste of the new worship music to come by which the “New Gentiles” will find their new identity and place in the emerging kingdom of God. Many “secular” songs will be prophetically overtaken by the coming move of God in this way. 

I have provided the words to the song below and hyperlinked to the song file here. If you can, I really encourage you to listen through headphones to take in the fullness of the song’s spiritual impact (do not watch it on a video or relate it to the movie). As you absorb the music, see yourself in this aspiring victor’s shoes approaching the cloud of witnesses and the arms of the Lord. Your soul will be truly stirred and inspired to “Go the Distance.”

See you on the other side…  

 

GO THE DISTANCE (1997)

Songwriters: Alan Menken, David Zippel

Performer: Michael Bolton

 

I have often dreamed of a far off place

Where a hero's welcome would be waiting for me

Where the crowds will cheer when they see my face

And a voice keeps saying this is where I'm meant to be

 

I'll be there some day

I can go the distance

I will find my way if I can be strong

I know every mile will be worth my while

When I go the distance

I'll be right where I belong.

 

Down an unknown road to embrace my fate

Though that road may wander, it will lead me to You

And a thousand years would be worth the wait

It might take a lifetime, but somehow I'll see it through

And I won't look back

I can go the distance

And I'll stay on track

No, I won't accept defeat

It's an uphill slope, but I won't lose hope

Till I go the distance and my journey is complete

 

But to look beyond the glory is the hardest part

A hero's strength is measured by his heart

 

Like a shooting star, I will go the distance

I will search the world

I will face its harms

I don't care how far

I can go the distance

Till I find my hero's welcome waiting in Your arms.

([music:] for the Bible tells me so...) 

**********

I will search the world

I will face its harms

Till I find my hero's welcome waiting in Your arms.

 

2011: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
Announcing the Imminent Arrival of  Stewardship Salvation


We are all on a journey none of us has ever taken before. As our journey proceeds across time, we gain greater perspective on where we have been and where we are headed. The longer the journey, the greater the perspective. As the understanding of our past increases, so does the understanding of our future.

This is especially true for a prophetic teaching ministry like First Love Ministry. Over time, the various revelations shared, each like a star in its first moment of brilliance, come to form a discernable “spiritual constellation.” Constellations paint larger pictures of the heavens and are used for navigation around the world. Today I want to share with you of a constellation I have begun seeing out of the stars of truth released through this ministry since its launch some 23 years ago. With it, we will navigate forward into what til now (2011) has been uncharted sea.

 

Stars in the Constellation

Since this ministry began in 1987, certain individual themes have appeared which are now coming together into a single shape that I believe defines the Lord’s purpose for this ministry in this era. Over time, the themes have required adjustment as perception grows and is perfected, but still remain true. Following are themes from this ministry past now coalescing into a unified whole for prophetically guiding us into the next phase of church history: 

·        Salvation is fundamentally a conversion to and a purification of an entirely new identity in Christ apart from all inherited family, national and racial identity in this world. True prophecy ministers to that identity separation and purification. False prophecy (i.e., “culture prophecy”) reinforces inherited identity and its worldly alignments. 

·        Translation (glorification) is the ultimate manifestation of our completed harvested salvation and occurs in conjunction with the Return of the Lord. It is typified as a great birthing from within the womb of the church and referred to as the “manifestation of the sons of God.” 

·        A third dimension of salvation beyond new birth and the sanctifying-anointing baptism of the Spirit is still to come before the translation. This salvation is from the “collective works of the world”—that is, deliverance from the world economic system as we now know it. Though it is before glorification, this salvation occurs close to it.  

·        A “next revelation” of Christ is coming to a people found largely outside the historic enclaves of the institutional church. This revelation too precedes and is separate from the fullness of His second coming, though the two develop closely together. But it will involve an entire changeover in the way we now relate to the Lord through the scriptures and the Holy Spirit—similar to the way the apostolic church superseded the Law. 

·        A call is upon us to a new dimension of kingdom responsibility in anticipation of the fully manifest kingdom the Lord is to inaugurate at His Return. And while the global commercial beast system is already here, and is approaching its final manifestation, victory over this beast is not only possible for the prepared, but the development of the new Kingdom order is and will take place under its nose “in the desert” where it will be protected from destruction. 

These key themes are beginning to gel for me into a single constellation for guidance into the future. This gelling is occurring against the backdrop of 1) my own family’s decades-long quest to become established in a home base, 2) the massive deterioration of the western economic system, and 3) the nearly complete “fizzling” of the American culture-prophetic movement.

 

&&&&&&&&&& 

So then, in this light, how do I answer the question, “Where is First Love Ministry and where are we as the church going from here?” Let me give you a condensed picture of what I am now seeing for the future…. 

 

Economy: The Bottom Line of World Consciousness

While wars and political intrigues will continue to develop, and natural calamities will also increase, and while all this will occur along with more technological change, the one constant about the future will be the reference point by which all the world makes its ultimate appeals for actions. It is the appeal to money—to the commercial system, to economics and to budgets.

No political event or natural calamity—no war, famine or plague—will outshine the universal reference point of commercial economy, and every event and calamity will simply be used to bring the world back to it even more deeply, commttedly, slavishly. All legislation will ultimately reference money. And so will all sense of “morality.”

Everything in fact already is about money. It doesn’t take a seer to see this or a prophet to proclaim it. I know it. You know it. The church knows it. The world knows it. Everything in this life—i.e., every practical function—ultimately boils down to the money. (“What’s this going to cost? Show me the money!”) But few realize the depths to which the world has been commercialized and its resources monetized—including you and me.

The fact is that all signed legal documentation either has been or is capable of being converted to money (known as a “monetary instrument”); and all human labor and every human identity in the world has already been commercialized through such documentation under the global financial system—all of which you probably know next to nothing about. And all of this has been in effect for about 80 years now. No one is “free” under this commercial system. No one.  Everyone is already a commercial slave.

The present system has been developing ever since satan was tried and convicted of conducting an illegal counterfeit trade war in heaven (Ezekiel 28) whence, being cast out of heaven, he imported his false commercial system into the earth upon the sin of Adam, establishing his first world base at Babylon under Nimrod (Gen. 11). But that is too big to go into here. (Please see the treatise Flight from Babylon for more on the historical development of spiritual and commercial Babylon.)

 

The Church in Bondage 

What matters to us is that the church is obviously included and captivated inside this world system of economic slavery. And we’re talking about the people who are supposed to be the only truly “free” people in the whole earth. This slavery does not recognize our “freedom in Christ.” It instead mocks it! 

Please get this clear. This slavery is beyond what we all understand now about the problems with “money in the church.” It’s beyond false prosperity teaching, the rampant “begging” for money from the pulpits and the prostitution of churches into “legal entities” for tax purposes. 

The truth is that all of us as believers, whether individually or collectively as churches, are subject to the theft and commercialization of our labor and identities, and to a debt system of “fiat” (made-out-of-nothing) money owned and controlled by an elite world banking class descended straight from the occult. And most of us are indebted to the hilt to this legally enforced banking system through its “lines of credit” and “loans” and “mortgages.” And the church is utterly blind to this, conducting all its “kingdom ministry” inside the jail cell of this system. 

 

Where is Our Salvation? 

What a picture this paints for us! “Slaves in Egypt.” That’s what we all are. That’s all our salvation amounts to when it comes to the world commercial system. We may have been saved by grace from the penalty of sin. We may have been saved from the power of sin by the sanctifying infusion of the Holy Spirit (or we may not!). We may have partaken of the numerous anointings of the healing, deliverance, Pentecostal, charismatic and prophetic movements of the last 130 years (or we may not!). 

But when it comes to money, to the world, and to our relationship to the world’s debt systems of finance, where is our salvation? What has our gospel produced for us? 

The fact that what we have obtained in Christ to this generation has not even scratched the surface of the world system, and the fact that the global commercial system is now so ubiquitous as to be inescapable by even the most die-hard Christian retreat survivalist should tell us something about where God is with His People at this hour just ahead of His fully manifest Return. 

 

What Is the Spirit Saying to the Last Generation Church? 

So what’s the Spirit saying through all this? The Spirit is saying that there is an incredible unforeseen dimension of salvation to be obtained by us that directly affects our relationship to the world commercial system. And when I say “salvation,” I’m not talking about another “gift of the Spirit” such as the sporadic “gift of faith.” I’m not just talking about another “anointing” for some “power” or “manifestation.” Nor am I talking about just another “stage of growth” in spiritual maturity.  

I’m speaking to something that is germane to our new kingdom identity in Christ and must be obtained through the same radical breakthrough power of the cross that saves us from sin’s penalty (the “works of the devil”) and from sin’s power within us (the “works of the flesh”). I’m saying there is a dimension of salvation from sin that saves us from the control of our souls by the world commercial system (the “works of the world”). That control upon the souls of all men is described in Revelation 18: 

11 And the merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over [Babylon], for no one buys their merchandise anymore: 12 merchandise of gold and silver, … 13 … and bodies and souls of men. 

Let’s be honest for a moment. I know of no one, myself included, who really knows how to live continuously by simple oblivious faith when it comes to finance related concerns. I’ve known of no one who as a lifestyle in the spirit could walk in totally undisturbed poise as our Lord did when faced by finance-related pressure—no matter how determined otherwise one might be to unaffectedly “live by faith.” For every soul it has always been at most a “struggle” and at least an “issue.” 

Everywhere one can turn to look, any time there is or has been an issue of financial lack, someone needs “prayer” about it. They need “prayer” because it is a “concern.” It is a “concern” because we have not been “saved” from an underlying subconscious adamic psyche that is attached to our sense of financial provision and well being. That psyche keeps us in bondage to the love of money. No, it is the love of money. There is an intrinsic “love of money” within a yet unredeemed sector of our souls—a “love” defined by an unshakable fear, concern, anxiety and need consciousness regarding our provision in this life. 

I am persuaded however that there is such a realm of salvation awaiting the church, a realm in which the subconscious psyche tied to financial need awareness and which interfaces with the world commercial system is breakable out of our souls, and must be broken out of us in order to proceed to final translation. It is also critical to the development and revelation and receiving of the new kingdom economy that is to be established in the earth in harmony with the Lord’s Return. 

 

Unanticipatability 

Prior to the release of a new dimension of salvation in the earth, it is almost impossible to imagine it and what it must be like. This is clearly seen in the various restorations of salvation over the last 500 years. Before Martin Luther came along, except for a very hidden stream of scattered people here and there, nobody could conceive of the idea of justification by faith alone. 

Later, not until Wesley could people conceive of that further work of salvation which we today freely refer to as the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. True, there were isolated minor outbreaks over the centuries of people experiencing these realms before they were restored to the church at large, but such people were not believed. And this goes for all the various specific types of manifestations of the Spirit—for healing, for tongues, for deliverance, for prophecy etc. that have been restored ever since. 

Likewise, who can now conceive of salvation from the root psyche tied to the consciousness of lack and provision? Who of us can imagine a dimension wherein we truly and literally “take no thought” for what we shall eat or what we shall wear (Mt. 6)? Yes, there are those rare isolated testimonies of saints who may have been able to walk in this, but who of us truly walks in it, and does so as a permanent way of life? 

 

Previewing the New Salvation 

What then does this next dimension of salvation look like? How can it be described? Is it describable? 

Before a new dimension of salvation is released to the church, many questions remain unanswered, and certain truths seem irreconcilable. Anyone familiar with the restoration history of the baptism of the Holy Spirit will know that innumerable questions about seemingly irreconcilable manifestations of the Spirit’s ways had to be worked out over many many decades. (For the reconciliation of such questions and truths, please see the treatise The Transformation and the Anointing.) 

Similarly now, prior to the coming salvation from money-consciousness, there are irreconcilable understandings and teachings regarding poverty and prosperity. We can see how God has led His people both into poverty and prosperity. We can see this in the scriptures. We can see it in real life. But we can’t seem to reconcile any of it into a workable saving lifestyle in Christ. 

We forever labor over how much is “right” for us to “have.” Is it right to “own” anything? “How much” must I “give away” of what I “have?” What is “right” to have because it is useful for the gospel and what is “ok” to have just because it brings me a certain pleasure and delight? Is it ever right to “borrow” anything? How much should I “pray” for my finances, and how much should I “confess” for, and how much should I just pretend not to think about it?? Should I “wait on God” for the provision or does God want me to “ask someone” for financial help or find a way to “earn” it or be willing to “borrow” it?.... 

An oppressive psyche afflicts us forming the endless morass of these questions. And even though we may come to wise spiritual conclusions about “being led by the Spirit” in each situation, the truth is we don’t ever get free from the morass itself and the need to deal with the same questions time and time again on different levels and in different situations. 

And all the while, we remain as slaves in Egypt under the world commercial system. We are under constant pressure and provocation of perceived need to make finance-based decisions that compromise our core convictional identity values in Christ. 

 

Stewardship Salvation: The End of Poverty / Prosperity Consciousness 

Despite our plight in the present and our inability to imagine a future free from “money consciousness,” I believe there are some things about the coming salvation the Lord is able to tell us and wants us to know. 

What I have come to see thus far is that the key saving power the Lord will internally release to us through the next salvation is the power for the consciousness of divine stewardship. An internal power for the consciousness of divine stewardship will totally evict and displace our adamic consciousness of money and need for provision. Because of this, I am choosing to refer to this next realm of salvation as “stewardship salvation.” 

The Lord has much to say about stewardship in His parables. We are all familiar with these. And to the best degree that we can, we try to inculcate principles of good stewardship into our lives. But the stewardship salvation to come will not be about principles. It will be about internal life that has displaced the deep engrained soulish consciousness of material need and provision. 

Once stewardship salvation is restored to the body of Christ, it will reduce to irrelevance the polarizing questions regarding poverty versus prosperity / poor versus rich that have historically plagued both the church and the world. In the big picture, stewardship salvation will eliminate the debates over economic theories that drive all human politics. It will do this because it will eliminate all the issues fundamental to human economy. 

Under this new salvation, consciousness of divine stewardship will totally replace the idea of personal ownership. We will see a new manifest sharing of goods and services come forth among the Lord’s people, similar to what is seen in the early book of Acts. It will entirely upstage the competing world economic theories of capitalism and socialism. A new class of covenantal trust relationships will come into being similar to the present legal concept of the trust. 

On the personal level, stewardship salvation will eliminate the internal angst and weight that descend on us over those “significant” financial decisions we must make. We will be free from all the nagging questions that arise in all situations that expose apparent lack, especially those where we appear to be parting with our last piece of provision. Possession or lack thereof will become a non-issue to us. 

The atmosphere attending stewardship salvation is the power by which we will at last see the yoke of the beast commercial system broken off the church. For the beast’s only power to afflict the church regarding her ability to buy and sell is found through the church’s subjection to the adamic money consciousness. When the salvation from that consciousness arrives, the beast will have no more power to haunt and threaten us as it does to this day. This salvation will in fact fulfil the meaning of the victory in Rev. 15:2, 

And I saw something like a sea of glass mixed with fire, and those who had been victorious over the beast and his image and the number of his name, standing on the sea of glass, holding harps of God. 

In keeping with the nature of true salvation, stewardship salvation will provide the fullest purging of our separated identity in Christ yet from the world. It will do this by purging our identities from the illegal commercialization they have suffered under the present system. 

At the same time, we will also see unprecedented prosperity break forth for God’s people, including miraculous provision and multiplications of resources—even while the beast is uttering its greatest threatenings and slaughter. The Lord will in fact spoil the beast system of its control of the earth’s resources, and put them into the hands of His people—even as He spoiled the Egyptians on Israel’s way out of Egypt. 

Why will this prosperity be available? It’s because once God’s people are purged and saved unto divine stewardship, the issues of misuse and corruption will not be factors in God’s estimation of our ability to handle large quantities of resources. It is on these terms that we will see the long prophesied expectations come to pass regarding the transfer of the wealth of the wicked to the righteous. That transfer will only occur through stewardship salvation. 

 

How Stewardship Salvation Will Change the Church 

All salvation is transformational in nature. It will be no less so when stewardship salvation arrives. We will be changed as individuals and in turn as the body of Christ. The church will be entirely changed with respect to its operation in the earth. 

When it arrives, stewardship salvation will accomplish two important transformations within us. First, it will unroot us from our place in the works of fixed human economy, creating a new mobility by which we will be released to carry the Lord’s truth throughout the earth. It will accomplish this by utterly breaking our inner soul attachments to our places of dwelling. 

As a result, it will enable those who need to “leave their nests” in order to travel to do so. And it will enable those who are to “retain their nests” to lose their protective sense of ownership over them to where they may more freely house those who have been called to leave their nests altogether. Spirit knowing of who to accommodate and for how long will replace our ingrained senses of possession and protectionism. A truly dynamic orbital model of spiritual relationship will at last have a complementary practical earthly framework for living out the kingdom gospel. 

Secondly, stewardship salvation will finally erase the dichotomous age-long angst within the Lord’s people between ministry “calling” and earthly “vocation.” The term “full time ministry” will fade away as the distinction between spiritual calling and earthly vocation is erased. The only reason this dichotomy exists now is because of the consciousness of financial need to sustain life that weighs against our sense of calling to go out into the world and preach the gospel to every creature. 

Going forward, the reason that believers will be “working” is because of their call to reach others, not because of their concern to have a way to make ends meet. The supply for God’s people will be there whether they are “working” or not. 

Under the new grace of stewardship salvation all the exhortations given by Paul relative to working for a living will become rendered obsolete. The sense of “obligation” to “have to work” for a living, and the guilt that goes with “not working” and the judgment that comes from others regarding working will be rendered inactive. All such consciousness attending our subjection to monetary consciousness will be supplanted and done away under this newest salvation by grace. In this grace, all the simple promises of the Lord to “take no thought” for our provision will be the rule of the day. 

 

“Glorex” and the Incipient Manifest Kingdom Economy 

Out of the revelation that attends the next dimension of salvation will come the blueprints for the economy of the manifest Kingdom Age. The Lord will be imparting to all His “saved stewards” the wisdom secrets of eternal life by which Kingdom economy is to be administered. As written earlier, this revelation will already be in process of impartation during the final manifestation of the beast system. (It must also be made clear, that this new revelation will not be based in the old Torah, as many in the Messianic communities teach, but will be of that yet unseen superior class of revelation accompanying the next revelation of Christ.) 

The Lord will also be revealing a new medium of exchange in the earth that will replace money as we know it. This new medium will consist of the substance of the glory of God—the same substance satan sought to counterfeit in the heavenly trade war before he was cast out, and which formed his basis for establishing a counterfeit fiat monetary system in the earth to the present. 

The new glory currency (which I refer to as “glorex”) will be transnational in scope. In the coming economy, gold and silver will not have the place they have historically had as mediums of exchange prior to the Lord’s second coming, though there will still be some use for them as the earth’s remaining mortal peoples develop in their economic understanding of the kingdom. 

 

Stewardship Salvation, the Next Revelation of Christ and the Translation 

Entrance into stewardship salvation will integrate into the fuller next revelation of Christ to the “New Gentiles” of which I have written before. There will in fact be many people who have had little contact with the church and the historic gospel who, having been high up in the realms of the commercial beast system will convert to the next revelation of Christ and immediately move into the newly released power of stewardship salvation that will also be in force. They in fact will become arch articulators of it, and will also be key agents in the spoiling of the beast system, serving as conduits for the diversion of the beast’s resources to the fledgling kingdom church in the desert. 

All this means that, even as the stewardship dimension of salvation is being released, it will overlap and dovetail with all the other revelational changes that will attend the next revelation of Christ and its effects on the church—changes which will involve how the kingdom gospel is presented and transmitted. 

Unclear is in what proximity these dovetailing salvations will fall relative to the first translations of the saints. For it is not until immortals are alive and walking the earth that the manifestly inheritable kingdom of God will be able to be said to be “here.” Thankfully, all this will come clearer as these developments occur. We do not have to answer these questions now. In time, they will be answered. 

 

“Finding the Light Switch” 

All this brings us back to the present hour. I have projected for you what the Spirit has revealed to me is ahead for us in the upcoming years. I cannot put fixed times and seasons on the developments of these things. But for where we are in the “story book” of time, this is as much as we need to know now, for it is what the Father has revealed through the constellation of truth He has developed to this time since our beginning in 1987. 

I pray you will be blessed and encouraged by this vision, and the larger sense of direction it provides as to where First Love Ministry is headed. 2010 has been a monumental year of change for this ministry, as it has for the body of Christ at large. It seems so dark to so many of us. But the Lord leaves us candles in the night. 

“We sleep, but our heart wakes.” (SoS. 5:2) 

We are as those awakening to darkness in the middle of the night who, though having eyes to see, have not found the light switch to the bath room. Our hands have felt our way for us to the door and we are touching the knob. We know where the switch is, but our hand has yet to feel it to turn it on.

It is in knowing of the certainty of the “light switch at hand” that we may rejoice that a nearing new dimension of salvation is at hand, one that will truly deliver us from this abysmal world situation as we have labored under it to this time.

 

&&&&&&&&&& 

As more comes forth, you will hear it from this pen. For now, as you ponder the victorious saints over the commercial system in Revelation 15:2, ponder how they obtain that victory through this cycle of scriptures: 

“This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith….Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God...Your Word is Truth…And you shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free…He whom the Son sets free shall be free indeed.” 

There is a hearing of a word and a knowing of Christ as Truth that ushers us into stewardship salvation. It is a Word of Truth we have yet to hear and to know. But when we hear it and know Him through it, we will be free indeed…finally, at last…from the commercial system and its works. As the old negro spiritual quoted by the famous American civil rights leader once said it, so will we say: 

Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty we are free at last!


 

Chris Anderson

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

1/11



BACK TO TOP



Broken links? Technical problems? Please e-mail Webmaster.
Page created February 3, 2011