Prepare for the Wildfire! Part II
We have not begun to imagine the holy violence that is coming to the church. In the coming days, Christians will no longer be viewed as pussy cats, but as lions. I am not talking about waging carnal warfare: we do not need another crusader affair. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds (2 Cor. 10:4). A generation equipped with supernatural force is coming on the scene, and the word “Christian” will no longer be a term of derision or mockery. Rather, it will evoke holy fear and dread in the hearts of men. A generation is literally coming forth who will walk in the mantles of the sons of golden oil (Zech. 4; Rev. 11) with the same authority as Moses and Elijah, whose words have authority to release plagues into the earth, call down fire to consume their adversaries and shut up the heavens. The Lord is extending the same choice and mandate to this generation as He extended to the prophet Jeremiah, when He said:
Get yourself ready! Stand up and say to them whatever I command you. Do not be terrified by them, or I will terrify you before them (Jer. 1:17).
There is a clarion call to boldness and aggression. Either you will continually be terrified, or you will become a holy terror! Passionate warriors will carry a tangible atmosphere of the Spirit of the Fear of the Lord upon them everywhere they go, striking dismay in the hearts of men around them. We ourselves will shake off cowardice, though others around us are struck with fear – and we who walk in this anointing will delight in the fear of the Lord (Isa. 11:3)! This is birthed from a place of violent passion in the heart of a bride that will not be held back from her lover. The bridal paradigm is for the pure in heart. The seeker-sensitive, mamby-pamby, purpose-driven gospel of religion will be confronted by an army of Spirit-possessed, Spirit-driven juggernauts plowing over every golden calf that stands in their way. Not a man-pleasing generation, but a generation possessed by the God of pleasure. A generation of fiery, John the Baptist sorts is emerging who will run over the pretty little gardens of religious idolatry and lay an apostolic foundation stone that will grow into a mighty mountain.
It is an army of wholehearted lovers that possess and occupy enemy territory.
Burning with Pleasure
A company of people are beginning to emerge who will be fully possessed by this God of pleasure, in whose presence there is “fullness of joy” and at whose “right hand there are pleasures forevermore” (Ps. 16:11). Christ, who sits at the right hand of the Father, is the good Pleasure of God incarnate. This same river of pleasure that flows from Him is also a blazing river of fire that cannot be contained:
A river of fire was flowing, coming out from before Him. Thousands upon thousands attended Him; ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him. The court was seated, and the books were opened (Dan. 7:10).
Daniel saw this river of fire, which is the moving, burning passion of Christ whose flames carry an intensity without end. Pleasures forevermore does not simply signify a quantity of pleasures (i.e. 40 million chocolates), but rather an infinite intensity of pleasure (i.e. a brand of chocolate, one bite of which will supernaturally transform you – body, soul and spirit – into pure, radiant light).
The loving pleasure of God is so intense, it can only be compared to fire. And it burns up anything that stands in its path. Joel’s army will be a terrible army, but its ranks are terrible because of the degree of intimate, holy bliss they have tasted. This army is so utterly addicted to this God of ecstasy, nothing will turn them back. They have so embraced this raging flame of love, they have become living firebrands in His hand. The wildfire has made them indestructible.
A fire devours before them, and behind them a flame burns; the land is like the Garden of Eden before them, And behind them a desolate wilderness; surely nothing shall escape them (Joel 2:3).
God does not simply want to destroy the bad things we have built, but many of the good things as well! Every kingdom of man, every religious work and structure, will be tested by fire. Notice in this passage that the land is not the Garden of Eden, but it is only “like” the Garden of Eden. You are the garden of the Lord, and He is interested in a temple made of living stones. He did not come to redeem systems and formulas, but people. Any systematic structure that is not flexible enough to carry the new wine and is too brittle to be stretched will surely be broken.
It is not good enough that multitudes of people would want to have more of Jesus – that would not start a revival. But if only a handful people would let Jesus completely have them, putting no boundaries on this wildfire – now that is something God can work with. A little spark can start a mighty flame that will burn down entire cities in this day.
Jesus is going to have a church that is fully His, which does not dictate how much of His Glory they will allow in the door. They will neither set parameters on Him, nor tell Him how He is to behave in order to have a “good service.” In fact, God is breaking His church far beyond a “good service” mentality, and into a Kingdom mentality. Expect to see massive outbreaks of the Glory in the grocery stores, the shopping centers and the very street corners of your city. When Jesus possesses all of us, then we can be entrusted to possess all of Him!
Burning Away Bondage
Let me make it clear that this “wildfire” that God is releasing can be quite offensive, and most dangerously intoxicating. If you get hold of it, you will be amazed at how quickly it gets hold of you! One of the first things it does is shatter the bondage of depression. For too long, the church has perceived that depression is a fruit of the Spirit! If you get too happy or optimistic, you can be sure someone will come unnerved. In fact, if you get too happy about God, people will hate you! If you begin to enjoy the pleasures of your supernatural inheritance, people will grow very jealous – you can count on it. The question is, will you back down in fear of stepping on a few toes? Will you water your victories back down to the lowest common denominator, in order to “build bridges” with the spiritually impoverished? Will you attempt to “‘descend into the deep' – that is, to bring Christ up from the dead?” (Rom. 10:7). That is the real arrogance. Christ has already lowered Himself to become available to men. You are called to lower yourself as well; however, this does not diminish your responsibility to shine like a star in the heavens.
What I am saying is that, when the Glory begins to break out, religious people, depressed people, people bound with demons of rejection and all other sorts of things start to get offended, and their dross rises to the surface. But the answer is not to start apologizing for what God is doing, explaining everything away, and turning back to natural human reasoning to set people free! No. You cannot explain away the Glory, and you cannot explain them out of bondage with the natural mind. Just stay in the Glory, and don’t worry about it. Keep getting whacked by the wildfire, and let them do what they will. You will watch some people get delivered, and others walk away. The wildfire will cause people’s demons to be exposed rather quickly, and they will either choose to get free or get further stuck.
To believe that by human effort, you can lower yourself into someone’s pit and somehow pull them out, apart from the effectual workings of Holy Spirit’s bliss, is apostate reasoning at its core. The enemy’s primary tactic is to try to keep you out of God’s Glory. If you start getting drunk in the Spirit, for instance, and someone gets offended – you need to drink more, not less! That is not the time to sober up and explain. It’s time for somebody to get free.
We can empathize with the sufferings of others, but when they suffer by choice (which is the bulk of all suffering) we cannot excuse them for hardening their hearts from Goodness Himself. Your call is to arise and shine for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord will rise upon you (Isa. 60). The hungry will be attracted to this light. Others will be repelled by it, yet the light will still expose their lack of hunger.
Better Than the Best
God is coming in a way that is loud, violent and inexplicable. He is not dancing around our toes anymore. He is crunching them if necessary. The coming move is not something that can be “massaged” into people with teachings and messages and explanations. Holy Spirit will be coming upon people in the rawest of forms. It will both irritate and attract. The manifestation of the Spirit in the coming days will be rather obnoxious and rarely palatable to those who are not truly hungry. But to those who are sincerely thirsting for a deeper realm in God … ah, the bliss! Prepare to discover your aching heart’s desire.
The best of the best – even notable prophets of repute – will be offended by the coming move of God’s Spirit. The Lord told me recently that “the best of the best are not good enough.” If the best prophets in the land were doing their job with perfection, we would already have global revival. God is waiting on us to bring revival, not the other way around. To continually blame God for the church’s inability to bring in the harvest in our cities is to try and shift the blame to His sovereignty. We must own up to our apathy and shortcomings if we are ever to overcome them.
Oh, how subtly we blame God for not having revival! We could have it today if we chose it. Unfortunately, even the prophets are slumbering in the land. We thank God for the servants He has sent us – and compared to much of what we’ve had in the past, we should be very thankful that so many prophetic and apostolic voices are emerging. But the “who’s who” of the charismatic conference circuit, whose faces adorn magazines, television and the internet, are simply not at the level God requires for broad scale revival. And just because someone says the right words about wanting revival and being on the vanguard of the “new thing” does not necessarily mean they will like the new thing when they see it. Every one of us can have just as much of God as we want because Jesus tore Heaven open on the cross. So if I lack fullness in any area – if I am not a fire starter in my own sphere of influence – it is my own fault for rejecting God’s graces!
This is not to say we should condemn ourselves for apathy. Instead, we should view it this way: that we are choosing to miss out on a party. God is not angry with us. In fact, He is amazingly patient with us during all this waffling and sleeping in the pews as if we were at a church lock-in. Would it be a strange thing to learn that the majority of quiet masses of pew-sitting, hand-shaking, polite-smiling Sunday parishioners the world over were in a far deeper state of spiritual rebellion than a wild-eyed, buck naked Isaiah sort who doesn’t use the same soft language, religious garb or conventional niceties as the choir lot? Could it be that the unique, unpredictable vibrancy of the Holy Spirit is quenched, even in the most charismatic of settings? It could just be that God is too wild, expressive, emotional and brilliantly enjoyable to be welcome in our club. One reason the world has become so ultra-sensitive and suffers from the relativism of political correctness, is because the church is full of appeasers who have lost the ability to carry the sword of truth and the oil of joy. Parishioners strive for acceptance, pastors strive for numbers and nobody wants to face the inconvenient truth that our motives are slavish and self-serving.
I believe that God is about to release something that cannot be packaged, marketed or made into an easy pill to swallow. And yet, the multitudes will be drawn to it, because they are hungry for something real in an age where there is a vacuum for truth. Instead of making God palatable to the masses, is it possible that we have been running completely amiss? Is it possible that the Lord is sending the most undomesticated fire the earth has ever seen? What if God actually wants to intentionally release the most riotous demonstration of His Spirit imaginable? In this age of political correctness, seeker sensitivity and religious boredom, is it possible that Jesus is about to reveal Himself as the great Offense? Is the stumbling block the builders rejected about to emerge as the mountainous capstone that causes all of us to stumble to some degree? I can honestly tell you that no prophet alive today has seen the complete picture of what is coming. And I can tell you this: it will look like utter rebellion to the systems of the world and social religion. Revolution. Unfettered wildness.
Get yourself ready! Stand up and say to them whatever I command you. Do not be terrified by them, or I will terrify you before them (Jer. 1:17).
There is a clarion call to boldness and aggression. Either you will continually be terrified, or you will become a holy terror! Passionate warriors will carry a tangible atmosphere of the Spirit of the Fear of the Lord upon them everywhere they go, striking dismay in the hearts of men around them. We ourselves will shake off cowardice, though others around us are struck with fear – and we who walk in this anointing will delight in the fear of the Lord (Isa. 11:3)! This is birthed from a place of violent passion in the heart of a bride that will not be held back from her lover. The bridal paradigm is for the pure in heart. The seeker-sensitive, mamby-pamby, purpose-driven gospel of religion will be confronted by an army of Spirit-possessed, Spirit-driven juggernauts plowing over every golden calf that stands in their way. Not a man-pleasing generation, but a generation possessed by the God of pleasure. A generation of fiery, John the Baptist sorts is emerging who will run over the pretty little gardens of religious idolatry and lay an apostolic foundation stone that will grow into a mighty mountain.
It is an army of wholehearted lovers that possess and occupy enemy territory.
Burning with Pleasure
A company of people are beginning to emerge who will be fully possessed by this God of pleasure, in whose presence there is “fullness of joy” and at whose “right hand there are pleasures forevermore” (Ps. 16:11). Christ, who sits at the right hand of the Father, is the good Pleasure of God incarnate. This same river of pleasure that flows from Him is also a blazing river of fire that cannot be contained:
A river of fire was flowing, coming out from before Him. Thousands upon thousands attended Him; ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him. The court was seated, and the books were opened (Dan. 7:10).
Daniel saw this river of fire, which is the moving, burning passion of Christ whose flames carry an intensity without end. Pleasures forevermore does not simply signify a quantity of pleasures (i.e. 40 million chocolates), but rather an infinite intensity of pleasure (i.e. a brand of chocolate, one bite of which will supernaturally transform you – body, soul and spirit – into pure, radiant light).
The loving pleasure of God is so intense, it can only be compared to fire. And it burns up anything that stands in its path. Joel’s army will be a terrible army, but its ranks are terrible because of the degree of intimate, holy bliss they have tasted. This army is so utterly addicted to this God of ecstasy, nothing will turn them back. They have so embraced this raging flame of love, they have become living firebrands in His hand. The wildfire has made them indestructible.
A fire devours before them, and behind them a flame burns; the land is like the Garden of Eden before them, And behind them a desolate wilderness; surely nothing shall escape them (Joel 2:3).
God does not simply want to destroy the bad things we have built, but many of the good things as well! Every kingdom of man, every religious work and structure, will be tested by fire. Notice in this passage that the land is not the Garden of Eden, but it is only “like” the Garden of Eden. You are the garden of the Lord, and He is interested in a temple made of living stones. He did not come to redeem systems and formulas, but people. Any systematic structure that is not flexible enough to carry the new wine and is too brittle to be stretched will surely be broken.
It is not good enough that multitudes of people would want to have more of Jesus – that would not start a revival. But if only a handful people would let Jesus completely have them, putting no boundaries on this wildfire – now that is something God can work with. A little spark can start a mighty flame that will burn down entire cities in this day.
Jesus is going to have a church that is fully His, which does not dictate how much of His Glory they will allow in the door. They will neither set parameters on Him, nor tell Him how He is to behave in order to have a “good service.” In fact, God is breaking His church far beyond a “good service” mentality, and into a Kingdom mentality. Expect to see massive outbreaks of the Glory in the grocery stores, the shopping centers and the very street corners of your city. When Jesus possesses all of us, then we can be entrusted to possess all of Him!
Burning Away Bondage
Let me make it clear that this “wildfire” that God is releasing can be quite offensive, and most dangerously intoxicating. If you get hold of it, you will be amazed at how quickly it gets hold of you! One of the first things it does is shatter the bondage of depression. For too long, the church has perceived that depression is a fruit of the Spirit! If you get too happy or optimistic, you can be sure someone will come unnerved. In fact, if you get too happy about God, people will hate you! If you begin to enjoy the pleasures of your supernatural inheritance, people will grow very jealous – you can count on it. The question is, will you back down in fear of stepping on a few toes? Will you water your victories back down to the lowest common denominator, in order to “build bridges” with the spiritually impoverished? Will you attempt to “‘descend into the deep' – that is, to bring Christ up from the dead?” (Rom. 10:7). That is the real arrogance. Christ has already lowered Himself to become available to men. You are called to lower yourself as well; however, this does not diminish your responsibility to shine like a star in the heavens.
What I am saying is that, when the Glory begins to break out, religious people, depressed people, people bound with demons of rejection and all other sorts of things start to get offended, and their dross rises to the surface. But the answer is not to start apologizing for what God is doing, explaining everything away, and turning back to natural human reasoning to set people free! No. You cannot explain away the Glory, and you cannot explain them out of bondage with the natural mind. Just stay in the Glory, and don’t worry about it. Keep getting whacked by the wildfire, and let them do what they will. You will watch some people get delivered, and others walk away. The wildfire will cause people’s demons to be exposed rather quickly, and they will either choose to get free or get further stuck.
To believe that by human effort, you can lower yourself into someone’s pit and somehow pull them out, apart from the effectual workings of Holy Spirit’s bliss, is apostate reasoning at its core. The enemy’s primary tactic is to try to keep you out of God’s Glory. If you start getting drunk in the Spirit, for instance, and someone gets offended – you need to drink more, not less! That is not the time to sober up and explain. It’s time for somebody to get free.
We can empathize with the sufferings of others, but when they suffer by choice (which is the bulk of all suffering) we cannot excuse them for hardening their hearts from Goodness Himself. Your call is to arise and shine for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord will rise upon you (Isa. 60). The hungry will be attracted to this light. Others will be repelled by it, yet the light will still expose their lack of hunger.
Better Than the Best
God is coming in a way that is loud, violent and inexplicable. He is not dancing around our toes anymore. He is crunching them if necessary. The coming move is not something that can be “massaged” into people with teachings and messages and explanations. Holy Spirit will be coming upon people in the rawest of forms. It will both irritate and attract. The manifestation of the Spirit in the coming days will be rather obnoxious and rarely palatable to those who are not truly hungry. But to those who are sincerely thirsting for a deeper realm in God … ah, the bliss! Prepare to discover your aching heart’s desire.
The best of the best – even notable prophets of repute – will be offended by the coming move of God’s Spirit. The Lord told me recently that “the best of the best are not good enough.” If the best prophets in the land were doing their job with perfection, we would already have global revival. God is waiting on us to bring revival, not the other way around. To continually blame God for the church’s inability to bring in the harvest in our cities is to try and shift the blame to His sovereignty. We must own up to our apathy and shortcomings if we are ever to overcome them.
Oh, how subtly we blame God for not having revival! We could have it today if we chose it. Unfortunately, even the prophets are slumbering in the land. We thank God for the servants He has sent us – and compared to much of what we’ve had in the past, we should be very thankful that so many prophetic and apostolic voices are emerging. But the “who’s who” of the charismatic conference circuit, whose faces adorn magazines, television and the internet, are simply not at the level God requires for broad scale revival. And just because someone says the right words about wanting revival and being on the vanguard of the “new thing” does not necessarily mean they will like the new thing when they see it. Every one of us can have just as much of God as we want because Jesus tore Heaven open on the cross. So if I lack fullness in any area – if I am not a fire starter in my own sphere of influence – it is my own fault for rejecting God’s graces!
This is not to say we should condemn ourselves for apathy. Instead, we should view it this way: that we are choosing to miss out on a party. God is not angry with us. In fact, He is amazingly patient with us during all this waffling and sleeping in the pews as if we were at a church lock-in. Would it be a strange thing to learn that the majority of quiet masses of pew-sitting, hand-shaking, polite-smiling Sunday parishioners the world over were in a far deeper state of spiritual rebellion than a wild-eyed, buck naked Isaiah sort who doesn’t use the same soft language, religious garb or conventional niceties as the choir lot? Could it be that the unique, unpredictable vibrancy of the Holy Spirit is quenched, even in the most charismatic of settings? It could just be that God is too wild, expressive, emotional and brilliantly enjoyable to be welcome in our club. One reason the world has become so ultra-sensitive and suffers from the relativism of political correctness, is because the church is full of appeasers who have lost the ability to carry the sword of truth and the oil of joy. Parishioners strive for acceptance, pastors strive for numbers and nobody wants to face the inconvenient truth that our motives are slavish and self-serving.
I believe that God is about to release something that cannot be packaged, marketed or made into an easy pill to swallow. And yet, the multitudes will be drawn to it, because they are hungry for something real in an age where there is a vacuum for truth. Instead of making God palatable to the masses, is it possible that we have been running completely amiss? Is it possible that the Lord is sending the most undomesticated fire the earth has ever seen? What if God actually wants to intentionally release the most riotous demonstration of His Spirit imaginable? In this age of political correctness, seeker sensitivity and religious boredom, is it possible that Jesus is about to reveal Himself as the great Offense? Is the stumbling block the builders rejected about to emerge as the mountainous capstone that causes all of us to stumble to some degree? I can honestly tell you that no prophet alive today has seen the complete picture of what is coming. And I can tell you this: it will look like utter rebellion to the systems of the world and social religion. Revolution. Unfettered wildness.
posted by John Crowder at 3:14 PM
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