“If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of His indignation, and shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up…and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image.” Revelation 14:9-11
This is the second beastly image John saw in chapter thirteen of the Revelation. These are worshippers in the presence of holy angels and the Lord of hosts. These worshippers are Christians in candlestick church heavens who have been “marked” with natural mindedness, conformed and controlled by literal minded understandings of the word of God. A beastly understanding has “marked” the soulish makeup of His people.
A mark of beastly understanding is within their “forehead”, indelibly impressed in their mind so that they can only think according to the thought patterns and images their church teaches, embracing their doctrines and worshiping under their images. Brethren receive “marks” in their “right hand” of fellowship, signifying their church system and religious works. These brethren are so captivated in this level of serving God that they are not easily dislodged. They have become ripe for a trumpet of correcting judgment so that they may be harvested to higher heavens.
When God calls upon our heart, He disciplines it with true judgment that gives us a change of understanding. The fields of the Lord are white for harvest, ripe to be harvested from the present candlestick church heavens who think they are so rich that they have need of nothing. We, however, have found a need for a more direct connection to God’s heavenly Kingdom.
The King James Bible, translated over 430 years ago, uses the word “wrath” for the Greek word “thumos.” From that, ministers have broadcast revelatory viewpoints of the destructive judgments as God’s “wrath”. What terrifying words have been broadcast to the nations through Christians! Nations are trembling before God’s judgments even now. How could there be any escape for an altogether stubborn people from so terrible a thing as the wrath of God?
Yet the truth is that the word “thumos” means “PASSION or passionately”. Christians have broadcast concepts of wrath that are earthly minded understandings about revelatory scripture, now well established in candlestick churches. Men with false ideas have marked the Lord’s people with uninspired soulish interpretations of scripture, building orders of church worship that cover their members with the defiling falsities of “Babylonish garments.”
He who worships God with “beastly” (natural minded) images and understandings are but Christians with literal-minded vision and understandings of revelatory scripture. They are the ones who need a reaping. They are to receive kingdom wine prepared, UNMIXED with human understandings, in the cup of His hand, HIS PASSION, to remove the beastly MARKINGS (understandings) in their forehead and hand.
This drink of passion (wrath) is primarily deposited internally from something we think and believe, because these words refer to release from internal suffering and torment. Christian people are waking up to realize they are holding on to old forms of thinking, dwelling in heavens with stale worship not led by the Spirit. Kingdom people, however, are caught up to the city of the King! They are alive in spirit, brought to new spiritual understandings by the Spirit of truth. The spirit of truth releases us from beastly markings of deceived systems to receive the truth that is in the King.
We can wake up to Christ, the inner light that makes us really free! We are not sleeping within those earthly minded heavens dominated by religious men. The Spirit and the Word of God has broken every yoke and tie which binds us to the lower passing heavens. We are called now to raise up from within to a higher third heaven, to the third thousand years, to the Day when we see the King of God.
Babylon’s religious leaders fight each other with words, arguing to maintain their representation of Christianity. The words coming from the mind of the King, however, are coming out from Mount Zion in the New Jerusalem order. These word battles are not waged among maturing Christians. There is no division in Christ!
The history of the church age is full of division. Unity is only to be found in the higher ground of God’s heavenly city. The spiritual truths of Mt. Zion are significant! God has gathered an overcoming people out of the candlestick churches for two thousand years with passionate (thumos) judgments. These judgments have removed their beastly, carnal understanding of Him and the scriptures, so they now KNOW GOD directly in Word and Spirit.
Wherever their leaders have promoted false doctrines and established traditional values straight from the mind of man, His people in church realms fall short of the promises. Earthly minded viewpoints of the book of Revelation, written to God’s people, His “slaves,” are applied to the world. These mark Christians with false images that limit their progress to become true and complete ollowers of Christ. Such lies block their path to maturity, keeping them babes in Christ in Babylon’s confused mysteries.
It is Christians who are held in fallen images of Babylonian church systems who must now receive cleansing drink from the cup in the hand of the Lord. It is God Himself who gives His free people a “drink” of correction. He gives new food and new clean waters from new Jerusalem heavens above that change His people to wash them from Babylon’s fearful teachings.
Overcomers take this “cup of indignation” by loving not their lives but laying them down, being “crucified with Christ.” This is a crucifying process that works to circumcise believers who come out of Babylon’s in-part mixtures. Sons are being taught by the Spirit of truth until the truth of our Father abides within us, which, yes, makes us effectively His tabernacle.
As natural wine affects the spirit of man, so “new wine” of the Kingdom is well-refined truth, effectively refreshing us with drink of a higher heaven, the third heaven, the third Day. The third Feast, Tabernacles, has come to His chosen people because it is the passion (thumos) of God. God is passionate about effectively delivering overcomers from the mind of man. He is sending them a sevenfold, full portion of Spirit straight from His throne realm.
God has and is leading people out from worship in candlestick churches. Candlestick churches have fallen from their original heavenly places, having only an in-part provision. Now they are corrupt systems called “Christian,” but are dominated by generations of believing men with religious understandings of scripture. The candlestick church has formed a Babylonish covering over the Lord’s people that opposes those things taught of God’s Spirit.
We should understand that any drink in the Lord’s hand would be taken within oneself. By drinking this wine prepared of God, the called-out are receiving God’s passion to burn up all their inner earthly dross, all of their anger, impatience, thought life, and earthly life’s aspirations. We are CHANGED because Christ within us changes our conscience, changes our mind, dislodges many false thought patterns, and every false image that has deceptively blinded us. Christians must face truth and let go of what hinders them from being centered in true peace. This the way for all to be truly delivered out of their agitated problems into an inner state of REST.
Inner union with God is the greatest joy possible! The most profound peace RESTS within our hearts to spring up within us, just as He has promised. Yet, the most terrible anguish will still result from fleshly resistance to His wooings. He is knocking upon the door of our heart to draw our focused attention to higher spiritual things about INNER enthronement.
The drink coming from the cup in the Lord’s hand is refined truth flowing, a spirit of truth poured out that washes us from our battles with the flesh. His kingdom people find victory in a loosening correction by drinking from the cup in His hand. This change burns up the confusion stemming from traditional understandings and interpretations found in candlestick church heavens.
"Put in your sharp sickle and gather the clusters from the vine of the earth, because her grapes are ripe. So the angel swung his sickle to the earth and gathered the clusters from the vine of the earth, and threw them into the great winepress of the wrath of God." Revelation 14: 18-19 NAS
The Greek word for “wrath” here again is thumos according to Strong’s Concordance, meaning “breathing hard, passion.” Everyone knows that wine inflames the passions. The Greek word does not denote WRATH in the conventional sense of rage, violence, or vengeful judgment, but rather of “breathing strong, feverish or in heated PASSION”.
Christian leaders have associated wrath as God’s anger displayed in enraged punitive ways. Yet the truth of this revelatory passage means a PASSION which may be expressed in terms of LOVE, as when a parent is moved with passion and stirred to action to protect or sternly discipline a child.
God’s passion is destined to be poured out to His people who have been captured in Babylon’s errors. God feels very strongly about delivering His people, those called by His name — Christians. He has a PASSION to lead them to a true worship of reverence and Godly fear, bringing a complete, mature deliverance to all. Thus those who ignore or resist the wooing of His Spirit are made to drink of the “wine of the passion of God.”
God’s passion is not vindictive and vengeful, but rather THAT WHICH IS BREATHING IMPASSIONED LIFE FERVENTLY, ZEALOUSLY, WITH THE ENLIVENING BREATH OF THE SPIRIT THAT BRINGS GLOWING TRUTHS OF VIGOROUS INTENSITY. His passion is sent to be burning up the systemized teachings of religious leaders THAT have been marking His people with beastly ideas. Ideas directly of God, however, release us to know Christ within, to be joined with His dynamic new heavens.
God has a passion to make all His people righteous worshippers! Out of all that has been wrong, He wants to cleanse and restore the people called by His name. God is a loving Father who wants his sons or daughters to grow up straight and strong. God has a passion for it, therefore He will not spare the rod of correction to accomplish His great purposes.
The wrath of God is in truth the passion of our Father to bring long needed correction to His “many mansioned” house. His passionate purpose is always corrective and redemptive, unlike the personal lives of multitudes of Christians who are still given to anger, bitterness, self-righteousness, blaming others with condemnation, censure, gossip, denunciations of variance, and vindictive judgments that pronounce eternal damnation on others. All of this is presented as being the judgment of God!
God’s passion is to come quickly by Spirit to quicken our inner man with a deliverance from these old ways of knowing Him! God’s passion (wrath) is working together to correct what is wrong in each of us, His own people. He will make us altogether right from within. It is the passion of our Father to be our Redeemer, to buy us back from all the good and evil ways of fallen man!
“…for the law is producing indignation.” Romans 4:15 concordant
Oh, the wonder of truth’s awesome application! How divine and glorious is the outcome of the loving passionate “wrath” of God. His passion is to love us! God IS love! If false religious standards and lying errors are the furnishings of one’s spiritual life, it is God’s passion to accomplish a complete change that abides within us and is age-lasting. NOW COMES THE DAY OF HIS JUDGMENT among His people. It is really but for a moment — a season — to bring us to His love unending! In wrath God remembers mercy — because GOD IS LOVE!
Blind leaders have been etching blindness on the hearts of believing people with wrong motivations and mistaken viewpoints about God and scripture. The foolishness of preaching has described God as a demanding taskmaster, exacting obedience or else He will bring cruel and vicious vindictiveness, tormenting people forever with implacably harsh and ultimate anguish. These leaders mark those who disregard their call to repentance as deserving wrath and torment in the fires of hell forever without one degree of mercy or hope, EVER.
That is but one of many distorted and deranged notions of traditional church leaders. God is not sending men to an eternal hell! Most people never had a chance to hear from Jesus, remaining ignorant and undiscerning, careless or unconcerned. Most people are merely guilty of being fleshly in errors, though not hating God or deliberately walking in rebellion against Him.
But then, the way many candlestick church leaders tell it, the vilest man who ever lived, who hated and blasphemed the Holy Ghost, abused his family and murdered brethren with lies, if on his deathbed simply says, “Lord Jesus, forgive me, please save me,” this one gets a one-way ticket into heaven.
Men test wood, steel, and stone in order to find out what they are capable of supporting. We test our ability to read, to run, to think, to drive a car, and no one calls the process evil. We find out something about ourselves when we are tested, even if that something is not always complimentary. Everything that goes on within us, in gaining His life, is being TESTED in some manner. This testing reveals what manner is right and acceptable among the spirits of just men being made perfect, to become a heavenly people. It delivers us from the fear of hellish torture-chambers and nightmares about “the rapture.”
Truth is a test that manifests “in the presence of the holy messengers [true ministers of God], and in the presence of the Lamb.” This again points to the fact that it is not the SINNERS of the world that are being given drink that tests them here. Rather, it is the Lord’s own people whose minds are marked by beastly understandings formed in systems of by-gone generations of worship. The book of Revelation is, after all, written to HIS people.
It is our Father’s passion to burn up these old heavens, consuming the inner carnality as dross with burnings of the Holy Ghost and the holy fire of His presence. As a refiner’s fire He comes, and as a purifier with soap He sits within, refining our character with a balance of His “gold and silver” nature to make us fit right into the Kingdom of God!
Jesus is our LAMBKIN, the Word of God. He is a perfect personification of our Father. All the Lord’s people are measured by the standard He sets. HE is the right gauge, the correct judge, the correct measure, the right criterion:
“…toward the adjusting of the saints for the work of dispensing, for the upbuilding of the body of Christ, unto the end that we should all attain to the unity of the faith and of the realization of the son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature of the complement of the Christ, that we may by no means still be minors, surging hither and thither and being carried about by every wind of teaching by human caprice, by craftiness with a view to the systematizing of the deception.” Ephesians 4:13-14 concordant
In matters of correct judgment, we are challenged to NOW stand, having a golden opportunity to have our Father’s characteristics, to have our Father’s nature written within us as the measure we are tested for and proven worthy. It is the genuineness of our “GOLD” or DIVINE NATURE that shows what our Father has been marking within us. This is the writing of God upon us by the Spirit, revealing within us His Word as taught by His Spirit. We now may most certainly be tried and made fit in the Kingdom of our Father.
Do you, in some measure, cling to the characteristic markings of man-dominated darkness? God tests the alloy of our heart, our personal commitment to truth. He knows what corruptions are mixed in our Christian growth that have stunted it by traditional ways of men. These commingle His Word with their own pollution, mixing it with their own human judgments. The “spirit poured out on flesh” has stopped short of the promise and practices by making league with false and passing standards of worship.
In the types and shadows of the Old Testament, we can see a pattern for entering the most sacred spot on earth. The HOLIEST OF ALL was a square apartment in breadth, length, and height — a figure of a cube representing the FULL complement. It represents the fullest content of a city being foursquare, a full measure which is the complete dimension for a habitation of God. Like the city foursquare, the Holy of holies was entered with bowed head and unsaddled feet, for Yahweh is there upon His throne.
How awesome the presence, the chamber of the Ark, God’s Glory! Here the council of God is heard and discourse is allowed. Here there is no seat for man found, for in the western end and facing eastward stood ONLY the ark with a mercy seat, THE THRONE OF YAHWEH seated between the cherubim. In awful brightness rested the Holy One of glory!
Here was no created light, as sunlight, nor artificial light of candles like the seven-fold lamp of the Holy Place, to illuminate this compartment. Yet in the ark realm, the Holiest was full of a light brighter far than the noonday sun. The fiery glory of God filled the Holiest with His own divine radiance, flooding the compartment with dazzling light. In that Most Holy Place the divine attributes of God’s nature were displayed in perfect reconciliation.
“MERCY AND TRUTH met together, RIGHTEOUSNESS AND PEACE kissed each other.” Into that secret place entered once a year Israel’s high priest representative, sprinkling the blood of atonement upon the mercy seat. Atonement was made UPON THE THRONE OF YAHWEH, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. It was upon that mercy seat that God was to be found and His council manifested according to promise:
“There will I meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from off the mercy-seat,” Exodus 25:22
Our covenant-keeping God took His seat upon that throne. If the blood of atonement was accepted, a proper sacrifice was made for the sins of all the people of Israel. Let us perceive the wonders transpiring here, beholding the scene of the priest entering to sprinkle the acceptable blood of atonement upon the mercy seat.
If God receives that blood of atonement, THAT BLOOD IS ACCEPTED SACRIFICE FOR ALL THE ERRORS OF THE NATION. Oh, the wonder of His mercies is still flowing from the mercy seat of the true tabernacle that now feeds us with the bread of life and gives us drink of new wine. We are to commune with the Holy One in consuming fires, purifying fires, fires that qualify us to remain enthroned with the divine nature!
“…for our God is a consuming fire.” Hebrews 12:20 NAS
The work of every Christian leader will eventually be tested by fire. God will try every man’s work by fire for what sort it is. It’s too late to build with church activities in religious “wood, hay, and stubble”. The test of fire will expose what men have built in His name. Sons are building on the same foundation — Jesus Christ — with quality material, the substance of divine nature, with spiritual wisdom like gold, silver and precious stones. They are not deceived by human caprice and craftiness. They do not trust the weak and beggarly elements to produce His nature in them and others.
Unprofitable methods of self-effort are found in so many church works. Oh, men are busy devising programs with limited success that deceive the people with ambitious yet false goals, building with hay, wood, and stubble to the satisfying of someone’s mistaken and darkened ego.
The outcome of our life and ministry, however, MUST BE BUILT from the lasting materials supplied in our Father’s house. Honored vessels of His house are of great importance. A vast amount of time can be involved in becoming an honorable or dishonorable vessel in the Kingdom of God. In the end, however, we all will be changed into His perfect image as brethren!
The believing man is often found to be desperately wrong in regard to his public places of worship. It is not difficult to find men who glibly make great claims that if we but go hear them, or go over there to follow after them, a future “home in heaven” is promised those who follow. Many, alas, so many, are simply involved in gaining a following for themselves, using religious building programs of their own brand — though they certainly claim to be building for the Lord.
We are wary of Christians who boast they alone have the truth, that they are God’s prophet, THE man of faith and power, yet fleece the flock and pervert the gospel. Recognized as “Christian ministry,” many are still working overtime in church systems using worldly methods to build their followings and financially maintain their ministries. Many false apostles, false prophets, and deceitful workers, transform themselves into the messengers of Christ. Some ministers are college trained to be self-deceived egoists who perform a show of good works and miracles yet remain incapable of discerning the Lord’s body in the seen or unseen.
God is the judge of our brethren’s motives, yet it does not require an exceptional gift of discernment to conclude that much of the work done in the name of Jesus Christ on earth is in God’s eyes actually hay, wood, and stubble, a production mixed with deception. The hay of spurious revelation is growing in the stubble of carnality on every level of the Pentecostal church heavens that I have known. True worship by the body of Christ cannot be held to these carnal ideas of men.
Quickened in the spirit of truth, yes directed, we are LED to now allow Christ to stand up in us and let us pass through every testing fire of God. God delivers us from evil and places gold, silver, or precious stones within every man that allows Christ to stand up within their testing fires of life. We have much freedom to gain by refusing religious hay, the wood of self-effort, or the stubble of self-promotion, for it is God’s passion to burn up and destroy those things that are dishonorable.
Jesus alone bears the message of this hour, so we press to hear the deep secrets of the Lord. We need no other source, for He exclusively holds the keys to life and immortality with God. No fleshly minded man will have somewhat to boast about in His Kingdom. If any man’s work can abide the testing of God’s passionate consuming fire mixed with cleansing brimstone, then that man will receive lasting reward, being profitable and honored in work accomplished by God.
Now honorable work with godly reward could simply be having a real prayer life and a real form of worship that honors God as our Father. If any man’s ministry does not abide the fire, but rather is consumed by it, then that minister will suffer some humiliating loss. Some dishonor is involved as that course which he has taken through his lifetime of supposed service to God as his work goes up in smoke before everyone’s eyes. Yet:
“He himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire…” I Corinthians 3:15
THE FIRE OF GOD CONSUMES THE DROSS FROM HIS PEOPLE. It is here now consuming the combustible works which are built in His name. The church of the firstborn learns to always allow the consummation of the old ways of worship when meeting with the Lord’s people because these ways of traditional worship have created carnal minded heavens rather than lasting inner change.
This has been done for two thousand years in the candlestick churches, so we ask that carnality and unprofitable works of apostasy be burned up and destroyed out of us. Christians, each one of us personally, are to be gathered and assembled unto the Lord in our inner life. God's passionate purpose is to change His people to grasp a salvation that is now reserved in a heavenly place, the third heaven:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who, according to His vast mercy, regenerates us into a living expectation, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from among the dead, for the enjoyment of an allotment incorruptible and undefiled and unfading, ‘kept’ in the heavens for you, who are garrisoned by the power of God, through faith, for salvation ready to be revealed in the last era, in which you are exulting; briefly at present, if it must be, being sorrowed by various trials,
that the testing of your faith, much more precious than gold which is perishing, yet, being tested by fire, may be found for applause and glory and honor at the unveiling of Jesus Christ, Whom, not perceiving, you are loving; in Whom, not seeing at present, yet believing you are exulting with joy unspeakable and glorious, being requited with the consummation of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” I Peter 1:3-9 concordant
Our God IS a consuming fire! This has been misrepresented by some as something so terrible, so frightening, so hideous that we should try to avoid it. If our approach to God is being tested through and by fire, as revealed by Peter, why then should we Christians not embrace rather than try to avoid the fiery processes of testing that symbolize two things in scripture— judgment and cleansing?
God is not schizophrenic in nature — one side of His character disposed to forgiving, saving, healing, redeeming, delivering, and restoring, while another part of His nature bent on vengeful destruction and the lasting torture for the slightest opposition. His action with heavenly fires reveals the true grace in His people. It is purity, harmonious and balanced, directed toward purging us, His people, from death into complete stature in Christ.
His consuming fires are cleansing the unbeliever and the believer alike. Believers then qualify for higher purposes, as God is actively casting His precious ones into cleansing “lakes of fire” (daily problems) in testing that works (in the seen and unseen) toward the end of conditioning and preparing us as people of peace, resting in the city of God.
We find rest from vain pride as we are delivered from the world’s rebellious pursuits. Even man’s efforts to be good are now being burnt up by the fiery trials that test us daily. The present heavens and earth are reserved for this devouring fire that is coming in the Lord’s Day. Any careful reader of the Old and New Testament notes that fire is often used therein as a symbol of the loving presence and action of God Himself. The apostle John states;
“God is love.” I John 4:8
It is no straining of metaphors to say that the love of God and the fiery wrath (passion) of God are part of the same thing described from different points of view. Every father who has had to test the correction of his son understands this. But many do not yet have the mind of a father. How we experience God depends upon the state of our inner being.
I say the wrath (passion) of God is a figure of speech that denotes God’s unchanging opposition to the errors of death now found in man's ways. God opposes every lie. God opposes every evil. Yet He promised to supply His righteous love. It operates to destroy every yoke to darkness and death working within our members. Nothing evil can survive His devouring flames.
Our heart has been burning up anything of a lying nature and all that wars against others with malice and hatred. We are being cleansed from all that holds to death. Oh, one thing for which we ought to rejoice and praise God for without ceasing, is that the devouring, cleansing fire of God can now burn up the foul rottenness in man’s tormented heart!
God is passionate to consume all the wickedness and cruelty in mankind. God is well able to consume all the shame and wrong which our souls have suffered. It is not the evil of death which will have the last word, but LIFE; not sorrow, but JOY; not hate, but LOVE; not warfare, but PEACE; not Adam, but CHRIST!
“Faithful is God, through Whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Now I am entreating you, brethren, through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all may be saying the same thing, and there may be no schisms among you, but you may be ‘attuned’ to the same mind and to the same opinion.” I Corinthians 1:9:10 concordant
The beginnings of the third thousand year day from Christ Jesus’ sacrifice is also the seventh thousand year day from Adam. This is the Day when all will be brought into unity with Him and with each other! The day of Rest is now come. We can now find the remaining rest:
“Yet the heavens now, and the earth, by the same word, are ‘stored’ with fire, being ‘kept’ for the day of the judging and destruction of irreverent men. Now of this one thing you are not to be oblivious, beloved, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not tardy as to the promise, as some are deeming tardiness, but is patient because of you, not intending you to perish, but all to make room for repentance. Now the day of the Lord will be arriving as a thief, in which the heavens shall be passing by with a booming noise, yet the elements shall be dissolved by combustion, and the earth and the works in it shall be found.
At these all, then, dissolving, to what manner of men must you belong in holy behavior and devoutness, hoping for and hurrying the presence of God's day, because of which the heavens, being on fire, will be dissolved, and the elements decompose by combustion! Yet we, according to His promises, are hoping for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness is dwelling. Wherefore, beloved, hoping for these things, endeavor to be found by Him in peace, unspotted and flawless.” II Peter 3:7-14 concordant