"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; and the knowledge of the holy is understanding." Proverbs 9:10
The fear of the Lord, in this scriptural sense, is a wonderful thing, a lovely thing, a godly thing. Fifteen Hebrew words are interpreted in the King James version as the English word fear. So what is meant to be conveyed by this Old Testament term "the fear of the Lord"? Many precious believing people are influenced by certain scriptural words like “fear” to accept teachings that paint false images of God as One who is so exacting, demanding, and judgmental toward others that if you allowed worldly sin unconfessed, not “under the blood”, you will be shunned and left in torment for your errors.
Furthermore, the general Christian teaching is that should one die in that state, they would be cast into hell forever. Fear and wrath have been preached to successfully frighten most of us into submission, with these lies about God becoming something large in people’s consciousness . Thus, they do not truly trust in God’s LOVE because of BEING SO AFRAID OF HIM!
Many Christians seem to be scared to death of what God intends to do in bringing judgment of wrongdoing. Preachers strike cords of terror in the hearts of their listeners by portraying Him as exacting and unjust. These lies are saying we have been created in a way that we are never quite good enough nor ready to stand before His fearsome presence.
Yet love fills our hearts when approaching the place of His mercy! The mercy seat of God is extended so we should not be cringing before Him like a dog that expects a kick! What God has done in subjecting us humans to vanity has already made each of us afraid. Yet the truth for followers of Jesus is that God’s love fills us so we are no longer afraid, no longer fearful.
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” John 3:16
God loved us before the foundation of the world and He loves us still. Enough love has been given to govern us. He picked us out to receive Christ. We are baptized with Christ within our inner being, predestined to behold what Jesus is receiving of God’s redemptive work. That same work IS available for us. NOW. Thank God we have come to KNOW HIM BY SPIRIT AS HE REALLY IS, in a high and holy unseen place.
This spiritual place is typified in Moses, in the Old Testament tent of meeting that contained the holy place candlesticks, table of shewbread, altar of incense, and the holiest of all, the ark realm. God expressed under the sacred scripture many covenant ideas:
“O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all My commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever!” Deuteronomy 5:29
Moses said:
“And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that He might preserve us alive, as it is at this day.” Deuteronomy 6:24
The words "fear the Lord" here would be better translated “be reverent.” God places a continual REVERENCE within the heart of His people, like an AWESOME AWARENESS, a full consuming knowing of His great POWER, of His unmatched ABILITY, His perfect HOLINESS, and His complete WISDOM. His secret PURPOSES for our lives are revealed as His RIGHTEOUS JUDGMENT is revealed in every matter of our lives!
The “fear of the Lord” is better known and understood by us as having “REVERENCE or RESPECT” for the Lord. Reverence and respect denotes awe, affection, and veneration for knowing the existence of our heavenly Father and His firstborn Son. We are profoundly respectful of our potential as His offspring. God grants us a kind of reverence that an obedient son would have toward a loving father who has formed a reverential trust. Thus we read:
“The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever.” Psalms 19:9
“The fear of the Lord is to hate evil.” Proverbs 8:13
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Proverbs 9:10
“Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear…” Hebrews 12:28
How plain it is that God grants a cleansing wisdom to hate evil to the person whose soul is soaked in true reverence and respect for Him. Thus each person is brought to true humility when placed in the judgment of God, to now know His ways and purposes. This makes God’s will more important and placed above ourselves. Within our inner being, a glorious God Life is granted by the Holy Spirit that devoutly teaches the humble soul who truly seeks to know Jesus as He is.
With Him, Jesus Christ, our heavenly Father is well pleased, yet He does not consent to reveal Himself to the arrogant or the scornful, neither to the mind of the careless or irreverent tongue, nor profane or hypocritical men. We have hearts made strong to fervently desire to truly KNOW GOD through knowing Jesus. We need not cringe like a dog when executing His judgments, but we do remove the shoes (covering thoughts) from our feet (understanding) to walk on higher spiritual ground, knowing of the spiritual homeland that grants us spiritual understanding.
If ever we would follow on to know the Lord, we will receive a full portion of His sevenfold Spirit. God promises to raise our inner man to a higher union with those in spiritual Mt. Zion, where brethren share portions of real glory with the exalted Lamb of God. We must first serve God acceptably with REVERENCE and GODLY FEAR by learning how to walk circumspectly.
We learn to walk softly, following after Him, never exalting ourselves. We learn pride leads to falls, so we learn to walk in deep respect and reverence for the divine instructions that function to lead us into His truth. We understand reverence as we consider His powerful angels (messengers) covering their faces before Him. God has fathered a family and HE is the architect and creator of our salvation. Reverence that is “Godly fear” cleanses us from the fear of death. We gain freedom from those lies that torment us, from inner fears of the unknown which are bondages designed by the prince of darkness.
Accepting the teachings of the Holy Spirit is the only way to know the truth. It is in direct contrast with the dead doctrines taught in the religious centers of the church world, where politics and worldly methods are used to produce falsehoods right in the church world. His people are in great bondage in this hour, led into countless ditches by many false prophets. The church world holds to dreadfully dark ideas about God that are false. Even the “fear of God” is taught in a way that terrorizes people, holding them in tormenting ideas about the realms of darkness, supposedly lasting forever:
“Remember Him before the silver cord is broken and the golden bowl is crushed, the pitcher by the well is shattered and the wheel at the cistern is crushed; then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.” Ecclesiastes 12:6-7 NAS
Men have been destroyed by death, their bodies return to dust, but our spirit goes back to God who made it. Our spirit has been delivered from hellish torments and is already cleansed from devilish lies. All others will yet be cleansed in ages to come so NO ONE is going to end up in eternal damnation. Condemning people to hell forever has been the tool used by religious experts in Christian churches to plant fear that is false. This is making people afraid of their Father, keeping them in their system of bondage and tied to their form of worship. Leave here, leave US, and you burn in hell forever, they say.
That kind of pressure from “great” leaders can hold us Christians in a form of worship that has no connection to spiritual life, with no entrance into God’s city. It is just dead works that keep us scared of missing heaven if we are not '“good enough” to some day go there when we die. But when we are freed in spirit, we are raised to see the King and to worship God in the spirit of truth:
“Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of instruction about washings and laying on of hands, and the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. And this we will do, if God permits.” Hebrews 6:1-3 NAS
Teachings of eternal judgments are elementary teachings, doctrines that hold us in elementary ranks, but the mature have gone on reaching for the ranks that are being made perfect. Overcomers have been separated from worship in the candlestick church heavens to have a greater measure of deliverance working within our inner man. Our spirit resists the blindness and fear that has crept into so many systematic church teachings through the last two thousand years. Such teachings have been, systematically instilling dark ideas, diverse and strange doctrines of doom into the hearts of so many good people.
All lies about God have the prince of darkness as their source. The spirit of fear has tormented some in church circles into thinking the worst about the people and planet we live with and upon, condemning them to lasting destructions:
"For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’" Romans 8:15
Those of us who have reverently put our trust in Jesus are adopted into a family knowing His judgment brings correction that quickens us to know God as He is. We are not fearing anything that man may do, or what may come upon our physical body, because our inner spiritual person has developed God life in the spiritual part of our existence, in our inner spiritual person:
"I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you." John 14:16-18 NAS
So that we boldly say,
"The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me." Hebrews 13:6
God delivers us from fear, including the fear of death, that dread of disease and death that is commonly found in men today. God told Abram, Jacob, Joshua, and Daniel, and Jesus told Mary not to fear. Not fearing is what God does for men and women. Yes, He can fill us with the spirit of truth to know God, and, because of that we are free to know what is perfect, what is “reverence” for a God that fathered us:
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Psalms. 111:10
“For God has not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” II Timothy 1:7
When Jesus was faced with the reality of his own upcoming crucifixion, the scripture states:
“In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety. Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.” Hebrews 5:7-8 NAS
“He was heard in that He feared.” Hebrews 5:7 KJV
The King James translated this verse as “Jesus feared,” but the truth in this verse clearly reveals most remarkably that Jesus’s suffering facing death revealed His piety and His virtue. He offered up prayers with strong crying and tears unto God and HE WAS HEARD because HE reverenced God to the point of virtue! He was heard, yet, in fact, He died. He came to know that God planned to raise Him from death, so also He has promised that to us. Jesus died, but the wonderful fact is that He did not remain dead! He was heard and in fact He was raised from the dead!
HE FEARED not the wooden cross, He feared not what man could do unto him, nor did He fear death, or hell. In those moments His reverence for God's purposes was teaching Him obedience to a perfect measure. By the things He suffered, He became complete in trusting what God had Fathered. He knew this experience was meaningful in accord with the principles that God had revealed directly to Him, and He applied obedience to His life, as when He taught others saying:
“Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Matthew 10:28
Jesus taught us to FEAR destruction of our soul in hell! Fear God, be reverent of God, who is able to create conditions within our life, conditions in our mind, conditions in the external world that will reduce us to ashes as slaves to destroyed kingdoms. Be afraid of what leads to destruction of both body and soul.
What things in this life that destroy to hold us in hellish rubble are present just until the time for our restoration comes. For death and hell shall give up their dead and these places of rubble are not to last eternally, but just for an age. We shall all be changed, because Jesus loved God as His Father. He loves us all, and is the savior of all in due time.
“For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.” I Timothy 2:3-4
God is righteous, a Father that makes us love justice. With reverent awe we see He is raising up sons and daughters from among the dead to an exalted glorious stature of maturity. Being sons unto our Father is a spiritual operation that has been working in our hearts to lift us to Zion’s spiritual heights, the place of His Kingdom. The reverent fear of the Lord leads to LIFE, say the words of the wise man:
“The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life, to depart from the snares of death.” Proverbs 14:27
And Solomon, after he had run the whole gamut of human thought, finally arrived at the end of his thoughts with this:
“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: fear God and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil.” Ecclesiastes 12:13-14
Fear God in order to keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.
“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Genesis 1:26
The only “man” who completely keeps all his commandments is JESUS CHRIST. And now that He has paid the price to learn obedience, He has opened up a way of obedience that we may be taught it. His Spirit makes us BECOME WHOLE MEN also, being made alive to God in our inner spiritual person, to bear the correct image of God’s likeness:
“Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God. If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, "Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!" Colossians 2:18-21 NAS
God’s judgment has come to correct some of the reasoning errors of men so that they leave those who keep working in fleshly commandments through outer do’s and don’ts — “do this and not that.” Knowing Godly fear (reverence) ENDS the fear men teach in falsehood. Many deceivers are in the church world who are trained to use fear in order to hold people in dead systems of former generations. Yet, now God’s people should experience greater freedom:
“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear; because fear has torment. He that fears is not made perfect in love.” I John 4:18
Christ casts off our earthly fears as love begins to be inside a man. God ends fearing what devilish men are doing to rule over us. God’s love reigns within us in wisdom. Hallelujah! Jesus was faced with death— yet He was saved from death in that He had piety, the right kind of reverence. Noah was faced with the same prospects of judgment that all the others of his day were faced with, but, moved with fear (the right kind), he prepared an ark that SAVED himself and his household. It was then true that reverence for God does bring men unto SALVATION!
The prophet’s words ,“the fear of the Lord,” are used as the sixth characteristic of the sevenfold Spirit of the Lord:
"Then a shoot will spring from the stem of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on Him, [1]the spirit of wisdom [2] and understanding [3], the spirit of counsel [4] and strength [5], the spirit of knowledge [6] and the fear of the Lord. And He will delight in the fear of the Lord, and [7] He will not judge by what His eyes see, nor make a decision by what His ears hear, but with righteousness He will judge the poor, and decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth; and He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked." Isaiah 11:1-2 NAS
“And I saw between the throne [with the four living creatures] and the elders a Lamb standing, as if slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, sent out into all the earth.” Revelation 5:6 NAS
Seven horns of authority and seven eyes see the seven Spirits of God that are in the Lamb. UPON THE ROCK of Christ Jesus is the stable habitation of God the Father. If we have passion to be true sons in this momentous day, if we seek out spiritual things that are above the natural minded to find that secure place, we become unshakeable, kept in a secret place IN THE LORD.
We do stay there by not letting anybody or anything spoil us with vain philosophy and empty seductions that move us out of our place in Him. Our face is set like flint toward the glory coming from the throne, and we refuse to be moved from our piety, our reverence for the God who is our Father!
All men should know that the outpouring of Holy Spirit, as the comforter, the helper into all truth, did not come when Jesus was in Bethlehem, nor Nazareth, nor from any of His mighty signs and wonderful miracles, nor yet from Calvary, nor the empty tomb. All these manifestations of the works Jesus did are void. Only that sacrificed Lamb Who arose triumphantly victorious over all man’s enemies — even death, hell, and the grave— ascended up far above all heavens so He could return spiritually to FILL ALL THINGS with that same victory.
Jesus started this great work by pouring out the Holy Spirit in the upper room two thousand years ago when the day of Pentecost was come. Now, a positively glorious portion of fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles is come upon us:
"He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things." Ephesians 4:10
His sevenfold spirit completes a maturity in our spirit, coming now beyond the earnest of the Spirit. A full portion of the sevenfold spirit fills us until being enthroned within, we are risen, ascended with the glorified King. He has been establishing us in triumphant glory, a triumph beyond the early and latter rain, beyond the Spirit being poured out on the flesh, beyond being baptized with His Spirit to speak in tongues. This glory enables us to become victorious over every lie and to be filled with rejoicing.
We are overpowered to demonstrate how our spirit is associated with His throne, from which praise and majestic delivering words are flowing forth on His behalf right here and now on earth. God’s purpose in this day is to bring us to the place He can tabernacle within us, bringing “many sons and daughters” to express the glory of His sevenfold Spirit.
This is the ministry of the King, God’s firstborn Son, the Lamb slain. Jesus Christ has the fullness of the sevenfold Spirit of God, which moves together in us with sweet harmony. The Spirit of God is leading us to be filled with truth, a fulfillment the words our Father has promised to former generations. Jesus has drawn many brethren to spiritual Mt. Zion where perfection is passed through just men who function to obey and operate in His divine way of reverence and are destined to rule the earth.
Soon it shall be seen, as it is working in tens of thousands and thousands of thousands who are raised in the unseen city of God. In the members of His body that are judged just, qualified by overcoming the problems in the candlestick churches. They are of the highest rank, becoming living creatures filled and now functioning in a salvation that’s full and complete.
The sevenfold Spirit has come to bring us to unity within, and with each of the others brought to full salvation — to what Jesus has attained in the heights:
“Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father. Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it.
If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper [comforter], that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you." John 14:12-18 NAS