3 Visions – Cross, Dead Spider, Crown, 03/09/2014

1. Cross. While hearing Dan and Mindy talking, I took notice of the cross shape framed in the backdoor of Tim’s living room. Then I heard the Father speak to me, as I surveyed the room and recognized that there were no Christian symbols around.

“Many believe they endear me by decorating their own surroundings, but I don’t desire they worship me through these when they are only meant for the beauty of their own house. I want my real worshippers to come to me with a repentant heart for a renewed life in my Son. I desire to be worshiped in spirit and in truth. Now take notice of this sign I show to you. Just like it is hidden from man’s plain sight and I choose to use it to adore the place where you sit with me and gather together in love under my name, so it is my pleasure to use you as a hidden people to the world. So they will have no excuse at the day of my reckoning, for I have sent you to them with my good intention and deliverance. Yet many have rejected you or received you with contempt. This knowledge will pierce their hearts on the day I reveal to them this understanding that they have wronged me in the way they have treated you. So be of a good cheer, my ‘little flock,’ in this crooked and corrupt generation (people). Be my signs and my wonders unto this age.”

The thought was fast and wasn’t given thru human words, and I was thankful for the Father for the fact that he is everywhere in our lives. But I did not have time to ponder on this until I heard John’s vision. The Lord then explained to me that this is to confirm his hidden plan for us as His family in the world. Christ Jesus, who is in Heaven and is the big cross, and on earth, we are the smaller one, who are in the center of His will, being Himself. It also correlates to Noah’s recent vision, which for me, is the fulfillment of the vision of the cross cut out in a burned land where the golden river from Heaven is poured into it.

Then during Lunch time, little Elijah shared his encounter with the Lord, where the Lord told him to take off his shoes (sandals), for the ground on which he was standing was holy. As I pondered on what he shared, I thought about an experience we had while he was only few years old. I was helping Tim paint the ceiling of his garage to prepare a place for Ben and Cheryl. That morning, the Lord revealed to me the pattern, or covenant, of His cross (from four corners of the earth) as written in Isaiah 11. I was urged to share it with Tim, which almost slipped my mind when I saw him. I knew I needed to share something, but I could not recall what it was that I had to share. It wasn’t until Tim playfully picked up some grass from out the car window while we waiting in the drive-through to “feed me” as a cow, instead of a chick while we tried to buy some lunch at Chick-fil-A. I came to my senses and I was reminded of what God spoke to me. The Lord was actually speaking to me about what is written Isa 11. where it talks about lions on His holy mountain being fed with grass….:)

Then while taking a nap on their sofa, I had a very vivid vision of a golden cross upon a temple made of precious stones (like a shining pyramid). I was a bit shocked,at that time, as I had no clear revelation of God’s temple. I thought it was like a pagan structure. Therefore, I was troubled about the meaning of the vision. Shortly before that, Mark Reece and his young son Nathan visited me. While we were talking, the young boy, about 11-12 years old, was caught up in a vision. He saw God’s sword cut off the head of the serpent(s), and then His Temple rested above my head in glory. He began to draw a picture of the temple. This is the first time I had encountered the idea and the image of God’s temple. I was learning the message of Sonship and Glory at the time.

So I went back and continued to paint the ceiling, while pondering these. Elijah sneaked in from the back door, I remember he had just started to learn to talk, and I had never heard him talk much in length. Pointing to the painted area in the ceiling, which was impossible for us to see while on the ladders, he called out in delight to Tim, “Dad, Sun is making a cross.” For a moment, we were puzzled. After we climbed down from the ladders and looked up at the ceiling from his perspective, we saw a perfect white cross shape painted on the ceiling. It confirmed in my heart that everything I shared with Tim that morning was indeed from The Lord, and that I was not out place in sharing it with him. Obviously, this is not what would be considered a conventional manner in which to interpret scripture.

What can man do to build a temple for The Lord? His dwelling place, which is through and through by and in the Spirit, will always be the “gathered” heart of His Holy Ones, or sons, who worship (serve) their Father in spirit and in truth.

2. Spider: I believe this vision relates to my prayer against the spirit of religion and the spirit of familiarity, the two pillars upholding the power of deception and oppression over the minds of man. In our day, they are the doorways through which the Devil constantly comes to steal, kill and oppress God’s precious people.

Jesus used the temple in Jerusalem, a headquarters of sorts of robbers, and the yeast of the Pharisees to illustrate the spirit of false religion. He wept over the people of Jerusalem while seeing that His own were scattered and oppressed by it.

He contrasted his commitment to his natural family to his spiritual family, his spiritual family being those who were seeking to “do the will of my father” by calling them his real brothers, sisters and mothers. The spectators, including his natural mother and brothers and sisters, as well as his “ignorant” disciples, were thrown into bewilderment. They continued to reject him, because they knew him through his natural affiliations – his birth place, his family and his ways of carrying himself in the midst of man. In essence, the spirit of familiarity can do two major things to a man under its influence: One, he will judge the things of God based on his natural senses and knowledge. Two, which is no less damaging, his natural love and affiliations will entrap him with the “interests of man” rather than “the interests of God”. In Peter’s case, Jesus responded directly to this spirit when he said, “Get ye behind me, Satan!” Satan in this context refers to the opposer, or adversary, of God. John called Satan the anti-christ. Jesus addressed this anti-christ spirit, the influence of which Peter was under when he made this statement. (Matt. 16:23)

Most of the time this is manifested in our lives as a self-centered lifestyle, if not overtly selfish. Even outwardly decorated with the good cultures and good traditions of man, our life, our deepest desires and foundational values, are still rooted in self love. In the pursuits of self-desires and self-values, natural love, in whatever form it may disguise itself, inevitably overtakes our love unto God, the love divine. We can cry out to the Lord all day long, but our true heart is turning away from Him. God calls these offenses in our lives “idolatry.” Often this illness, the sickened heart, can be easily discerned by careful evaluation of the desires of our heart.

We take no offense at a crooked and wicked person, but we are easily offended by one who come to us in truth, righteousness and with a pure heart. We can allow a man to continue to indulge in their blindness and foolishness, imagining that by being “gracious” we are doing them a good service, but we can’t muster a bit of patience and time to hear out and chew on a word of correction and instruction. We imagine for the best with those seems would give us worldly gain and false comfort while knowing full well that they are living in perverted ways of life, but we can’t put up with the small misdeeds or misconduct by one who is speaking or serving us in God with good intention and good direction. We can complain year after year, day after day how unfulfilled we are in God and turn here and there to seek help or teachings, but when help arrives and The Lord is evidently in our midst, we will still be unsatisfied and feel unrestful.

If we find ourselves in such a place, look no further, and seek no more answers. Instead, endeavor to recognize the problem resides in an illness of our own attitudes. The answer lies not with God’s love nor His power. The problem comes not from this or that quarter of our lives, whatever that may be. The cause is not this one or that one our lives whom we believe are determined to make us feel miserable. The problem is our own heart, and more importantly, the attitudinal approach in which we seek our own comfort and healing. Self-love, when unsatisfied, is deceptive to the core, so much so that it can manifest itself in the opposite form of self-hate. Therefore, the accurate diagnosis is SELF. The solution is simple: Put it on the CROSS, leave it there and allow it to die there.

Instead, be filled with God, rejoice in His ways and devote your life to His interest. Not the next day, or with the next thing, but RIGHT NOW in whatever He gives you to do. If we don’t know for sure, ask Him for the desires of His Heart to fill yours. Forfeit your own will and take up His will. Put to death and bury your old self, and put on Christ. In Him let us help one another to learn to live and breathe in Christ’s life.

True, oppression produces victims. But let us not forget the other part of the story is also true. The essence of slavery or victimization, can often invite, a strange sense of peace or value while under oppression. The power of oppression can be highly deceptive. The devil’s duplicitous schemes are not confined to just the oppressor. It can equally work its way into a life of one being oppressed. Some examples: the story of Samuel in giving into the people’s request for a king, the life of our Lord was cast out by the very ones he wanted to set free and “rule.” In more recent history, it took another hundred years for the black people in this nation to rise up and seek the substance of their freedom. Prior to that, as a people, they were formally declared free by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, but were they truly free at that moment? The yoke of the devil’s oppression is broken the moment we dedicated our lives to Our Lord, but are we learning to be the Freeman? This is an honest question that demands an honest answer. To become free after freedom is declared involves a difficult process through which the freed man must endeavor to attain. Let us pray that we strive to take full possession of a truly free life in Christ. Let no one rob us of this freedom.

Some attribute the cry of “Abba, Father!” as emanating from a new born babe in God. This is partially true, but it is not the kind of cry our Lord and later Paul spoke of. Rather it is the cry of a prodigal son when he was fully restored back to his father, he now came back to his senses. In other words, this can never be done to the extent the Lord designated it unless it is with a heart of true repentance and the spirit of power and revelation! It is our natural man, with the help of the Spirit of Sonship, that finally wakes us up, as if from a dream, as if from among the dead, to the knowledge that I belong to God, more than that, that He loves me as His own son! And that everything, the good and the bad in my past was wrought by Him as a means through which we come to His Light and receive the fullness of the life of His Son. John spoke of this with amazement even though he was advanced in age and well matured in his knowledge of God, “Behold, what manner of love God (the Father) has bestowed upon us that we shall be called sons of God!”

Think about it, think about it again and again and again and forever more. Let the knowledge of His love flood us, overtake us, break every boundary we set for ourselves or for Him, let His river of LOVE rolling in and rolling over, not just for a moment, but with ever increasing volume and impact. May it not just fill in the vessel of us as we are now, but pray that our vessel be enlarged and that the increase will know no end!

There is no pride or misdeed of ours in this. It is the father’s good desire to give us His Kingdom. It is our Lord’s greatest joy to see us to become just like Him. It is the Holy Spirit’s passion and very mission to see us be filled with the full measure of the life of Christ- limitless, boundless and endless! Let it roll in, fill up and overflow! Yes, Lord! Do it for us, for each and every one of us.

When the spirit of familiarity is married to the spirit of religion, it becomes dangerously subtle and perverse. It is well known that this spirit has infiltrated the very establishments under the name of God, the temple in Jesus’ time. True worshipers of God had to go out of the city, where the cross was, to renew their lives in God by becoming the seekers of the Truth, which is the life of the Son of God. It was true that day, and it is no less true today. Sadly, the very culture that is boisterously upheld by most parts of western Christianity in the world today, with its values as “sound teachings” and practices as “good works”, are no better than the “yeast of the Pharisees” and the worship done by the priesthood in the temple without the ark of God. Even the very message of the Cross is diluted into cheap grace or humanistic indoctrination, forgetting the very fact that what is approved by man will not, most of the time, be approved by God, and vice versa. A man needs to die to himself in order to gain Christ.

So what is the poisonous and treacherous spider? Like scorpions and snakes, it symbolizes the mindset of man, or the damaging ways of man’s teaching.

Glory to God that it is put to death in our midst. So its trappings will be no more.

Please do a careful reading in Isa. 28-30. Then Isa. 59-61.

3. The crown. The Lord is using this to confirm His message to us in Isa. 62. This is especially true for the dear sisters in our midst, whose hearts have been dealt with by God through the spirit of judgement (righteousness) and the spirit of fire in becoming the true bride of Christ (Isa. 4), without blemish and without spot (a perfect sacrifice), without filth and without wrinkle (the white garment), ready to be received into His glory (the crown of life).

The fulfillment of the parable of the ten virgins is standing at the doorsteps of God’s people today. As a result, many hearts are weighed in the balance of God, and found wanting because of their pride and lack of true love.

But for those who are coming to the Lord with a broken heart and a willing spirit, this will be more than a time of refreshing and restoration, it will be a time of real fulfillment. Like coming to the wedding feast, not just as a guest, but as His precious noble bride. God will take away the spirit of oppression (slavery) and heal us and surround us with Himself, as we surround Him, as a people gathering around the Ark of His Glory, where His glory and power permanently resides, where His wisdom and love endlessly flows.

We will become indeed the “beauty out of ashes,” like the fruitful Eden in the desert, like the glorious temple out of the ruins, like the precious stones sparkling in His land, even now being engraved into His Glorious Crown.

Glory to God, for His goodness and His power knows no end! Let us praise Him forever more.