“A Voice for the Gathering Saints”
Duane Stewart
www.avoiceforthegatheringsaints.org
“Fulfilling God’s Eternal Purpose”
The message from God in this the hour of great restoration is for the people of God to repent and turn away from sin, including those hidden sins of the heart. The trumpet of God, which sounded out through His raised up ministry is the method God has and is using to give the Christian community every opportunity to turn from their sins. The meaning of a refusal in hearing and obeying His call is resulting in a pouring out of God’s judgment which both punishes and restores His people. The purpose in judgment for restoration is that each vessel would finally begin to know that God and His ways alone are to be the Lord of our lives. In this desire, God continues to cry out “turn from your sins to a live of holiness” here they begin to know God. In walking in the ways of God, a pathway of live, joy and wholeness replaces that life of corruption, immorality and spiritual death.
Scripture declares of a promised time of restoration for a people to receive the spiritual blessings of God, destined to inhabit that people. Ezek. 28:25-26 speaks to us of such a promise. “Thus says the Lord God: when I have gathered the house of Israel from the people among whom they are scattered [the Christian Community is scattered throughout many religious organizations and denominational groups], and am hollowed in them in the sight of the nations, then they will dwell in their own land which I gave to my servant Jacob [name changed to Israel which points to the true church of God]. And they will dwell safely there, build houses, and plant vineyards; yes, they will dwell securely, when I execute judgments on all those around them who despise them. Then they shall know that I am the Lord their God”.
As God’s people put on the holiness of God this above scripture declares that all the nations shall behold them. God is declaring that He would increase them in all areas of life as they dwell in the safety of His arms. These shall build houses and plant vineyards in the fruitfulness of God’s eternal purpose. Meanwhile, even as we are beholding the downfall of the nations all over the earth today, God’s judgment rest upon all those who have treated the true church with contempt. Understand that this contempt has, until judgment purifies the house of God, worked from within the camp as well as without.
God’s purpose in purifying His house with holiness is that through His House He might judge the nations. Therefore, with judgment beginning in the house of the Lord, judgment is to then extend to the ends of the earth that all may come to this realization, that all, with every knee bowing, may know that God alone is the only true God. For this cause, God is re-establishing His house. God is again cleansing a people in His righteousness that He might dwell in them in the full measure of their calling as they dwell in Him. This confirms the truth that even though they have dwelt in the earth realm with the earth contaminating this Christian Community, judgment can remove all source of contamination. This removal is accomplished in such a way that they no longer have a mind-set nor life-style of being strangers and foreigners unto God.
These restored people have now become the established citizens of the household of God. Eph. 2:19 states, “Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God”. Paul again speaks of a citizenship that is not of this of this world but one that when completely committed unto it will progressively bring change until the whole man in spirit, soul and body benefits. Phil. 3:20-21, “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself”.
With our citizenship being one of heavenly realms we need to consider just what it means to those who move in the life of citizens of the kingdom of God. The restoration of the true Christian Community shall cause the glory of God to manifest itself in measures of an unlimited degree. From out of Zion (God’s dwelling place in His first-fruits), this appearance of His remnant people with God’s glory become a people without walls. The structured systems of religion with their walls have made prisoners of God’s people. Dwelling behind manufactured walls of man, these walls create boundaries of limitations. But, a promise of removing man’s walls as God surrounds them as a wall of fire. Zech. 2:4-5, “Who said to him, run, speak to this young man, saying: Jerusalem shall be inhabited as towns without walls, because of the multitude of men and livestock in it. For I, says the Lord, will be a wall of fire all around her, and I will be the glory in her midst”. A wall of protection, a sense of total security, as God Himself purifies with fire all those who abide within Him. The nations around shall, because of judgment, look toward the people of God, His city, while seeing God’s glory abound in the inhabitants with continual increase.
What a place of joy, nothing unclean nor corrupt shall enter into such a presence because the Lord of Glory abides therein. This people are the sold out citizens who belong to God and gather for no other reason or name but the name (nature) of the Lord Jesus Christ. The time of restoration is now come, a people knowing a renewing as God fulfills all that for which He has purposed. Acts 15:14, “Simon has declared how God at the first visited the Gentiles to take out of them a people for His name”. Can we now testify of a change and the shifting which is taking place within a responding people? Are you, as an individual, becoming more and more aware that life as usual is neither completing nor fulfilling the longing within for more of God?
A question to ask yourself, could this desire be the Spirit of God moving within to bring total change within the soul? When God speaks to us about a people raised up in His Name He is speaking more in light of His nature being formed within. In this change the nature of Christ from within shall manifest God throughout the earth. For this reason, God so freely declares in Matt. 18:20 that His nature manifest through this people as they come together. “For where two or three are gathered together in my name [nature], I am in the midst of them”.
The kingdom of God dwellers are those people who follow none other but the Holy Spirit’s leading whose so purpose is to glorify Jesus Christ the head of this many member body of people. The Holy Spirit’s method of glorifying Christ Jesus is to guide His people into all truth. Truth heard, received and yielded unto causes the transformation needed. This allows a people to stand in the glorious presence of God. John declares in 16:13 that the Holy Spirit, sent forth from God, will led this people into the truth as quickened by God. “However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and he will tell you things to come”.
Is it not so that to the ones who are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God? This means that this remnant people are not only hearing one voice, but they are following that one voice only. John 10:14-16, “I am the good shepherd and I know my sheep, and am known by my own. As the Father knows me, even so, I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear my voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd”. Could this not be both the Jews and the Gentiles who have received of the Father through the one and only Savior, Jesus Christ, that make up the one house?
The Father’s house is a house with but one head. God’s purpose is not to have many kingdoms but one kingdom made up of many members. These members are members that are putting all things beneath Christ feet (head and body). Eph. 1:22-23, “And He put all things under His feet [includes His body], and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all”. God’s intent is that the church will be the present physical presence of Christ in the earth. The church, filled with Him by the Holy Spirit; they represent Christ to society as they manifest God’s love, life and power. The love of God is the fruit that matures from within the vessel to become the truth of Christ. Eph. 4:15, “but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head – Christ”. Is this not speaking of spiritual growth individually as well as collectively, a maturing of the body of Christ?
Likewise, the sounding out that is coming forth from Christ and His body is a cry for the fullness to come, a cry for change, in not only man’s spirit, but also the soul and body. This is making up a people who will manifest Christ in all the earth as a saved people who are complete in Him. Eph. 5:23b, “… Also Christ is head of the church; and He is Savior of the body”. A people appearing that moves in a like spirit of leadership, the spirit of self-giving and devotion to Christ.
Another attribute of these victorious people is that they are a people joined only to Christ. Let us remember that the Christ is not only a head (Jesus) but also a body with many members, meaning that a sense of unity prevails in all things to glorify God in all the earth. 1 Cor. 6:17 declares that Christ true church is of one spirit. “But he, who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him”. Thus, a purifying agent whose purpose is to continually sanctify the body of Christ in the pureness of God. A people who give of themselves in spirit, soul and body while keeping themselves clean from all other spirits which are motivated by the spirit of this world. A relationship with God is a union that remains pure from all other relationships of the spirit world.
In belonging to Christ and Christ alone, we now see people who recognize and devote themselves to the fact that we belong to Him and Him alone. We know we came from a fallen nature and have been purchased with a price. This people own no one and no other but Christ rules him or her. Note and pray for understanding in that which Paul shares with us in 1 Cor. 7:23 when declaring, “You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men”. Consider how much our ancestor’s affect us in our way of thinking. In this, our thinking and a teaching has remained but as a tradition only. Lest we forget, let’s remember the ways of God are a part of those who progressively mature in a line upon line and precept upon precept as God matures in the things of God. This means, for this people, the understood truth of our ancestor’’ in not to be our stopping place, but just a stepping stone. These should be a launching pad to higher heights and deeper depths concerning the mysteries of God. The mysteries of God are that which He desires to open up within a maturing people that have been called to establish God’s kingdom on the earth. Slavery to man and his religious ways has been abolished in Christ that we might become willing bond slaves to Him and Him alone.
Another established truth of the kingdom of God is that this kingdom people have no other life to live but the life of Christ. That is, He lives in and through them as they become a crucified people who now live, but now their life is His and His alone. The error of much of the Christian community is that they seek to gain salvation by only their works. Works of the law or flesh becomes an offense to God when the only means to Him is through the cross. The work of the cross accomplishes that which the law could never accomplish, that is, the cross slays the old Adamic nature and the Holy Spirit births a new nature from within, the spirit of Christ’ resurrection. That is, God begins through the workings of the cross to write His nature upon our hearts. That is the soul of man that we might naturally manifest the like-kind nature of Christ. For this reason, Paul leaves us with this reality in Gal. 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me”.
Know that the word “flesh” in the above scripture is the Greek word “SARX” and in its idiomatic use, the word indicates “the human race. In an ethical and spiritual sense, it speaks of the lower nature of a person, the seat and vehicle of sinful desires”. It is this flesh, even though we live in a world controlled by it at this present time, it has been crucified, set aside, in Christ that He might live in us. In this, we can agree with God’s word and roll up our sleeves, put the mind of Christ in gear and receive the gift that comes to us through the resurrected Jesus Christ. No need for us to slip back into the old ways of an evil nature, but by staying obedient vessels, we become cemented into the way of life that is shaped by God’s life alone. God’s life is a life full of energy that manifest His holiness through this new nature. Is this not God’s desire for all the Christian community, to be holy as God declares, “be holy for I am holy”. In this God helps man in every area of his make-up as we become dependent upon Him in all things while making Him our source in the spirit of obedience. Thus the kingdom of God is come as He lives in us that He might be manifest in all the earth, fulfilling God’s eternal purpose.