Duane Stewart
www.avoiceforthegatheringsaints.org
“How Great God Is”
God, the creator of all things, is such a God of Love that He delights in revealing Himself to a people with this desire. That all would be willing to come to Him and stand in His presence. God’s presence projects such a presence of righteousness that it promotes right living among His people, something that emotionalism of the flesh will never do. Are we willing to stand in such a presence? Knowing that His continual presence slays all that is corruptible, immoral, and unclean, could this holy presence be the main reason why most of the world rebels against such a holy God? By following Christ, a dying progressively takes place from within the man through death to self-man. Herein the man comes into eternal life, progressively being removed from that life which is temporal.
With a knowing that darkness is covering the earth as the waters cover the sea, God is again, descending unto the earth realm to proclaim and establish His victory over all things that pertain to darkness. His light is now coming forth through a first-fruits people, to repeal the darkness as a kingdom of light is established. Has not God declared that He shall have for Himself a people that will follow Him into His place of glory? According to scripture, when certain Greeks came desiring to see Jesus, He revealed to them the greater manifestation of God’s kingdom through the Christ.
John 12:23-26,
“But Jesus answered them, saying, the hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, let him follow me; and where I am, there my servant will be also. If anyone serves me, him My Father will honor.”
God’s son Christ Jesus willingly fell to the ground at the cross; to be planted into receiving humanity because of accepting His death, burial, and resurrection. Thus, because certain of mankind have taken steps to receive Him, Christ now has a first-fruit harvest alive and well on the planet earth. In this, God has given them a mandate, which releases in them the anointing that enables them to, in power to establish the kingdom of God in the earth. What is this mandate? Is it not the authority, given by God, to go into the entire world and conquer, possess and establish the kingdom of God?
The time has come for what Moses the lawgiver represents as a type, to die. The realm of the law (Moses), which produces death only, is fulfilled and completed in Christ and has made available to a people a new realm of life. This speaks that a time of deliverance from the wilderness journey (typed by the wondering children of Israel) of carnality has come. It is now time that Joshua whose name means, “Jehovah is salvation,” a type of Christ, has come upon us and we are to go in and take the land promised by God. The time has come when the body of Christ is to gain entry into the promises concerning the kingdom that God has prepared for His people. Joshua 1:2, “Moses [representing the law] My servant is dead. Now therefore, arise, go over this Jordan, you and all this people, to the land which I am giving to them…” Even so as then, the Father is speaking to His people today.
It is time for the church to move beyond the laws of carnal commandments that have ruled over them during this time of knowing only an in-part wilderness journey. God’s season has come for a dying to the death realm of carnality and the passing away of any in-part truths, manufactured doctrines, and constitutional laws that promote spiritual death among the people. Is there not a called remnant that is destined to come forth. Those who are even now hearing the words of the Lord speaking forth and sounding out another day in Him? These words are speaking of a day of assembling ourselves together in Him as we arise and go over our Jordon. Jordan is that river which types for us a death that washes away the death realm of carnality in our nature as we progressively, through sanctification, put on the nature of God. A new nature that accomplishes all that God has purposed to establish in the earth.
Note also in Joshua 1:11 that they are told to “prepare provisions for yourselves, for within three days you will cross over the Jordan, to go in to possess the land which the Lord your God is given you to possess”. This is also pointing to the time of Jesus’ baptism in this same river, symbolizing the death, burial, and resurrection He fulfilled from the cross. These three days is now upon this generation as we come to that third day (3000-year day) from Jesus Christ death, burial and resurrection. This is a new season, the time in God when His people are again crossing the river Jordan, dying to the death realm of carnality, to possess the land that is before us. Paul declares these as the living sacrifices that are becoming acceptable to God.
Rom. 12:1, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service”.
God’s witness is set before us again as He types, using the children of Israel, and sets them before us as examples and shadows. Herein God likewise speaks to us today of crossing over into the promises of God. In examining the movements and acts of these Israelites we can see the spiritual things that are taking place among God’s people in bringing forth the realities of possessing the land (first our individual land, our bodies). In taking the land we can fulfill the promises God speaks of as becoming His heirs, the expression of His glory.
Rom. 8:30, “Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified”.
Is this not the third day? Arise, cross over, and see the wonders of the Lord.
John 17:22, “And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one”.
A set time in God, proclaiming its fulfillment, as a first-fruits remnant are now seeing the Christ coming together as one many member body. These are becoming one with the Head, the Christ Jesus who crossed this river 2000 years ago, fulfilling the type that the Ark of the Covenant represented.
Joshua 3:3-4, “…When you see the ark of the covenant [Jesus Christ] of the Lord your God, and the priest, the Levites, bearing it, then you shall set out from your place and go after it. Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits by measure [2000 years from Jesus]. Do not come near it that you may know the way by which you must go, for you have not passed this way before.”
What a day this day is. Speaking of following Jesus into a time when His body shall come into places in God that we have not yet come. This speaks of a Christ-kind anointing and like-kind manifestations and authority as we establish a kingdom for God in the earth.
Joshua 3:5, “…Sanctify yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.”
How it is that God shall do wonders among His people of today? Today is the season which God has set aside for the body of Christ to possess the invisible kingdom of God. This kingdom will possess them as they bringing His kingdom into a visible manifestation throughout the earth. This surely is a changing of the guard, from the old generation of doubters, complainers, and fleshly carnal minded people, to a new generation. This new generation is ascending unto the presence of God, as they become ones of a heavenly mind-set with Christ.
Rev. 12:5, “She bore a male child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And her child was caught up to God and His throne.”
This type of rulership is the results of a nature change, one that establishes a new mind-set nature in this company of people called the man-child. These people submit completely to the divine government (nature) given by God as it flows in and through them.
Obedience is the life-style order that they respond to as they proceed according to the instructions of their God, the manifestations of the mind of Christ. Know and remember that God uses the number twelve as standing for and pointing to His divine government, a government that He has establishes within this people to possess the promised kingdom. (Read Joshua 4:1-14). Twelve stones taken by twelve men out of the Jordan River became a memorial of God’s eternal government for all to see and know that God is God and there is no other. A divine government that even now expresses itself through the birthing of a generation that is taking the land. A people that are becoming the fullness of God in the earth, a new creation people filled with God’s divine nature, His purpose.
1 Peter 1:13-21, “Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, be holy, for I am holy. And if you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here in fear; knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by traditions from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as a lamb without blemish and without spot. He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you who through Him believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God”.
Yes, God is not willing for any to perish, but unto all who become willing, they can come to repentance. God has established a plan of restoration that comes through repentance and obedience. Unto all who partake of the offered renewing, it brings each vessel to this time of fullness when Christ body shall possess the land. Let’s note that this all-encompassing order of God reaches all the way back to the first Adam and forward unto this day onward until all that will come may come.
Joshua 3:15-16, “and as those who bore the ark came to the Jordan, and the feet of the priests who bore the ark dipped in the edge of the water (for the Jordan overflows all its banks during the whole time of harvest), that the waters which came down from upstream stood still, and rose in a heap very far away at Adam, the city that is beside Zaretan. So the waters that went down into the salt sea, failed, and were cut off; …”
Here we see that God is making Himself available to all of fallen mankind, back to Adam and all the way forward until men come to the new heavens and new earth which ushers in eternity. What a great God, bringing His purposes forward until we, as a chosen generation, now stand upon the banks of that river. Now the time has come to possess the land, to possess all the promises. Thus, we stand in what the scriptures declare as the day of the Lord when He shall do marvels in ushering in and manifesting His eternal dwelling place.
2 Peter 3:10-13, “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements [elementary rules] will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless, we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.”
The life-styles as we have known them are destined to pass away. The laws and governments that have ruled over the earth with its carnal political, economic, and religious systems are passing away because our God is a consuming fire. Change, in all these arenas shall take place for God’s body of people are crossing this Jordan River on dry ground to possess our inheritance. Our God is truly a great God. The kingdoms of this present-tense season are falling as God’s kingdom is approaching and is even now crossing the threshold. Truly, how great God is.
(Emphases added by the editor.)