The Daily Word of Righteousness

A Giant Step Forward, #33

You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44)

He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work. (I John 3:8)

The truth is, all sin is spiritual in nature. It comes down to us from the angels and is maintained by the presence of demons plus the self-will of people.

We have no scriptural basis for believing we no longer will be bound by self-will when we die and enter the spirit realm. Also, the demons still will be present.

So apart from a passage of Scripture that informs us otherwise, we conclude that passing from the physical world into the spirit world is, for the sinning Christian, out of the frying pan into the fire.

Also, there is no passage of Scripture informing us that when the Lord returns He will wave a wand and we will be transformed from sinners into spiritual giants who will govern the nations with the rod of iron.

In fact, the opposite is true. When the Lord returns He will reveal what we have become while living on the earth. He will reward us according to what we have done. As I stated previously, He will not deliver the unrighteous servant from laziness; rather, He will remove the talent from him and throw him into the outer darkness.

We have been grievously misinformed. Now we need to get busy and serve the Lord diligently so we may move forward in the program of redemption from the power of sin.

Our Necessary Response to the Current Season of Refreshing

It may be clear to us that we are in a season during which the Lord is ready to help us throw off the chains of worldliness, the lusts and passions of the flesh, and self-will and rebellion against God's will.

Many of us have received Christ as our personal Savior but not as our personal Lord. We have continued to live the "Christian life" quite independently of the Lord Jesus.

We have mentioned the three great branches of sin:

How we live.

Who or what we serve.

Doing great things.

The Lord wants to deliver us in each of these three areas, removing what is of sin and spiritual darkness and filling us with eternal, incorruptible resurrection life—the Life of God which is in Christ and is Christ.

We are in a definite season of moral deliverance. Having experienced Pentecost since 1948, we have become aware God is moving forward today. It was spoken to us in 1948 that God is ready to judge His people, and we now can feel the power of this declaration.

Of course, we always go by the Bible, not by our feelings.

The best way to discover if a teaching is from the Lord is to first make sure it does not clearly contradict the Scripture, and then to go to Jesus. Keep bringing the issue before Him. If the teaching is not from the Lord, it will not be long before He makes you aware of this.

It would be wrong, I think, to just ignore the passages presented above. Ours truly is a day of visitation. The "high hills are leaping," so to speak. There seems to be a sound of revival in America. Yet there seems also to be confusion concerning what part is of the Lord and what part is the ambition of religious people.

To be continued.