The Marriage Supper of the Lamb

The Messiah, the Anointed One, is presented in the Old Testament. The Jews assumed the Messiah would be a great king, like David or Solomon, who would deliver them from the Romans. I imagine this is what Judas thought; and he followed Jesus until he saw that Jesus was not going to bring His disciples into glorious rulership but into weakness and shame. Then Judas left.

(2/24/2009) We are making the same mistake today. We are looking for outward manifestations of the Glory of Christ, when the truth is, the Lord is coming to individual believers today to prepare them for His coming to the world. The Kingdom of God is first internal, then external. As the inner Kingdom is formed in us, the world see the results on the outside as we begin to behave in a righteous manner.

The burden of the Lord today is to warn God’s people that there is something going on right now. We are being prepared for the resurrection—that which will take when the Lord appears. It is an inner work. Our American culture is so materialistic that many, if not most, of the Christian people will not hear the Spirit and will not be prepared for the Lord’s outward coming. Therefore they will not be raised from the dead when Christ comes.

The call to the virgins is taking place today. Those who have the oil of the Holy Spirit are hearing the voice of the Bridegroom and are going in to the marriage. The majority of the “virgins” ran out of oil a long time ago. By the time they choose to leave the world and come to Christ the door will be shut. Hear me loud and clear—the door will be shut! Our American love of materialism is making it impossible for us to hear Christ today!

The Church of Laodicea is the last church of the Church Age, I believe. It is the church of the people. It is the church of democracy, of freedom of speech. Man is in love with himself. He does not need God.

To this church, the worst of the seven churches. Christ gives the two greatest promises of all, and these two promises are related.

First, Christ says if we will open the door, He will come in and dine with us. We dine on His body and blood in the spirit realm. He dines on our obedience and worship. This is the marriage of the Lamb, of which the Scriptures speak. It is taking place right now. It is necessary to enter into this marriage if we hope to rise from the dead when the Lord appears.

The second promise is that if we will overcome all the spiritual darkness that is thrown at us by Satan, just as Christ did, we will sit with Him on His throne as He sits with the Father on the Father’s throne.

The throne of which Christ is speaking is the throne that is within each human being. We were born with a throne in our heart.

As we open our heart to Christ, and we dine with Him and He with us, He takes His place on the throne of our heart. When Christ is on the throne of our heart, and He also is on the Father’s throne, then it is true that God and Christ are dwelling in us.

We were created to be the throne, the resting place of God. Our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. It is not our temple. We are in this temple which our body is, at the present time. But we have not been fulfilled as long as we are on throne of our own life. The throne belongs to God. Until we permit God to sit on the throne of our life, we cannot be fulfilled; because we were created to be the throne of God.

The great problem of today, in America at least, is that people believe they can receive Christ and be “saved,” and yet save their own life. This is an exercise in futility. We were not created to be saved. We were created to be the eternal house of God.

The rule of Christ in us has to be worked out in practical action. We must come to God in faith. We must declare clearly and resolutely that we no longer want to be the ruler of our life. We want the Lord Jesus Christ to be the Ruler of our life.

Such an action on our part requires much faith. By doing so, we are relinquishing the right to do as we please. The reason American people love democracy and freedom of speech is that through this form of government they are able to do as they please.

I noticed years ago that democracy and the Kingdom of God are opposing forms of government. The purpose of democracy is to enable people to govern themselves, to engage in the pursuit of happiness. It is government from the bottom, so to speak.

This is the opposite of the Kingdom of God. The government of the Kingdom of God is from the top down. The purpose of the government of the Kingdom of God is that all of God’s creatures will be obedient to Him and do His will.

God has made Jesus Christ a Monarch with total authority and power over the works of God’s hands. There is no human, angel, cherub, seraph, or whatever creature there may be, who can prevent the will of Christ from being performed. We humans can be hindered by other people and by Satan. But Christ Himself cannot be hindered.

The Father has given to His Son, Jesus Christ, all authority and power in Heaven and upon the earth.

This is why Satan emphasizes religion. The nature of religion encourages us to save our life, so to speak. Even if we enter a monastery, this still can be a form of saving our life, unless Christ Himself has directed us to seclude ourselves in this manner.

Satan does everything he can think of to keep us alive in our religion. We pose no threat to Satan’s grip upon the world and its peoples as long as we are alive in our religion. We do not begin to threaten Satan’s empire until we open up our life to Christ and live by His body and blood, putting Him firmly on the throne of our heart.

We had to take a conscious action when we came to Christ for salvation. We confessed our need of His atoning blood.

We had to take a conscious action when we were filled with the Spirit and spoke in tongues. We had to get down before the Lord and ask Him to fill us. You know (speaking now to Pentecostal-Charismatic people), we don’t do enough seeking of the baptism today. When Audrey and I came into Pentecost, after every service, people came up to the altar and waited on God in order to be filled with the Spirit. We do not do this in the church, Mount Zion Fellowship, where Audrey and I pastor. Perhaps we will get back to this some day.

Those were great days, in early Pentecost. But greater days are upon us now, if we will seek the Lord with a pure heart.

In order to enter the rest of God, the “Tabernacles experience,” call it what you will, we have to take a definite action. We have to tell the Lord out loud that from now on He is going to direct our life. Then we have to back up this commitment by looking up to Jesus as often as we can throughout each day and each night, in order to make sure we are thinking, speaking, and doing what He wants us to think, say, and do.

You may believe such a life is impossible. It is not impossible at all! It is a whole lot easier to look to Jesus for guidance than to plan our own way.

Of course, there may be things we desire fervently, and the Lord Jesus is telling us to get away from them. Such deferral of desire certainly does take place.

What do we do then? We obey Christ. If this is difficult, we ask for His strength. To not obey sternly and in every detail the Lord who purchased us with His blood, is unthinkable.

If you are not serving Christ in strict obedience, you and your loved ones are going to suffer in the future in America. God is removing His covering from our nation. Satan and his demons are directing the activities of our government and our citizens with increasing power.

The present popularity contests, that we call our presidential campaigns, may yet put someone in the office of President who is totally unsuited to meet the hostility of the Eastern and Western nations that is directed toward the United States of America.

Be warned! Take action! Go to Christ right now and tell Him you will obey His will from this point forward and on throughout the endless ages of eternity.