DEMONSTRATING THE POWERS OF THE AGE TO COME 3
(mr/03/12/18)
OLUBI JOHNSON

Firstly, we pray for all our readers to have a wonderful and blessed Christmas celebration in Jesus Name and a deeper and more personal revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ: the reason for this season!

The Bible says:

Malachi 3:1, 3 KJV: Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts. And when he comes he will come as a refining fire. (3) And he shall sit [as] a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness.

The Lord spoke to me and said, “There will be fire on the inside and glory on the outside.” By this He meant that when we were baptised in the Holy Spirit, the initial evidence was speaking in tongues. However, with this imminent outpouring of the Spirit in the feast of Tabernacles will come the evidence of the refining of soul and body on the inside! There will be a fire inside you, and because of that fire your love can never wax cold. Like the Lord Jesus, when people see you, your eyes will be like a flame of fire (Rev.1: 14), because there is fire on the inside. The fire will show in your eyes; the fire will show on your hands. There will be fire on the inside and glory on the outside! You will touch the sick and they shall recover; you will touch the leper and he will be immediately cleansed! You will speak to the dead and they will be raised! They will be responding to the glory that is permanently abiding upon you, because you have not just been baptised by the Holy Ghost (you got that as a gift in Pentecost) but in Tabernacles, you will now be baptised with fire!

The Pentecostal baptism was the baptism of the Holy Ghost. The baptism of the feast Tabernacles is the baptism by fire and all flesh shall see it together; it cannot be hid (Is.40: 5)!

There are three scriptures that define and describe the fulfillment of the feasts of Tabernacles and how the Lord is going to come literally any minute now! I thank God for the new forum the Good Morning Jesus Cyber-Upper Room of prayer that God has created. For years, God has been looking for a group of people who will discipline themselves. We too have been preaching to the brethren to get up early in the morning. I am aware that some brethren have been doing it sporadically, here and there. But now, on the Good Morning Jesus Cyber Prayer Platform, we have a consistent group of people who are actually there every morning, and it has all of the right ingredients of the fruit of the Spirit, the armor of God, and the life of God. The primary thrust of the prayer, mostly prayer in the Spirit is, ‘Thy Kingdom come’! Although it is true many Christians pray, they dilute the prayers; most of their praying is done in the understanding and is mostly talk! Typically, for the believers, the hour prayer is forty-five minutes of talk, five minutes of actual praying in tongues and ten minutes of worship! Although this is not wrong, it is not quality praying, nor is it effectual, fervent prayer that avails much (Jas.5:16), that makes tremendous power available, dynamic in its working (Jas.5:16 AMP). When you have 200, 300 or 500 people praying quality prayer in the Spirit consistently, effectively, then you are going to have an exponential increase described in the first of the three scriptures:

Deuteronomy 32:30 KJV: How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their Rock had sold them, and the LORD had shut them up?

If one will chase a thousand and two praying will put ten thousand to flight, what then will three do, or an hundred, or a thousand? Calculate it up to hundred praying and you will have an explosion! It is a mathematic function that explodes into the glory of God!

This is very significant! The Lord Jesus said,

Luke 24:49 KJV: And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high. 

In this the second scripture, the Word reveals that the only people who partook of the initial glory were those that were faithful to remain in the upper room praying. Five hundred were told to stay in the upper room (1Cor.15: 3-6; Act.1: 3-4), only one hundred and twenty were found there! What happened to the remaining three hundred and eighty?

The third scripture is in:

Luke 14:16-20 KJV: Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and bade many: (16) And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready. (17) And they all with one [consent] began to make excuse. (18) The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me excused. (19) And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me excused. (20) And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.

Unless we actively meditate on the scripture, many times, the reality eludes us because we read it like a story book. In your mindset, go back to two thousand years ago; imagine yourself amongst the apostles! Your Master has just been killed; you too may be arrested by the Roman soldiers. They were so afraid that Peter three times denied his Lord with whom he had walked for three years because of fear. He saw what was going to happen to the Lord Jesus and was afraid they would treat him the same way! Pilate and the Jewish Sanhedrin were looking for the disciples to deal with them, so they all went into hiding.

It is difficult for many to believe now that the glory is coming, just as it was difficult for the disciples of the Lord Jesus then to believe He would be resurrected and come to save them!

This is why when the Lord Jesus appeared suddenly to them in His glorified body, coming through the wall, the disciples were afraid.

Luke 24:36-43 KJV:  And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. (37)  But they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit. (38)  And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? (39)  Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. (40)  And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his feet. (41)  And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto them, Have ye here any meat? (42)  And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb. (43)  And he took it, and did eat before them. 

The Lord Jesus showed them all the wounds of crucifixion in His hands, feet and His side and then asked for a honeycomb and some fish and ate it before them. He asked them to stay in Jerusalem until they were endued with power from on high (Lk.24: 49).

So over the next forty days, the Lord Jesus came to teach the disciples from the books of Genesis, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Micah, Malachi etc.; all the prophetic scriptures. He also taught the two disciples on the road to Emmaus:

Luke 24:27 KJV: And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

Although the disciples had been with Him for three years, they still did not fully understand what the Lord Jesus came to accomplish through His death and resurrection, they just didn’t get it! The Lord held a prophetic seminar for five hundred brethren to explain the purpose of His passion and resurrection and told them to stay together and keep praying until He visits them.

On the day of ascension, the disciples saw Him levitate and disappear and they went back to obey the order He gave them. They started meeting everyday in the upper room. I am sure the initial number was five hundred. Three, four days, and no glory, no manifestation; they started making excuses:

Luke 14:18-20 KJV: And they all with one [consent] began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me excused. (19) And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me excused. (20) And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.

The majority of the disciples who heard and saw the resurrected Lord Jesus daily for forty days as He taught them went back to their businesses, and didn’t continue to obey the instruction of the Lord to stay in the Upper Room! However, some of the disciples, about one hundred and twenty, obeyed till the end.

The scripture says:

Acts 1:15 KJV:  And in those days Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples, and said, (the number of names together were about an hundred and twenty,) 

It is significant to note that there were also one hundred and twenty priests in the temple of Solomon, not during the feast of Pentecost, but in the feast of Tabernacles, and they blew trumpets and the glory of God visited them. That is a type of exactly what is happening now: 

2 Chronicles 5:12 KJV: Also the Levites [which were] the singers, all of them of Asaph, of Heman, of Jeduthun, with their sons and their brethren, [being] arrayed in white linen, having cymbals and psalteries and harps, stood at the east end of the altar, and with them an hundred and twenty priests sounding with trumpets:) 

It is amazing that the disciples did not plan to be about one hundred and twenty in number; this a prophetic shadow being fulfilled. God knowing that the scripture in 2Chronicles 5:12 should be fulfilled, once the ‘critical mass’ of 120 disciples in the upper room on the day of Pentecost was available, He caused the glory to come!

Only God knows what happened to the other 380 saints; but the sad news is that when the Holy Ghost came down from heaven, they were not there to be partakers! At least they were not partakers of the first fruits. They probably partook later on, though some of them in all probability never partook of the glory. Hence this prophetic message.