I know we are all gearing up for the harvest but I always notice things far in advance. I don’t know the best way to use it but God always has me focusing on things that are years away. Well my dream from last night seems to fit into that category although it may have some right now applications too.
I started out in a full and packed church. But the world went into collapse and became a dystopian trope. As time went by fewer and fewer people came to church. The church felt like it needed supplies as well and so they started sending people on missions to the freeways to scavenge. This is always a dangerous place in any dystopia and these excursions were violent and difficult. But things started to be collected at the church. The people inside the church would fight and they would even let each other be killed when there was danger. This happened several times, many disasters came and drove a wedge between people in the church. They were very bitter towards each other. After awhile of this the church started to gain people again. Not as many as at the beginning but it was starting to grow. Two of the leaders who had fought each other through the whole thing and survived, began to fight over a phallic idol. One of them defeated the other and went to the huge pile of amassed junk and pulled out a fishing pole! It was not the god of the church and no one there followed Jesus. They believed they had won.
To go along with this I felt like the Lord was teaching me something yesterday afternoon along the same lines. I was listening to Dan Mohler talk about Israel coming out of Egypt. I started to see in my mind the parallel between Israel in the wilderness and the church in the last days. Israel didn’t want to be there, they did nothing but complain. They tried to reject their provision, they tried to reject their leaders, they rejected God, it was all a mess even though God was doing one of the most amazing things ever done on this earth. Eventually they were so dumb about it all that their generation was left in the wilderness.
While that prophesied of Jesus and how Israel would reject Him, God was showing me the church and the great falling away. The questions came to my mind, do you think the church will understand the return of Jesus better than Israel understood His first coming? Do you think Christians will despise the ‘worthless bread’ like Israel despised the mana, when the true mana comes down?
This time period of the perfect storm that we are walking in, and this time of the great harvest that we are walking in, may not play out just like we want it to. There is a falling away that must come somewhere during this process. It brings me to the parable of the sower where Jesus lays out the 4 levels of receiving Him and only one that bears fruit. The path has no soil at all in it’s heart. These are people who won’t even listen and the demons keep the word of God from them. The shallow think that the word of God is great, until someone else comes along saying something different. When it’s not popular, the shallow fall away. Then there’s the believer who gets plugged in and rooted but cares more about this world’s issues than the kingdom. They can withstand one hard time or 2 but when the enemy sends a demon to just buffet them and buffet them. When life is a constant challenge and the feet next bad news arrives as they receive the first, they are choked out. They fall away because they didn’t persist. Then there are the few who outgrow the weeds and produce the harvest.
He’s shown me that the revival is real and coming soon. So what is all of this about? It’s about after the great revival. How we steward the discipleship of the people who are saved in this harvest is very important. The times coming are going to be wild and many will come in with joy but fall away at persecution. Many will make it through the persecution but fall away at sickness, injury, the death of a loved one or child, financial ruin or any of the many weeds that can choke someone out in this life.
If you’ve never gardened, there’s a thing called deadheading a plant. It creates a clone cutting and multiplied regrowth. The Lord says that He will prune those who produce bear fruit so that they will bear much fruit. This is a picture of disciples making disciples and that is what will bring in the harvest over time. We must steward this first wave of the revival that never ends. We must watch for the pitfalls that cause falling away.
Why would the idol be a fishing pole in my dream anyway? Because the very thing that the church is supposed to be using to reach people, (fishers of men) is going to become the focus. We have to keep as many eyes on Jesus as we can. Stay away from those who desire power over people. The power of God is not to lord it over people but to build them up and bring them into the Kingdom. If we are to avoid the falling away that comes after the great revival, we need to conform to the image of Christ and persist in trials.
The church will have its time in the wilderness once again. We are very excited about the revival that is coming, but those will be tested for a time. Those who do best in the wilderness are the ones closest to Moses or Jesus in our case. Understanding God through Jesus and not forsaking Him to make a calf when He is a long time in coming. Remember what it was like for those who fell away before Moses’ second time down the mountain? There was a slaughter of the sinful and that prophesied both the new covenant and the second coming. They literally said that the golden calf was the god that brought them out of Egypt. They thought the idol was God. In my dream they also thought the idol was God, the fishing pole which should have been used to fish for men became God to them. Be very careful in the hard times that we don’t fight, store up mountains of stuff and worship the gifts instead of the giver.
Practice Outlaw 