The Age To Come

One of the blogs I follow with some interest is Mark Mallett, a Catholic singer and writer. Whilst I do not subscribe to Marks Marian theology, I do find him most insightful regarding the present times. Here are some excerpts from recent blog posts here and here.

HE is burning with love for you like a groom separated from his bride, longing to embrace her. He is like a mother bear, fiercely protective, running toward her cubs. He is like a king, mounting his steed and rushing his armies into the countryside to protect even the lowliest of his subjects.

Jesus is a jealous God!

By now, you may have heard that Oprah Winfrey said the reason she began to question her Christian faith is because she heard the words that “God is a jealous God” (Exodus 34:14). How could God be jealous of me, she asked.

Dear Oprah, don’t you understand? God is burning with a great love for us! He wants ALL of our love, not a divided love. He wants all of our gaze, not a distracted glance. Rejoice at these words! God loves you so much, He wants all of you. He wants you to dance like a flame in the furnace of His heart… fire mingling with Fire, love uniting with eternal Love.

Yes, dear Oprah! God is jealous for you, and even more so, now that you have sought Him elsewhere.

But so has a vast portion of the Church. Instead of running to its Lover, it has crawled into bed with the god of materialism. Rather than fixing her eyes upon Christ, she has become hypnotized by the spirit of the world. We are scourging Christ all over again! While our sins fill the cup of justice to overflowing, it is a jealous love which is consuming our God!

…

God is ready to pour out an Ocean of Mercy upon us! Yet, at most of the churches we have gone to, only a very small percentage of the congregation have attended, leaving the majority of pews empty. At our school events, there is a dullness of heart and unbelief among the older students that is heart-breaking. Several times, I have cried out: “These are a stiff-necked people!”

And the words came to me:

There is coming a Great Shaking!

Yes! It is coming, and it is coming quickly! This people needs to be shaken because many do not even realize they are asleep! Their ignorance is in some ways a saving grace: it has reduced their culpability. Yet, it is also numbing souls, dulling their consciences, which can lead them to greater and greater sin bringing sorrow upon sorrow, and further separation from God.

There is a Great Shaking coming to awaken again our sense of sin, but by far more, to awaken an awareness of the existence and presence and love of God! It is a coming of Him who loved us even unto death!

I believe we are on the verge of one of the greatest moments of evangelization since Pentecost, even if it is brief. Our sins demand Justice… but the jealousy of God insists upon Mercy.

Is it not love which awakens the human heart? Is it not love which melts our apathy? Is it not love that we are longing for? And what greater love is there than One who has laid down His life for another?

BEFORE the Day of Justice, Jesus promises us a “Day of Mercy”. But is this mercy not available to us each second of the day right now? It is, but the world, particularly the West, has fallen into a deathly coma… a hypnotic trance, fixated upon the material, the tangible, the sexual; upon reason alone, and science and technology and all the dazzling innovations and false light it brings. It is:

A society which seems to have forgotten God and to resent even the most elementary demands of Christian morality. —POPE BENEDICT XVI, U.S. visit, BBC News, April 20th,2008

In just the past 10 years alone, we have seen a proliferation of temples for these gods erected all over North America: a veritable explosion of casinos, box stores, and “adult” shops.

Heaven is telling us to prepare for a Great Shaking. It is coming. It will be a grace from the merciful heart of Jesus. It will be spiritual, but it will also be physical. That is, we need our comfort and security and pride to be shaken so that the spiritual is awakened. For many, it is has already begun. Does it not appear to be the only way to get the attention of this generation?

….

DIVINE PROTECTION

During the coming harvest—The Time of the Two Witnesses—and the outright persecution which follows, God will protect His Bride. It is foremost a spiritual protection, for some will be called to martyrdom (not forgetting that there have already been more martyrs this past century than all the centuries combined since the time of Christ). But they will be given the supernatural graces for their glorious calling. All of us will experience increased trials, but we too will be given extraordinary graces.

Though an army encamp against me my heart would not fear. Though war break out against me even then would I trust. (Psalm 27)

And again,

He keeps me safe in his tent in the day of evil. He hides me in the shelter of his tent, on a rock he sets me safe. (Psalm 27)

….

The Church will be vindicated. The Truth, which in this time of tribulation she fights and dies and is mocked for, will be revealed as the Way and the Life for the whole world, confounding the “wise” and vindicating the children of the Most High. What a glorious period awaits the Bride of Christ!

For Zion’s sake I will not be silent, for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet, until her vindication shines forth like the dawn and her victory like a burning torch. Nations shall behold your vindication, and all kings your glory; you shall be called by a new name pronounced by the mouth of the Lord. You shall be a glorious crown in the hand of the Lord, a royal diadem held by your God. (Isaiah 62:1-3)

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone which no one knows except him who receives it. (Rev 2:17)

Will the name we bear not be the Name above all names to which every knee shall bow and every tongue confess? Oh Jesus! Your Name! Your Name! We love and adore your Holy Name!

Then I looked, and behold, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him a hundred and forty-four thousand who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads. (Rev 14:1)

It came to me the other day that the time to which we are headed could be envisaged much as a chrysalis. Right now the church in the Western world is doing a pretty good impression of a browsing caterpillar – fat, slow, lazy and not particularly attractive for the most part.

But if there’s one thing we should learn from the Bible, it is that God does not give up on us. Even in the midst of judgment he is saving His people, even if they don’t much like the prospect of the methods of salvation.

Hence, now, the chrysalis. Encased by the hard realities and persecutions that will befall us, God will do a remarkable work of transformation. All the current structures and our methods of doing church, all the boundaries that we have drawn between fellow Christians, all the ways we have drawn and defined ourselves, will be broken and remoulded at the most fundamental level.

Note too, that there is no fresh injection of material, nobody else to step forward and be Church – it will be us. That’s something else to learn from the Bible – that God does not provide superheroes, but uses ordinary people for extraordinary things.

The end result, what will emerge from the chrysalis, will be a Church transformed, beautiful in the eyes of God.

At our church we run a prophetic listening group that meets once a month to hear from the Lord and pray through visions / dream etc that people from our church may have had. I’d like to give you a sense of what we heard earlier this week, and then on from that my understanding of where we are headed in the near future.

One very strong thread that has been running through our personal lives recently has been the need to become unencumbered of the things of the world. As we live enmeshed in the world, it can prove hard to do, nonetheless there are possibilities. For example, getting out from the crushing hand of debt by not overextending ourselves for the latest new ‘thing’, by consciously divesting ourselves of all the ‘stuff’ that clutters our lives by giving to those who genuinely need it, and…well I could go on, the point being that there is a need to unentangle ourselves from the world.

Why? Well, one of the other threads has been the imagery, given in various dream, of travelling, perhaps even as refugees. The understanding here being that we need to be unencumbered and not weighed down, listening to the Lord, so that when He directs us that we immediately go to do His will.

The third thread we have seen is one of trust in our Lord. That the tumult of the world, distracting as though it may be, is no more than transitory fog compared to Christ. That He is very much in control, like a strong current underlying mirror clear water, He is our peace, and our direction. He knows the end from the beginning – we are not to fear but to trust in Him every step of the way.

I’d like to place these threads within my own understanding of the current times, and what is to shortly occur. I think there are soon to be changes in the world that will radically change how we all live. What they might be, and when, I could speculate, but it would be only that – and that is not what is important. If you’ve been listening to anything on this site over the last 18 months, the message has been to prepare. Not prepare out of fear, but to prepare in trust. Neither necessarily a physical preparation, though that plays a part, but fundamentally a spiritual preparation.

Why this spiritual preparation? Because, if our eyes are on the things of the world, and not on Christ, we will be caught up into the same spirit of fear and panic that will infect millions. In either case we will not be taken out of the tumult, and will indeed suffer loss ourselves, but we will have the anchor point in the midst of the storm, the Solid Rock on which our lives are founded. Then, and only then, rising above rack and ruin, we will have an opportunity to bring in a massive harvest home. For all those who have seen their anchors swept away, we may have that opportunity to show them Truth, where before folly held sway.

But it is my impression (and I would welcome yours) that this will be but a window. As a result of the tumult, strong autocratic systems will be put in place and we will see freedom traded for security. Then, when the control is established, so will come persecution. This is why we will need to raise (and be) disciples, not merely converts. For sure, deep faith will be needed to stand firm then. So, we will have our work cut out for us during the window of grace – hence the preperation now. There will come a time when we will need to ask whether we are willing to literally put our lives on the line for the sake of Jesus Christ.

So, this is what we are hearing at the moment, and my understanding of the times. I hope it helps and blesses you.