A Word From Vaughn-March 2006
|
I have long felt the true fruit of the American Church was persimmons. If you were not raised in the country, you don't know much about green and ripe persimmons.
Green persimmons are beautiful fruit, perfect in form and firm to the touch, with just a tinge of color. They literally will turn your face inside out and cause you to pucker involuntarily like a fool. We once had a family move into our small town from Manhattan--this was in the 60's and I was a teenager full of it who carried green persimmons around in my pocket. They opened up the first deli in town. My best friend and I went in and realized this man had never seen anything but city life, and I offered him a green persimmon. He chased me out of his store after he caught his breath, but laughed about it the rest of his life.
Beloved, this is no laughing matter--a lot of your fruit, and mine, in our American rendition of the Church, has been like green persimmons: picture perfect, firm to the touch, a tinge of color, and so bitter when we are tasted that we turn people inside out. Idols speak, and many of our idols are ministry and ministers. I have been so convicted of flowing out of a wrong spirit, of being pompous, arrogant, self-seeking. I do not want to project my own conviction onto you, but it seems we are either in the ditch of presumption or condemnation. I tremble at my own heart over the last few years. I have been so bound by wanting to be right, to have "the revelation", to be a part of "the movement", and to be a part of "the church". I wanted to be better than other Christians.
I have been bound by a devil called Destiny, and have omitted the weightier things of the Law like Mercy,Truth, Forgiveness,and Longsuffering. Many times I swallowed camels and strangled on gnats! I thought belligerence was boldness and sarcasm was wisdom. I thought a hard and haughty spirit was the great authority of God, and my own wrath,anger,and displeasure were His.
There were two constants in the early Church: joy unspeakable and full of glory, and fellowship around the sufferings of Christ. Read the Book of Acts. They had great persecutions and joy, great outpouring and provision,and joy, great humiliation and joy.
Liberty came at the price of opposition, and license was challenged by the Holy Spirit. Resurrection power came at the price of death. I fear we often mistake lawlessness for liberty and control for good government.
Consider what the Apostle Paul said in Philippians 3:10-11 in the NIV:
"I want to know Christ in the power of His Resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His Sufferings, becoming like Him in His Death, and so, somehow, to attain to the Resurrection from the dead."
Also consider Hebrew 5: 8a:
"Although He was a son, He learned obedience from what He suffered...."
Jesus suffered for His submission to God. He learned obedience by going through circumstance manufactured by the enemy to oppose Him. He only did what He saw and heard His Heavenly Father telling Him to do. He lived in the will of God. He is the most anointed One Who ever lived. He suffered, not sickness or poverty, but great opposition and persecution in the perfect will of God. He was able to perform the will of God for the joy that was set before Him. He was given power and authority in the fellowhip of suffering.
I have learned the hard way my flesh wants to survive at all costs, but I don't want to fellowship with the Lord around His sufferings, and certainly not mine! I have begun to marvel and wonder at how much I preach and how much I listen to is nothing but flesh coniving for preservation under the veneer of religion and the prostitution of anointing. My flesh wants temporary control and happiness, and balks at the peace and surrender of joy. How many victories have I achieved and accredited to the Lord and breakthrough which were nothing more than my flesh climbing higher, raging to remain unopposed, clanging cymbals of self in Jesus's Name? I have warred in what I called worship when I sought little more than justificaton in my struggle and status in my achievement, or acceptance from those around me. The flesh is a ruthless dicatator who will not be denied.
I have eaten what appeared sweet and it was bitterness to me in the outcome and have eaten what appeared bitter and it yielded much sweetness. So have each of you.
We have a cup to drink we have not considered.
A ripe persimmon is one of the most unsightly objects--the best is not even hanging in the tree but lies bruised and blackened on the ground beneath the tree. The skin is cracked and broken, bitten by the cold. I remember the first time my dad picked one up and offered it to me--it looked more like a discarded body part than a fruit. He said,
"I know it doesn't look like much, but everything is not the way it looks. Just taste it."
I did and began to scurry about picking them up for myself. You see, a ripe persimmon is the sweetest of fruits with a unique taste. They are so sweet, deer will fight one another for them. They are without compare in baking! Their sweetness only comes when they are bitten by bad weather.
"Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the Glory of the Lord rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you and His Glory appears over you." Isaiah 60:1-2
We are about to experience the collision of worlds and systems, in the spiritual, economic, and political arenas: the kingdoms of Light and darkness, of Christ and antichrist have impacted. Islam is about to explode due to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit--great wrath is to come. The Moslem religious system is one of the purest manifestations of antichrist on the earth. The most pure is the substitution of self for God, and believing self-preservation is the voice of the Holy Spirit.
In our American system this collision is not only Church to the world, but within the religious system as well. The change will seem sudden to the blind, but it is the beginning of the Sabbath Rest and has been building for millenia. Many will be caught unprepared for anything but idolatry and will be slaves with hard decisions, few choices, and fewer options. I may be one! Our Kingdom is not of this world, and much deception concerning money and authority is beguiling many.
We are like Pompei in her last days, unaware that cataclysm is about to strike. The groanings of the creation in Romans 8 are about to be manifested in the natural as well in the spiritual realm. All that has been conceived will be given birth, good and bad. This collision of worlds will unleash natural phenomena that will shadow Katrina and opposition that will wither giants.
These things will also release great Harvest.
It will be the best of days and the worst of days. It will as the relaying of the foundations of the temple in Ezra's day. There were two groups of God's people there in Jerusalem who had returned to rebuild the city after 70 years captivity in Babylon: one group were old folks in their 70's through their 100's--they were children and young people 70 years before and remembered the physical splendor of Solomon's Temple and the bitterness of judgement; the other group were younger, from their 60's down to children--they were born into captivity, saw the blessing of God in a foreign land, and came on the wave of revival to do a work not seen in a generation. The older people wept and wailed in sorrow, for the foundations of the new temple were nothing compared to the splendor of the old. The younger people rejoiced and shouted at the Glory of God and the faithfulness of His Promise to build and restore. One wept for what the Glory of God had departed from and judged; another shouted and rejoiced for what the Glory of God had come to and confirmed and was yet unbuilt. They were one equal voice so that you could not discern between the voice of weeping and the shout of rejoicing.
So it will be in the Church and in the nation, the best of days and the worst of days. We shall know the joy of the Bridgegroom, Whose foundations are laid and seen, but His temple yet unbuilt. We shall feel the mourning of those attending a funeral of the flesh, a bonfire of the vanities, the burial of what was once tolerated from which His Glory has departed. We shall be pierced and filled, divided asunder soul and spirit, bone and marrow, yet we shall be united in this burial and joy.
We Christians will finally discern one another correctly in that united one voice of weeping and rejoicing. This is probably the only way we will.
For those of us who know the Lord, we will lift up our heads and rejoice, realizing we are strangers and pilgrims here, looking for a city. We will see that our redemption draweth nigh. We will shortly begin going to the highways and byways seeking that which is lost.
For those who are contrary to the ways of God, we will be their target--flesh always seeks a scapegoat to justify itself. It is the manifestation of rebellion against the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon all flesh. If we surrender to Him, we manifest Christ; if we rebell against Him, we manifest antichist. Those who opppose Him, hate us.
I do not enjoy writing these things, but I know in my heart of hearts there is great glory and great joy and great trouble all intermingled. Historically, revival and judgment are often the same move of God, revival to those who embrace Him and judgment to those who resist.
I have found myself singing one line of the national anthem repetitively and involuntarily,
"Through the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air, we saw through the night, that the flag was still there..."
I say before you globalists that I love this country in spite of her faults and sins. I am called to this nation and to the American Church. I know that God is not done with her, but she will suffer for her arogance, slander, pride, and unGodliness.
Recently, I was in the Spirit and had a most disturbing vision. I was hearing the same line of the Star Spangled Banner being sung. I was suspended in the air before the Statue of Liberty with my back to the city--I was at face level. It was night. There were tears streaming down the face of the statue. I could not turn and see, but there were the shadows of flames flickering on the wet face of the Lady of Liberty.
I pray that I am deceived, that I am mad! I implore heaven to spare this nation, to forgive, to shield the great cities, to overlook our ignorant, pantheistic population, to overthrow our lying politicians, and to undo the influence of demonic educators. I implore God to set a hook in the jaw of jaded media and to turn again a deceived Church.
Most of all I ask God to forgive me as a Christian and minister for my hedonism and idolatry in the face of a lost and dying world. I beg God to delay, to change this country to give us a chance, to realize that most of the evil here was by decree and not the choice of the common man. I remind God that he would have spared Sodom for the sake of ten righteous men.
We have the victory of Jesus Christ--through Him we have overcome the world. Stand in the authority of this Truth, but realize the price.
I say this to you in all sobriety. Seek God while He may be found. Cry out for revival and change. Prepare your heart to face hardness as good soldiers. Keep short accounts with God. Turn from darkness. Forgive all that have sinned against you and do not overgloss your sins against others. In this season whatever you cling to will be given to you.
Get ready to see the Glory of God.
We will be sweet to the taste. We are a drink offering.
I pray that the love of The Truth will never depart from you, your loved ones, and all your generations, and that not one will be taken in the Apostasy or depart from the Truth, in Jesus' Mighty Name.
In Christian love,
Vaughn Allen Clark Isaiah 6
| Site Tools |
|
|
|
|
|
Verse of the Day |
|
|
