Jul 05, 2018

With every major revival in past history has come a particular revelation that has been driven home by the workings of the Holy Spirit.

With Martin Luther (1517) it was justification by faith alone (Passover).

With the Wesleys (1700’s) it was sanctification (Red Sea).

With Finney and others (early 1800’s), it was that God heals (Marah).

With the Bible Societies and missionary organizations (mid-1800’s on), it was to bring the gospel to the seventy nations of the world (Elim).

With Parham, Seymour, and others (1900-1950), it was Pentecost.

With the Latter Rain movement (1948-1952), it was to taste the fruit of the Kingdom (12 spies).

Out of each of the above were derived individual churches and movements, as each particular revelation was applied differently and spread throughout the world by other leaders.

Each revival since Martin Luther helped to define the various stops of the church in the wilderness in the past 500 years that ran parallel to Israel’s experience when Moses led them out of Egypt. By understanding this progression of revelation, it is clear from many signs that we find ourselves at the end of the wilderness. We are poised to enter the Promised Land.

So the question is this: What great revelation will spark the final end-time outpouring of the Spirit? What is it that the Holy Spirit must ingrain in the heart of the church and the world at large that will lay the foundation for the Tabernacles Age in the next thousand years?

A Second Revelation of the Law

To answer that question, we must look at the biblical record. What happened on the plains of Moab just before Joshua led Israel across the Jordan River? I can think of three things that occurred. First, Moses gave seven major speeches that were written down and which formed the bulk of book of Deuteronomy. They can be found in Deuteronomy 1-26. This formed the climax of Moses’ summary of the law called Deuteronomy, i.e., “The Second Law.”

Then Deuteronomy 27 records how, after Israel had crossed the river, they were to stand on two mountains opposite each other and formally agree to the terms of the first covenant, agreeing that if they violated God’s law, they would be judged by the curse of the law. The curses were then spelled out in detail in Deuteronomy 28.

Moses’ teaching on the law at the end of Israel’s wilderness experience was necessary because the people had forgotten much of what they had been taught at the beginning of their journey in the shadow of Mount Sinai. At that time, they were given the law as recorded in the book of Exodus. But that generation had died during the next 40 years, and most of their children had not even been circumcised (Joshua 5:5).

This is another indication that the people had forgotten the law and so they were unable to keep the Old Covenant that they had made with God in Exodus 19:5-8. This fact also prophesies that the church in the wilderness in the Age of Pentecost (33-1993 A.D.) also forgot the law and was also unable to fulfill the Old Covenant.

The church under Pentecost claimed to be under the New Covenant, but in practice they had largely reverted back to Old Covenant thinking. Hence, they based their salvation on their own vow (decision) to follow Christ, rather than upon God’s vow. For this reason, the church followed the pattern set by Israel during their own wilderness experience, making it necessary for a second revelation of the law—this time understanding it with spiritual eyes.

When I did my own study on the book of Deuteronomy a few years ago, I wrote a 10-book commentary on the book of Revelation, completing it on February 16, 2014. I believe that this was a time marker in the big picture, representing the completion of Moses’ presentation of the law in his day.

One year later (to the day), I began writing my series on The Two Covenants. Part 1 began on February 16, 2015, launching the second revelation of Moses in the plains of Moab.

https://old.godskingdom.org/daily-weblogs/2015/02-2015/the-two-covenants-part-1/

The Second Covenant

Deuteronomy 29 is the chapter setting forth the Second Covenant, which is a type of the New Covenant under which Israel crossed the Jordan into the Promised Land. Having violated the first covenant and forgotten the law, the church in that time was not ready or even eligible to enter the Promised Land. They had all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. They had been rebellious in the wilderness, proving that they could not keep their vow to God.

So at the end of their 40 years in the wilderness, God made a second covenant with them, a covenant that was different from the first covenant. Deuteronomy 29:1 says,

¹ These are the words of the covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the sons of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant which He had made with them at Horeb.

This covenant was one where God made an oath to make them His people and to be their God (Deuteronomy 29:12, 13). Moses said that it was a reiteration of the covenant that God had made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In other words, it was based upon the promises of God, not upon the promises of men. Many years later, Jeremiah called it a “new covenant,” and this is quoted in Hebrews 8:8. The next verse says that it is unlike the Old Covenant. Indeed!

Giving Israel a second covenant, based upon the promises of God, shows us today the importance of understanding the New Covenant, for it is what makes the church today eligible to cross over its own Jordan River into the Promised Land—that is, the Promises of God. I should also add that it is important to understand the scope of that promise in Deuteronomy 29:14, 15.

As I said earlier, I believe that the revelation of the New Covenant since February 16, 2015 has been the modern sign fulfilling Deuteronomy 29 in our own time. I put those weblogs into book form a few months later, and finally wrote the tract, God’s Promise to You, which I sent to the mailing list last week.

I suspect that this mailing has completed the process of giving the revelation of the New Covenant in Deuteronomy 29. Now we come to the third sign.

The Commissioning of Joshua

We read in Deuteronomy 31:14, 15,

¹⁴ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, the time for you to die is near; call Joshua, and present yourselves at the tent of meeting, that I may commission him.” So Moses and Joshua went and presented themselves at the tent of meeting. ¹⁵ And the Lord appeared in the tent in a pillar of cloud, and the pillar of cloud stood at the doorway of the tent.

So when Moses and Joshua went to the tent of meeting, God met them at the doorway “in a pillar of cloud.” This suggests a connection with the second coming of Jesus (Joshua), who is prophesied to come in the clouds. After God gave instructions to Joshua, Deuteronomy 31:23 says,

²³ Then He commissioned Joshua the son of Nun, and said, “Be strong and courageous, for you shall bring the sons of Israel into the land which I swore to them, and I will be with you.”

Joshua was commissioned under the power of the New Covenant to bring the Israelites into the Promised Land. We usually focus upon the story of Israel’s Jordan crossing, but even before that Moses gave His first instructions to Joshua in the next few verses. Deuteronomy 31:24-26 says,

²⁴ And it came about, when Moses finished writing the words of this law in a book until they were complete, ²⁵ that Moses commanded the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, saying, ²⁶ “Take this book of the law and place it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God, that it may remain there as a witness against you…”

Why would God tell them to place the book of Deuteronomy “beside the ark”? Why not inside the ark, as Hebrews 9:4 tells us?

The Rabbis who translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek rendered it, “ye shall put it in the side [i.e., inside] of the ark of the covenant” (Septuagint). That was how they understood it, because there would be no point in putting the book next to the ark when it had an inner chamber. In fact, they put a pot of manna inside the ark as well.

The ark was the place of God’s presence. It represented the collective heart of the people. To put the law in the ark teaches us that the law is to be written in our hearts. So Hebrews 8:10 says,

¹⁰ For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put My laws into their minds and I will write them upon their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

That is the only way that God can be our God. That is the only way we can be God’s people. That is why God took an oath to make this happen when He established the New Covenant in Deuteronomy 29:12, 13. In the earlier covenant, in order for Israel to be God’s people, they had to obey Him (i.e., fulfill their vow). That did not work. So God took an oath by Himself to ensure that they would indeed be His people. Not only the Israelites, but also the aliens among them and even all the people of the earth who were not present at the time (Deuteronomy 29:14, 15).

Conquering Canaan

Having seen the three main signs preceding our entry into the Promised Land, we can expect to see the promise fulfilled soon. The main difference between now and then is that we are no longer required to wield physical swords to conquer Canaan. Though Israel technically entered Canaan under the New Covenant, in a broader sense, they were still living in Old Covenant times. Hence, they needed physical swords to subdue the land.

Jesus (our Joshua) ascended in order to send the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, giving us the sword of the Spirit by which to conquer the world. This conquest is known today as The Great Commission. Jesus told His disciples in Matthew 28:18-20,

¹⁸ … All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. ¹⁹ Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

The Holy Spirit was given in order to equip us to fulfill this Great Commission. This is a much better solution to the Canaanite problem than just killing everyone. Baptism has become our New Covenant method of administering the death penalty. It is a symbolic death representing the death of the old way of life, the old flesh man, and even the death of the Old Covenant.

The outpouring of the Holy Spirit in our time, I believe, will be the climax of a series of revivals since the days of Martin Luther, wherein we have followed the pattern of Israel under Moses. This climax will empower us to conquer the world, not with fleshly swords, not by violence, but by making the love of Christ irresistible to all men. If we have faith that “love never fails,” as Paul states, then we will have the confidence to use the weapons of the New Covenant, for such weapons are not carnal.

The revelation of this final outpouring will be the revelation of the New Covenant and using it to write the law upon the hearts of all men, so that they can be His people.

It appears that we are now poised and ready for the greatest outpouring of the Holy Spirit ever seen in history. As we approach the feast days in September, let us keep this in mind, for they are our main watch dates for such events.