12 Minutes
God has a prepared people for the coming of the Lord. He describes them as His peculiar people, chosen as His elect and His very elect. Their faith is decisive and determinative and expressed devotionally to God through obedience, suffering, and sacrifice. In this pattern, they are the gathering unto God. They were meant to treat one another with mercy, justice and love in every sphere of life. They are strong in their condemnations of sin. These are the proclamations of the fulfilment of those promises in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our gatherings each Sabbath is an anticipation of the ultimate coming together of God's people around His throne in the new creation. Since we await that final experience of fellowship with God, each believers’ assembly has an 'already and a not yet' dimension. We are already ‘in Christ’ and yet we are not yet 'with Christ'. These assemblies do not involve any essential time schedule. They can and should occur at any time there is interest in studying the truths of God.
Isaiah 43:5-11, 21
The scattering was purposed for the carrying forth the messages of God to the world. The gathering is purposed for all who profess Christ. Jesus Christ, at the time of his second presence, will gather the chosen remnant of the people from all parts of the earth.
Matthew 24:31
But there is a different time of dividing ahead. It’s called the shaking and the sifting. The experience will be a traumatic one, for we will see some shaken out of this message of truth in whom there was great confidence. There will be others who were thought to be weak in faith who will stand like rocks. There is a sieve of affliction and persecution approaching. Through this experience will be demonstrated which of those who claim to be followers of God would remain. The purpose is to purify a people. God will have a clean and holy people. This world cannot stand much longer. Jesus’ coming is the only hope. Consider the desperate tactics that the enemy is using to cause some to refuse the truth. Fearful days of shaking and sifting are determined for those who claim to be children of God. Remember, God is in control. He may allow the enemy’s participation, but God is now sifting His people. He alone tests their motives, their purposes, their endurance. We may want to restudy God’s word for our time. Could there be an attempt of God to bring us into deeper truth that we refuse to reason with for perfect understanding? The sifting will be much more severe than the shaking. Both are a separating process. Put the rocks and the sand in the bowl. The shaking causes the separation in the bowl of life. But drill minute holes of trouble in the bowl, in the life. As the shaking continues, the sand begins to fall out. Only the rocks remain.
Many superficial believers who are lukewarm, feeling much at ease are being shaken out. Watch what causes any kind of separation among the people who once were as one. Most diseases begin within the body. And the nature of the feelings of bitterness is contaminating. The sifting process is the crisis brought on by refusing or neglecting to come to God...to God to reason...if you be willing and obedient. Surface readers are like sifting sand. They will fall out as they refuse to struggle with self. God’s true people resist unto blood. This goes much deeper in experience than just trying. These stand firm for revealed truth. The shaking, sifting, settling, and sealing are all about standing firmly against the opposition to God so that we cannot be moved. These pass through the shaking having resisted unto blood, past the striving in the shaking. These have reasoned with the Lord in the wrestling away of their thinking what is truth, clinging to His every word until the promised blessing has become the realized revelation. In the simplest language, what we must learn to do is to stay in communion with the Lord until the sin of self has been overcome. As God’s people are settled in His truth there is no diversion that the enemy can bring. The enemy’s greatest tactic is to cause your feet to begin to slide from the precept of the word because they were not firmly planted on the truth of God revealed in scripture. And if the enemy can just hold you where you are...!!!
If you are claiming to be in Christ, then you are to recognize the privilege and the extreme importance of you revealing every word of truth learned. It will not go well in the judgment for those who are complacent and content, allowing others to stand alone for truth. Many, most, who refuse to call for the truth, will call for the rocks to fall...
Please do not think that just because we come together sabbath after sabbath that we are better off than those sitting in the conference churches hearing error. The end-time work means there can be no abandonment of any of the truth of the word of God. That means as watchmen, as servants, as teachers, as hearers, we are to go therefore and teach whomsoever whatsoever is of Jesus Christ. There is almost no subtlety to willingness of too many to follow another other than Christ. Because of the weakness of the people’s sentiments or their lack of personal study and knowledge, they just keep following agents of error. It is our duty to seek out truth and stand for that truth no matter what happens or who diverts from it. It is incredible for anyone to take the attitude that individuals who stay in conference churches will be lost for putting up with error and not standing for truth, while at the same time they are doing the exact same thing in their independent studies. We desperately need to understand that the gathering, shaking, sifting, settling, and sealing process will continue until all of us are in one group or the other. As individuals we must go step by step in the path of truth that leads to the sanctuary watching every way of God in doing His work with our eyes firmly on Jesus. In this last moment of time, many wonderful and terrible things will be happening, and we will need to keep our eyes wide open and be empowered with the eyesalve to discern the events, thereby having wisdom from on high through the unction of the Holy Spirit. How vitally important it is that people individually study to understand the process through which we are going and to see it as a matter of life and death, as it certainly is. Many will come up to one point of faith, draw the line, and go no further. If there is any doubt about the validity of this point, study again how and why Adam made the choice to eat of the forbidden tree, which threw the whole world into chaos. If only he had continued in faith to the doing of every word of God.
The sifting process is the powerful spiritual reality that believers will go through. It’s a God ordained thing. It is a good thing. It is initiated by God to allow us to come to maturity. It is the trying of our faith. Notice the end result...a faith more precious than gold.
I Peter 1:7
The sifting is biblical. When a believer is in the Word, God begins to do a work in their life. He is preparing them for something. God starts showing up in wonderful ways in your life. You might be brought through a stroke, or a personal tragedy, a firing, the lost of a spouse, or a parent, you might have experienced sexual abuse, or suffered from a brain affliction...doesn’t matter.
God showed up! And if you accept His doings you were brought to a higher plain of understanding and relationally with God. And His healing far exceeds any trial endured. He is preparing you to overcome. God may accept us as we are, but He will not leave us as we are. There may be seasons of change that we go through for Christ. Some have already experienced a purifying fire in past seasons. The residue of burnt smoke lingers in their nostrils. Remembered is the trial for the that God brought. Some still sting from the burning process. Why does the enemy so want to sift us? He misthinks that we will fault God. How nearer the mind of Christ, as we have the realization that God is growing us. If we’re to be the last people and to teach the final generation then we must be prepared to be sifted. We will not be exempt from the trials of life. But there is a difference in how we use them to refine us, to change us, to mold us, to chisel us, to transform us, to correct us, to chasten us, to challenge us, to grow us. God is making us more like His Son. God is not so much concerned with our comfort as He is with our being saved. Please understand the purpose of this statement; if you cannot stand for the working of the straight testimony involving the reasoning for truth beyond your little opinions then you will not stand for Christ. Jesus knew that he would soon be gone. He was about to go to the cross. And his goal in the development of his disciples was that they would stand. Hear me please, the disciples would have never been able to withstand all the persecution, the opposition, the trials that they faced including martyrdom had they not learned how to stand. Jesus was about ready to go to the cross. The disciples did not understand why. They would have chosen for Jesus to remain with them and tosetupanearthlykingdom.ButGod’schargesaredifferent. Jesus’mission on earth at that time was to die. And there was no one who felt stronger about that than Peter. Jesus explained this to them...and had to use strong words against Peter. This was a difficult thing for Peter. It was a huge test of his faith!
Matthew 16:21-28
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