Why was it “the best of times and the worst of times?” We are living in precisely that situation now, and the best will get better, and the worst will get worse. Both are preparing this world for the age to come, and we are here to be the messengers, so we must understand our times.

     Many things bring life to a church, such as great preaching, prayer, worship, and fellowship. However, three things seem to bring the most life to the church—hearing from God, miracles, and new believers. In our local church, we have been blessed by an increase in each of these, which has come in waves. It seems that we may be in the first stages of yet another wave, which is creating a lot of excitement. A few weeks ago, I was also given a promise from the Lord—He said He is going to release a double portion of prophetic revelation to us.

     True holiness is not legalism but love. The reason the bride wants to be without spot or wrinkle is not out of the fear that if she is not perfect her Bridegroom will smite her, but because she is so in love with Him that she wants to be perfect for Him. This is the difference between being driven by legalism, which is fear based, and being motivated by the love that fulfills the Law.

     Before we go into the more in-depth teaching on the prophetic gifts of the Spirit and the ways that the Lord speaks to His people, we have been addressing the spiritual and moral foundation of prophetic ministry. There are two reasons why this is important.

         We recently did a cursory study of the “four winds of the earth” and how they unfolded over history. Next, we will cover how the sealing of the bondservants is taking place at this time, and how they will keep from taking "the mark of the beast."

Last week we discussed how the habitations of God in Scripture, the tabernacles, had three compartments, and how we applied this to our Katrina relief efforts, breaking it down into three phases, which were:

Phase I: Rescue. The main goal in this phase is simply saving lives and getting people to safety.

Phase II: Stabilization. The main goal of this phase is to establish PODs for sustaining the people with the basic needs of food, medicine, shelter, clothing, etc.

Even a cursory look at church history reveals many things that were not only contrary to the teachings and nature of Christ, but were diabolical in nature. Today the church tends to deal mostly with matters of insensitivity, but in times past, the issues were how to deal with the brutal and inhuman cruelty being inflicted on literally millions in the name of Christ. Certainly, progress has been made out of the deep darkness which the church had fallen into. So where are we now? What's next?

As we continue our study from the rest of Joshua 6, we learn how Israel crossed over to possess the Promised Land by capturing Jericho through faithfully following the Lord’s orders. However, before they blew the trumpets and shouted so that the walls would fall down, Joshua charged the people to keep their vow to Rahab the harlot and those who were in her house not to touch anything that was under the ban.

In the next verse of the Lord’s discourse concerning the end of the age, He says: