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The Bride has made herself ready

I have noticed over the years that the revelation I receive is witnessed by actual experience in some way. Often these coincide. The date of a particular revelation often marks the start of a period in which I am required to walk out the revelation. Perhaps this is part of bringing it from heaven to earth.

At other times, usually in regard to revelations that deal with mere character issues, I have found that difficulties or challenges arise the same day which force me to focus upon those particular issues. For instance, if I write about love or patience—especially if I receive some new insight—God then brings people or situations into my life that give me some practice exercising my new revelation. Such challenges serve as a double witness to the revelation that establishes it in the earth. Recognizing God’s ways and tactics can be quite helpful.

There are many times, however, walking a path in the dark, having only a small lamp at my feet, I am unable to see the big picture. Such times require faith, which is an inner knowing that the light guiding my feet is indeed the word of God (Psalm 119:105). I believe that God requires this near-blind faith at times, so that when the light comes, I know that God was the one who led me and that I did not go down that path by my own understanding.

The Recent Focus on the Bride

Last week some of us here (locally) began to receive revelation along a new train of thought. Our attention was brought to the topic of the Bride of Christ. I won’t try to trace this back through the things I have seen in the past, where this topic was raised, because most who have walked out this revelation have gotten into trouble and have failed in one way or another. In fact, when this topic came up in our radar recently, my first thought was, “Oh, no, here we go again!”

Yet because I have had time to observe the pitfalls from the past, I was able to assist. At any rate, this really came to the surface when God spoke to Sharon saying, “You are Sarah.” God can say so much with so few words! It meant obviously that God had put her in a position as a type of the Bride. Further, by calling her “Sarah,” the word provided context and precedents by which to understand this.

The precedent is obviously the story of Abraham and his two wives, Sarah and Hagar. I have already written about this and have discussed the prophetic significance of each woman in  bringing forth the heir of the promise. By understanding the story in light of Paul’s explanation in Galatians 4, we are given the context in the present story. In my view, the failure of many others to walk out the story properly is due to a shortage of understanding the biblical meaning of the “allegory,” as Paul calls it.

I am confident, however, that our current story will be successful, because it is apparent (to me) that God has given us an understanding of Galatians 4 that most others do not share. And yet there are also new revelations accompanying the present experience, so we are able to increase our understanding beyond what we knew previously. In other words, we are now walking out the new revelations in order to establish them by a double witness in the earth.

As of yesterday afternoon (December 19, 2018), we now know that we were set up to fulfill (in type form) the verse in Revelation 19:7, 8,

⁷ Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready. ⁸ And it was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.

What John foresaw at the end of the first century, we are about to experience at this end of the age (collectively). As individuals, of course, we are all called to enter into this revelation in some way or another, for it applies both individually and collectively. Individuals experience such cleansing in their own lives; but the bride is also a body of people from many generations, and on that level the bride cannot be “ready” until the final individual has been cleansed and can join that body.

We must learn to think on both levels, because God is working on both levels. He is just as interested in the whole of creation as He is in each individual. He is not just saving individuals; He is also “the Savior of all men” (1 Timothy 4:10).

How to Get Ready

God betrothed the seed of Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3, when He first proposed marriage. There He promised His bride many children, to protect her, to honor her, to give her a good home, and to provide for her needs. Abraham accepted the proposal on behalf of his collective seed that was to be the bride.

Some centuries later, God redeemed (purchased) a slave bride from Egypt and brought her to Mount Horeb. There He married Israel, using Moses as the officiating minister. So the prophets later tell us that God had married Israel. However, they prophesied in the context of Israel’s unfaithfulness. Hosea’s prophecy shows that Israel was a harlot, pictured by the prophet’s wife, Gomer. This agrees with Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and other prophets as well, who use such language.

Before that original marriage ceremony at Mount Horeb (or Sinai), God told the people to prepare themselves for marriage. Exodus 19:10, 11 says,

¹⁰ The Lord also said to Moses, “Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their garments; ¹¹ and let them be ready for the third day, for on the third day the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people.”

In those days, the people had to do their laundry, for they were acting as types and shadows of greater things yet to come. In Revelation 19:8 we see that getting ready also had to do with garments of “fine linen.” But here we are given the real meaning of these garments, “the righteous acts of the saints.”

In other words, doing one’s laundry does not really prepare a bride for marriage. Outer clothing is not the real issue, although clothing can certainly serve as a type and shadow illustrating the real deal. Unfortunately, when we look at the story, we understand that Israel agreed to the marriage but did not prepare her heart. She prepared outwardly but had no inward heart change.

1 John 3:18 says,

¹⁸ Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.

Israel professed her love for God but failed to follow through “in deed and truth.” She took her vows of obedience (Exodus 19:8) but failed to fulfill those vows. Hence, she lacked the linen garments, which were “the righteous acts of the saints.”

Such righteous acts are only possible under the New Covenant, because God has vowed to make us righteous by His own power through the working of the Holy Spirit. The Ten Commandments, then, are the Ten Promises of the New Covenant, where God promises that we will have no other gods before Him, that we will not steal, murder, or covet. Our success is not based upon our attempt to fulfill our own vows of obedience but upon God’s vow to make it happen as He changes our hearts.

So the Bride must make herself ready first by having faith in the promises of God. Such is New Covenant faith that identifies with the faith of Abraham in Romans 4:21. Only through the New Covenant can she obtain “linen garments,” which clothe the inward parts and not merely the outward body.

Israel, however, was a bond woman (Hagar) and was therefore suffered from a lesser form of marriage. Her marriage was legitimate (lawful) but it was slated for divorce in the end. God had planned a better marriage for the future, and this could take place only after His first marriage had ended in divorce (Jeremiah 3:8).

Cleansing from Inner Defilement

We see, then, that the real way to prepare for marriage is to deal with inner defilement, which alone can change the heart and bring us into agreement that characterizes a New Covenant marriage. Whereas an Old Covenant marriage requires obedience, a New Covenant marriage requires agreement. Obedience implies submission to authority; agreement implies that there is no need to enforce compliance, for authority has been rendered irrelevant.

That is why a man’s authority over his wife began in Genesis 3:16, which was after sin entered the picture. Originally (Genesis 2:24), marriage was meant to be a man and a woman in agreement (“one flesh”). The original marriage condition was based on the New Covenant, whereas later it was reduced to an Old Covenant pattern. Sin made it necessary to set up a line of authority, but this was not the original intent of God in a marriage.

For further study of this, see my book, Old and New Covenant Marriage.

The Current Type and Shadow

As I said earlier, Sharon was made the type of the Bride. Most important was that she was to play the role of Sarah, rather than Hagar. (That was encouraging!) Yesterday it occurred to me that this role really dates back a year and a half to when we first began to minister to her in July 2017. At that time, she walked into a prayer meeting and immediately an evil spirit was disturbed. We then had to cast it out of her.

I thought we were done at that point, but as time passed, more spirits surfaced, and we had to deal with them one at a time. Only yesterday did I realize that she was being cleansed inwardly in her prophetic role as a Sarah-Bride.

The first few exorcisms dealt with her own problems brought about by her background in Satanic ritual abuse. But once she was cleansed, she was ready for her role as a representative of the collective body of the Sarah company. Hence, we saw a series of evil spirits being drawn to her as if she were a magnet, some of which were high-level princes over islands, regions, and nations.

This was unusual, for I had not seen this in my past experience. Though it took awhile to understand what was happening, we still had to deal with those spirits when they manifested. To turn aside would have been to leave her in a painful condition. In all, we have probably cast out a hundred evil spirits out of her, never more than a few at a time.

Then last week God began to reveal the big picture of what was happening. The most revealing factor was when we began to cast out evil spirits that currently torment the church as a whole. On December 10 we cast out Fear of Torment, Counterfeit Vengeance, and the Spirit of Delusion. These have to do with the church’s belief that a vengeful God will torture sinners forever.

We followed up on December 14 by casting out Judgmentalism, Harshness, Resistance, and Legalism. Then on December 17 we cast out the Twin Towers of Power and Wealth, along with the Red Dragon and the Spirit of Hagar. On December 19 we cast out the spirit of Blindness and concluded with the spirit of Old Covenant Marriage.

That was when the big picture was revealed, showing us that the Bride was making herself ready. These evil spirits in the church were being summoned to us as we met in a divine court setting or as a divine council, so that we could pronounce judgment upon them and cast them out. This was designed to prepare the Sarah company for marriage and to bring forth the sons of God.

We saw no particular clothing as being a factor in all of this. What we saw was the inner condition that is pictured biblically as clothing. What is most encouraging is that God is revealing something comparable to the preparation of Hagar in Exodus 19 but is actually fulfilling the Sarah prophecy in Revelation 19.

The Son of Laughter

Recall that Revelation 19:7 begins by saying, “Let us rejoice and be glad.” I had never connected this prophecy to Isaac, the son of laughter. When the angel told Abraham about this, he laughed (Genesis 17:17). He laughed, not because he doubted but because he was ecstatic (Romans 4:19, 20, 21). Sarah also laughed on another occasion (Genesis 18:12, 13, 14, 15), though she denied it out of fear. It appears that she laughed because of doubt and was in need of some cleansing before she could bring forth the promised son in Genesis 21:3.

The birth of Isaac began a time of conflict between him and his older half-brother, Ishmael, who had been expecting to inherit the birthright from Abraham. Both Hagar and Ishmael had to be cast out in order to prepare the way for Isaac to be the inheritor. So also have we followed this prophetic type in recent days, as we are now at the start of "the third day" (Hosea 6:2).

This past ten days, after each deliverance session, we were rejoicing with a lot of laughter. In fact, this really goes back to the first deliverance session in July 2017. After Sharon had recovered, she could not help but get up and dance around the room. Her joy was overwhelming and she could not sit still until she had released it.

Her rejoicing came after every session in the past year, but we did not understand it fully until yesterday while we were laughing and rejoicing. Then this morning, as I looked at Revelation 19:7, it finally occurred to me that John’s prophecy was referring to Sarah, the New Covenant Bride and her “son of laughter.” And for this reason, John tells us to “rejoice and be glad.”

So we rejoice. We are glad, because we see events coming which were prophesied 1900 years ago by John—and even farther back by other prophets.

I do not know if there is more preparation work to be done, but walking out these revelations indicates that the time is near for the marriage of the Lamb and for the manifestation of the sons of God.