Today, many believers either fail to recognize how late the hour is and how dark the spiritual climate is and fail to do anything, or they do discern how spiritually dark it is and either rise up or, because of fear, remain depressed and discouraged. Sadly, most of the Church is doing nothing.
We have entered a very dark hour when we need true leaders to arise, and the Church needs to learn holiness and purity before the Lord. One of the main reasons for the ignited mentoring series is to share key insight from previous leaders that will help us to fulfill our high call at a critical time. There is so much at stake, and we need to recognize that we as His people need to return to the Lord.
Smith hoped that there would be one final last-minute revival before the Lord comes. But he also understood that the Lord is returning for a Church without spot or wrinkle.
“Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to an idol, nor sworn deceitfully.”
Psalm 24: 3-4
How can we claim to enter the Holy Place of His Presence without holiness? It is only to the degree that the Holy Spirit can constrain us that He can restrain through us. Smith Wigglesworth explained:
If you are in this love, you will be swallowed up with holy desire. You will have no desire, only the Lord. Your mind will be filled with divine reflection. Your whole heart will be taken up with the things that pertain to the Kingdom of God, and you will live in the secret place of the Most High, and you will abide there. Remember, it is abiding where He covers you with His feathers.
Now, the world uses the call for the Church to love as a weapon to take the Church captive. But His love should drive us to rise and be a stronger and bolder voice as we recognize that Jesus is coming soon. The enemy is singing the church a lullaby so that through fear and confusion we might fall asleep, while Heaven sounds a trumpet blast to awaken us thoroughly from our slumber. Smith added:
It is an inner, inner, inner, inner place where the Lord now has the treasures. There is an exceeding glory. There is a glory where you forget your poverties, where you forget your weaknesses, where you forget your human-nature history and you go on to divine opportunity.
Naturally speaking, all doors are closing, and it is getting darker, but spiritually it is an hour of opportunity. It is the hour that we were made and anointed for and He has an open door that no man can shut. But we must dine in the Secret Place of His Presence and enjoy holy intimacy there. Smith added:
The crown of life is for the overcomer. God never wants you to retreat before the enemy, but to learn the song of victory and overcome! Praise the Lord! There are two kinds of shouts—a shout that is made and a shout that makes you. There are men of God, but there are also men who are God’s men. There is a place where you take hold of God, but there is a better place where God takes hold of you. “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” Do you know the presence of the Almighty? It is wonderful. His presence is a surety, and there is no wavering, no unbelief, and no unrest there. It is perfect.
This is an hour where He is separating the fake from the real, a separation by fire. The Lord is looking for true leaders to rise up.
“Your commanders are like locusts, and your generals like great grasshoppers, which camp in the hedges on a cold day; when the sun rises they flee away, and the place where they are is not known.”
Nahum 3: 17
This move of God is not one in which God is looking for great personalities but great-yielded vessels. He is looking for living shofars that His Holy Spirit can sound an alarm through that all who have ears to hear might hear. But shofars demand death, the removable of the old flesh, a stretching and a stressing so that they might be a vessel the Spirit can blow through and make a sound from the depth of the Father’s heart and cries to the deep of all who will hear. The Lord is looking for those who will draw near and yield and yield until He makes them.
The Lord called nobodies in the middle of nowhere to set the world on fire as they walked as yielded vessels to the Holy Spirit. Smith explained of them:
These were just ordinary men who were chosen, but they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and this infilling always lifts a man to a plane above the ordinary. It does not take a cultured or a learned man to fill a position in God’s church; what God requires is a yielded, consecrated, holy life that He can make into such a flame of fire. Baptized with the Holy Ghost and fire!
Let us remember He is the HOLY Spirit, and if He has His way in our lives, then the proof is holiness. It is not how well we articulate our words or the depth of knowledge we hold but His ability to work through us. How many claim to know Him, but He declares, “I don’t know you!”?
“And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”
1 John 3: 3
Will we surrender to be purified? Purification always comes at a cost and at a loss. Smith explained:
When you are filled with the power of the Holy Ghost, God will wonderfully work wherever you go. When you are filled with the Spirit, you will know the voice of God.
But we must remember that the Holy Spirit doesn’t come with new revelation but rather to point to Jesus and to underline the Word. The Children of Israel were taught the holy fear even of the Word, but today, we believe the Word is subject to change and evolution. We stand wise in our opinions and believe we can answer today’s complicated problems. We don’t see to hear what the Lord, the Creator of all things, might have to say because we have predetermined the answer.
We need to return and repent that His blood might wash us. That means we first must be convicted of sin. Smith said:
Wherever Jesus went, sin was revealed, and men didn’t like sin revealed. You are in a good place when you weep before God and repent over the least thing. If you have spoken unkindly, you realize it was not like the Lord. Your keen conscience has taken you to prayer. It is a wonderful thing to have a keen conscience. It is when we are close to God that our hearts are revealed. God intends us to live in purity seeing Him all the time.
If we are to draw near, then sin must be exposed in our lives, and we must desire purity. We must be quick to be convicted and quick to repent. Smith added:
If there is anything wrong, come to the Blood. “If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). Jesus was manifested to destroy the works of the devil. We can come into a new experience of God, where God creates in our hearts such a love for Jesus that we are living in a new realm—Sons of God with power, filled with all the fullness of God.
It is here that we recognize that salvation is only through the Cross and that we need to return to Him. But returning to Him is on His terms, recognizing our desperate need of Him.
“NOW, therefore,’ says the Lord, ‘Turn to Me with ALL your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.’ So REND your heart, and not your garments; Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness; and He relents from doing harm.’”
Joel 2: 2: 12- 13 Emphasis added
Heaven calls for heart surgery. We need to return with ALL our hearts in true brokenness. The Lord is not interested in showmanship and games. He demands true repentance and true brokenness before Him.
Smith said:
Brothers, sisters, it is vital that we keep pure hearts before God. Purify yourselves and see the face of God. He greatly desires to draw near to you, but you must first purify your heart and your hands.
If we walk filled with His Spirit, His Holy Spirit, and led by the Holy Spirit, then we must allow Him to purify us.
Smith explained:
In this new life in the Spirit, in this new covenant life, you love the things that are right and pure and holy, and you shudder at all things that are wrong. Jesus was able to say, “…the prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me” (John 14:30). And the moment we are filled with the Spirit of God we are brought into like wonderful condition, and as we continue to be filled with the Spirit, the enemy cannot have an inch of territory in us.
We must live to see the increase of His purpose, His desire, and His Kingdom. True fear of the Lord never seeks to alter or take from the Word. This is an hour where the battle is over the hearts of men. It is a spiritual battle, and if the Church does not stand up and preach the truth, who will? Will we bow to the fear and pressure of the hour, or rise up and, whether small or great, make a real difference? But we can’t stand up until we bow down to Him/
