The Day of
Atonement
In this update, I would like
to share with you a very special experience that
Pastor Shelley had on September 20th, two days before the Day of
Atonement. He had forgotten, but it was also the day of
his 32nd anniversary of continuously preaching the
Gospel. (He started when he was 7.)
He and his family were (and
still are) in Orange Beach, Alabama, for two reasons. The
Lord has given him a very urgent mandate to write a
book and directed him to get away from as many
interruptions as possible so that he could do this. He even
had an experience several months ago where he met a scribe
angel who was assigned to help him!
Also, on the Day of Atonement
every year, Bob Jones receives revelations from the Lord
about what to expect for the coming year. Paul Keith
Davis helps to articulate these prophetic downloads in a
booklet entitled "The Shepherd's
Rod."
Pastor Shelley was invited to
be with them this year in Orange Beach as they waited on the
Lord and shared revelations.
When Pastor Shelley came back
to his church to preach last weekend (Oct. 6-7), he shared
his amazing experience. Here is a condensed
version:
Preparing
for the Holy
I had this experience
early in the morning, out on the balcony. I was sitting there with my Bible, and I was praying about
something. All of a sudden, I went somewhere else.
I was physically sitting there, but a part of me went
somewhere else. And I saw myself in an
experience. It was real - very
real.
The
Experience
I saw myself as a high
priest. We know that Jesus is the high priest of our
faith. We have a priest who is moved with the feeling of our
infirmities.
But for many, many years there were
priests on the earth, and for many, many years there was a high
priest. And I saw myself as a high
priest.
And for 40
minutes I was sitting in a chair on a balcony overlooking
the Gulf, but my spirit man was somewhere else, in another realm,
and I was going through the motions of the Scripture in
Leviticus 16, detail after detail. I wrote it
down.
(Lev
16:4) He shall put on the holy linen coat, and
he shall have the linen breeches upon his flesh, and shall be girded
with a linen girdle, and with the linen miter shall he be attired:
these are holy garments;
therefore shall he wash his flesh in water, and so put them
on.
I don’t exactly know how
to describe it, but I went through verse by verse of Leviticus 16 in
making preparation as the high priest to go into the Holy of
Holies on the Day of Atonement. I’m telling
you, it shook me up.
I washed my hands.
I washed my feet. I saw myself pulling up the linen
breeches. And there were others in this vision or experience who
were helping me with this heavy, cumbersome job of getting all of
this stuff on.
In
fact, there was a time in this experience that I missed a step, and
one of the other priests who were with me said, "Here, I’m
sorry. You forgot this." And then I went through that
step.
But I saw the coat, I saw
the breeches, I saw the girdle, I saw the miter.
I even saw the Lord’s
goat and the scapegoat. I saw all of that. All of
that preparation was being made. And I was going through it as though I were the high
priest.
I even saw myself taking
the burning coals in the censor and both hands full of
incense.
Process of
Purification and Obedience
When it was finished,
forty minutes later, I said, "Lord, what is this
about?"
And He said, "There is great preparation necessary, even
today, for coming into the Holy."
I said,
"What?"
We have this very
accurate concept that Jesus made the way to get in
with His Blood. The veil is open and we can go
in.
But God said,
"Even today there is preparation that is
necessary for coming into the
Holy."
And you can believe this
or not, but I heard Bro. Branham’s voice say, "Fools . . .
Fools . . ." And there was a long pause. I didn't see
him, but I heard his voice. He
said, "Fools have walked with hobnailed
shoes where angels fear to
trod."
I nearly shook my Bible
right out of my lap at the thought, at the seriousness, of what he
said. It may be a strange way of expressing it, but
how many times have I heard him say that on tape. He said
that fools stomp right in and stomp right around
where angels know better than to trod without covering
their faces.
There is
preparation that is necessary in this hour to come into the
Holy. God said, "I’m still going to have a sanctified
people. I’m still going to have a people who walk
before Me in righteousness and holiness." To come into
the Holy, there is a process of purification. There
is a process.
He taught me that there was no
special virtue in the water that filled the basin.
When I read Leviticus 16, the priest did
not even use anti-bacterial soap, so his hands weren’t even really
all that clean. But when God looked at him, He wasn’t looking
for a microscopic germ; He was looking for
obedience.
There is a possibility
that a priest made it in with a speck of dirt under his fingernail.
And we have no record of God killing him because he was not
able to discern a tiny speck. But you had better know for sure
that if he skipped a step of washing his hands in
the laver, he was going to have trouble at the
curtain.
Do you want to go
into the Holy? I want to go into the Holy. I
want to dwell in the Holy. I want to live in the Holy. I
want to stay in the Holy.
I want to be shut
in to the Holy so that I won’t ever have to come out
again.
And in my notes here I
wrote, "I remember the sense of heavy
responsibility for what was to happen, and yet there was
such sweet joy.
"There was a heaviness as
I sensed the responsibility of the commission of going in as though
I would have been the high priest, but there was such a joy
of knowing that I was going into the
Holy."
Joy Married to
Responsibility
And the Lord said, "One
of the things that I want to do this coming year and one of the
things that I want to release in this season is I want to release joy that has been married to
responsibility. I want My people to be solemn with
the responsibility that I have placed on their shoulder, but with
that, I want to marry joy."
God is revealing to
us another part of that marriage between Truth and
Spirit. Those who have
walked in Truth have walked in some of that responsibility and some
of that solemnity. And there are others who have walked in such
unspeakable, splashing joy.
There is a danger to
being overcome and overwhelmed in too much
solemnity, and there is also a danger in splashing
and uncontrollable joy. There’s a difference in being carefree
and careless. Sometimes we get so excited, we become careless
and we forget about our responsibility.
God said, "I want to
marry Truth and the Spirit. I want
those mountains to melt together in this
hour."
From this marriage,
a baby is going to be born. God doesn’t bring
anything together in union unless it’s going to give birth to
something. I am looking forward to the bouncing
baby.
Preparation Still
Needed
We must make preparation
for coming into the Holy – even in this hour. That was
preparation for what God showed me on the Day of
Atonement. Of all the weeks of the year that it could
have happened, it happened a couple of days prior to the
Day of Atonement. And then I realized it had happened to me on
my 32nd anniversary of preaching the Gospel.
Thirty-two years
later, I am still making preparation to come into the
Holy. It’s all right. I have dealt with
it. We need to deal with it.
We need to accept
where we are, but keep our eyes on where we’re going.
You will not keep on track if you keep your eyes on where you
are.
We need to be very aware
of where we are right now, but we need to keep our focus on
where we are headed.
Words For This Next
Year
In
the middle of the night before the Day of Atonement, the Lord told
me, "I am going to raise
the standard this
year."
