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Realms We Have Never Walked In
Before
Almost ten years ago, on June
21, 1998, during a service in his church, Pastor Shelley prophesied
these Words in the middle of a longer prophecy:
Will you let Me open your eyes to see that which is
spiritual?
Will you trust Me to lead you into realms that you
have never walked in before?
As I was
meditating on what to present in this update, the Holy Spirit led me
to read the prophecies given many years ago, and He highlighted
these two prophetic questions.
I did not
know Pastor Shelley then, but I can surely identify that God has
been working over these years to bring us to the place of
really believing and expecting to see and walk in
spiritual realms!
Expansion
 (Mat 9:16) No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put
in to fill it up taketh from the garment,
and the rent is made worse.
(Mat
9:17)
Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new
bottles, and both are preserved.
I can remember that many years ago we were all
praying for new wineskins to be able to contain the
new wine that we were believing for God to pour out. When the
manifestation of spontaneous laughter began to break out in
churches, we decided that this was the new wine. We
needed flexible wineskins to be able to believe that
God would do such a thing.
And then came the gold dust, and the manna, and
the feathers, and the jewels, etc. These manifestations really
caused us to check our wineskins and ask God for new
ones!
Pastor Shelley, who has experienced true,
life-changing, Fire-of-God revival, once asked Sister Ruth
Heflin about all of these manifestations because he was not
seeing people's lives change as a result of them
like he saw happening in the days of true Pentecostal
outpourings.
She told him, "This is
just the ocean spray! The big waves are on the
way!"
I don't know if you have noticed, but God
has been answering our prayers gradually over these years
in preparation for something really big that is on
His heart for His Bride.
Like some of His forerunners,
He wants us to experience and become
accustomed to the spiritual realm.
Enlargement
(Isa
54:2)
Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch
forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy
cords, and strengthen thy stakes;
 If you have not yet let God
enlarge your mind to be able to contain where He wants to
take us in the spirit realm, now is the time! He is
pulling on our tent curtains and challenging us to move our
stakes beyond the place our minds have become comfortable
with.
He is
calling us to stretch ourselves into new realms of
habitation that are beyond the realm of the natural.
He wants us to give Him plenty of rope so that He can enlarge our
thinking as much as His heart desires.
Have you
noticed within yourself a hunger to actually see the Lord,
His angels, Paradise, His Throne Room, etc.? Do you
have an increased desire to actually talk to the Lord face
to face on a regular basis, as many forerunners have
done?
That's
where He wants to take us. The devil is taking our young
people into spirit realms for his demonic purposes. It is just
a counterfeit for the real. But God is stirring His Bride to
ask Him to open the spiritual realms to
her.
Drink
from the Well of Forerunners
For many
years, the Lord has been busy behind the
scenes grooming and training forerunners to walk
in the spirit dimension, having regular encounters with
Himself. Now He is bringing these forerunners from
obscurity to visibility to raise up another company of
spiritually hungry believers to walk in their footsteps and be
forerunners for those who will follow.
Pastor
Shelley is one of many of these forerunners in our
generation. But God is drawing these first level modern
forerunners together to drink from each other's
wells in order to encourage and to challenge each one to
reach higher and deeper. And He is awakening His Bride to
have a desire to drink from the wells of these
forerunners.
Two very
notable men of God who are coming into visibility in these days are
Neville Johnson (www.lwf.org.au), from Australia,
and Sadhu Sundar Selvaraj (www.jesusministries.org),
from India. These are men who walk with God in
incredible ways and who God is raising up to challenge His
Bride to do likewise.
The Holy
Spirit has prompted me to relate to you a divine experience
that Pastor Neville had in June of this year which he
has mentioned in several conferences. Pastor Shelley
was so blessed reading about this experience that he
shared it with his congregation a couple of weeks ago. Here is
my condensed version:
From
the Outer Court to Eternity
The Garden of Disrepair
On Sunday, the 24th of June of this
year, I [Neville Johnson] was praying and
talking to the Lord. I felt the Lord come to
me, tap me on the shoulder, and He said, "Come." At that
moment, I was somewhere else and the whole scene changed.
When these experiences happen, there’s a transition of
consciousness from one realm to
another.
I looked at the Lord's face, and it kind
of frightened me because His face was so focused and
resolute. I started to follow Him down a garden
pathway to a wall with an arched gateway and no gate.
The gateway had lots of vines creeping and climbing all over the
entrance, and there were weeds growing all
around.
And then the Lord walked through into a
garden, so I followed Him. But the garden was
in an incredible state of disrepair.
It had once been a nice garden. There had been hedges and
stone walks, and there had been fountains, and so on, but it was
totally overgrown.
I asked the
Lord where we were, and the Lord said, "This is My church." And when He
said that, I felt the incredible sense of love He had for that
garden. Then His face became much softer, and He said,
"This is the Outer Court of My
church. This is where most Christians
live."
When He began to talk like that, I
realized that He was also talking about the tri-part nature
of man – our body, soul and spirit - which the Tabernacle
was a picture of.
The Holy Place of the
Heart
Then I
followed the Lord through the garden into a small room which had a
curtain across it. It was dim inside there, but there was a
candlestick on the left side and a table on the right with bread on
it. I then realized that this was the Holy Place
of Christian's hearts.
The
candlestick was giving off more smoke than
light. I could see that it had never
been trimmed. There was very little oil
and mostly wick. The wick speaks of our flesh.
And there was a mixture of good and bad stuff floating through
the air.
The Lord said,
"This is the soul of most
Christians." It looked a real mess. The
soul can get really messed up with what you put into it, what you
look at, what you watch and what you read.
 I then became aware of the altar
of incense in the front. There was very little
incense on it, a small amount of vapor
and more smoke than fire. I asked what
the smoke was, and the Lord replied, "That is the selfish prayers of My people that did not
originate in Me."
I said, "Lord,
I really thought we were doing well." He looked at me
and said, "There is much in the
church which is good, but I must do a much deeper work of
cleansing."
Then from an
incredible gold vessel, the Lord took some
incense and threw it onto the altar of incense. That
beautiful smell went up and filled the whole place.
Then a veil divided, and I began to get
overloaded. My background and training in the
Scriptures were flooding through my mind.
I thought,
"Lord, we’ve got to build an altar of incense in our heart
to get through the veil. We’ve got to open that veil and live in that
realm." And incense speaks of our prayer life
and intercession.
The Holiest of All
We moved into
another room which was much, much smaller. It was the
Holiest of All. And when I stepped there, I had the
distinct feeling that this was very
rarely visited.
The Lord Jesus
stood in front of me. And then something began to happen that
only happens in the movies. He started to morph and
become the Ark of the Covenant and then the Lord Jesus, the
Ark of the Covenant and then the Lord Jesus.
And I thought, "I
wish we could do this better in our studios." It was really
good how He was doing this. Then He turned to me and
smiled.
And then He
began to emanate Light. He started to glow,
the colors changed, and He became
brighter and brighter. Power and
energy came off of Him to such a degree that it filled that whole
place. And this started to flow into
the Outer Court and then out into the world. And I
saw that mess was cleaned up so quickly.
Living in Eternity
As I was standing
there, suddenly it was like time slipped away.
I had the feeling that I was standing in
eternity. That is the only way I can describe it.
There was no past. There was no present. I was in
eternity. It was the strangest, strangest
feeling.
It was like time
stopped. Ages past and present began to be
merged. The future was merged into the present.
Galaxies flowed by me - time and time
immortal, eons and eons. And I distinctly remember a number of
black holes.
And I thought,
"Lord, where am I?" He said, "You
are standing in eternity where everything is
present."
And my
understanding began to be enlarged. I began to see way into
the future. I began to see eons into the future – the
purposes of God. I can’t remember everything. I
remember just little bits. The emotion of it was so
great. I said, "Of course, this is logical. This is
fantastic."
The Throne of God
was the center of everything. Everything emanated from the
Throne of God out into the universe.
And the vastness of
the universe was unbelievable. And the purposes of God for man were
mind boggling out into the universe. And I remember thinking,
"We had no idea, Lord, that it was going to be like
this."
I was standing in
eternity, and I had the feeling nothing was impossible.
The potential of this place, the Most Holy Place, was
unlimited.
And He said to me,
"Neville, if you come frequently into
this place and dwell with Me here, you will transcend time and
you’ll walk with Me in eternity."
And then He said,
"Have I not said that I put eternity in
your heart?"
That’s in the Book
of Ecclesiastes. The King James says, "I put the world in your
heart," but it’s the word for eternity – "olam" in the Hebrew.
It means a place beyond time and space and has the
thought of a vanishing point.
And there is a
place where we can come before God and finally touch that
realm. And we exit this world while still in the flesh.
There is a vanishing point where we can stand in the Lord,
transcend, and understand all things.
He said,
"Tell My people they have got to live
with Me in this place. Tell them there is a place where they
can learn from, where everything is clear, where understanding is
clear, where time does not exist, space does not exist. You
stand in eternity."
You
know, everything doesn’t just finish when we just get to heaven.
Once we get to heaven and for those who get into the
Millennium reign of Christ, the Millennium reign of Christ
is just another place of training to reign. And when
we get to the end of the Millennium, the City comes down on the
earth – the New Jerusalem – and the earth becomes the
capital of the universe. And only then does it
begin. Only then. God’s going to spread His
Kingdom across this vast universe. And you and I have
a part in that.
In His Manifest
Presence
And I thought, "Why don’t many people come
here?" He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High .
. . Most of the time we spend is in the Holy
Place.
But there is another place, in God’s manifest
Presence of God, where the Shekinah Glory is. In God’s manifest Presence, it is only there that we
are really changed. Your exposure to the manifest
Presence of God changes you.
We cannot do this, but God is going to have a
church that is perfect. And His light, His life, His love, His
power are going to transform us as we press into
Him and we learn how to come before Him and we stand in
that place in God exposed to the manifest Presence of
God.
You cannot be in the manifest
Presence of God and remain the same.
You know the Bible says no man can see God
and live? Well, there are a few guys who have seen God and
lived. So I thought, "Okay, what does this mean?" When
you are in the manifest Presence of God, when you are there, you’re
connected with God and something in you dies.
You are never the same again. You cannot live the old way
anymore. You cannot see God and
live like you were. Something dies within you.
And He does it. We don’t do it – He does it.
Waiting on
God
But let me say something to you.
Unless you spend quality time daily waiting before
God, waiting in the Presence of God, this is not going to
happen to you.
No preacher is going to come along and lay
hands on you and it will happen. This has now become
individual. There are certain things we can do, but there is a
limit.
There are only some things you can do.
You can come before the Lord on a daily basis. You say, "Well,
I come before the Lord and nothing happens."
Wait. Wait.
I had a friend, who is dead - Walter
Beuttler. He told me that he came down every night
round about 2:00 in the morning. He would sit in his chair and
say, "Lord, I have just come to keep You
company." He said, "I just want to wait on You.
I’m not asking for anything. I just want to be in Your
Presence." He just waited and waited. When dawn came, he
would get up and go back to bed for a while and then go about his
business.
He said, "Neville, after twelve
months I did this and there was
nothing that really happened. But I kept the
Lord company." And then one night, no different from any other
night, he just came down and said, "Lord, I’m here to keep You
company, to just love You. If You want to talk to me, that’s
fine. If You don’t, it’s all right. I’m just
here."
He said he heard somebody
walk down a gravel pathway outside, open the kitchen door,
close it and walk into his room. And it was the
Lord. He said, "I want to
spend the rest of the night talking with you
now."
The Scripture says, "Therefore will I make you wait, that I might be
gracious to you." Why does God make us
wait? He said, "I’ll make you wait so that I can be gracious
to you." Because in the waiting, something transpires
in us, something happens. It’s really important for
you to come before the Lord. Learn to spend quality
time in the Presence of God.
As ministers, we really have got to
let go of some of the administration, some of the
counseling, some of all that stuff and spend quality
time, at least four hours, in the Presence of God every
day. If you want to get into this, you’ve got to
really be hungry and mean business to do this before
God. You’ve got to be strong enough to let the rest of this
go.
You see, if you break into this and
the manifest Presence of God comes in your church – and it
is going to come in many - the world will beat a path to your door.
The world will come. The world will come to see that
church burning. This generation - you are
it. You have come to the Kingdom for such a time as
this.
In
Closing
The Lord has been so faithful to provide for
us! We are closer than usual to being able to pay our
rent next week (Feb. 15th), and we
are rejoicing! We also need money to pay our
Jerusalem city taxes. And our
van has been in the garage for a week with some kind
of computer problem that has disabled the speedometer and the
automatic part of the transmission. They have not yet
been able to find the problem, but when they do, that's another bill
that we need the Lord to pay!
In my
last update, I reported that a pastor from India had been
sharing his testimony of how the Lord has blessed him financially
because he has been giving faithfully to the ministry here
in Jerusalem. However, he is from
Indonesia - not India. I accidentally typed it
wrong. And we have received a few generous donations from
others that he has preached to resulting in their wonderful
testimonies of the Lord's faithfulness to bless when seed is
sown into His Jerusalem!
So we
know that this is
good ground for sowing,
and we depend on God using you to help us live here
to fulfill our current mandate of sowing to the heavens from
Jerusalem so that the Lord will sow back to the earth.
If you could make a donation before the
15th, it would be a great blessing to
us!
(1Co 2:9) But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear
heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the
things which God hath prepared for them that love
him.
(1Co
2:10)
But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the
Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of
God.
(Psa
119:32) I
will run the way of thy commandments, when thou shalt
enlarge my heart.
Pastor
Shelley is in the middle of preaching a series on "Spirit
Travel." The Lord wants to enlarge our
thinking about what He plans to do through His Bride, His
Sons of the Kingdom, to help bring in the harvest!
May we allow the Lord to give us new wineskins and then stretch our minds so that we can
believe to walk in realms we have never
walked in before!
Blessings, Grace and
Shalom from Jerusalem!
Nancy Bergen
Jerusalem Revival Center
PO Box 1402
Jerusalem 91013, Israel
Tel.
& Fax: 972-2-5825301
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