CHAPTER 24 REFORMATION NOT RENEWAL: THE GREAT SHAKING! In the previous chapter we looked at I Samuel 22:1-2.  In the Cave of Adullam we saw a remnant of 400 men who were distressed, discontented and in debt.  These men, with David as their leader, were the beginning of God's greatest work in the time of the kings.  Those 400 men, who were once part of the Saul kingdom, were now a separated remnant.  God was literally RE-FORMING His Davidic kingdom, using the remnant (chips) from the Saul kingdom.  In I Samuel chapter 20:1-2 in the Cave of Adullam we see a RE-FORMATION of God's people by God for the purpose of bringing a purer and more powerful people forth from the masses in Saul's kingdom.  God was looking for a leader that would be after His own heart and not the people’s heart.  God was looking for a people, taught by this leader, who would also love Him for His heart’s sake and not merely to satisfy their fleshly desires.  We see in these Scriptures the principle of Reformation as God prepares a people for the great task of cleansing the land of the enemy and establishing His kingdom.  The reformation started with Saul trying to kill David and drove him away from himself.  It did not end until years after Saul's suicide.  The Reformation of God's people did not really end until David defeated the last of Saul's supporters and established a unified kingdom of all the tribes under the anointing and authority that he received from God years earlier. At the present time we are in the early stages of God's current and probably last Reformation.  Other Reformations have occurred, but God will do it again.  God's re-formed people of the future will be a small Remnant who will wait and watch as God continues to search for more people after His own heart.  All Reformation times are difficult times for the Church and only come about because spiritual darkness has blinded the existing churches.  At such times the "ruling" spiritual body, whether it is the Catholic Church of the sixteenth century or the Saul Church of the twenty first century, always finds it virtually impossible to recognize the NEED for Reformation.  Their desire is always to RENEW what already exists.  They are always promoting renewal and branding any idea of Reformation as coming from the devil.  The sixteenth and seventeenth century Catholics attempted to renew their church, in reaction to God's Reformation, but all they did was make it more appealing for people to remain in idolatry.  The modern day Evangelicals and Charismatics, particularly the Charismatics, are responding to the first stages of today's Reformation with the same spirit as the Catholics of the sixteenth century.  They are trying to renew the Church as it exists and thus are resisting the Reformation that God is doing and will bring to completion.  Some refer to I Samuel 11:14 which says, ""Then Samuel said to the people, "Come and let us go to Gilgal and renew the kingdom there."”  They are trying to renew the Saul Church, which God has already rejected as being un-renewable.  The Pentecostals did have a renewal in the 1960's-1970's (in fact, they even gave themselves a new name - Charismatics) and that renewal very likely WAS ordained by God.  The Saul Church will NOT be renewed again. Reformation is totally different than renewal.  Renewal, even in its most radical form, is a restoration and refining of the existing Church.  As was just mentioned, this is exactly what happened in the so-called Catholic Reformation of hundreds of years ago.  Re-formation occurs when the basic structure MUST BE CHANGED!   The Saul Church, the visible, Evangelical, Charismatic Church of today, is quite literally in no condition be renewed or restored.  The Church must and will be re-formed into a new structure by God Himself.  Just as He took a Remnant from Saul's kingdom and reformed them into a kingdom under a man who was after His own heart, and just as He took a Remnant from the Roman Catholic Church of the sixteenth century and re-formed them, using divisive protestors such as Luther, Calvin, Knox and others, into the Protestant Reformation, so in these last days, in the twenty first century, God is taking a Remnant from the Saul Church and will reform them into the David Church which will be a Church for His own glory.  There will be no more Gilgals.  There will only be Adullam's caves and the mighty that fall slain on Mt. Gibron, separation, and spiritual battles between Saul's followers and David's followers until God brings His victory to the ones whose hearts are after Himself. Those who continue in their campaign to renew the existing Evangelical and Charismatic Churches will be placed in the same category as the Catholics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were.  The Catholic priests and leaders who fought anti-renewal proponents such as Martin Luther and John Calvin were found to be fools who were only fighting God.  Many of the Saul Church leaders of our day will also choose to resist God's Reformation.  These leaders may receive the praises of men, as many popes did, but they will NOT receive the approval of God.   The Reason for the Shaking: When the Tall Buildings Fall In the spring of 1993 there was a man who had prophesied a physical earthquake to occur in the Portland area and many Christians heard that prophecy or read about it in the newspapers.  Some churches also received letters articulating that prophecy.    This prophecy was very specific and mentioned a particular day that the earthquake would destroy Portland.  The day came and went, and no earthquake occurred.  Shortly after this time, God gave me a vision of a great shaking where I saw many tall buildings come crashing to the ground.  He made it clear to me that this was not a physical earthquake but a spiritual earthquake and He would be the one who would orchestrate this event.  We were living the Portland metropolitan area at that time, and God showed me a surrealistic view of the downtown skyline from the Willamette River.  The buildings stood tall, straight and imposing.   I saw many people walking in the shade of these buildings.  The sun shown brightly and with great strength behind the buildings, but the people were shaded from the hot, penetrating rays of the sun by these tall buildings.  I asked the Lord what that meant and He said, “These tall buildings are blocking the light of the sun and the warmth of the sun from touching My people.”  He said that the sun was in fact the Sun of Righteousness, Jesus Christ.  He told me that it was important that I pray that these tall buildings would fall down, so there would nothing between His Son and His people.  He said that His people had been shaded from the Son of Righteousness for decades by these imposing structures and that it was important that this blocking of the sun be removed.  He said that there were people that would never pray for the buildings to come down because they enjoyed the cool shade of the buildings and did not really care to look upon His Son directly.  He said there were others who would desire deeply to look upon His Son directly.  He said that the ones that would pray for the buildings to collapse would be blinded to the things of this world by the brightness of the light but they would see Him clearly.  The others who did not want the buildings to fall would be blinded to the presence of the Son of God, but they would even more clearly see the world in all its glory and fascination.  As I have contemplated this vision over the years, it is possible that the tall buildings are large ministries that have prevented God’s people from experiencing Him fully.  These buildings have provided comfort from the harsher elements of the light of Jesus Christ, but still enabled His people to bask in the cool shadows and experience the comfort that this shade brings.  I believe the height of these buildings indicates their standing in the eyes of men and women in the Church.  These tall buildings are representative of ministries of great wealth and power in the Body of Christ that have great influence today. At one time I thought that it was the wealth that we Christians in America have experienced and the temptations that come from holding and seeking this wealth.  I thought that perhaps the falling down of the buildings represented a collapse of the financial system in America.  In my vision, the buildings certainly did remind me of the gigantic financial buildings in the Wall Street district of New York City.  I do know that these buildings represent that which keeps us from the warmth and the light of Jesus Christ and gives us a “cool” kind of comfort.      Over the years I have noticed that some ministries have taken some hard financial hits and I speculate that God is nudging them to get their house in order.  I further speculate that this nudge is a warning of the shaking that will most surely come to the Body of Christ in America.   It is important at this point in the writing of this book to discuss prophetic utterances and human interpretations of these utterances.  In much of Scripture we notice that the prophetic utterance is not interpreted by the prophet.  The prophet often does not know when and in some cases how these events will unfold.  Often he does not know exactly what the images represent that he sees depicted.  It is a grievous error for one who delivers prophetic utterances to always interpret the images that God speaks through him.  SOMETIMES God does give the one who prophecies the interpretation of the image, vision or word, but more often He does NOT give the interpretation of the vision.  It is important that the prophet NOT give his own interpretation of the  Word of God except that the interpretation has been revealed to him by God.  Many prophecies that I have read by men who see visions seem correct until these men start to interpret these visions.  Often it is my sense that they were not given the interpretation by God, but they were given the vision by God.  The hardest thing for God’s visionaries to do is to know when to stop.  Some prophets are good SEE-ers of visions but are not properly equipped by God to HEAR God’s interpretation of the vision.  Unfortunately, some are not able to distinguish what is of man from what is of God.  A prophet’s ear and eye are best trained by God as the man of God reads the Word, understands the Word and practices the Word. People today are still arguing and discussing and contemplating and surmising and speculating on whether or not God will come before the Tribulation, in the middle of the Tribulation or after the Tribulation.  Often their interpretation of these events is given as gospel truth.  Their human investigation has confirmed in their own hearts that they have received divine guidance in the exactitude of interpretation of many Bible events.  Whether one is an interpreter of visions and prophecies that God gives to him or whether he is an interpreter of prophetic Scripture regarding what will happen in the future he MUST clarify that, a) he has received a direct revelation from God confirming that his interpretation is correct, b) he feels strongly from the evidence of Scripture that this is the correct interpretation, or c) his observation is an educated speculation.  When the interpreter of prophecy presents his material in such a way as to virtually guarantee its accuracy, IF HE IS WRONG, he is functioning much in the same way that a false prophet functions.  He is essentially saying “thus saith the Lord: this interpretation is the gospel truth.”  A TRUE prophet or interpreter of prophecy will always separate revelation from speculation and identify speculation for what it is.   The Result of the Shaking: God’s Hand on His Church Years ago in the 1980’s the Lord showed me a vision of what He is doing in His Church.  He showed me how He is RE-FORMING His Church.  He showed me a huge medieval-style cylindrical fortress/castle made of stones.  It looked like a huge, stone, grain silo.  This cylindrical castle reached ten stories high into the sky and could be seen clearly at a great distance.  The Lord identified this fortress/castle as the Saul Church as it exists today.  Then there was a terrible earthquake and shaking.  Not only did the ground shake but the Lord laid His own hands on the ten story castle and shook it.  The castle shook from bottom to top until all of the stones tumbled down and there remained only a huge pile of stones.  Then the Lord picked up the stones and started to separate them.  He threw most of them away; however, He began to build with those that remained.  By the time He was through, I could see a stone castle (with the same cylindrical shape) that was one story in height.   All of the other stones were on the garbage heap.  The one story castle was much shorter and less conspicuous than the original castle, but it looked much more solid and was much wider than it was tall.  It appeared to be unshakable.  This building was God's Church that was after His own heart that He had re-formed using the stones of the Saul Church.   The TRUE unity of His people would be accomplished by a great shaking, a division of the stones and a consequent RE-FORMATION. The true Church would be only a small percentage or Remnant but it would be virtually unconquerable and unable to be compromised.  This is the David Church, built on the unshakable foundation of having a heart wholly after God for Himself alone, a heart that is correctable and will do all of His will.

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