God’s Unfolding End-time Strategy

The current social climate of pandemic mixed with racial unrest mark a pivotal momentum in God’s unfolding end-time strategy. The enemy intended this 1-2 punch to undermine God’s established order. Yet, the Lord’s sovereignty has allowed it to play into His end-time purposes. This double-portion event is intended to mark the beginning of a new, and what will eventually prove to be a well-defined, era of God’s end-time strategy.

This era will be marked by increased conflict between the forces of heaven and hell manifesting on the earth. Many more such events will play out in the days, years, and decades ahead as the Lord allows the enemy to play his hand meant for evil purposes to serve God’s strategy of posturing His Church to display His glory on an unprecedented level.

For His glory to be clearly seen and His end-times purposes fulfilled, a dramatic change will take place. The Church as we know it will undergo a violent and dramatic transformation unlike anything seen before. In the end, the Church will be divided into two distinct, separate camps. This event was described in a vision experienced by a dear friend of mine, Eric Vaughn, in September 1993:

“While in prayer during a time of fasting the Lord took me into a vision: I was worshipping in a theater-style room, the stage was in front and people filled all the rows from front to back. The worship meeting was full.

I knew in my spirit that the whole group was representative of the Body of Christ. Halfway through the worship suddenly the body of believers was divided down the middle and both sides turned and faced each other. The left side became clearly bitter and angry, they began to point with their fingers and make accusations towards the group on the right. The group on the right did not respond but were obviously saddened, not angry at the accusations, just sad in a humbling way.

A few brief moments passed as I observed the bitter anger coming out in accusations towards the rest of the Body and then immediately like lighting flashing an impenetrable wall fell and divided the two groups. I knew in my spirit the group that was accusing was cut off from the blessings of the marriage supper of the Lamb. I immediately and involuntarily screamed out loud in my prayer time; “NO!”.

The Lord responded to me gently with resolve and said, “Yes.” He then said to me, this generation has the calling of John the Baptist and that we needed to prepare the Body for the Marriage Supper of the Lamb”.

I believe there will come a time in this generation that the body of Christ will divide and many who are confused and deceived by the “prince of the air“ will begin to accuse and persecute the other parts of the body of Christ who are pursuing wholeheartedly the preparations for the return of the Lord. Unfortunately, these accusing believers, though going to eternal security with Christ in heaven, will be excluded from the marriage supper of the lamb by their own choices. Matthew 22:1-14.

After the vision, the Lord began to affirm that the message of John the Baptist was necessary for these days, the message of the fasted lifestyle and pursuit of the Lord Jesus with the abandonment of all else in light of HIM. He reminded me of the parable of the 10 virgins, five wise heading the word of the Lord in regards to preparation and alertness for His coming and five not so wise in regards to not preparing.”

This vision fits into the bigger picture of God’s unfolding end-time strategy as one of these two camps of believers turns on the other. The cracks in its foundation are already clearly visible to those with the gift of discernment. Multiple pivotal social events will drive wedges into these cracks to dramatically shift and separate them into two entities with opposing agendas. This separation will be perceived as tragic by many in the Church who will work to stop it, but it is a necessary part of God’s end-time purposes. The end result will be an entirely new level of unity in God’s remnant people that could not happen without this painful and challenging global segmentation.

This separation is God’s strategic response to the catastrophic deconstruction leveled against the New Testament Church by Constantine some 1,700 years ago. To catch up with readers who are not aware of what happened, Constantine entered the scene when the New Testament Church was thriving in miraculous signs and wonders still continuing from God’s Acts 2 outpouring. Christians were being heavily persecuted and believers martyred. Constantine not only wanted to stop this persecution of Christians but to legalize and even mandate Christianity as the state religion.

To make this social transformation possible, Constantine merged many expressions of occult paganism with Christianity. Pagan temples were instantly converted into Christian churches. For example, a pagan temple dedicated to the god of the harvest was converted into a Christian church dedicated to the patron saint of harvest. In many cases, the pagan priests were made Christian pastors and were required to immediately switch to teaching Christianity. Hebrew holidays and celebrations were replaced with coinciding pagan events (such as Passover being replaced with Easter, etc.).

Constantine redesigned Christianity to be more multipliable and controllable by the Roman government. Home churches, that had been the mainstay of church expression, were outlawed. The five-fold leadership structure was given by Jesus at His final act before His ascension was reduced to a single authority figure, the pastor, as a single figurehead mimicking the ruling structure of the Roman Empire (over which Constantine ruled as Emperor from 324-337). The layout of churches was dictated to a universal template pattern (that still remains to this day). Average believers were forbidden to teach or sing publicly. These roles were given to paid professionals (pastor, worshipper leader, and singers). Believers were forced to switch from being active participants in the government of the church to being passive spectators of hired professionals.

God’s Holy Spirit-empowered Church became so convoluted with paganism and humanism that it shifted from being filled with the substance of God’s presence and power to being defined by empty form and function. The focus shifted from genuine heart-engagement with God to keep the people entertained with programs and performances. The Church as we know it today remains a convoluted entity comprised of a mixture of people types holding to a watered-down expression of the gospel message. Much of what it practices is merely humanistic expressions of man’s religious traditions cloaked as faith in Christ. Constantine stripped the Church of its heart and power and replaced it with a form largely devoid of substance. The Spirit withdrew from manifesting His power and authority in the Church.

In this convoluted condition, the Church has remained anemic, marginalized, and marked by disunity and segmentation. Although it is difficult to understand why God allowed His Church to remain in this state of spiritual and philosophical mixture for most of its history, it has all played into His providential purposes and timing. This unusual pandemic season marks a pivotal moment in God’s strategy to destroy the works of Constantine and to restore His Church to its original and pure form. God is implementing a strategy to remove the mixture from His Church and set apart for Himself a true remnant people in which His glory dwells and through whom He will reveal His glory in the end-time movement that is already taking shape.

This work will yield a polarization of the Church. Those who are after God’s heart are being called out even now into a prolonged season of separation and purification. Many are being called but few will be willing to pay the price to endure all that will be required to see its full expression worked out in their lives. The pagan and humanistic toxins must be siphoned from the veins of His Church. This will require days and years of shakings, testings, trials, and persecutions. Offenses will take out many who are not willing to biblically, transparently, and humbly deal with their hearts during these trials. What now looks like one Church will be proven to be two separate distinct people groups – the humanists and God’s remnant people. The distinction between these two groups will grow increasingly stark in the years and decades ahead as a great falling away occurs in reaction to God removing the mixture from His elect.

God’s remnant Church will increasingly operate in His power with supernatural signs and wonders. It will display a level of unity unlike anything seen since the days of Acts. Strangely, a counter form of unity will develop among the humanistic church in an unusual way. As God begins to manifest Himself through His remnant Church, jealousy will arise within the hearts of those in the humanistic church. They will see God doing things through the remnant that He does not do through the religious structure. This jealousy comes from the same spirit as the Pharisees and religious leaders of Jesus’ day who ultimately partnered with government agencies and political powers to have Him crucified. Their jealousy will turn to rage against God’s chosen ones. It will become increasingly fueled by demonic manifestations.

The end-time persecution spoken of in Revelation and elsewhere in scripture will come not primarily from the secular culture but from the religious community, in the same way it did in Jesus’s time. This means that as God continues His work of destroying Constantine‘s adulteration of the Church, persecution of the true Church will be restored and pick up where it left off some 1,700 years ago (not that the Church has been without persecution for centuries but the persecution will become more universal, global, and strategic). Just as the Pharisees and religious leaders of Jesus’ days aligned with governmental agencies to carry out their plots of persecution and murder, so too will the humanistic church align with government agencies and political powers worldwide (as well as media, technology, and social media controlling corporations).

But the work of darkness being manifested against the remnant church will be nothing compared to the majestic glory of what happens within its ranks. God’s light filling the remnant church will become so pure and concentrated that it will become like plasma that effortlessly cuts through the works of darkness. It will become so filled with God’s power and Spirit, that it will operate not only in the signs and wonders demonstrated in Acts 2, but far more so. It will be marked by such unity that it will have only one figurehead, in the person of Christ. And Jesus’ purposes will be without a mixture of human agendas. These will be the fiery ones who perform even greater work than did Jesus (Jn 14:12).

Now is the season to prepare yourself carefully as God tests your heart to decide where you best fit in His emerging battle plan for His end-time strategy. One of the key catalysts the Lord is using for segmenting His Church is what scripture refers to as ordinances. Although this concept is not often discussed, the Lord reveals in Ephesians 2:15, that on Calvary’s cross Jesus abolished the law of commands contained in the ordinance (the Greek says that Jesus annulled human ordinances). The Greek word for ordinances is dogma (Strongs 1378). This translates into opinions, judgments, edicts, decrees, or doctrines.

The airwaves are being filled with man’s opinions and judgments on an unprecedented level. It is causing polarization and segmentation. The Lord wants us to come into alignment with His heart. He abolished man’s opinions and judgments on Calvary’s cross in order to create a unified Body that operates under the headship of Christ. Anytime we come into alignment with human or religious dogma, we are working against the completed work of Christ. We are subjugating ourselves to human and religious agendas, that are intended to take us out. Jesus did away with the futility of man’s opinions and judgments so that we are no longer subject to man’s dogmatic and opinionated declarations.

God is doing a supernatural work of building up His Church in unity. There is a higher sphere of operations God is inviting us into and our choice of alignment will dramatically affect our end-time positioning. God is calling His remnant people to the heavenly plane of operating under God’s purposes that is infinitely higher than man’s dogmatic opinions and decrees. God is preparing you to be someone who carries His power and authority so as to represent His glory throughout the earth. This calling requires separation from the humanistic ways that are counter to the completed work of Jesus Christ on Calvary’s cross. It’s time to come out from among those whose agendas are in any way mixed with humanistic ways and dogmas.

You must prioritize grounding yourself in Christ above all the busyness and tasks. You will be shaken in ways you never thought possible but this will not be difficult for those clinging to Jesus’ feet in humility and loyalty. These days will be profound for those who allow the testings to expose all the mixture in their hearts and who chose to partner with Him to war over your own heart to be refined as pure gold (Is 48:10, Zech 13:9). God will vindicate His chosen ones whose faith proves more resilient than the offenses that arise against them to test them. Just as Jesus was called a demonized heretic by the religious leaders, this group of God’s faithful remnant will be ostracized by the religious humanistic masses who partner will the political structures and powers to try to destroy them through every means of persecution possible. The humanistic church will call itself the true church and these remnant people will be dogmatically declared to be heretical and demonic. But, they will be fighting against the hand of almighty God and their agendas will be thwarted by Christ Jesus Himself.

This is the season for the virgins to fill their reserves with oil within the chambers of vulnerable intimacy with Him. Now is the time to draw aside and get real with God. It may seem optional but those who refuse to draw aside during this grace-filled season will find themselves vulnerable to the offenses that will take out most. This is the beginning of the season where you must become un-offendable as you posture yourself so low to the ground that the ordinances of man hurled at you will not find its mark.