Thoughts
On Revival And Mixture
By
Clayton Sonmore
(Excerpted)
Like
Jude, we need again to cry aloud, “Oh, that we might earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the
saints.” The religious mixture of today bears no comparison to the glory that descended only forty years ago in 1948,
and again in 1953 (Latter Rain Visitation). Yet the glory evidenced in the early days of the two-pronged visitation was but
a shadow of the Upper Room, and the early Church visitation.
This
early Church visitation was a product of the “Feast of Pentecost,” as was also the 1948-1953 visitation that landed
on the rocky beach of Nicolaitanism and Laodiceanism. From Scripture, it can be seen that the anointing and measure attained
in the early Church was only a shadow of that which is to come to those who enter into the “Feast of Tabernacles,”
now beginning to envelop some of God's end-time overcomers.
Lord,
help the true Body of Christ as it struggles to leave “the place of ordinances” (Passover) and “the place
of leaven” (Pentecost) in order to “join You outside the camp, bearing Your reproach,” in “the place
of Your Presence” (Tabernacles).
The
1948-1953 visitation was recorded by historians as consisting of great numbers. But those with spiritual eyes saw is as “a
visitation within a visitation” that was composed of few, numerically. They saw there were many who in one way or another
joined themselves to this visitation and warmed themselves by the “fire” that evolved, but were never consumed
by that fire. On the other hand, they could see that those who really entered into the Lordship of Christ were few in “quantity,”
but great in “quality.”
Again,
so often in history, God is allowing this dual work; a worldly emphasis on “quantity,” and spiritual emphasis
on God's Kingdom work of “quality.”
Have
you joined with the great majority of a former “quality” dimension that has somehow let down the spiritual high
mark enough so they can no longer recognize what is not of Spirit, but is of the soul nature, if not of the flesh? Have you
crossed over some divide where you have, perhaps unknowingly, mixed together “quantity” and “quality,”
and do not even know it? It is primarily to these who have unwittingly become a people of “mixture” that this
exhortation is directed.
Those
who are non-compromisers understand what God is saying: His purity and presence are available only through paying a price,
not through obtaining a new found dimension that combines “quantity” and “quality.” Jesus continues
to exhort His own to: “Enter ye in at the strait gate; for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction,
and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few
there be that find it” Matt. 7:13-14.
Many
of the present day leaders are not teaching God's people how to make Him the one and only Lord of their lives. His way is
narrow, and few find it. Those few are beginning to realize that the popular “wide gate” being advanced today
is not of God.
In
contrast to most present thinking, the gate is not wide, but narrow, and “few there be that find it.” It is my
prayer and desire that you are, or will become, one of these.
