Stand
Could it be that the hard things you are going through are
simply the explosions of each Seal as they are being removed from the Scroll?
The Book of Revelation, starting with chapter 5 and continuing to
chapter 11, describes series of events surrounding a Scroll with seven seals
that is being unrolled. Each time
a seal is broken off and the Scroll is unrolled, a catastrophic event takes
place. No one in heaven or on
earth was worthy to open the Scroll except Jesus, and it was because He had
overcome and conquered (through His death on the Cross and His resurrection).
Then the Scroll unfurled, one
seal at a time, and the last seal had seven more items called seven trumpets.
What does this all mean?
Zechariah also saw this Scroll in the Old Testament.
Zechariah 5:1-5 says, “Then I
turned and raised my eyes, and saw there a flying scroll. And he said to me,
‘What do you see?’ So I answered, ‘I see a flying scroll. Its length is twenty
cubits and its width ten cubits. Then he said to me, ‘This is the curse that
goes out over the face of the whole earth: ‘Every thief shall be expelled,’
according to this side of the scroll; and, ‘Every perjurer shall be expelled,’
according to that side of it.’ ‘I will send out the curse,’ says the LORD of
hosts; ‘It shall enter the house of the thief and the house of the one who
swears falsely by My name. It shall remain in the midst of his house and
consume it, with its timber and stones.’ Then the angel who talked with me came
out and said to me, ‘Lift your eyes now, and see what this is that goes forth.’”
I believe that this is the Scroll of our “old life,” our life
before we were born again. I
believe it repents the CURSE that each and every person is born under.
Are CURSES real?
You better believe they are.
If blessings are real, then CURSES must also be real. They are opposites.
We live on a word ruled
plant, Earth. Everything happens
based upon some word that was spoken.
It could be a curse or a blessing.
Curses can come upon each of us in many ways:
• By our own sin and
disobedience. For example: stealing, lying, committing sexual sins, being rebellious,
speaking negatively about yourself, and just about any kind of sin.
• By someone “cursing”
us. (Only if we are weak enough, or foolish enough)
• By inheriting a curse
from our family and forefathers. This is the most
common cause of curses. Not only
is it the most common, but it is the most reliable. We can know for sure that there are curses of these kinds to
overcome in our lives.
Exodus 34 says that the curse
is passed on to the 4th and 5th generation. We may have a tendency to addiction because of our
grandfather, or chronic illness due to an inheritance, a tendency to be
frustrated in anything that is attempted, like in business, etc., a sexual
perversion, early death, and many others.
The Bible is full of examples
of curses that are effective on people in all of the above categories.
A curse is like a dark shadow
holding you back, tripping you up, taking you into a direction you have not
decided to go in, perhaps that you really do not want to take. It may take you to worship the “world”,
or may draw you to alcohol, or it may keep back your financial success, it may try
to bring chronic illness and accidents, there are many more, far too many to
list.
Some people who have very
strong “flesh” natures, who are very good at performance in life, will deny
this process that God is taking them through. They do not realize that it is God who is unrolling the
scroll.
They lay blame on Satan for
the trouble in their lives. They
blame life, they blame others, they complain and demand that things
change. They feel that life is not
fair to them. They feel that
somehow life is unjust. They always
look for another “fix.” They feel
that if they move to another city or another church, things will be different. They get offended at people,
circumstances and events. They
change jobs all the time. They are
always looking to avoid the pain.
I’ve got news. The curse
cannot be avoided. The only
decision to make is when one will face it.
The truth is that Satan
ultimately is responsible for the curse.
However, it is God who is in the business of overcoming those curses by
having us face them head on, and unrolling the scrolls in our lives.
Some call this process the
disciple or chastening of the Lord. “Now no chastening seems to be joyous for
the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit
of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” (Hebrews 12:11).
Some would disagree, saying
that God does not discipline His children with bad things. They are correct. God does not send bad things, the enemy
does. However, God does want us to
overcome our scroll curses, and He knows that by allowing them to confront us,
and giving us the power to overcome them, that He is in effect disciplining us. We are relying less on ourselves and
more on His mercy. Our character
changes and we become more meek in His hands.
Jesus said, “Assuredly, I say
to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take
place” (Matthew 24:34). The word generations according to Strong’s
Concordance means:
-
fathered, birth,
nativity.
-
that which has been
begotten, men of the same stock, a family, the several ranks of natural
descent, the successive members of a genealogy, metaphor.
-
a group of men very like
each other in endowments,
pursuits, character.”
I believe what Jesus was
saying in the Scripture, is that our “generation” or our old nature, our old
flesh nature, our own Adamic generation that is personal to us, will not be
wiped out without all these things taking place. What things?
The catastrophes described in Matthew 24 and other parallel
chapters. These are the violent
things that happen in the Book of Revelation when the scrolls of our lives are
unrolled.
Jacob was a very good
example. He certainly had a very
strong flesh nature, but he also had a very strong commitment to God. God had faith in what He Himself could
do with Jacob in spite of his strong will. God saw something in Jacob that was precious. However, Jacob’s strongest member had
to be dislocated before his character was changed from Jacob (meaning ‘deceiver’) to Israel, (meaning ‘one who ministers in partnership with God’). “And when He saw that He prevailed
not against him, He touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow
of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as He wrestled with him” (Genesis 32:25, KJV).
This is why in Revelation
chapter 5 they could not find a person who was worthy to open the scroll,
except for the Lamb of God. If our
scroll should open without the mercy of God, without the curse being dealt on
the Cross, we would be destroyed.
People who try to handle their own scrolls in life, are
destroyed.
Sometimes a person can be instantly delivered from a curse, like
casting out a demon, and sometimes it is a long process of overcoming. Personally, God has always put me on
the long path of overcoming. I
believe that when we face the potential worse of a curse, and yet it does not
win and we overcome, I believe that at that point, we end it forever, and our
children and their children never need to suffer under it.
The long process I believe is
what is described in Revelation.
In the first three chapters Jesus is warning the different believers
that they need to get their act together and repent from those things that
could trip them up during the war.
Then during the process, all
“hell” breaks loose and we feel like God is not on the Throne, like this curse
is going to get the best of us, but if we hang on, Jesus will stamp us with the
supernatural seal and what we are going through will not actually hurt us, but
will strengthen us.
It always feels like the
first “six” seals are going to destroy us, like we cannot take it any
more. Remember 6 is the number for
man; we can only take so much. But
7 is the perfect number.
The Final Trumpet in
Revelation 11 is the 7th Trumpet of the 7th Seal.
When that Trumpet blows, it
is a picture of what happened at the Cross. The Cross is the only place where
an earthquake of such magnitude took place and tore the veil of the Temple.
Jesus became a curse for us.
Galatians 3:13 (KJV) says, “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse
of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one
that hangeth on a tree.”
Galatians 3:29 (KJV) says,
“And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the
promise.”
We need to keep the attitude
of being pardoned from some horrible judgment. So often Christians loose their sense of being pardoned
because they have not committed some great moral sin recently. However, if we are aware of the great
impending curse that is due to us, and of the Lamb of God who takes away our
sin and our curse, we will always keep a sense of being pardoned.
So often I see the vision of
horrible explosions going on around me, bad things trying to destroy me. Then I see the Scroll next to me being
unrolled, and with each Seal that is loosed, I see a major explosion. Then I
see Jesus, with His blood stained hands, the Lamb, unrolling the Scroll. Then I see each Seal exploding in His
hands, causing the scars and the blood to flow. All I can do then is worship! I feel pardoned.
When we maintain the attitude
of being pardoned, then we stay in His presence. When we stay in His presence, then we are always aware of
our position in Christ. When we
are aware of our position, then we have the power!
Pardoned.
Presence.
Position.
Power.
Why do we have to go through all this, why doesn’t God just
give us victory real quick?
I am not sure why some of us have to go through more, but I do
know that we always win IF we hang on and walk in the spirit and keep
repenting.
In Revelation 10:10 John was
told to take a “small scroll” and eat it. Do you suppose that was John’s share
of Christ’s sufferings?
Philippians 3:10 (KJV) says,
“That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of
his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.”
Colossians 1:24 (KJV) says,
“Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of
the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the
church.”
Romans 8:18 (KJV) says, “For
I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall
be revealed in us.”
We need the warfare, we need to show the demons and principalities
and powers that Jesus is in us and that we are overcomers.
“…now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places
might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God” (Ephesians 3:10, KJV).
We can lose if we are not wise!
I have seen far too many Christians give up hope when they are
going through the unrolling of the scroll. They do not realize what is going on. They feel that God “does not work”, or
“this faith stuff does not work.”
They get the wrong idea of who God is. They get down on themselves and get into the failure
syndrome. I have even seen
Christians commit suicide. I have
seen others backslide and totally lose their salvation.
Just when we can take no
more, just when we feel like God has dropped our file and it is all over, just
when we are at our weakest point (6 for our strength), then God’s precious
grace kicks in and the Cross becomes effective in our life and we win! Daniel puts it in a different sort of
way in Daniel 12:11-12. He says if
you hang on 1,290 days, good, but you are blessed if you continue without
wavering beyond the period of tribulation to the 1,335th day.
What is the answer?
The simple, childlike answer is this. We must maintain our “marriage relationship” with God. We need “marriage counseling.” Too many Christians do not understand
how to keep a real time, living and vital relationship with Jesus. It is similar to our marriage
relationship. If we try to make it
on yesterday’s love, yesterday’s words, yesterday’s commitment, the
relationship dries up, and there is nothing left but a cold doctrine. Jesus is not real to us. The Holy Spirit came to make Him real.
When bad things are happening
in our lives, we need to take it all to Jesus with honesty. We need to humbly submit to Him, His
Word, and take time to unload on Him and fellowship with Him.
I have noticed, that it does
not matter how bad things in life are becoming, if we can hear from Jesus, get
into His presence and see His point of view, we will be all right. He will show us those areas that need
repentance and clean up. He will
speak grace to us. He will speak
His purposes to us. He will
encourage us and keep our hope aflame.
Next time you are in the war arena with the Devil, don’t give
up until you hear the 7th Trumpet of the 7th Seal!