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Prophetic Messages for 21st Century Warriors
A vision of The NET, the New Face of the Church I kept back nothing that was helpful, but proclaimed it to you, and taught you publicly and from house to house,testifying to Jews, and also to Greeks, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ Acts Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end, Upon the throne of David and over His kingdom, to order it and establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward, even forever. Isaiah 9:7 As we hurtle toward our destiny in the Lord at breakneck speed, the face of church as we have known it in the USA is changing rapidly. The change is happening so fast that most of the church is simply not equipped to see or accept it. Yet, there has been a significant and dynamic shift in the direction the Lord is taking much of His flock. I can’t explain every detail of it, but I believe I am to share what I know. In September of 2005 right around the time of Rosh Hashanah, the time the Jews celebrated the Lord’s New Year of 5766, I was so shaken in my spirit that my physical body reacted. Changes that had been going on in the body of Christ for several years took on radical new dimensions of completion as the Lord revealed to me a portion of His end times plan for His church. As I read His word, He walked me through the story of Eli the Priest and his irreverent sons Hopni and Phineas culminating with the loss of the Ark of the Covenant as those sons presumed upon the Lord in unrepentant sins. The sons died. Eli died. The glory of the Lord departed from the temple. (1Samuel Chapters 2-4) When recovered, the Ark was not returned to the synagogue… it was placed in a home where a man was assigned to minister before the Lord (1 Samuel Chapter 7). The Ark stayed in the home of Abinadab with Eleazar ministering for twenty years. Again, when David went to get the Ark and bring it to Jerusalem, he encountered problems. So, he took the Ark to the home of Obed-Edom. … and that home the Bible says was very blessed. (2 Samuel Chapter 6). The fact the Ark rested in the home of a man twice, and for many years, seemed very important and I made a note of it. There it rested in my heart. Then again in the early Spring, that comes late February here in California, the Holy Spirit walked me through the story of David and Saul. In that story the people cried out for a King and they would not relent even when told that the Lord Himself was their King. Finally, the Lord gave let them have a king. One that looked good. One that won battles and protected them. He was also one with deep character flaws. He was a reflection of the sinful cries of a rebellious people choosing to settle for a flesh and blood ruler to care for them like other nations instead of choosing to follow the plan and purpose of God. Because the people would not wait for a King, when it was time for David to step into leadership as God's chosen one, he could not. It took years of struggle, pain and suffering on David’s part to press into the plans and purposes of God before he could take the throne. But, finally he did take that throne. Saul was removed by God and David became King. And so I came back to the story of David trying to bring the Ark back to Jerusalem. Now the Ark would not be hidden in a synagogue with walls and partition where no one could see the presence of God. It was taken from a man's home with much sacrifice to a place where all could see it. And thus the old ways were wiped away by God and the Tabernacle of David, a new form of worship was established, and it pleased the Lord. Suddenly, it all became crystal clear. The plans and purposes of God in shaking me and walking me through these two stories became evident. The truth is we have been in the throws of a revolutionary re-creation of the Body of Christ to make her into a spotless and wrinkle free Bride. This revelation has completely changed my mind about what the USA church is now and what church will be like in a just a few years. We are moving into a time when it will be obvious who the Eli’s are in the church and who is like Hopni and Phineas. Eli is old, fat, blind, deaf and ineffective. He is the epitome of the religious folks who look like they know what they are doing but blindly go about their business deaf to the voice of the Lord and totally ineffective in advancing the Kingdom of God. The Phineas and Hopni of the church of our day have hidden sin. They too look good. They are dressed in the garments of holy priests but they are not pure in their motives or character. They are merchandisers selling the good news and stealing the best portions of the people’s offerings for themselves. They lie with prostitutes (whether in the flesh or spiritual) and offer unacceptable sacrifices and unholy fire to the Lord. They are misleading and mistreating God’s people. One thing we can count on, what we sow we will eventually reap. So, it is with those who have looked good, but are base and profane wolves in sheep’s clothing. We have come into a time when the Lord is doing something brand new. He is bypassing Eli, Hopni and Phineas. Though they appear to hold the reigns of the church, the Lord is still in control. He has prepared a way for His flock to enter His Glory despite man's religious towers of pride and idolatry that is the church today, In the night as he slept in the glow of the Menorah, the Lord called out to a young lad named Samuel. Once Samuel accepted the call, the Lord began the process of wiping out the old and building up the new. In our day the Lord is once again calling out “Samuel, Samuel.” We need to respond “Here I am Lord”…and then we need to listen to His plan. It may not be at all what we expected, but we need to listen anyway and do what He says. Not only that, we have a double duty in our day. We also need to step out of the Saul mentality of pride the one man show where the pastor is the only one who hears and speaks the things of God. That is part of the old thing. We must step into the new thing, the “David thing” that God is doing right now - a place that is open where all who will may participate. The church is just like the story of Saul and David. Too many of the people in our USA churches don’t rely on God. Instead, we rely on our Pastor or Priest or Minister or Teacher to go to God for us and take care of us. We are lazy spiritually speaking. We have grown to like the fact that one-man or woman does everything so that we don’t have to do anything unless we feel like it. After all, we are very busy people. Ouch. I know that hurts. But it is true. We expect the hired pastorate of the church to do it all: preach, teach, evangelize, prophesy, pray, heal the sick, etc while we watch and sometimes give money. Most of the church is stuck in an audience mentality. The Pastors have become the actors, the music ministers are forced to be entertainers, and the congregation has become the audience. The people are separated by an unseen partition from the Glory of God. They are separated from true worship and full participation in the service. Truly, that is not the plan in the Kingdom of God. Jesus has torn down every partition. The veil is rent! Man put the veil back up, so, God is working on tearing it down. The Saul-like audience mentality church has to go. Instead, He is building up the Tabernacle of David where all participate. This process is happening right now, in our time. Whether we will acknowledge it or not, there is a whole new church developing and just like in Samuel’s time and David’s time it’s an exciting adventure and uncharted paradigm. That is hard for us stubborn stiff-necked Americans. Because we have been so high-spirited and prideful with a mindset that the USA church RULES and ROCKS the world, the Holy Spirit has said "OKAY, I'll go where I AM welcome." Instead of working within the restrictions of the man directed church, He has been quietly calling the Samuels and anointing the David’s for this generation. He is working with those who welcome Him. He is slipping the foundations of a New Thing right under our feet. The foundation of the prophet and apostle is being established everywhere whether the local churches want it or believe in it or not. He is giving His true apostles the plans to establish the new thing in every community in the USA and His prophets are proclaiming the changes to all who will listen. And now we come to a phenomenon that proves something is going on! Thousands of people are leaving the institutional and denominational and dead dry religious churches. They are leaving the fun one-man-show entertainment churches and easy going seeker friendly churches too. The Eli church and the Saul church are going to collapse or become dead dry places really soon. The cracks in the walls are gaping and the Lord is calling out the remnant before the ship sinks. Where are they going? Some are finding the new or renewed apostolic churches in their area. These Revival Centers are springing up in the most unlikely places. They are full of life, commissioning the saints and working as the first apostles worked... in POWER. But, most folks have no idea what powerful apostolic life is like. And many areas do not yet have an apostolic church or the one they do have is not yet well- known. So, as they wait for direction, these “called out ones” are starting or joining small home churches and small Bible study fellowships or gatherings. The people just know they are tired of powerless church. They believe there is more to know about God and that there is something supernatural missing in their lives. Listen with your heart...in our day, the Ark is now in a man’s home, in small fellowships and apostolic churches (which are often pretty small in the US). And the men and women of God are ministering there before the Lord. There, in those small groups, the sheep of Jesus pasture will be kept safely until the New Thing He is doing has been more firmly established by the David’s and Samuel’s working in the Revival Centers in the land. And those small groups are very blessed! Sure, a lot of flakes and nuts have also left the church to establish home groups and small fellowships out of wounded pride and rebellion. The Devil always has a counterfeit of the true move of God. These souls are led by folks like Phineas and Hopni. They think they have the presence of God going out before them, but they are in gross error and they will not succeed. It’s grievous the numbers of people they are misleading. Yet despite that , we must trust and pray that, just as with all the past moves of God, He will take care of those who are out of order. We cannot dismiss an entire movement just because of a few mis-led folks. So, what are the David’s and Samuel’s working on? What I saw, is that the new face of the new wine church is a NET; a knotted together organism that is being made by God to catch the greatest harvest of fish of all time. Look at the story of the fishermen who fished all night. They didn’t catch much. But, Jesus said, throw your net out on the other side of the boat. In other words, stop doing the same old thing over and over. Try a new thing. The fishermen said, "We fished all night and didn’t catch anything, but at your word we will try the other side of the boat.' So, they threw in the net and it nearly broke for the staggering amount of fish they caught. The David’s and Samuel’s are fishing on the other side of the boat at the word of the Lord. These folks are collection of either anointed saints, who are connected to a set-man, or five-fold ministry people whom the Lord has called out of the church. They are revolutionary builders of the Kingdom of God. What I saw as the Lord walked me through the coming changes are first the established churches that are really teaching and equipping centers - Revival Centers. They are or will be the center of the NET in their area. They will go out into their territory and through personal evangelism souls are saved. Then they plug new believers into a bible study in their neighborhood. If there isn’t a bible study, they establish one. The goal is to disciple the new believers at the Bible Study and then get them plugged into the teaching and equipping center so they can get trained to go out and win more souls and become Bible Study Leaders themselves. Others I saw (and al least in our case already existt) are apostolic teams connected to or led by a “set-man or woman” who start a small home church or fellowship meeting in a rented room, an office conference room, a stock room at Wal-Mart or under a tree in a park for homeless folks. They teach the people about God, holiness and how to do personal evangelism to share the good new about Jesus. As the people bring in new people to the small group, it grows. When it gets to be more than 25 folks or so, the Lord raises up another leader and the original group splits into two. The two then split and you have 4 small churches. When those split you have 8 and so on. The set- man or woman and the five-fold folk then leave the original small church in the hands of a trusted leader and they go from group to group strengthening each one to keep them on the holy highway headed toward the Lord and not into error. Still other groups I saw by the Spirit, will start with 2 or 3 gifted people whom the Lord has called out. They are sent by the Lord, under the guidance of the set-man or woman, on a search and rescue mission into a specified territory. The territory is identified by God through prayer. The mission is three-fold: find those folks the Lord has called out, but they don’t know where to go once they leave the church; find folks who have been hurt and wounded and restore them to the Lord; find those who have been prepared to receive the Lord as Savior. When the team has success in finding any of the three they begin a Bible study in that person’s home to disciple them and their family. All the time, they continue visiting homes on their search and rescue mission. As others are “rescued”, they are either invited to the original Bible study or a new one is established. The aim is to build a network of small home-based fellowships that move from Bible study alone to worship, communion, baptism and being raised up to join the apostolic team in evangelism. How will the teams find folks? Some will go door to door canvassing. The Lord spoke to me about what I have started to call “Word of Knowledge Evangelism.” The Lord simply will tell the leaders what part of the city, what neighborhood and even what street to go to. Once they have heard from the Lord, they can then prayer-walk and listen to the Holy Spirit as He tells them about each home. Then, when they are released by the Holy Spirit, they will go to the doors He identifies. They will need to go when He tells them to. They will need to speak the things they hear from the Lord. Because the words of knowledge are from God, they will be designed by Him to break down resistance. It is a progressive process of learning to hear the Lord and following through with weeks of prayer and preparation, especially at first. I saw multiple visits to homes as relationships were established. It was supernatural and there were numerous souls saved and many raised up to be leaders. Some, teams will worship the Lord together at a specified place and then when the Holy Spirit says to GO they will take to the streets of their city or town and preach the Gospel. Others will sit in a coffee shop and talk to whomever will listen. Mostly they will listen to the Holy Spirit and do as He says. Training and equipping are central to this vision of the church to come. It is vital to have leadership meetings and to raise up leaders. And the Lord revealed gatherings of all of the small groups. This a time when the set-man or woman can release important messages the Lord is giving to the entire network that has been established, pray over and release the saints into their gifts and callings, heal the sick and pray over the territory corporately. Or, it can be evangelistic and the small groups can invite people to hear the Gospel message or go out after the service for street ministry. Having worked in government and the political realms for over 12 years, I have to tell you that I am the first one to be very skeptical and even cynical at times when I hear things like this that are so different from what is established. So, when the Lord first called me to this ministry and vision, He used my understanding of the structure of our governing system, institutions and agencies to speak to me about the network of small home groups and Revival Centers He wants to establish and the changes He wants to make in His church. He used our educational system. Just like the diversity of our educational institutions, the church has a similar diversity. In the realm of education we have the government run public schools; we also have private schools, charter schools and home schools. The church of our day has a similar structure. In this analogy, the institutional denominations are like the public schools, the private schools are equivalent to the one man show or seeker friendly entertainment churches, the charter schools are the “remnant apostolic churches or revival centers” and the home schools are the “small church & house church network.” All of these types of churches currently exist, but it is the new NET where the life and excitement is and will be. Just like our public schools suffer from bureaucracy and lack of commonsense, the stubbornness and bureaucracy of religious people in the church will probably never completely die away. Yet, I see by the Spirit of God and hear of exciting things happening that prove what I saw in 2005/06 is happening. There is movement away from the dead institutional churches and the one man show seeker friendly entertainment churches. I can see the beginning of the NET that will be used to bring in the end times harvest and it is being knotted together by our Fisherman’s hands as you read this. What an amazing God we serve and what a privilege to live in this glorious time of seeing the signs of the birthing of the end time’s church. Perhaps by the time you read this it will have been birthed before our very eyes. This church is amazing and will grow into maturity quickly. Her face is lovely and her garments are spotless. Her lamp is burning brightly with passion and zeal. Her Groom is head over heals in love with her and soon very soon, He comes for this Bride. Respectfully submitted Rev. Cheryl S. Birch |
Cheryl Birch Ministries, Inc.
