What Is The
Revelation Of The Coming Outpouring Of The Holy Spirit?
By Dr. Stephen Jones: July
05, 2018
With every major revival in past history has come a
particular revelation that has been driven home by the workings of the Holy
Spirit.
With Martin Luther (1517) it was justific:ation by faith alone
(Passover).
With the Wesleys (1700’s) it was sanctification (Red Sea).
With Finney and others (early 1800’s), it was that God heals (Marah).
With the Bible Societies and missionary organizations (mid-1800’s on),
it was to bring the gospel to the seventy nations of the world (Elim).
With Parham, Seymour, and others (1900-1950), it was Pentecost.
With the Latter Rain movement (1948-1952), it was to taste
the fruit of the Kingdom (12 spies).
Out of each of the above were derived individual churches and
movements, as each particular revelation was applied differently and spread
throughout the world by other leaders.
Each revival since Martin Luther helped to define the various
stops of church in the wilderness in the past 500 years that ran parallel to
Israel’s experience when Moses led them out of Egypt. By understanding this
progression of revelation, it is clear from many signs that we find ourselves
at the end of the wilderness. We are poised to enter the Promised Land.
So the question is this: What great revelation will spark the final
end-time outpouring of the Spirit? What is it that the Holy Spirit must ingrain
in the heart of the church and the world at large that will lay the foundation
for the Tabernacles Age in the next thousand years?
A Second
Revelation of the Law
To answer that question, we must look at the biblical record.
What happened on the plains of Moab just before Joshua led Israel across the Jordan
River? I can think of three things that occurred. First, Moses gave seven major
speeches that were written down and which formed the bulk of book of
Deuteronomy. They can be found in Deuteronomy 1-26. This formed the climax of
Moses’ summary of the law called Deuteronomy, i.e., “The Second Law.”
Then Deuteronomy 27 records how, after Israel had crossed the
river, they were to stand on two mountains opposite each other and formally
agree to the terms of the first covenant, agreeing that if they violated God’s
law, they would be judged by the curse of the law. The curses were then spelled
out in detail in Deuteronomy 28.
Moses’ teaching on the law at the end of Israel’s wilderness
experience was necessary because the people had forgotten much of what they had
been taught at the beginning of their journey in the shadow of Mount Sinai. At
that time, they were given the law as recorded in the book of Exodus. But that
generation had died during the next 40 years, and most of their children had
not even been circumcised (Joshua 5:5).
This is another indication that the people had forgotten the law and so
they were unable to keep the Old Covenant that they had made with God in Exodus
19:5-8. This fact also prophesies that the church in the wilderness in the Age
of Pentecost (33-1993 A.D.) also forgot the law and was also unable to fulfill
the Old Covenant.
The church under Pentecost claimed to be under the New Covenant, but in
practice they had largely reverted back to Old Covenant thinking. Hence, they
based their salvation on their own vow (decision) to follow Christ, rather than
upon God’s vow. For this reason, the church followed the pattern set by Israel
during their own wilderness experience, making it necessary for a second
revelation of the law—this time understanding it with spiritual eyes.
When I did my own study on the book of Deuteronomy a few
years ago, I wrote a 10-book commentary on the book of Revelation, completing
it on February 16, 2014. I believe that this was a time marker in the big
picture, representing the completion of Moses’ presentation of the law in his
day.
One year later (to the day), I began writing my series on The Two Covenants. Part 1 began on February 16,
2015, launching the second revelation of Moses in the plains of Moab.
The Second
Covenant
Deuteronomy 29 is the chapter setting forth the Second
Covenant, which is a type of the New Covenant under which Israel crossed the
Jordan into the Promised Land. Having violated the first covenant and forgotten
the law, the church in that time was not ready or even eligible to enter the
Promised Land. They had all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. They
had been rebellious in the wilderness, proving that they could not keep their
vow to God.
So at the end of their 40 years in the wilderness, God made a
second covenant with them, a covenant that was different from the first
covenant. Deuteronomy 29:1 says,
1 These are the words of the
covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the sons of Israel in the
land of Moab, besides the covenant which He had made with them at Horeb.
This covenant was one where God made an oath to make them His
people and to be their God (Deuteronomy 29:12, 13). Moses said that it was a
reiteration of the covenant that God had made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
In other words, it was based upon the promises of God, not upon the promises of
men. Many years later, Jeremiah called it a “new covenant,” and this is quoted
in Hebrews 8:8. The next verse says that it unlike the Old Covenant. Indeed!
Giving Israel a second covenant, based upon the promises of
God, shows us today the importance of understanding the New Covenant, for it is
what makes the church today eligible to cross over its own Jordan River into
the Promised Land—that is, the Promises of God. I should also add that it is
important to understand the scope of that promise in Deuteronomy 29:14, 15.
As I said earlier, I believe that the revelation of the New Covenant
since February 16, 2015 has been the modern sign fulfilling Deuteronomy 29 in
our own time. I put those weblogs into book form a few months later, and
finally wrote the tract, God’s Promise to You, which I sent to the
mailing list last week.
I suspect that this mailing has completed the process of
giving the revelation of the New Covenant in Deuteronomy 29. Now we come to the
third sign.
The Commissioning of Joshua
We read in Deuteronomy 31:14, 15,
14 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, the time for
you to die is near; call Joshua, and present yourselves at the tent of meeting,
that I may commission him.” So Moses and Joshua went and presented themselves
at the tent of meeting. 15 And the Lord appeared in the tent in a
pillar of cloud, and the pillar of cloud stood at the doorway of the tent.
So when Moses and Joshua went to the tent of meeting, God met
them at the doorway “in a pillar of cloud.” This suggests a connection with the
second coming of Jesus (Joshua), who is prophesied to come in the clouds. After
God gave instructions to Joshua, Deuteronomy 31:23 says,
23 Then He commissioned Joshua the son of Nun, and said,
“Be strong and courageous, for you shall bring the sons of Israel into the land
which I swore to them, and I will be with you.”
Joshua was commissioned under the power of the New Covenant
to bring the Israelites into the Promised Land. We usually focus upon the story
of Israel’s Jordan crossing, but even before that Moses gave His first
instructions to Joshua in the next few verses. Deuteronomy 31:24-26 says,
24 And it came about, when Moses finished writing the
words of this law in a book until they were complete, 25 that Moses
commanded the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant of the Lord, saying, 26
“Take this book of the law and place it beside the ark of the covenant
of the Lord your God, that it may remain there as a witness against you…”
Why would God tell them to place the book of Deuteronomy
“beside the ark”? Why not inside the ark, as Hebrews 9:4 tells us?
The Rabbis who translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek
rendered it, “ye shall put it in the side [i.e., inside] of the ark
of the covenant” (Septuagint). That was how they understood it, because
there would be no point in putting the book next to the ark when it had an
inner chamber. In fact, they put a pot of manna inside the ark as well.
The ark was the place of God’s presence. It represented the
collective heart of the people. To put the law in the ark teaches us that the
law is to be written in our hearts. So Hebrews 8:10 says,
10 For this is the covenant that I will lake with the house of Israel
after those days, says the Lord. I will put My laws into their minds and I
will write them upon their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall
be My people.
That is the only way that God can be our God. That is the
only way we can be God’s people. That is why God took an oath to make this
happen when He established the New Covenant in Deuteronomy 29:12, 13. In the
earlier covenant, in order for Israel to be God’s people, they had to obey Him
(i.e., fulfill their vow). That did not work. So God took an oath by Himself to
ensure that they would indeed be His people. Not only the Israelites, but also
the aliens among them and even all the people of the earth who were not present
at the time (Deuteronomy 29:14, 15).
Conquering
Canaan
Having seen the three main signs preceding our entry into the
Promised Land, we can expect to see the promise fulfilled soon. The main
difference between now and then is that we are no longer required to wield physical
swords to conquer Canaan. Though Israel technically entered Canaan under the
New Covenant, in a broader sense, they were still living in Old Covenant times.
Hence, they needed physical swords to subdue the land.
Jesus (our Joshua) ascended in order to send the Holy Spirit
at Pentecost, giving us the sword of the Spirit by which to conquer the world.
This conquest is known today as The Great Commission. Jesus told His disciples
in Matthew 28:18-20,
18 … All authority has been given to
Me in heaven and on earth. 19 God therefore and make disciples of
all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and
lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
The Holy Spirit was given in order to equip us to fulfill
this Great Commission. This is a much better solution to the Canaanite problem
than just killing everyone. Baptism has become our New Covenant method of
administering the death penalty. It is a symbolic death representing the death
of the old way of life, the old flesh man, and even the death of the Old
Covenant.
The outpouring of the Holy Spirit in our time, I believe,
will be the climax of a series of revivals since the days of Martin Luther,
wherein we have followed the pattern of Israel under Moses. This climax will
empower us to conquer the world, not with fleshly swords, not by violence, but
by making the love of Christ irresistible to all men. If we have faith that “love
never fails,” as Paul states, then we will have the confidence to use the
weapons of the New Covenant, for such weapons are not carnal.
The revelation of this final outpouring will be the revelation of the
New Covenant and using it to write the law upon the hearts of all men, so that
they can be His people.
It appears that we are now poised and ready for the greatest outpouring
of the Holy Spirit ever seen in history. As we approach the feast days in
September, let us keep this in mind, for they are our main watch dates for such
events.
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