The Resistance

Many in the resistance don’t understand what they are resisting, how critical it is, and that they are not alone in the battles.

In his Revelation letter to the early church of Pergamum Jesus wrote in part:

 I know where you live—where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to my name. You did not renounce your faith in me. . . . Nevertheless, I have a few things against you: Rev 2:13,14

“Where Satan has his throne…” sounds like a fun place… I think he probably has thrones in many cities, places where he has complete control over the governing entities and the culture. Where the resistance has been, and is being, crushed.

For the last few centuries western civilization has largely prevented Satan from having such a reign in much of the “free” world. But as the church has been diminished both in numbers and influence, almost nonexistent now in Europe, and doing a slow fade in America, that deterrent capability is fading also.

That which holds the enemy at bay, is losing its power and the enemy is becoming bolder, and his influence taking hold in the hearts of more and more people, compelling them to be agents of hate and destruction while under the delusion that they are in the right, as the church–who is a stark and uncomfortable reminder that they are not–becomes the target of their scorn.

And they have no problem finding justification, nor do they have a problem with the virtual and literal destruction of the church and all who hold to Godly values and morality.

The Holy, those who remain true, find themselves outnumbered and forced to make the decision; renounce your faith in Jesus Christ or face cancelation—ostracization— which soon becomes imprisonment and then—Satan’s ultimate goal— death. All in hopes of stopping the Kingdom of God from advancing and diminishing his power to destroy all that God loves, the God whom he tried to usurp in an arrogant and ill-fated heavenly insurrection that turned a third of the angels of heaven into what we now call demons.

Even so, his power is restrained—

For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. 2 Peter 2:7

So what is it that holds the enemy at bay, that restrains him? What is it that keeps the devil from having total power and sway over our land and our families, from setting his throne up unopposed in the middle of our Nation and allowing lawlessness to reign supreme? Not much it would appear. But it is still enough. And there is more of it than his agents of death would like us to think.

The resistance against the darkness is greater than you would be led to believe, but discouragement plagues us. Many in the resistance don’t understand what they are resisting, how critical it is, and that they are not alone.

What is that resistance, or rather who? Who’s refusal to conceded, to stop fighting the good fight, to turn our world over completely to the devil and his minions? Ours, we who remain true to the name of Jesus.

It is the church that holds the Devil back. The church and the power of heaven that resides in their midst, those who remain faithful and true to God and his word, those who are willing and desirous to live in holiness, keeping themselves clean in the midst of a culture that never ceases to sling filth at them. Those who are willing to pray, whose collective prayers empower the heavenly warriors that are fighting on our behalf to prevent the devil and his demons from totally destroying us.

The Holy Spirit, loosed on the earth in the authority of those entrusted with him by our Savior and King, keeps the Man of Lawlessness from ruling the earth. We are the resistance—so we must be destroyed.

Consider this from Paul:

Now, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you, not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come. Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, ⁴ who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.

Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. 2 Thes 2:1—7

No church, no Holy Spirit empowered resistance to the enemy’s plans for mankind. Lies get sucked into the vacuum created in a heart devoid of truth.

The falling away that precedes the revealing of the man of sin who sets up his throne in the temple of God, is the demise of the church.

It is the abandoning of that which equips and nourishes the souls of those who are called to fight for the advancement of the Kingdom of God. Falling away from the church means they will be more likely to fall away from God’s ways and his word, separated and destroyed, the oldest and most effective war strategy there is.

No church, no holy warriors, no faithfulness, no opposition, no prayers empowering the angels of God fighting on our behalf, no Holy Spirit moving amongst the sons of Adam, that which restrains the man of sin, the son of perdition—the Antichrist—from becoming the god of all of this earth, as has always been his goal, is gone; watered down, disarmed, deceived into thinking they were fine without all that Jesus stuff, and defeated.

And the few faithful who remain, now a minority, will be beheaded— martyred—to end up watching and waiting from heaven for their Lord to avenge their deaths as the armies of heaven prepare to return and seize the Serpent of old, toppling his throne and reclaiming the earth, and all of creation, for himself and his children.

Crossroads

And that my friends, is the reality of the crossroads we stand at as a church, as a nation, as a species. Resist the seductions of the enemy to conform, or become one of those who reject truth, complacent in the enemy’s crimes against God’s children, and suffer his fate. Jesus continues in his letter to Pergamum:

Repent therefore! Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth. Rev 2:12

It’s really that simple—follow Jesus and receive your crown, or succumb to Satan and find out what that sword in the mouth of Jesus can really do .

We must resist the seductions of the enemy to conform.

Everything else, the politics, the hysterical talking heads, the wokeness, global warming, transgender chaos, racism, pandemic fearmongering—it’s all just a distraction to keep us fighting among ourselves— submitting, compromising, heeding the siren call of Jezebel who seduces, induces and strips away the faithful and turns them into the fallen away until there are no true prophets, no one who hears and heeds the voice of God, left in all the land—so she thinks.

For so it was, while Jezebel massacred the prophets of the Lord, that Obadiah had taken one hundred prophets and hidden them, fifty to a cave, and had fed them with bread and water. 1 Kings 18:4

Jezebel was the Queen of Israel during the reign of the spineless whipped wimp, King Ahab, a king in ancient Israel, who tried to replace the God of Abraham with Baal at her urging and was foiled at every turn by the faithful and true prophet Elijah. She lives in infamy and has come to represent for all time, compromise, adultery and idolatry.

Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophet. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. Rev 2:20

Don’t fall for the seductions of Baal, Satan, Jezebel, or whatever name he chooses to fit the bill. Keep yourselves holy, remain true-be the resistance. God always preserves a remnant, those who remain faithful.

Pray it does not come to that in our lifetime—I don’t really want to live in a cave on bread and water as those who ran from the first Jezebel had to. I don’t care how good a prepper you may think you are, it will not be a picnic. Ask Elijah. While running to his own cave, he despaired of his life and laid down to die. (1 Kings 19) But God took care of him and Elijah did what he had to do.

So will I…

Every Eye Shall See

Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him. Rev 1:7

Jesus is returning, of that we can be certain. That promise has been the hope of the church, the assurance of justice served and wrongs made right, the triumph of good over evil, and the comfort of tortured hearts since the day that the resurrected Jesus first departed from that hill outside of Jerusalem to return to His rightful place alongside the Father on the throne of Heaven.

We have the promise made by Jesus himself both before and after his resurrection, as he stood before the Sanhedrin on the day of his murder proclaiming that he would return on the clouds of heaven, and as he assured his disciples on that same night that he was going to prepare a place for them and that he would return for them to be with him there. A promise that holds true for all who believe.

John 14:3

This is a promise that has been echoed throughout the New Testament, and again by Jesus himself, as he reveals the events to surround his return to his Apostle John in the Revelation, who is a prisoner on an island rock quarry that serves as a forced labor camp for enemies of the state.

John is an enemy of the state because his hope and his allegiance is given to a King and  Kingdom that is not subject to Rome or its Caesar, a kingdom that resides in his heart via the Holy Spirit of the King he has chosen to follow, a kingdom which is more than just a memory and a promise, a kingdom that is very real and very close although it cannot be seen with the natural eye.

Yet John, the Apostle and friend of Jesus the Messiah, is going to get a glimpse of that Kingdom and be encouraged to write of what he sees so that all who call on the name of the Lord and King of Heaven, the Alpha and Omega, the First Born from among the dead, will know that this kingdom is real and that there is indeed a place there, prepared just for us. A Place secured and prepared by the man we knew as Jesus, who turned out to be the Son of God, who loved us with an unimaginable love of which we will never fully fathom, but can only benefit from.

And on that day, every eye, including ours, will behold the glory of the coming King as his Spirit within us rejoices at the grand reunion of the entire family of God with their Lord, the Groom, coming to gather us for his wedding feast. Proving to all once and for eternity, that He is the way, the Truth and the Life—the only,  way, truth and life.

When will this be? Soon and very soon.

 I am coming soon; hold fast to what you have, so that no one may seize your crown.  If you conquer, I will make you a pillar in the temple of my God; you will never go out of it. Rev 3:11—12

Patience

It may seem that having waited for two thousand years now, that his return has been far from soon. But when he returns, the span of eternity that is suddenly before us, with the realization of eternity past, and the blip that our lives were in light of that, those years will be but a blink of the eye in the context of our forever reward in the Temple of our God—in the house of our Father.

In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.  John 14:2-3

Love built this house, and love will get us there. In the fullness of time.

Love is patient; the Lord wants to give all a chance to return his love and find their place in that house.

So today I am pondering the first chapter of the Book of Revelation. The opening verse refers to it as “the Revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to show his servants”. Thus this book is indeed a revelation, given to us from our Lord Jesus Christ to share with those who love him, just what his Father has planned, how the victory that Jesus won on the cross and in the tomb is fully and finally implemented, and just exactly how he intends to return.

But it is more than just a revelation of things to come and a tantalizingly marvelous look into the throne room and the workings of heaven itself, it is also a beautiful and magnificent revelation of our resurrected Lord in the fullness of his glory. A glory that, when revealed to all, will bring even the hardest of hearts trembling to their knees in fear, awe and worship. 

A glory that can overwhelm and terrify, yet is beautiful even in that brilliance for us who know him, because we’ll see through that magnificence, the man who came to live and die for us, we’ll see the heart of love and the burning desire and passion that drove him to shed his blood, to be pierced, for us, his creation, his children, his friends. We’ll see the scars that he chooses to still carry to remind us of his love and devotion to us for whom he became flesh and blood and died.

Rev 1

He also carries the scars so that even those who mock and deride him, his message, and his people, will know just exactly who it is that is coming on the clouds on that great and terrible day when every eye shall see the one whom we call Lord. And blessed are those who have not seen, who have not placed their fingers in the scars, and yet believe.

For we who believe now are a kingdom of priests—kings and priests—and we who serve and honor him now will rule with him when he places all the world’s thrones under his feet. But even until then, we are his and we bow down to no other on this earth or in the heavens.

We are his bride; we are the church. The church built on the rock of our confession that Jesus is the Christ. The church for whom he cares enough to send us–even as we await his return–words of encouragement, correction, warning and promise; to reveal to things to come, things to watch for, and our place in all of it. If we dare or care enough to hear with our ears and to see with our eyes and to set our hearts to understand what the Spirit is saying to the church–to you.

Every Eye Shall See

The Men in White

“It’s like ‘Come ‘on people, pay attention!‘“

 Now when He had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, who also said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.”

Acts 1:1-11

Olivet

Angels

Obviously, the ascension of Jesus is the focus of this opening chapter of Acts, but let’s picture this scene for a moment. The Men of Galilee, as they are addressed here by the strangers in white, are standing there on the Mount of Olives slack jawed, staring up into heaven, probably somewhat in shock as they have just witnessed Jesus, who appears to still be as human as them, though they know better at this point, has just floated off of the face of the earth and disappeared into the clouds. Leaving them alone–so they thought.

They suddenly they hear a voice and turn to see two men in white apparel asking them, seemingly somewhat incredulously, ‘Why are you standing here gazing into nothingness?’  It’s kind of like the young man in white who earlier had asked Mary; “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” It’s like ‘Come ‘on people, pay attention!‘

In both these cases these angels, as we now know them to be, appear, or are at least described as simply men— men in white. To me that sounds like they could be mistaken for just another person—who happens to be in the right place and just happens to have the right answers, in the moment.

I have to wonder how many times these men in white have inconspicuously stood by us with an answer we needed at just the right time and we failed to realize who they were—until much later, if at all. Paul reminded us of this in one of his letters.

Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some have unwittingly entertained angels. Hebrews 13:12

There are many great stories of spectacular angelic rescues to be heard, but often, they are just bringing a word in time, to save a weary soul.

A few years ago I was a little discouraged—okay, a lot discouraged. I had been toiling away at the church here in Red Lodge Montana for years, still working full time —at that time actually working on a project in Miles City during the week—and the church seemed to have hit a wall, or at least I had.

So I was sitting on a park bench overlooking Red Lodge, up by the airport in a little park area and I was praying, or should I say whining, to the Lord. “Lord, what am I doing here. My vision of a thriving church that supports a ministry of healing and restoration, drawing people from all over to be refreshed and recommissioned for the callings and passions you had given them to make a difference in this world for you; it just doesn’t seem to be happening.”

Not to mention my vision of having a church big enough to allow me to quit my construction job and focus more on ministry—”Lord? What am I doing here? Did I miss something?”

Suddenly I noticed an older gentleman in a jogging suit and a pair of sneakers, walking down the trail that ran right past the bench I was on. He greeted me with a big smile and said; “Nice place for some R and R!”  “Yes it is.” I replied. And he just kept on walking. I sat there and thought; Yes, indeed it is, as his words seemed to reverberate in my soul.

I wish I could say the man was wearing white, I don’t remember— But he spoke the words of God to me just as surely as if the heavens had parted and Jesus had hollered down at me—’Hey! This is why you are here—remember?’

I am convinced that he was an angel.

That one sentence confirmed in me and reminded me exactly why God had sent me here, and reassured me that the vision and call to be here was still valid.

God sent me here with a very clear mission to build a church of refuge and rest, a place to recoup, rebuild and refit for wounded soldiers who are weary of the fight, who feel scorned and cast aside or who just need a little R and R. And what better place for a ministry like that then in Red Lodge MT at the foot of some of the grandest and most beautiful mountains in the world?

Red Lodge -Swaningson

The very nature of a ministry like that, by design, is that people might stay for a while and then move on into the plan God has for them. Healed, forgiven, forgiving, and empowered by his Spirit. And it has been happening.

God never told me how many it would be happening with at a time—he just asked me to come. And to claim and cling to my own healing along the way.

And if it takes an occasional visit from the men in white to remind me—than thank you Jesus, I’ll take it. Why are you standing here gazing into the heavens? —’Why are you sitting here on this bench whining?’ Okay Lord, I get it. I’ll go back and do what you asked me to do.

And you know what? Anything I have ever done with and for the Lord, no matter how difficult, is still better than my old life without Jesus.

Angel is a word that simply means messenger. Are you listening to the messages?

A Grand Entrance

He is risen!

“And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat on it.” 

Talk about a grand entrance!

Can you imagine the angels standing poised and ready to go at the word from the throne to release the risen Lord? Who will it be? When? Alright, there’s the sunrise—you—go! And an angle shoots down from heaven, no doubt at great haste once he was given the go ahead.

I have no doubt an angel can travel at the speed of light, and he makes a grand appearance—‘How about we shake the earth, that’ll show these big bad guards—and all the demons of hell, who the boss really is here, and then we’ll roll that puny little stone aside!’

‘Guards? Oh look, they seem to be a bit scared as they have fainted—poor dears.’

I don’t know if angels employ sarcasm, I’m pretty sure my guardian angle does. Otherwise we’d never never get along. But somewhere in the midst of this grand angelic show—Jesus gets up and walks out of the tomb. Not just raised from the dead, but resurrected into a perfect glorified body.

A perfect body that can eat, yet walk through walls. One that can walk down a road and have a normal conversation with two travelers and  seem like another pilgrim, yet disappear in the midst of a meal at the end of the road. One that has flesh and blood scars that can be seen and touched yet can ascend to heaven like gravity is just no thing at all.

And then the angel just casually sits on the stone, I love that part. Hah, we’ll just slam into the earth at lightning speed with such force that the ground quakes, shove that little stone aside with a back hand brush like it’s just like it weighs nothing, watch the Lord of glory walk out into the sunlight like it’s the first day of creation when he created light and saw that it was good. And then the honored angel just casually sits on the rock like it’s a lawn chair at a picnic as he watches the guards finally recover their wits enough to run off like children being chased by hornets. —‘Off you go now!’

Fine day for a resurrection Gabriel! Why yes Michael, it is—the finest of days! At some point according to the other gospels, another angel has shown up as well—the gospels don’t name them, but it’s possible.

The angel, or one of the angels, then goes inside to sit and wait for the ladies.

Turned out the ladies were wishing for and worrying about the wrong thing. The stone was not a problem for the one who had the power to overcome death. In fact it sounds like the heavens had a lot of fun getting rid of that puny little rock.

Point made—what rock? Jesus is risen.

Let him roll away your stone today. Expect a bigger miracle, nothing is to big for the one who conquered death.