By: General Deborah Green
Praise God, we are continuing in the series of the Revolu-tionary Way, and in these messages we have reiterated again and again, and we will continue to reiterate, that Jesus was, is, and always shall be, The Revolutionary. A lot of people don’t like the word “revolutionary”. They would rather have me say that Jesus is Santa Claus, that Jesus is your psychologist or your counselor. They would rather have me say that Jesus is Prince of Peace, and that He wants us all to live in harmony. But no, Jesus was, Jesus is, and Jesus always will be, The Revolutionary. Because Jesus brings change. I said, Jesus brings change! And if you are not having change, revolution in your life, you are not following Jesus. Many people say they have converted to the Lord, they say they have been born again, but they have not chosen to walk in His Way. What have they done?
Jesus has kept His part of the covenant. When Jesus died He didn’t go back and say, “I won’t die”. He didn’t go back and say, “Give Me back my life”. He didn’t go back and say, “These people are not worth it”. HE GAVE EVERYTHING TO BRING US THROUGH! HE DIED, HE BLED UPON THE CROSS, HE WAS TREATED WITH CRUEL MOCKINGS, HE WAS BEATEN, HE WAS OPPRESSED. (The bible says, “He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He openeth not His mouth, but He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, as a sheep before his shearers is dumb, yet He openeth not His mouth.” Isaiah 53:7) He did not try to defend Himself, BUT HE GAVE HIS LIFE!
He Is the Son of the most high God, the Creator of heaven and earth. He was there in the very beginning with God when Adam was formed, when they said, “Let Us make man in Our image”. He brought forth the very life that is in all humanity. He was of that stature, yet He humbled Himself, came down and took on the likeness of man. And He did that, even walking through all of that persecution that befell Him, He did that so we could be brought to redemption. When we take that precious Seed of the new Kingdom and we say, “I am born again, I am conceived to Christ”, then we turn around, look back, pursue and live in the old kingdom, we are thieves. There are many of you who are listening to me today who are thieves. You have stolen from God and you have not kept your part of the covenant. Because when we take the Seed of Christ we are meant to be His. And how are we meant to be His? By just one tenth? No, we are not meant to belong one tenth to God. Jesus didn’t just let His foot be crucified or Jesus didn’t just let one hand go up there and get a spike driven through it. No, Jesus gave all of His body to be physically crucified. Every bit of Him went into the tomb.
So, when we say that we are born again, every bit of us is meant to go into the tomb, that is every bit of the old nature, of the old man, of the former lifestyle. We are not meant to hold on to pet idols. We are not meant to hold on to our pet lusts, but we are meant to abandon everything that was in death and pursue the new life. And Jesus Christ is the life! When we hang on to this and hold on to that, and yet we say that we are His, we are thieves. It is true. (See Romans 6:6, Gal.2.20,5.24,6:14)
It’s like if I went to the bank and I said, “I would like to cash this check”. Then I give them the check, I have it all signed, and they give me the money. Then, while the teller is turned, I reach my hand in there and grab out a big stack of money, put it behind my back where I have my bag, shove it into my bag, say thank you to the teller and walk out. Now, I gave them the check, they gave me my due and that is all I was meant to get, but because I am a thief, I took what wasn’t mine, I stuck it in the bag and I took off. That is what we do, we take the sacrifice that Jesus has given for us and we stick it in our bag and we do not give Him our obligation. He purchased us, plain and simple, He already paid every penny. There is no dime, no nickel, no interest that He owes, He paid it already. And when we accept the seed of Christ and we ask Him to forgive us of our sins and to release us of that burden, He washes us. And though our sins were crimson as scarlet, we are made whiter than snow. Why? Because He keeps covenant. When we don’t keep covenant we are as bad as that thief. “I will take the good things of God and not have to pay anything”. There are millions of professing Christians who are liars, pretenders, and thieves.
The text in these Revolutionary Way messages is Matthew 6:9-10. In verse nine, Jesus was teaching His disciples how they should pray, verse ten is the statement of that: “After this manner pray ye, our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven.” Some translations say, “on earth”. What we have been learning is that we are that earth. Yet you say, the earth is the ground, or the earth is a planet. But, we are the habitation of God. Where is that Kingdom meant to come? Is it meant to come in Jerusalem? NO, IT IS MEANT TO COME IN US! We are to become the heavenly Jerusalem. In other words when we enter into heavenly dimensions with God, that is where God finds His satisfaction. A lot of people don’t like the truth. They would rather put Christianity into some fairy tale fantasy conceptualization so that it does not pertain to their everyday life. Just like the church box god. Put him in a Sunday box, lock him in there, and come see him once a week, “Hello god, good-bye god”, and then go live their own sick, selfish lives. Or, if you are a Sabbath worshiper, put him in a Saturday box. Go in on Saturday, open the door, say “Hello god, we are better than the rest of them because we come to see you on Saturday. Good- bye, god”.
HE IS MEANT TO BE THE LORD OF OUR LIVES. WE ARE MEANT TO GIVE EVERY ASPECT OF OUR LIVES UNTO GOD. You say, “That sounds like fanaticism.” You better believe it is! We are meant to be fanatical for God. Look what was said about Jesus in His time, we can read about it in the Bible today. They said, “The man is a lunatic, he is crazy”, and who made these accusations against Him? The religious. Jesus came preaching Revolution against Religion, He came throwing the whole thing out the door, saying to the religious – “you are liars, you are hypocrites, you are of your father, the devil.” He came saying radical, fanatical things. He did not come in false humility and unity, saying, “Oh brethren, let us come here together and abide, and let us seek the Father and hope for a unity to be brought among us”. No, He came telling them the truth, and do you know how He came? He came with the sword, the two edged sword, the weapon of Revolution. The weapon of Revolution is the Truth, the Word of the Living God, the two edged sword which cuts, and divides, penetrates and exposes. It exposes the rats that are in religion and the rat that is in the carnal man.
So, we have it settled, that there is a New Kingdom and it is the Kingdom of God the Father. It is the Kingdom of God, and Jesus said, “This is how you should pray”. Everybody is so silly, everyone is praying for the rapture, why? So that they can escape persecution. But the Bible says, “Blessed are ye when ye are persecuted for my name’s sake”. Why else are they praying for a rapture? So they can escape tribulation, but the Bible says, “…ye shall see tribulation”. Why else do they want a rapture? So they can escape anyone speaking evil against them. “Oh God, rapture us out of here”. But the Bible says that all men are going to speak evil against you. The rapture is a fairy tale, the invention of the minds of men, designed to keep people from facing the fact that one of the tenets of the Kingdom of God is opposition. The opposition comes so that God’s people will know what it is to press into God.
Persecution will do one of two things, if you are persecuted for your faith, you will either renege on God and join the enemy or you will endure persecution and draw closer to God. It is plain and simple, it is a tool that God uses. Tribulation – the same thing, you will either collapse in the middle of it, fall into the arms of the devil, or you will endure tribulation and come out with a glowing testimony of God. The truth of the matter is that these things are meant to test and try our faith. When we refuse these things, we are not fit for the Revolution. Jesus said, “Any man having put his hand to the plough (see Lk. 9:62) looking back, is not worthy, is not fit”. He said if you don’t love me more than you love your natural family ties, you are not worthy of me. I thought about that all one night – YOU ARE NOT WORTHY OF ME. I thought, we sure are some proud fools. We are proud fools to think that we have any justifiable reason to turn back on God. You may say, “Well I can’t endure that, or I can’t give them up.” Jesus GAVE UP EVERYTHING, INCLUDING HIS VERY LIFE’S BLOOD. We are cheap arrogant fools to think we can offer Him any justification. There is none. He said if you put your hand to the plow and you look back, He will throw you out as unfit.
Jesus was not the way that He is conjured up to be in our modern day. Jesus was very precise as to the standard you had better measure up to, and if you don’t measure up to that standard, then you are a cull, thrown away. Absolutely. You say, “Oh, I am not comfortable with that”. Well, none of Jesus’s Words were comfortable, and if you don’t want the sword, you don’t want Jesus, plain and simple. It is about time that those who are claiming His name quit playing the whore. You go back and read in the book of Proverbs about the whore, and what does it say about her? She says, “The good man of the house is away, so come on in.” So, what is she saying? She is saying to the world, “Come here!”, she is saying to the demons, “Come here!”. She is saying to other lovers, “Come, here! The good man is away.” That is a whore’s heart – “the good man is away.” Who is the good man? The good man is her husband, her provider, the one that gave her the fancy house and her beautiful bed where she was going to commit her whoredoms.
Isn’t that what God’s people do? They think the good man is away, God is not watching right now, so come on in world, let’s commit fornication, come on in demons let’s commit fornication. Vile! Wicked! And there are millions of people professing they belong to the Lord yet they are nothing but whores on God. They are saying the good man is not here, he has gone away, we can do our thing. You can seduce me or I can seduce you, we can fornicate and He will never know. I’ve got news for you, He knows! He knows everything we do, He knows everything we think, and when we imagine that He has gone away, we are deceived, because He is the omnipresent God. Again, that is the deceit of churchianity. They lock Him in a box and go visit Him once a week when pastor opens the doors. You can hear them, like spoiled children, “Whee, there is god”, as they all put on their false faces, their nice clothes and go in to play “Christian”.
So many people develop an insensitivity in their conscience where they believe that God is in their box, and as long as they have cleaned up their act by Sunday then they are fine. They can commit fornications all week long, live like the devil himself, then go in on Sunday, give God a quick hello, drop a little bit in the collection plate, and leave feeling like they’ve done God a favor. Don’t be fooled. The box god act does not deceive God. God knows what you do twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. He is the omnipresent God. Think about that, the omnipresent God, He is not in some box, like an animal in a zoo waiting for his banana, waiting for you to come in with your stingy ten percent and your religiosity and your falsity. Hypocrites! Church makes God’s people into hypocrites!
Jesus said, I AM, not I was, not I will be, not maybe someday, but I AM. In John the tenth chapter, we meet up with a very important figure, we meet up with a very important personage, it is the Shepherd of Revolution. Now, the Shepherd of Revolution reveals Himself as the True Shepherd, He reveals that all others were false.
Jesus said, I AM THE ONLY ONE! And all those who are preaching Jesus are going to be the only ones. I don’t mean just by saying His Name, but by living the life, walking in the Revolutionary Way, following after the Shepherd of Revolution. Those ones in that Way, they are the only ones. Now, like it or not, that is the truth. I am sick and tired of playing “mince words”, I’m sick and tired of the accusations of religionists. The truth of it is, if you are walking in His steps, you are in the class of the only ones, because HE IS THE ONLY ONE. There is no other way!
There is no other way. You can’t get there by being nice, you can’t get there by being accepted of men, you can’t get there by playing compromise church, you can’t get there by playing good citizen. You can only get there by going THE WAY OF JESUS. The way of Jesus is the way of the cross, and you must die, I must die, to everything that is of the old nature that the new man may be resurrected in all of His glory. Do you know what our cup will be? The same cup that Jesus drank, we will be hunted and hounded, prosecuted, we will be evil spoken of. Why? Because that is the way.
In the first several verses of John 10, Jesus tells them that there is only one way in and if you go another way then you are a thief and a robber. There is only one way that we will enter into and remain in the Kingdom, and that is the Revolutionary Way, that is the way of Jesus. If we try to walk another way and play nice guy, pay our tithes, go to church, but not let Jesus touch our personal life, nor touch our hearts, nor let Him crucify us, then we are deceiving ourselves. We are living as thieves and robbers. There are probably millions of professing Christians upon the earth who are thieves and liars, because they are trying to enter in through another way, trying to play religion and gain the Kingdom. The religious will not enter in. The ones who go the Revolutionary Way, the way of the cross, the Way of Jesus, will enter in, there is no other way.
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice; and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them forth.” John 10: 1-3. Continuing on in Verse 6, “This parable spake Jesus unto them; but they understood not what things they were which He spake unto them.” Vs. 7, “Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep.”
We see that Jesus often repeated Himself over and over. You ask, “Why do you say over and over that Jesus is the Revolutionary?” Because you haven’t even conceived it yet. Jesus knew that the people were dull, that they could not perceive everything He had to say, so He repeated it again in a different context. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep, all that ever came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them. I am the door: by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” Verses 7-10.
Now listen carefully, it says, “The thief cometh not but for to kill, and to steal, and to destroy”. Stop and consider what is going on in churchianity, nothing but sensuality, entertainment, lust of the flesh, pride of life, arrogancy, conceitedness, hatred for God, rebellion, disrespect for God’s authority and disrespect for God! So, who is running those places? To kill, to steal, to destroy, it is the work of Satan! Man’s organization has refused to accept the headship of God and has been given over to Satan. And Satan is very cunning. In the beginning he plays humble, meek and mild, then in the end he is a devourer. If you take a good look at what is happening in the churches, you look at the standards of holiness and righteousness that have been done away with to “keep the young people in the church”, or to “keep the pews filled, to keep pastor’s wallet fat”. When you look at all of those sacrifices unto the devil, with little being made unto God, but rather the holy things of God being sacrificed to be mauled over by the swine, then you see it is the work of the devil and not the work of Almighty God. Plain and simple.
Starting in verse 11, “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth His life for the sheep.” So, what is the Shepherd of Revolution? He is willing to lay down His life. The Shepherd says, “I give My life for the sheep, I give My life for the sheep”. How many so called shepherds, pastors, in this generation are willing to give their lives for the sheep? Name me some. How many are in the Revolutionary Way?
That is the first declaration that He made as far as His nature, as far as the characteristics which identify Him and separate Him from the thieves and robbers. He said, I GIVE MY LIFE FOR THE SHEEP. Going on in verse 12, “But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, who own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep.” The false shepherds are not going to be protectors, they are not going to be guides, they are not going to be keepers. They are going to be flake- outs, and when the heat gets on they are going to run and leave the sheep to be devoured, leave the sheep to be scattered and destroyed. Why? Because they are liars, because they are mockers and deceivers. They are hirelings, they are not in the Revolutionary Way. They are not of the seed of Christ, they are of the seed of the deceiver.
There are only two kingdoms. I don’t care how nice you think Pastor Joe is, if the heat gets on and Pastor Joe takes off to Tijuana and leaves the flock to be devoured, Pastor Joe is of the devil. If you are a true shepherd, you are going to protect the sheep, even if you have to pack up all of the sheep and take them with you to Tijuana, you are going to seek to keep the sheep. Because that is the Revolutionary Shepherd’s truth that He gave us in this chapter, that He laid down His life, and any of those who are truly following Him, are going to do the same. They are going to lay their lives down for God’s sheep, plain and simple.
Going on in verse 13, “The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep.” So, he is a thief. He is taking money for a job he is not doing. “I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep and am known of mine. As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father; and I LAY DOWN MY LIFE FOR THE SHEEP.” Vss. 14-15 Jesus had a two fold meaning here, more than the disciples knew at that point. He not only laid down His life right there, but He laid down His life on the cross. He laid down His life that our redemption was sealed.
Still in John 10, verse 16: “And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold;”. We are those other sheep. We are those other sheep, those that have come in the generations after this was written, those that have sought for the Lord and longed for the Lord and He has come to them, they are those sheep. Some people want to make this verse out to mean aliens, or UFO’S.
That is absurd, we are the sheep. We are the Gentiles, we are the ones He was referring to when He said, “I have other sheep that are not of this fold, them also, I must bring”. In other words, when Jesus was teaching them He was letting them know that the truth was not dead with the generation they were in. Jesus was telling them that the truth that I AM, the I AM, must be proclaimed, must be declared, until all of those who are my sheep are brought into the fold. “And they shall hear My voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.” Verse 16
Does it say there shall be ninety thousand denominations? No! It says there shall be ONE FOLD AND ONE SHEPHERD, ONE FOLD AND ONE SHEPHERD, ONE FOLD AND ONE SHEPHERD! ONE SHEPHERD IS WHAT JESUS SAID. One Shepherd, one fold, one way! So what is He teaching right here? THY KINGDOM COME, THY WILL BE DONE. THERE IS ONLY ONE KINGDOM, THERE IS ONLY ONE FOLD, THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY UNTO THE FATHER. THAT IS BY THE NAME OF JESUS, THAT IS BY THE WALK OF JESUS, THAT IS BY THE WAY OF JESUS. WE COME THROUGH JESUS THE REVOLUTIONARY INTO THE REVOLUTIONARY WAY, THAT IS WALKING IN THAT NEW KINGDOM!
Let us pray for that Kingdom to come in earth, on earth, as it is in heaven. “Therefore, doth My Father love me, because I lay down My life, that I might take it up again. No man taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of My Father,” Verses 17-18.
So we see that Jesus knew He was going to die. He knew that He would lay His life down. But He chose to do that, He loved to do that, because it was the will of His Father. It was the commandment of the Commander of that Kingdom which He taught His disciples to pray for. He taught them to pray that Thy Kingdom come, and Thy will be done. If we are true disciples, if we are in the Revolutionary Way, we will lay our lives down with joy. Does that mean that everyone of us will hang on a physical cross? No, but we will go to the cross, not only once, but again and again as we die daily (as Paul said) that we can bring forth the image and the likeness of the ONE SHEPHERD IN THE ONE WAY, THE REVOLUTIONARY WAY OF THE SHEPHERD OF REVOLUTION.