Week of 20 September 2020

A Timely Word concerning the World Situation and the Lord’s Recovery (5) — Answering God’s Call to Be His Dispensational Instrument, His Overcomers, to Turn the Age

Every time God wants to make a dispensational move, an age-turning move, He must obtain His dispensational instrument. The principle is seen with “Daniel and his companions”.  They were absolutely one with God in their victory over Satan’s devices; they were men who turned the age of the captivity of God’s people to the age of their return to the land of Immanuel for the building of God’s house and God’s city for God’s expression and authority. They were men who God used to turn the age. In God’s sight, they were “men of preciousness”, even “preciousness itself”. We must be those who have dispensational value to God.  

Daniel had companions with whom he was absolutely consecrated to God and separated unto God from an age that follows Satan.  All those who are used by God to turn the age must be Nazarites — voluntarily consecrated ones who are sanctified absolutely and ultimately to God.  They stood up as “an anti-testimony”, similar to the way that Antipas did in the Church in Pergamos.

Daniel was a person who was joined to God’s Word.  When Daniel read from the book of Jeremiah that God had ordained seventy years of captivity for the Israelites and that after seventy years God would turn back to bless them, he immediately fasted and prayed.  As soon as he touched God’s desire through the Word, he joined himself to that desire. We must read God’s Word in a spirit and atmosphere of prayer and touch God’s desire from His Word; then we must immediately join ourselves to that desire; the Bible should affect our living, and we should be joined to the Bible.

Daniel was a man of prayer with an excellent spirit, a man living under God’s rule in the reality of the kingdom of the heavens, the ruling of the heavens. Man’s prayers are like the rails that pave the way for God’s move to go on; there is no other way to bring God’s economy into fullness and into fulfillment except by prayer; this is the inner secret of Daniel Chapter 6.  Prayer is the lifeline in the Lord’s recovery; the more Satan tries to frustrate our prayer, the more we should pray.

Daniel prayed at the risk of his life. Daniel was a self-sacrificing person with the spirit of martyrdom. Daniel’s companions had a true spirit of martyrdom; they stood for the Lord as the unique God and against idol worship at the cost of their lives, being thrown at the command of Nebuchadnezzar into a blazing furnace. Everyone whom God uses to turn the age is afraid of only one thing that is, of offending God and losing His presence.

In order to be today’s overcomers, we must redeem the time. Colossians 4:5 says, “Redeeming the time,” and Ephesians 5:16 says, “Redeeming the time”.  One could translate the word time in these passages as redeeming the “opportunity”. We who are learning to serve the Lord must not let the Head have a sense that we are dull to His direction and numb to His leading; we need to allow the Lord to train our spiritual sense and our spiritual sight to sense the opportunities whenever they come and make the most of them.

“The people who know their God will show strength and take action”.  The more we know God’s will, the more we will seize the opportunities; those who know God will never live in a habitual way day after day.  Today the way to become vitalized is to answer the Lord’s call to be an overcomer. We need to have close, intimate, and thorough fellowship with the Lord and with the seeking saints with whom we can labor, just as Daniel had three companions. We have to make a resolution to be the overcomers who overcome anything that is replacing Christ or that is against Christ, to be the dispensational instrument to turn the age.

(Source:https://www.churchintaipei.org/weeklynews/archive/1140.pdf )

COOPERATING WITH GOD THROUGH PRAYERS

[God] caused the king of Babylon to have a dream. The strange thing is that the king was clear in the dream, yet he could not remember what went on in the dream after he woke up. Therefore, he called together all the magicians in Babylon, as well as all the wise and knowledgeable ones. None of them could tell or explain the dream. This is a picture. It shows that all the followers of Satan on earth cannot understand the profound things of God. At that juncture God vindicated Daniel. He showed everyone that here was one who was particularly separated. He was acknowledged by God, qualified to be used by God, and capable of speaking forth the mystery of God.

Before the king of Babylon called for Daniel, he declared that if none of the magicians or learned ones in Babylon under him could explain the dream, he would destroy them all. Among those who were to be killed were Daniel and his three friends. I fully believe that Daniel would have told his three friends to pray with him. There they afforded God the highest cooperation; they gave God the highest coordination. In their single-hearted prayer, God revealed to Daniel the dream. It was the dream of the king of Babylon, but now Daniel saw it also. Not only did Daniel see that dream in his prayer; he understood its meaning as well. This shows that Daniel was a person living before God; he depended on prayer to do what man could not do, and he depended on prayer to understand what man could not understand.

 In chapter 10 we see that not only was Daniel a praying person, but he was a persistent praying person. He asked God for understanding and for direction. He prayed and prayed steadfastly. The Bible says that he received God’s answer on the first day of his petition. From the first day God had answered his prayer by sending an angel to show him what would happen to the children of Israel. Yet when the angel came to the air, he met Satan’s prince, who withstood him. There was a battle. In other words, when God in heaven was about to join Himself to man on earth, He met Satan’s resistance, and there was a twenty-one-day battle. Although God had already heard Daniel’s prayer, Satan resisted in the air and would not allow God’s answer to reach Daniel. Nevertheless, Daniel was a persistent praying person. He persisted in prayer for three seven-day periods. As a result, the angel came to tell him how God had heard his prayer and how He would deal with His people.

Daniel’s prayer reached the highest peak. He asked God to do something for Himself. He prayed, “Cause Your face to shine upon Your sanctuary that has been desolated, for the Lord’s sake” (Dan. 9:17). I hope that we would circle the words for the Lord’s sake. We can see that his prayer was totally for God and not for himself. It seems as if he was saying to God, “My supplication here today is not for myself but for You. This was a very special prayer; it was also the highest prayer. Our prayers are ninety-nine and nine tenths percent for ourselves. Very few of them are for God. Only a person like Daniel, who prayed to God single-heartedly, can be used by Him to turn the age.

(Men Who Turn the Age, chap. 2, pp. 24-25, 27-28)

GOSPEL TESTIMONY                 

My name is Chan Weng Kiew Alan.

In 2009, my father Chan Keen Tuck was baptized and converted to Christianity which came as a surprise to the family because we were a Buddhist family and he was a devout Buddhist. In January 2019 I was introduced to a brother by my father. At that time I was having a severe episode of urinary tract infection. In addition to the pain it was making me depressed as well. My dad invited him over to our place for a little chat with me to maybe cheer me up.

I didn't feel much after the chat with him but I kept in contact with him and he was sending me Bible verses and literature regularly and in the next following months I started to read more and more as I was finding it interesting and meaningful. I found a sense of calm and purpose and had direction in my life once again. Psalms 37:5, “Commit your way to Jehovah, / And trust in Him; and He will act.”        

 I was baptized on 29 Aug 2020. It was easily the best decision I ever made in my life. I can finally understand why my dad became a Christian back in 2009 and how my dad felt on his baptism day. It is truly a salvation to enjoy the joy of being born again, to have a fresh start in the Lord, and to be delivered from the world. Galatians 3:26-27, “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”

My main wish now is to bond my family (Dad, Mum, Younger brother and me) together in faith and direction. Jesus Christ must be the foundation. Matthew 7:24-25, “Everyone therefore who hears these words of Mine and does them shall be likened to a prudent man who built his house upon the rock. And the rain descended, and the rivers came, and the winds blew, and they beat against that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.” Praying as a family binds the family together. The family that prays together stays together. — Brother Chan Weng Kiew, Alan, RHE district