In this study, we wish to talk about personal preparation for the most fearfully awesome period ever to affect this earth. We are told by the Word of our loving heavenly Father that with proper preparation, there will be no fear or terror. Instead will be assurance and poise in the face of any threat or any danger, for that one will then have been established and no power will be able to shake him. Ps. 91:1-16, 37:17-19, Isa. 54:14-17.
In that frame of reference, there is no fear and no terror; but note carefully that the preparation required equates to the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, which He sees we can attain in this life on this planet. Mt. 6:33-34. Before we begin to examine the detail of our subject, adjust your line of vision. We are not talking about your friend. We are not talking about his less enlightened congregation. We are talking about the teaching you personally have received from the Word of God – wherever it has been received.
We can read in both the Old and New Testaments that the Lord of Hosts is seen as Husband and as Father, loving in both functions. In both roles, He is active in training His children into maturity. Only a few of the children being trained today have qualified themselves to be elected by Him.-.His election, into His Bride company. Scripture also states that in the latter days He will hasten His work. Isa. 60:22.
That must equate to a need for more and faster training in our generation. The Lord of Hosts told those “who have been pitied and obtained mercy” (Ruhamah) to plead with their mother (those in the Church organization), to plead with her, because she has behaved herself badly and is not His Wife. He asks that we who have received His mercy plead with her, lest He strip her naked and make her a wilderness and set her like parched land and slay her with thirst. But on those who continue to follow her in her unfaithfulness, He will have no mercy. Hos. 2:1-4. It is much the same message as Jesus Christ has sent to the last Church of the final portion of our age, to the Church of Laodicea. Rev. 3:14-19. The “surely goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives” has a condition attached to it!
Suppose you have a very good backer of long standing, so good a friend that you feel you can call upon him to support you in any need you might have. Suppose you received a letter from this very dear benefactor which said, in effect: “Dearest one, I love you deeply. I think you are kidding yourself about the love which you voice for me, and I think you are being so foolish. After all the help in training I have given you, your communications to me are almost entirely self-serving. The things I have taught you to do for me, you are not doing well. Of the things you do accomplish, I can use very little. You are ruining my property.
You tell my other friends you have a rich relationship with me and because of that they copy you, causing me a greater problem. And in place of the training I offer, you go around to people who don’t even know me, or don’t know me well, and take their advice on how I want my property managed. What foolishness! In your self-righteousness, you pay very little attention to my expressed wishes. Pleasestop all of your “good” works and do mine. I love you so much, I intend to cut off the “dole” – everything of mine you have been using as your own, and I will cast you into a period of Great Lack of anything from me, unless you quickly and completely turn around in your ways and begin to relearn and then apply what I have told you. You are really not committed to me, but to yourself.”
Would you listen, or would you cut that Dear Friend off your List? Many yet will, because that is the letter from the Lord of Hosts to the Church of Laodicea. Laodicea means just or righteous people, and it pictures the church people of today who have been play-acting in righteousness and ethics and honesty and justice for all – even in Church. It is all those who seek the Lord in an outward imitation of people who are truly righteous, drawing near to God outwardly, especially when on display. The Laodicean Church becomes a false front to hide faults. Theirs is a faulty commitment to God’s perfect design. But remember that this is not a commentary on the lack in an acquaintance or in his less enlightened congregation. This has to do with a personal commitment to what is being revealed to you from the Word of God.
The Laodicean Church people say all is well, because they feel at peace with God. Rarely is God asked if He is at peace with the individual concerned. And how would that one asking even know he had received an answer, because the Lord will continue to make His requirements known only in consistency with the every Word of God, which is still easily available to each of us.
If He is at peace with you, you should be riding on the high places of the earth, being free from harm and free from sickness every step of the way. You should be experiencing the life-bringing dew from heaven for your soul and the much wheat of the Word for your physical well-being and the wine of the Covenant guaranteeing fulfillment of glorified life for the whole composite man. You should be attaining mastery over all situations, being one upon whom the Father dotes. Isa. 54:17, Ex. 15:26, Isa. 58:13-14, Gen. 17:28-29, 28:15. Are more blessings being showered on you than you can hold. Mal. 3:10?
The preparation is two-fold. The precise plan of the loving Father must be learned and implemented within the inner being in daily living – as the plan is progressively revealed to the searching one by the all-knowing Teacher. His plan must be received from His teaching, for the Laodicean Church does not teach His plan in its precision. But there also must be an accurate awareness of the Father’s plan in and among the nations, or mass pressure of error will cause stumbling into a snare of personal delusions, as was the case with the imprisoned John the Baptist, greatest of the Prophets. He perished, because he was taught and looked for the development of the wrong pattern around him. Failure to gain understanding and make preparation, either or both, can bring danger of destruction. Hos. 4:6.
There must be a daily and constant walk with the objective of reaching higher ground in personal conformance to the perfect plan. There also must be readiness to cooperate with Him in developments in the political, the commercial, and the ecclesiastical arenas. Failure in the first two brings separation from the Father. Isa. 59:1- 2. Inadequate response in the third brings trigger- trapping into destruction. Mt. 11:6, literal translation.
Preparation involves the searching out and application of what the Word of God really describes as God’s perfect plan to bring about change in thinking habits, emotional patterns and physical responses. Then there will be a new direction of determination – a new spirit of approaching all things. Ezek. 18:31-32. Complete preparation also involves a knowledge of the prophetic content of the Bible, especially that of the Book of Revelation, or there will be stumbling and disbelief when actual environmental developments do not match those anticipated. Where there is disbelief, there is a shutting out of the protection of the Lord. Heb. 3:19.
By Gordon Wolcott
