We have dedicated an offering to the Lord and it is smoking and ascending to heaven. Let us look at it in the typology of what a burnt offering is, an offering wholly burned, an offering that ascends to the Lord. And the Lord smells the aroma of the fat, the smell of burnt flesh, of blood, and that aroma of a life that was sacrificed ascends. What happened at Calvary represents an offering. Why does God demand life? It is something very high, the most precious, because life is the breath of God, which represents the totality of the being. That is why the Lord demanded life, because when man sinned he lost life, he lost the breath; he kept on breathing, but he had no spiritual soul before the Lord; he existed, but he did not live, because He is our life and in Him is life. And God breathed on Adam and gave him the breath of His nostrils, the breath of His life. But sin undid that breath and man lost spiritual life and was left only with physical, Adamic life, merely existing. That is why, through the representation of the ancient worship, the worship of the patriarchs, of the people of Israel, God asked that animals be sacrificed as a representation of the life of man.
It is incomprehensible, and now we can understand it because we have the representation of the life of Jesus at Calvary, but the ancients understood in a limited way. They saw only an animal that died in their place, but they saw nothing more. Sin created separation between God and men; sin is everything that is contrary to the nature of God, it is what is most foreign and most distant from the perfect character of God. It is more than rebellion against God; it is replacing God, it is taking God’s place, it is supplanting the Creator. We have not yet understood the dimension of sin, what it means to God. Sin is not only an offense that wounded the heart of God, it is more than that. It cannot be explained with words what it means. It is not that God, as a punishment, chose to withdraw, it is that He cannot dwell where there is sin, as Habakkuk said: “You are very pure of eyes to see evil, nor can You look upon the wrong” (Hab. 1:13), and that is sin. Through the typological representations the Lord wanted us to understand, or He announced, what was coming with the death of His Son. Now you can understand why Jesus gave up the Spirit to the Father, when He said: “Father, into Your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46); “preserve it, keep it, because it is not the spirit of Adam who sinned, nor the spirit of man, a spirit that acted unworthily, vilely, contrary to what You are, not only offending You but damaging Your creation and obliging You, in a certain sense, to separate from man even with the pain of separation.” And the Son felt on the cross of Calvary the great pain of separating from the Father.
The One who said: “… and you will leave Me alone; yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me […] For the One who sent Me is with Me; the Father has not left Me alone, because I always do what pleases Him” (John 16:32; 8:29 R60), now, with a cry that came from the depths of His heart, a groan, an outcry, says: “My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46). That is not only the feeling of man suffering the pain of being separated from the Creator, but the same pain the Creator felt when Adam vilely betrayed Him by changing his loyalty to give it to a serpent, doubting the eternal, faithful, and true word of God. The cry of Jesus, God wants us to understand today, because it is not only the cry of the creature separated from the Creator, but, in a divinely superlative degree, the pain of the Creator at being separated from His creature. Man’s relationship with God was not a mechanical relationship, it was not a relationship apart from Him, quite the opposite, it was the very breath of His mouth.
Man is the breath of God’s mouth; that is what was lost. We see breath simply as physical life, but God did not form in man only a physical life. The book of Job says: “Certainly there is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty makes him understand” (Job 32:8). It is the breath of the Almighty that makes man understand, because in that breath there is more than respiration so that the lungs function and in turn can carry oxygen to the blood, so that the oxygenated blood reaches the tissues, as the body functions physiologically. It is more than that, it is the very life of the Creator. What men call the soul, the will, the affections, the emotions, everything that is the human soul, but perfect, as it came from the breath of the Creator, was more than an existence, it was the representation of the life of the author of life in man.
Just as God taught Adam when He took Eve from his side so that he would understand that Eve was part of him; so, in that representation, God took us out of His side, took us out of His breath, took us out of His life. And just as woman comes from man, so man, generically, has the essence of the Creator. In that breath is the very essence of the Creator, and that is what is lost when man sins, and that is why God had to sacrifice animals. I imagine that first animal that He sacrificed in order to take its skin and clothe our first parents, when Adam and Eve saw life being lost for the first time, and saw that lamb (or whatever animal it was) die on an altar and saw that animal groan because its breath was leaving. That is why Adam and Eve gave Abel his name, which means breath, perhaps alluding to that breath, the breath that was lost, which is the life of God in man, and that is what Christ comes to represent.
That is why the Lord never permitted the use of blood, He forbade it even in the time of the patriarchs, in the time of Israel, and also in the New Testament it is the only thing the apostles asked of the Gentiles, that they abstain from (Acts 15:20). We have taken it lightly, and some interpret that it was simply because the Jews had that commandment, so that they would not be offended by the Gentiles. But I still believe that life continues to be sacred to God, and that it was no coincidence that the warning was given: abstain from using blood, it is holy, it represents life. This is not about a rite, but a spiritual teaching, because in the blood is the life. And after Christ shed His blood it is made much more understandable why God said not to touch the blood, because in it is the representation of life.
I know that we know the importance that blood has in the human body, and what it represents physiologically for the body. It is the representation of the life of God, it is the breath. Have you seen a life when it leaves? It gives up its breath and the respiration is cut short, it fades away until it disappears completely and the breath leaves the man and he ceases to be. This is how God wants us to understand it, people of God, open your understanding, because the word of God is more than a doctrine, as it is used religiously. It is not a dogma to be kept, it is life from what is the nature of the Father, the essence of the Father, the essence of His kingdom, the foundation of His throne, His way of thinking.
That is why the Lord, through worship, teaches us the highest things. There is an indissoluble bond between the salvation accomplished by Christ and worship; more than understanding that we were saved to be in His presence and worship Him, it is that in the representation of the offering is God’s way of thinking, what was lost is recovered, the breath. That is why the worshiper must bring life. “And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength” (Deut. 6:5). There is the breath. The physical represents the energy of the body, but when it speaks of with all the heart, it means putting one’s disposition and will before the Lord, and with a ready mind, giving God what is worthy of Him. It is better not to give the Lord an offering than to give it ruined, lame, one-eyed, useless, as God taught in the typology (Mal. 1:8). May the God of heaven pour out His fear upon us; may the God of heaven make us understand, so that we may serve Him with understanding. And when I say with understanding, it is not simply understanding something theologically or doctrinally, but understanding it with the heart. Because one thing is to understand it with the mind, that is intellect, and another thing is to understand with the heart.
The Bible says that with the heart one understands. “They do not know nor understand; for their eyes are shut so that they cannot see, and their heart so that it cannot understand” (Isa. 44:18). The heart represents the essence of the being in the highest sense, the spirit of man that is within man, where the Holy Spirit dwells, who rules the whole being and the will of God in the life of the redeemed. May the Lord make us understand, because God wants an understanding people, who understand with the heart, not with the intellect. The church has understood with the intellect and has fought for doctrine, literally making wars, and has fought apologetically to defend doctrine, but that is not it. Doctrine is not defended by arguing, but by living. Doctrine is defended by living it, because it is the only way to preserve the word, by living it. What is more, the church has preached for twenty centuries and the truth is that we have not advanced. Sadly, we have to say it: if the church had kept preaching with the same tone, the same dedication, and the same understanding and the same overwhelming force, like a fire that spreads, twenty centuries later, oh! Where would that note be that Jesus and the apostles began to sound! Where would that note be!
Definitely we have diminished. We are losing life, and I am not speaking of eternal life, I am speaking of spiritual life. And I make a distinction because what is of God does not die, but the Bible says that we must be made alive in the Spirit (1 Cor. 15:22). The Bible also speaks of walking in the Spirit, and it semantically uses the word be renewed in the new man (Eph. 4:22-29). The new man is not renewed, because, as the Word says, it is something new, redundancy aside; what is new is new. And the new man is already new, he does not need to be renewed, it is a term to make us understand that when the flesh dies the Spirit takes its place, takes the hegemony, takes the authority in our being, the government of God in our lives by the voluntary decision of someone who loves God, that is renewal. When the flesh occupies the place of the Spirit and we begin to silence the Spirit who is constantly telling us: “Get up early, get down to praying, do not devote yourself so much to work and to the cares of this world, and to the cares of riches. Do not allow them to choke you.”
Do not allow this world to choke you —says God—, hold fast what you have, do not lose life (2 Tim. 1:13). There is a life that you are going to lose, because it is already lost, and it is the life of Adam. Man is born, grows, reproduces, and is going to die. We all die and we are going to die, and this natural life comes to an end, that is unavoidable. But there is a life that is eternal that must be lived here, on earth, which is a spiritual breath. It is what Moses represented when it says that God took from Moses his dignity and imparted it, with the laying on of hands, to Joshua and to the seventy elders, and they all had the spirit of Moses in order to serve with the same heart (Num. 11:25). Jesus did the same representatively when He breathed on the twelve, and said to them: “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:22). And that is not Pentecost. Pentecost is the person of the Holy Spirit —as we have understood it in all dimensions— the Presence leading us into all truth. That breath means, in other words: “Receive the same that I received from my Father; receive my resurrection; receive my Spirit; receive me in what I am.” Together with the twelve, we also received that breath. In other words, the Lord said: “Here is my life, receive it. This is more than the breath that Adam lost, it is a breath in the Spirit that I now return to you, church, I give you my Spirit, I give you my heart, I give you my way of thinking, my way of being, my way of loving the Father; let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, receive my Spirit.” To those who receive that breath the Lord will never say: “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of wickedness” (Matt. 7:23). Those who receive that breath have the breath, have the life of God, the spiritual life, and they are living it, and they retain it because in Adam we are a living soul, but in Jesus we are a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45). A Spirit that has life, that retains life, that imparts life. But only the church living in the Spirit can live that breath, and cannot lose it.
The Spirit reveals, and I hope you can understand it (because God reveals it to you), so that you may see the church as a body, and perceive how the church has been breathing for twenty centuries. If we were to recall those first ten generations from Adam, they were long-lived men. But why did they live so many years? They spoke of eight hundred, nine hundred and some years (Gen. 5:5, 14, 17, 27). Why did those men live so many years? Because they were very close to the breath, to that moment when God breathed on Adam, so that, although man sinned, the force of that breath was still there. Now think of the twelve when Christ breathed on them. Why did the church last about three centuries breathing the breath of the life of God? They were, in a way, “long-lived in the Spirit.” In them there was spirit, perseverance, resurrection, signs, they never grew tired of God! Paul preached a sermon until the early morning hours, and held a Lord’s Supper, and the church was there with him until daybreak (Acts 20:7, 11). And the young man who was there, attentive, sitting in the window, who fell asleep without realizing it, and fell down, the apostle went, lifted him up, and raised him with the life of God (vv. 9-10). Why? Because the breath of Jesus was still latent, and they kept the breath.
But how is the breath maintained? We must be connected to the respirator who is Christ: “… that all may be one; as You, O Father, are in me, and I in You, may they also be one in us; so that the world may believe that You sent me. […] I in them, and You in me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent me, and that You have loved them even as You have loved me. […] I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 17:21, 23; 15:5). Therefore, it is there, connected, attached, being one single thing, breathing through the breathing of Christ, that we will maintain the divine spiritual breath. The Bible says: “In Him was life” (John 1:4), and He gave us His life. We have the life of the risen Christ, we have to breathe with that life, we must breathe with that life. In physical life, when you are healthy, you have the desire to exercise, to eat, to work, to do the things you need to, because you feel well. You feel happy because your body responds to you, and you have energy, strength, you feel robust, because you are healthy. But how sad when health is lost, you do not want to eat, and even those who enjoy eating so much lose their appetite. Well, when you are sick, laid up in bed, you have no appetite, you lose sleep, and you have no desire for anything and you are short of breath. And that is because when a member of the body or an organ deteriorates, the other members are also affected, because the body is an organism, and although its members have different functions —as God says (Rom. 12:4)— when one gets sick, the whole body gets sick, because the members are one thing.
Now let us think of the church from the time Jesus breathed. What came on the day of Pentecost? A breath, now upon the one hundred and twenty, like a rushing wind that blew (Acts 2:2). It was the same Spirit upon the twelve, now upon the one hundred and twenty, bringing them the life of God. That Spirit lasted about three centuries, and little by little it began to be lost. And many times God sent revival, but the divine breath diminished again, until the Spirit came back to bring a breath of the life of God. But I cannot be depending like the dying in a hospital, who have an artificial respirator connected to their bodies. I see the church dying and I see many who put those machines on the church so that it may breathe and live artificially, because if they take away the respirator it ceases to be. That is how the church is, on an artificial respirator. There are many who depend on the enthusiasm of the preacher, on activities, and that is why some are always cheering people on, and saying that such-and-such evangelist is coming, do not miss it; that there is a famous musician, etc., and they use fame to fill the church and the motivation is the gift that man can display or the spectacle or show that he can give. How many things are used to make the church breathe, but it is not breathing, it is artificial. Only the Holy Spirit makes the church breathe, but “the Spirit is the one who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life” (John 6:63). The word is breath, the word is life, that is why we must live by every word that comes out of the mouth of God (Matt. 4:4).
There is a wise church, an understanding church, there is a church that does not conform to this age, there is a church that understands that it is a pilgrim. Do not take this as pretty words, there is a concern in the heart of God and I see it prophetically, and not only at this moment. God is not only concerned for you, El Amanecer de la Esperanza, but for the whole church. That is why He has you praying twenty-four hours, praying for the breath of the church. Groan, intercessor! Say to God: retain Your life in the church! Because there are thousands and thousands of buildings where the church used to worship that are already empty, but it was because first the heart was emptied, they stopped breathing, they stopped breathing…
We see empty temples, because the spiritual temple ceased to be, and God says: “I hold the ministers guilty,” and He blames them because they took devotion away from the people by telling them that an hour of devotion tires people out. There is no lie more diabolical than that. When a service tires you, it means that you are sick, you are losing your breath. It is a great reality that when it is heavy, burdensome for you to get up to serve the Lord, and you make excuses and objections, because there are other things that are more important to you, it is spiritual death, the Spirit is telling you, it is spiritual death. Become aware and make an important decision in your life today, because you do not know whether God will repeat it to you tomorrow, because He has told you many times, church, many times. God does not want us to depend on a breath that arrives one day. And that breath is not what someone receives because he was drowning and they gave him mouth-to-mouth respiration, it is not that. That is what Elisha did over the child, and also Elijah, to restore life mouth to mouth (2 Kings 4:34; 1 Kings 17:21). You have already received the life of God, do not allow anyone to give you life, you already have life, just retain it, retain life! The Spirit is the one who gives life. The Spirit is the strong breath, and it is in the Word: “The spirit is the one who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life” (John 6:63). There it is, the Word is life, and communion is your spiritual life.
There is sadness in the heart of God, I tell you prophetically, because the church is gradually dying. You can see churches full on Sundays, but it is only a spectacle, they are quite empty. When God is a Sunday matter it means that life has already been lost, not that it is going to be lost, it is already lost, because that is not the Kingdom of heaven. God is not a matter of a moment, nor is He a spectacle; God is not entertainment or a hobby or pastime. God is life! Without God one cannot breathe, without God one cannot live! If you fell into the lie, we have shortened the life of God.
Four or five days ago the Spirit moved me with the death of Billy Graham (1918-2018), and I remembered the prophetic message of this year 2018, of the two keys, since with one key his life began in 1918, and with another key he closed it in 2018. I was moved, and it made me meditate on the life of this man of God, his dedication to the Lord. And although I have been dedicated to God since I was sixteen years old, and I have lived only for God, such a great brokenness fell upon me that my wife came and the brokenness clung to her also, and we wept in the presence, like one whose child has died. And I wept saying: “Forgive me, Lord, for I robbed You of Your time, the redeemed time,” because God gave me a revelation of redeemed time. Christ bought my life and my time, and when I, at times, waste it on anything else, even listening to the news, God says to me: “You are robbing the redeemed time.” And God broke me, for, although I have been given to Him since my youth, I felt like a thief, because He made me see that every minute of my life Christ bought with His blood and I must not dedicate it to anything other than God. And there I understood a dimension that I had not understood before, and so I pass it on to you by the Spirit: your time was redeemed. We must redeem the time because the time was already redeemed.
We must redeem the time, not because the days are evil, but because your time is sacred, Christ bought it with the breath of His life, let us not waste it. May God help us not to waste time on vain things; may God forgive us so many hours lost watching television and doing so many trivial things, and things that God has not commanded us, may God forgive us, my brothers and sisters. We can justify ourselves in so many things, but time belongs to God, let us use it for something useful, let us give it to the family, to the children. Do something with your time, redeem it, redeem it, because time is life, time is the material of which life is made. Help us, God, and have mercy on us. I ask for mercy because to whom much is given, much is required (Luke 12:48), and I see that demand in my life every day more and more and more. But I do not mind, that is life, having God’s demand is life, having God’s requirement is life. That you feel an alarm of the fear of God in your heart when you do something wrong, when you do not act with love toward your neighbor (your spouse, your brothers and sisters, your parents, your children, your neighbors, your boss, coworkers, etc.), and you realize that you failed, ask for forgiveness, humble yourself and say: “No, this is not the life I received from my God.”
When the Spirit constrains us, and makes us see that we have failed, that, for example, we have gossiped about a brother, and without knowing his life we have criticized him, because we have seen only what is in front of our eyes and we do not understand the reality of that life, whether it is sick, whether it has some situation, we know nothing, but we are gossiping. Today the Lord says to us: “When you feel the rebuke of the Spirit, do not start analyzing, repent at once, prostrate yourself, because it is the Spirit speaking to you and there is life. When you feel the demand to get up early to pray, to read the Word, to come to the services, to the jubilees, to the feasts, that demand to gather together and support everything of God, do not silence the voice of the Spirit, do not silence the inner alarm. It is as if there is a fire and the alarm sounds and you turn it off. Do not turn off the alarm, it is the life of God in you; it is the work of the Holy Spirit to guide you into all truth. Do not silence the Spirit, because there is life.” That which you feel, which you may call guilt perhaps, if you do not have a conscience damaged by religion, that is the voice of the Spirit saying to you: “I do not like that, that is wrong, that is not worthy of me,” there is life.
Let life not be lost! It is simple to retain life. It is better to keep health than to have to recover it. And how is health kept? One must have certain habits in natural life, for example, sleeping eight hours, drinking a lot of water, resting well, having good nutrition, etc., that contributes to having health. The same happens spiritually, one must devote time to reading the Word, one must devote time to God, time to worship Him, to sing to Him, to have communion with the Lord. We must also have time to attend the services of the church, to gather with our brothers and sisters, the Lord says that, nobody made it up (Heb. 10:25). If you took a burning log out of the fire, and put it in the open air, it would stay lit for a while, but then it would go out. That is what would happen to you if you stop gathering together, you would go out, even if you pray at home and watch messages and sermons on TV or the Internet. Nobody has been able to keep the fire alone, because we are an altar of God where each one is a burning log that burns in the presence of the Lord. Understand this, no one alone is a church. You have never seen a kidney in a doctor’s office waiting its turn while the rest of the body is at work. When the kidney gets sick the whole body goes. Come with the body, with your brothers and sisters! That is not simply a form, nor a stimulus, it is that there is the spiritual life. Retain the breath by living in the Holy Spirit.
Oh! Until when will the voice of God be heard? Until when will the voice of God be the beautiful song of a troubadour? Until when will the voice of God be like that of John the Baptist? A voice crying in the wilderness (John 1:23). Until when? Until when? Israel grew weary of God (Isa. 43:22) and captivity came several times. What God could not teach them, the enemies came, with oppression, and taught the children of Israel. May God not have to send us affliction for us to understand, because in His sovereignty He can use it and use tribulation. But one thing is tribulation because there is a purpose, and another thing is tribulation because God wants to get your attention, to make you see your need of Him. One must be wise, one must be understanding. There are things that are programmed in the mind of God, in His sovereignty, and we are going to live them because they are works prepared from the foundation of the world (Eph. 2:10). But many times God sends affliction to your life and mine so that we lift up our heads, so that we say: “But what am I doing? Where am I going? How mistaken is my course and the direction of my life? I have simply become a machine of the economic system of this country. I am a machine, I work day and night and I live only to work; I have sacrificed my health, my family and above all the Lord.” It should not be so, for work is a means, not the end. The end is God, the end is God, life is God.
The Spirit says to me and to you, hear it well [and now I speak to you, El Amanecer de la Esperanza], you already have thirty-one years since God made you a body or made you a church. And from the beginning God has revealed to you that you are a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, a prophetic priestly house. Therefore, the Lord has given us feasts, has given us jubilees and has taught us to have that commitment to Him, this holy demand. It is not only today that God says it, He has said it before, He is telling me every day, and lately He reiterates it to me:
“Make this people understand why I speak in that way. Most of my people have lost life; they are no longer church, they no longer have life, they are in a hospital with machines, that is how they breathe artificially. But I do not want you to lose your breath, El Amanecer de la Esperanza, I want to preserve your breath, that is why I ask of you, do not grow tired of hearing my voice, do not despise it. Once you despised the word I gave you on September 25, 1999, you paid no attention to it, and you paid very dearly for it. I put you to shame and I put the ministers to shame. I do not want to do that, and although I warned you that I was going to do that in order to keep you and preserve you as a resource of my love, I do not want to do it again. I want you to represent me as an ambassador of the kingdom. I do not want to teach the others through your shame, but through your honor.”
May God reveal to the newly converted and to the other brothers and sisters who joined this congregation in all these years, this vision from God of what we are. They will tell you: —In all churches the service lasts an hour or two— And you will say: —But those are the ones who are dying, I am not dying, that is how those who are on artificial support breathe, those who grow tired of God. Not us, we have spiritual life and we walk in the Holy Spirit—. That is why from the beginning God has not skimped on time. I myself as pastor, some time ago God was telling me: “You have to hold the two services, it is necessary.” And I myself refused them, and do you know why I refused? Because I was going to have a tension in the service, and the service is God’s. Holding a service for God is not “we are going to do this, hurry up because the hour is about to end.” God is not served in that way. An offering burns on the altar until it is consumed. Neither the priest nor the worshiper put on a burnt offering and went home, as if saying: ‘let it burn there until the end, whoever comes after will put it out,’ no, no, no. The priest was there until the last little wisp of smoke, until it went out.
The service in our church always begins on time in order to place an offering before God. Why do we always begin right on the hour? Because God taught us from the beginning that the offering is God’s. If you arrive late, and only want to give God a piece of the offering, that is your problem; give Him a third, that is your affair as a worshiper, that is your love for God. If you consider that the service is long, arrive at the end, arrive expressly for the sermon, that is a matter between you and God. But here the offering is God’s and we are going to give it to Him complete, and we are going to give it to Him without hurry, without tension, because we love and respect God, and because it is a delight in the Spirit. In the flesh it is a nuisance, a displeasure, but in the Spirit it is a great satisfaction to praise God. That is why when there is spiritual life you do not grow tired.
When God wanted to make a dying church breathe He sent them revival, for that is what I call revivals: God’s resource for giving life to a dying church. Why revival? I do not need revival if I walk in the Spirit. What we need is to live in the Spirit in order to be always revived. He who walks in the Spirit does not have to be asking for revival. Why have to wait for a moment or a specific situation to arrive, like that of the paralytic of Bethesda, for the water to be stirred so that I may plunge in and be healed, when I have a healing God (John 5:1-5)? Why do I have to depend on a breath arriving that lifts me up and keeps me revived for three months? No, this is not a matter of three months revived, if I have already converted forever, I have the life of God. You and I decided to change the spiritual life when we were converted; we chose the life of God over that of Adam. The life of Adam is going to end, but that of Christ does not end. That of Adam is ephemeral, fleeting, that of Christ is perpetual; that of Adam is vain, that of Christ is essential, honorable. Jesus is the all of the spiritual man.
My God, do something for us! For the sake of Your name, Lord! Please, God! It is time to say enough is enough! We cannot go on saying that in the Spirit there is power, and live in weakness; saying that I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me and remain the same slaves of sin and of discouragement, of dejection and of double-mindedness, no, no, enough! The apostles did not live that way, the first church did not live that way, because it had breath and they retained the breath of life. Remember that life is in the Spirit, the Spirit is the one who gives life. What is God giving you now? The Word, hear it. What is it to walk in the Spirit? It is to impose the spiritual life upon the body, it is to impose it.
We have idealized the offering of God so much and have entered a time where worshiping is a romanticism. And I am not against that, I believe we should be expressive in the presence of the Lord, but I want to tell you, church, do not deceive yourself, the offering is not only that. The offering that pleases God most is not so much being in a moment with a religious experience and singing prettily to God. All through the Bible, when it speaks of an offering it implies something more. “And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you, except that you fear the LORD your God, that you walk in all His ways, and love Him, and serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul; that you keep the commandments of the LORD and His statutes, which I prescribe to you today, so that you may have prosperity?” (Deut. 10:12-13). And in the book of Micah it says: “O man, He has declared to you what is good, and what the LORD asks of you: only to do justice, and to love mercy, and to humble yourself before your God” (Mic. 6:8). In other words: “O man, you know what God asks of you. Do not come here with twenty thousand liters of oil, no, that is not it. You know what the LORD asks of you: that you do justice, that you have mercy on the poor and humble yourself before His presence, then come and settle accounts with Him.” Let us cleanse ourselves first, and then settle accounts. It is not coming to sing prettily. And I am not against singing prettily, no. Let us not deceive ourselves into believing that this is having intimacy with God, for look at what the Spirit reveals. In the end it is not God that we seek, but an experience with God, in order to feel elevated. And God knows the heart and sees that you come here to be elevated, like one who takes a drug.
Why do drug addicts use drugs? The deepest reasons for their addiction are as individual as each user, but generally those who experiment with hallucinogenic drugs do it to feel that they are strong, that they are no longer shy, that they dare, because they are high, and feel themselves in the heights. And so there are people who use worship as a drug, they even use it to be set free, to have power, because they say there is power in praise. But there is no power in praise, where there is power is in God. When God is praised, naturally you regain spirit, you receive spiritual energy, but that is a result of being in the Presence. It is not in praise or in prayer that the power is, but in the God to whom you pray, in the God whom you worship, there is the power. So do not sing to prayer, nor lean on some particular praise, offer worship to God with understanding and He will answer you.
The Holy Spirit reveals to us that many of us are chasing after an experience with God, and not after the God of the experience. Do you understand the difference? We want to last a while in order to be elevated, because we live so tired, so overwhelmed, that we want to be elevated in the Presence, and if we feel nothing we think that God is no longer with us. That is religion, for even if God is not felt, He is there. The Gospel says that, in that great storm, the waves covered the boat, and Christ was sleeping, but He was there (Matt. 8:24). I am also sure that He was with Noah and with all the animals in the ark. Possibly they did not feel cramps or have their hair stand on end, but God was there, because He promised. The just shall live by faith, and without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. 10:38; 11:6). That is the blessed word from heaven; I am not saying anything that has not already been revealed or that no one knows. What happens is that we have learned so much from religious culture and from men, that what is of God now seems quite strange to us, what is of God is odd.
The Holy Spirit keeps insisting to me and I communicate what I receive from the Spirit, and as a messenger and prophet of God I will not withhold the word of God from you as long as I live. I must communicate what the Spirit says to the church. We cannot be content while the rest of the body is dying. There are eighty million Americans who go to church on Sundays, and I tell you one thing without judging anyone, I say it by the Spirit, that is only a Sunday, cultural, and family custom. They go to church with their family, but after they leave there is no commitment to God: they cheat, they lie, they live a double life, they live in adultery, in fornication, in theft, in everything; they destroy others, but on Sunday they do not miss their congregation. In the time of slavery in this nation, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Christians throughout the South subjected black slaves to every kind of humiliation and inhuman abuse. They tore their backs apart with lashes, took their women, sold their children, denied them every right, treated a beast better than them. Many of those slaves were Christians and they made them worship apart, over there on the farm, while they worshiped in their churches. And you could see them looking like saints singing to the Lord: “Amazing grace of the Lord that saved me, a sinner; I was blind but now I see, I was lost and He found me,” and the slaves over there, like beasts, mistreated, some perhaps still bleeding, tied to some stump… Is that the God of Christianity? Do you see why people no longer believe in anything? Do you see why people look at us with hatred, with loathing, and loathe the hypocrisy of religion?
And that is what happens to the church when it gets involved in politics also, defending politicians, letting itself be deceived by politicians. My brother, politicians are always deceiving us, every day it is a lie, a deception, an invention. Can I follow an adulterer, a thief, a murderer, someone who cares nothing about justice, much less about God? For the love of God, open your eyes, church! Your kingdom is not from here, church. God commands you to love them, to pray for them, to submit to them, but do not give your heart to any ideology, they are rotten. And I ask you, if one cannot believe in Christian ministers, are you going to believe in politicians? Open your eyes, church! How dare you defend the lie if everything is a deception? The media is a deception, politics is a deception, Hollywood is a deception, everything is a deception, only the truth is in God. This is not religious fanaticism or mysticism, it is the truth, if you analyze it you will see that everything is a lie. Those who govern us are prostituted. For them, profits reign, they have no interest in the people, only in staying in power in order to continue being what they are. They defend what is theirs, and not any human system. Give your heart to God, only defend God, because the only true One is God, the only One who does not deceive is God.
We are in a world of contradiction, a world of deception. They claim that they defend the constitution, but does the constitution not say that legal marriage is between a man and a woman? And why did the Supreme Court legalize marriage between same-sex couples? Did they not violate the Constitution with that? Ah, but since they interpret the law as they please… They say the Constitution must be defended, but they do business with drug traffickers, or does the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) not do it every day, and take mobsters and murderers out of prison if they cooperate with them? Justice negotiating with criminals, have you seen anything like it? Is that the respect they have for the laws? Forgive me, everything is rotten.
They dare to say that it does not violate the Constitution to sell a firearm to a person under 21. But it has already become known that the president of the nation received 30 million dollars from the National Rifle Association (NRA) for his presidential campaign, and tens of millions of dollars went to many members of the National Congress. Therefore, it is no wonder that Congress interprets the Constitution however it pleases, because they are sold out. Why can a child not buy alcohol until he is twenty-one? Because a law has been established controlling alcohol. Then, why can they not control the sale of firearms? Why does that violate the Constitution? No! Because there are petty interests and they do not care at all about the community. How many children will have to die? Everything is rotten, forgive me, but everything is rotten and damaged.
Did the Lord not say that in the last days there would be men who are lovers of themselves, “greedy, boastful, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, ungodly, without natural affection, implacable, slanderers, intemperate, cruel, haters of what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, who will have an appearance of godliness, but will deny its efficacy” (2 Tim. 3:2-4)? Open your eyes, church, do not give your heart and your sympathy to any politician, it is not worth it, they are liars. Every four years they deceive us and we go back to the same thing, and we know they are lying to us and we keep defending them. Oh God, how far deception goes! Some see the current president as a messiah, and the other one [former president] as a redeemer, please, they are all the same. Some believe he is in favor of the church, please! It was only to win the vote, so that the church would support him in favor of many things, but he has nothing of a Christian, not even the C. In the churches Christians are scarce, are you going to find them in politics? Please! We are a prophetic house, it is already time for us to assimilate the truth. That does not mean that we are not going to respect them, nor that we are not going to pray for them. That is not what I am saying, I am saying do not give your heart to a rotten ideology, do not let yourself be deceived. Every piece of news is manipulated; every script on television and in film is prostituted by demonic spirits. The lowest are the people who control the mass media; film, television, everything is rotten. Lift up your head, church, you are the salt of the earth.
Oh God! Have mercy on us, Lord! Have mercy on us. May God have mercy on us, on the church in general. We must wake up. Until when? The church is the prophet of God on the earth, the church is the ambassador of God. Daniel served in Babylon because they appointed him there, but he never gave his heart, quite the opposite, they set a trap to catch him and the enemies had to say: “We shall not find any occasion to accuse this Daniel, unless we find it against him in connection with the law of his God” (Dan. 6:5). Then they decided to set a trap for him so that he would choose between being faithful to God or being faithful to the king; and he kept on praying just the same, although he knew that the king had signed that edict (vv. 6-10). Daniel was never deceived, and when he had to confront King Belshazzar —who offered half the kingdom to whoever would interpret the writing on the wall (Dan. 5:7)— he said to him: “Let your gifts be for yourself, and give your rewards to others. I will read the writing to the king, and I will give him the interpretation” (Dan. 5:17). In other words: “Keep your money and keep your honors, because you are a man who prostituted the vessels of the LORD, you gave them to prostitutes to drink from. I want nothing from you.” And he said to him: “The Most High God, O king, gave Nebuchadnezzar your father the kingdom and greatness, glory and majesty. And because of the greatness He gave him, all peoples, nations, and languages trembled and feared before him. Whom he wished he killed, and whom he wished he gave life; whom he wished he exalted, and whom he wished he humbled. But when his heart was lifted up with pride, and his spirit was hardened in arrogance, he was deposed from the throne of his kingdom, and stripped of his glory. And he was driven from among the sons of men, and his mind was made like that of the beasts, and his dwelling was with the wild donkeys. They fed him grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, until he acknowledged that the Most High God rules over the kingdom of men, and that He sets over it whomever He pleases. And you, his son Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, though you knew all this; but you have exalted yourself against the Lord of heaven, and you had the vessels of His house brought before you, and you and your lords, your wives and your concubines, drank wine from them; and in addition to this, you praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which neither see nor hear nor know; and the God in whose hand is your life, and to whom belong all your ways, you have never honored. Then from His presence the hand was sent that traced this writing. And the writing that it traced is: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPARSIN. This is the interpretation of the matter: MENE: God has counted your kingdom, and has put an end to it. TEKEL: You have been weighed on the scale, and found lacking. PERES: Your kingdom has been broken, and given to the Medes and the Persians” (Dan. 5:25-28). Do you think a political person could say that to a king? But that is what a man of God does, he does not mind saying to him: “If you wish, remove me from my position, do whatever you want, but whoever is an enemy of God is an enemy of mine.” The one who has the grace of God, even if he does not want to know of me, has my favor also, that is integrity toward God, that is what the prophets did. Why could Daniel speak this way to the king? Because his loyalty to God took precedence over loyalty to his human king.
Nathan was a close friend of David, so much so that his sons were chancellors and held important positions in his kingdom. And when David told Nathan that he wished to build a house for the LORD, he said to him: “Do all that is in your heart, for God is with you” (1 Chron. 17:2). But when, that same night, the LORD said to him: “Go and tell David my servant: Thus says the LORD: You shall not build me a house in which to dwell” (v. 4), Nathan faithfully obeyed. And when David sinned, Nathan led him to realize his great injustice through a story, and while the king, filled with fury against such a man who acted without mercy, pronounced sentence, the prophet said to him: “You are that man” (2 Sam. 12:7). If he had been more a friend of David than of God he would not have dared to speak to the king that way, but since his commitment was to God, the friend, the father, the mother, whoever it might be, went by the board. When it concerns God we have no friends, no wife, no husband, no one. That is why we must be careful about committing ourselves to men, lest in the moment of testing, the commitment to men make us disloyal to God.
Daniel served the king and his kingdom. If the president of this nation were to call me, I would go to him and honor him in accordance with his authority, but I will never give him a loyalty that belongs to God, nor will I deceive myself because he did me a favor, no, my beloved. It ministers to me, and that is why I meditated much on the life of Billy Graham, a man who served God with integrity, an advisor to presidents from Truman to a dozen more as long as he had strength. President Trump still visited him there at his home, nearly dying, a very old man, on his bed. In the midst of the Cold War he preached in Russia in a stadium; he was with Gorbachev, with the Queen of England Elizabeth II, with all those great people, he was an ambassador of God. He was also an advisor to Democrats and Republicans, he never came out publicly defending any politician, and everyone respected him. And when it was necessary to tell them the truth and the counsel of God, he gave it to them, that is a man of God. You can move in the midst of excrement without getting dirty if your heart is clean before God.
We must ask God that our heart not be damaged: “Above everything that is guarded, guard your heart; for from it flows life” (Prov. 4:23). There are many decisions that I have made in my life so that my heart would not be damaged. Rarely does a day go by that I do not say to God: deliver me from pride, from self-sufficiency, deliver me from injustice, from gossip, deliver me from cruelty, deliver me, Lord, from unbelief, keep my heart from greed, because these are sins that God hates and that we all have a tendency toward. Only God guards the heart, or is what Jesus said in the Lord’s Prayer unnecessary? “… do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Luke 11:4). No one is strong by his own strength, no one. We are here by the pure mercy of God. My life is a living testimony of the intervention of God for those who love Him, saving me, delivering me, protecting my family, my wife, my children, and myself, who had several occasions (since I was a child) when I could have lost my life. How could I not love the One who loved me and has preserved me so that I may serve Him, so that I may be His.
Our lives are hidden in God. We must preserve life as the church of God, and that is the message. Lately I see the image of the historic church losing life with the deception that the things of God are tiring, that they are too long, etc. God have mercy on us, when we are blessed to be able to worship Him with freedom, with a ready mind. We are privileged to be able to sit down and receive a word, a testimony of His faithfulness in our lives. The same I can say speaking of El Amanecer de la Esperanza as a congregation, for twenty-one years how God has kept us from so many things. Each one can testify, we all have an experience with Him, we all have a story that we have lived with the Lord. Let us open our eyes to see His faithfulness in our lives and let us not be arrogant, nor overbearing, nor think that we deserve anything, everything is part of the mercy of God toward us. Let us pray:
“Lord, may we take this word about keeping life, keeping the breath, into our hearts, may we keep the breath of life. You already told us that it is through the Word, guided by the Holy Spirit, cultivating and captivating the relationship with You, Lord, coming to the services, studying the Word, praying constantly, testifying of Jesus Christ, having our heart in You. Father, I ask for Your church in the nations, for Your ministers. We love Your church, although we do not deny its condition. You know that we love the church and we want to see it raised up like an army in order, all loyal to You; all upright toward You with that primitive piety. May Your kingdom come to us with every manifestation. Watch over our children, God; watch over our young people in the name of Jesus, keep them from this present evil age, help us.
“Keep that persecuted church in the nations. Keep, Lord, those who are careless; awaken those who are asleep. Father, may the church come out of its lethargy, breathe life, give command to save, add those who are to be saved. Affirm, confirm, establish, have mercy, God. Keep us from temptation, from falling, from ourselves, Lord, keep us from bad news, us and our own. Preserve us for Your kingdom of glory, take us from glory to glory and from power to power, give us perseverance in the faith, help us to live the purpose of Your heart, may each one fulfill that purpose, may the work of Your hands in our lives not be halted, may we be joyful in hope, patient in tribulation, constant in prayer and not lazy in what requires diligence, fervent in Spirit, serving the Lord. Thank You, Father, in the name of Jesus. Amen.”
Notes taken from the ministration given by Pastor Juan Radhamés Fernández at the 2nd jubilee of the year (March 10, 2018). To listen to the complete ministration, please visit our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/jIBlTOoIABk
