Background

This paper attempts to thread together various scriptures, prophetic words and convictions shared by a diverse group of people concerning God’s plan for Western Australia[1]. In recent days I have focussed on praying into this subject more intensely, and believe that after 4 years of reflection Christ has given me a coherent message. I take the timing to mean these things are at the core of the divine will for 2010.

Beginnings: a Pipeline and Angelic Connection

In 2006 as I laid hands and prayed over a gracious and humble apostolic father from America, I had a clear and unusual sense of a “pipeline” involving angelic communication linking Perth and Kansas City (KC). Travelling to the International House of Prayer (IHOP) in KC the following year, I had a sense that the pipeline was operational, for each step of the journey was accompanied by extraordinary opportunities to share Jesus with non-believers. This occurred not only in planes, but with immigration officials, at security checks and waiting for buses at terminals.

Taking an early prayer walk on my first day in KC, I came across a physical pipeline, and the Lord soon shared with me a scripture that I believe is a key to his purposes, “Thus says the Lord: “Keep justice, and do righteousness, for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance be revealed. 2 Blessed is the man who does this…and keeps his hand from doing any evil.”” (Isa 56:1-2)

Strikingly, another of the team who travelled from Perth to KC received a prophecy about a pipeline of overwhelming supply for the purposes of God. The Lord was to make a further connection in the story when I returned to Australia.

I visited for the first time a brother who had been to IHOP in 2006, he lived in Northam and had a vision of masses of young people reaching the nations. Northam lies an hour east of Perth, and to reach there by road you travel parallel to one of the most historic man-made features of Western Australia, the Mundaring- Kalgoorlie pipeline.

Why A Pipeline?

In the late nineteenth century gold was discovered in the desert 600kms east of Perth. The eastern goldfields soon became the richest in the world, all because the premier of the state, John Forrest, pioneered a venture many said was an engineering and economic impossibility. Water was to be pumped over 500 kms uphill from the ranges near Perth to Kalgoorlie. The personal and political opposition to this project of faith was so intense that the chief engineer committed suicide!

On 24 January 1903, the dream became a reality when water flowed into Kalgoorlie. Premier Sir John Forrest* drank the first glass of water while quoting Isaiah from the Bible. They had, he said, made ‘a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert’[2]. The scheme enabled the benefits of the gold discovery to be realised and brought immense wealth into the previously struggling economy.

This “pipeline of gold”, achieved through faith, struggle, tribulation and death, symbolically represents a pipeline of glory. The state of Western Australia is still producing vast quantities of gold, iron ore, gas, bauxite, diamonds etc[3]; but no one would say the glory of God is being poured out amongst us. The enormous resources of WA were placed here by Christ for his kingdom, but they are yet to be released to fund the evangelisation of the world. One prophet, knowing nothing of W.A. history/geography, has said, “There is mud in the pipeline”?

The Great Stain

If there is “mud in the pipeline” and it is a pipeline of glory, the mud must be shame[4]. This is confirmed by an overseas intercessor’s dream, “I then saw them (friends) walking in Northam… They met with an aborigine man who was a believer in Jesus, who told them a different history of the land….The man spoke of great bloodshed that began in 1833….and a fake sickness”.

Unknown to this watchman, 1833 was the year in which Northam was gazetted, that is, lawfully authorised for public settlement. From this time on, aboriginal dispossession in the district was legal. As to “a fake sickness”, the following account is clear.

“Another of Northam’s scandals occurred in 1933 when the town’s entire Aboriginal population were rounded up by police and dumped in the Moore River Settlement. The Northam Shire Council said they had scabies and were a health risk.”[5] However, of the 89 aborigines moved, only one woman and 3 of her children actually had the disease[6]. In fact, the health conditions at Moore River were far poorer than in Northam. This action should not surprise us, as there were a number of massacres of natives from the 1830’s on. One is of significance for this article.

In 1906-7 on the Canning Stock Route, an unrecorded number of Aboriginal men and women were raped and massacred when captured and tortured to serve as ‘guides’ and reveal the sources of water after being ‘run down’ on horseback, restrained by heavy chains 24 hours a day, and tied to trees at night. A Royal Commission in 1908 exonerated Canning, after Kimberley explorer and Lord Mayor of Perth, Alexander Forrest+ claimed that all explorers had acted in such a fashion[7]. To this day Aborigines remain disastrously below the rest of the Australian population in all areas of health and well being[8]. Reversing the condition of the “the least, the lost and the last”[9] holds the key to a way forward in the purposes of God.

The Great Reversal

Visiting Hong Kong in the middle of this year I recalled a scripture the Lord used to release a remarkable Christian ministry that turns the shame of many addicts into a visible reflection of his glory, “Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. 6 This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. 7 The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.” (Psalm 34:5-7). This passage connects deliverance from shame with the presence of the Lord in his angel, and in my notes from Hong Kong it is headed “The Pipeline of Glory.” If God can lift up the bottom strata of Chinese society so powerfully, who is called to elevated the esteem of indigenous Australians in such a way that his glory and through them to the praise of Jesus Christ?

I believe this involves a Christian man whose surname was revealed to another American prophet in a dream, Andrew Forrest. Significantly, this Forrest, until recently the richest person in Australia, is the great grandson of explorer Alexander Forrest+ and the great-grandnephew of former Premier John Forrest*. God is working something deep in the bloodline of the Forrest’s to reverse the curse of shed blood on the land[10].

This Forrest is a marketplace minister, pioneer and leader on a vast scale. The grandest of his works is not the opening up of new mines, but his scheme to work covenantly with government and business to see 50,000 jobs created for indigenous Australians nationally. No partnership like this has ever been achieved before, and it contains the seeds, God willing, to raise inestimably the dignity of the first peoples of this nation.

The Lord is working to release spiritual “streams in the desert” of this land through the fulfillment of Isaiah 56, ““Keep justice, and do righteousness, for soon my salvation will come”. Good works (Matt 5:16-17; Eph 2:10) like those of Forrest have always accompanied major moves of God[11].

Andrew Forrest’s actions are catalytic and prophetic, fulfilling a further word spoken by a young seer who, while ignorant of such ventures, has spoken out, “Marketplace believers would release mercy deeds and benevolence to the poor, and this would bring about righteous justice for the wrongs done.”

Why Angels?

Others have spoken of angels accompanying reconciliation and releasing repentance and the promises of God over Australia, but none have explained their essential role. The text I believe Christ gave to clarify this matter is from the beginning of Revelation, “The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.” (Rev 1:1-2 cf. 22:6, 16).

This passage involves a “pipeline of revelation” in time: (1) the Father gives to (2) Jesus a revelation made known through an (3) angel to (4) a prophet who wrote[12] (5) for all God’s servants. This sequence and order must be respected and it hopefully frames the teaching of this article.

In Revelation, angels occupy a mediating position between heaven and earth, and implement the sovereignty of God over the churches (Rev 2:1, 8, 12 etc.) and the world. Acting in concert with the human servants of Christ (Rev 19:9-10; 22:8-9) they present a unified testimony to the fact that all of creation, heavenly and earthly, visible and invisible, has been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb (Eph 3:14-15; Col 1:19; Rev 5-6 etc.).

As the angelic (Job 1:6; 2:1) and human sons of God submit as one to Christ as Lord (Mark 13:26-27; Heb 1:6, 7, 14; Rev 6ff.), they reveal the image of God with a fullness that confounds the powers of darkness (Eph 3:10, 14-15). The spiritual environment of a locality changes and God is manifested in the very public ways we call “revival”. “The revelation of Jesus Christ” “made known”[13] through angels involves signs God gives in heaven and on earth. In relation to a pipeline of revelation and glory, the acts of angels signify a sovereign work of the God who possesses absolute freedom over his creation and who will ultimately prove victorious. One critical factor remains for all this to be manifested as true in our midst.

Counter Culture and the Coming Youth Revival

The generation of Christians of which I am a part, the “baby boomers”, have failed abysmally to resist the inroads of popular culture in spirituality and morality. We are, above all else, conformists[14].

I am convinced that the primary carriers of what God is about to do are youth. Many have spoken of a surge of young people who will intensely adore the Lord. Whilst I believe that this is both necessary and correct, the long term viability of the coming move of God depends on a very unpopular factor- tribulation.

The entire book of Revelation is founded upon the following truth, “I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was (exiled) on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.” (Rev 1:9). Partnership in the cause of testifying to Christ’s word in the midst of tribulation is the relational glue of the kingdom of God that holds everything together in “perfect unity” (Col 3:14). It is the fellowship of Christ’s suffering (Phil 3:10) that welds all holy beings together in a specific order of the revelation of grace: Father, Son, angels, prophets, servants of Christ[15].

I believe God has been at work assembling the “pipeline of glory” for years by placing his faithful remnant through the fires of affliction, thus maturing them for the coming release of his presence. Matured believers know that the supply of glory will only continue as long as the people of God are willing to suffer for Christ’ sake.

Conclusion

If you are an Australian, especially a West Australian, this paper is a call to rise up from the spiritual apathy of Laodicean lukewarmness (Rev 3:16), induced by seemingly endless material prosperity[16], and to believe God for something different. A special focus involves praying and acting concerning the pitiable state of our indigenous people.

If you are a marketplace believer, and especially a business person or entrepreneur, this teaching is a call to seek the Lord for divinely inspired means to elevate the condition of aborigines. Primary amongst these must be employment and training.

Jesus has a plan to redeem (in the very broadest sense of the word) aboriginal Australians. Where endless streams of government finance have totally failed he has a way. When the church of God rises up as one to do the work of God the kingdom of God will come with power in the lives of these unfortunate, oppressed and often hopeless folk[17]. This will happen in such a way that all the world will have to stand up and look at what the Lamb on the throne has done in the midst of the nations. Such a work of God will spread across the face of Australia touching all its peoples and reaching beyond our shores with many indigenous disciples (and others) evangelising the world funded by the vast wealth of this state. These are the dimensions of the pipeline of glory.

These are some of the things I believe the Lord has planned for 2010.