Ascending into the Divine Council
Background
This prophetic teaching comes out of a very specific context. On Friday 18th February the Australian Council of Apostolic Leaders (ACAL), through their local apostolic representative, Paul Botha, called together about 30 people from across the state with the purpose of moving towards forming a WA Council of Elders. People whose discernment I trust have often spoken of ACAL as a group with inflated egos, but Paul has suffered much in mission (cf. Acts 20:23; 2 Cor 1:5, 8-9; 4:7-12; 11:16-33; Phil 3:10; Col 1:24 etc.), he has the credentials of a genuine apostle. I wasn’t on the original invitation list, but the Lord has a way of getting me into places, and I was admitted as a “prophet”. However I very soon found that the “teaching anointing” came upon me. (It needed to, for the two Zoom presentations, whilst practically helpful, lacked theological depth.) The tables were arranged in a circle with a roving mike and camera, all good. On each table were bundles of coloured pick-up sticks, and around the room were bicycle wheels as visual aids (see below). This meeting of the Church in Perth, I have another with a different group tomorrow, was significant because we live in a time of great crisis far deeper than the average pastor can grasp.
Signs of the Times
Pandemic crises come and go, but a recent widely distributed (Barna) survey of millennials (Gen Z) in the US (born 1984-2003 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10178981/Nearly-millennials-identify-LGBTQ-new-study-finds.html), found nearly 40 Percent identified as LGBTQ, 30 percent of those naming themselves as Christians identify in this way! Whilst identification and practice aren’t equivalent (“men who practice homosexuality” 1 Cor 6:9), the numbers are astounding. My wife’s work with young people in social care makes these statistics quite plausible. For those who believe in the Bible, and what it teaches about the wrath of God (Rom 1:18-32), alarm bells will be ringing. Without a doubt, our society is under divine judgement. Despite all appearances, the Lord is not asleep (Ps 35:23; 44:23; 59:5) and is working to a long-term plan that will activate in his church in a fundamentally different mode of knowing and acting than her usual ineffective political and ethical reactions to such a state of affairs.
Losing Your Mind
In his presentation, Paul Botha referred to a culture shifting book After the Ball (1986) written by 2 gay Harvard professors that successfully turned the unrelated “pick up sticks” of the sexual liberation movement into a dynamic wheel in motion that has transformed the values of western civilisation, via media, education, arts, entertainment, business etc., within our lifetimes. Paul was correct on this level of analysis, but he omitted further dimensions of knowledge, historical and revelatory. After the Ball was a modern manifesto for successfully marketing the gay rights movement, but as he was speaking my mind immediately flipped through the many individualising (https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/subjectivity-ancient-and-modern/) and corrupting philosophical and theological influences on how, not just what we think, as far back as the 14th century. A river has long been running in Western thought denying that there is any inner connection between the objects in the world and the minds that see and name them i.e. our minds. An obvious contemporary application of this split between the outside world and how we experience things is the widespread conviction that whilst biological sex (male/female) is a given, gender is nothing but a social/cultural construction. No one can tell you your gender but yourself, so gender, like many other aspects of identity and morality, is limitless “fluid”. Facebook, offered you 58 gender choices (https://blogs.illinois.edu/view/25/110232). The irrational place our society has reached in its thinking is the result of a very long-term satanic strategy which cannot be reversed by any attempt to go back to the reasonableness of a previous “Christendom”. It is difficult to think of any Western nation that now thinks Christianly. Worse, any sustained attempt to undo the thinking of “woke” society with reasoned argument will only be met by hostile resistance to an attempt to reassert religious control. Our horrific child sex abuse scandals have largely destroyed the moral credibility of most Western Christian institutions. The Lord calling us his Church back to a very different way of knowing his plan and purpose.
The Divine Council
The topic of the “divine council”, appears in both Old and New Testaments, but is very neglected theologically, pastorally and in the practice of our churches today. The “divine council” in the Old Testament is a way of describing the heavenly assembly where God makes decisions in concert with angels and prophets. It is the place from which the Lord holds court. Important scriptures include 1 Ki 22:19-23; Job 1-2; Psalms 82; 89; Isa 6; Jer 23:18-22; Zech 3:1-7. It is uncontroversial that under the old covenant God’s sovereign governmental decisions were shared with holy beings, angelic and human. In the New Testament this understanding is vastly enlarged and completely centred on Christ.
Jesus’ ascension is into the divine council (Luke 24; Acts 1). It is from this dynamic place in heaven that he appoints apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, not to fill the Church but to fill “all things” of life and culture with his own fulness (Eph 4:10). Now, all believers are “seated with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:6) with minds “set on things above…with Christ in God” (Col 3:1-4). The perspective of these passages isn’t personal ethics, but filling all things with the fulness of Christ (Eph 1:22-23 cf. Acts 3:17-21; 1 Cor 3:21-23). This is its biblical foundation for things like the “The 7 Mountains” project. We are part of a heavenly Church centred on the blood of the cross in the midst of jubilant angelic powers (Heb 12:18-24). The apex of the biblical testimony to such exalted things are the throne room scenes in Revelation 4-5. In the Spirit (Rev 1:10; 4:1) John has ascended to the throne room of God centred on the Lamb drawing out praise and worship from the entire holy creation, angelic and human. We must in the Spirit join in this ascension in union with Jesus in his plans to reconvert the Western world? To do this we must join with the reshaping of Jesus own mind through death, resurrection and ascension. This is something the people of God rarely submit to.
The Mind of Christ
Far deeper than our current preoccupation with leadership, our “orphaned” Church today desperately needs spiritual fathers and mothers (1 Cor 4:14-15). No dimensions of culture can be remoulded into the image and likeness of God without a spiritual oversight that has endured a transforming renewal of our minds in spiritual worship enabling it to corporately discern the perfect will of God (Rom 12:1-2) as Father of all (Eph 3:14). For such a city/state eldership to come into existence, for a bunch of pick-up sticks to become a functioning wheel, we must have insight into the breaking and remaking of Christ’s own mind, understand how this saving event was applied to the minds of the first apostles, and desire for such a transformation to happen to us.
Since the rebellion of Adam was most deeply a son rejecting a Fatherly warning (Luke 3:34; Gen 2:17 cf. 1 Pet 1:17), the corruption and depravity of the fallen mind (Rom 8:6-7; Col 1:21) can only be healed if the one true Son bears the unspeakable anguish of living with a godless mind. The trauma of his enduring being unFathered on the cross in our sin (Rom 8:3; 2 Cor 5:21), “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” (Mark 15:34) , is an experience totally contrary to the Word of faith, “For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in.” (Ps 27:10). The experience of Jesus in being abandoned by the love of God, turned the perfect wholeness of his mind, fit for re-ordering of the whole world (Heb 1:3), into a mangled mass like a bundle of “pick up sticks”.
The impressive demonic inspired unity of the After the Ball movement, inspired by their counterfeit father, the devil (John 8:44; Gen 11:1-6;1 John 3:12) can bring great artistic and scientific advances (Gen 4:21-22), but they contain within them seeds of fragmentation that must sprout across the Western world. The epidemic of relational and psychological disorders, particular in the young, we are witnessing in our time is this fruit. Its healing and restoration demand an immersion in the resurrected mind of Christ promised to the Church (1 Cor 2:16).
If the cross was the temporary undoing of Jesus’ as God’s mind bringing order to all creation (Heb 1:1-3), the resurrection was the perfection and fullness of the mind of the Son of Man (Rom 1:4; Rev 1:12-18) for the restoration of a whole new creation (Acts 3:17-21). The death-and-resurrection of Christ is the sole and sufficient foundation for the healing of the catastrophic undoing of the splendours of Western civilisation. This healing can never happen without a radically different way of “doing church” than we are used to.
All for Jesus
The lengthy corruption of Western thought involved a progressive turning away from the mind of Jesus and his acts in the world (many of the pioneering scientists were convinced Christians) to the ability of our own unaided intelligences to understand the inner working of the world. Having abandoned the foundation of all secure thought, it is not strange that today’s millennials feel uncertain about many things, but totally sure of their own sexuality. The cascading Western movement into moral/spiritual madness can be reversed only if the Church turns away from obsession with its own personal experience to the mind and affections of Jesus revealed to us in the Spirit (1 Cor 2:16; Rom 8:6). Few of us realise the practical/strategic consequences of the fact that when the eternal Word “through whom all things were made” (John 1:2; Col 1:16; Heb 1:2) became human (John 1:14; 1 Tim 3:16), a human mind was forever placed (1 Tim 2:5) at the centre of a world order reconciled to God in him (Col 1:20). Former Dutch P.M. and theologian Abraham Kuyper could famously, and rightly, assert, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: “Mine!”. All things were made for the humanity of Jesus in his communion with God, a fellowship he shares with his Bride the Church (Eph 1:23). Every sphere of existence, of concern to shop keepers, farmers, artists, engineers, plumbers or nuclear physicists etc., was made for Jesus. All domains were created to conform to his wisdom, understanding and dominion as a glorified human being (Heb 2:5-9; Rev 5:12, 10). The growth of “marketplace ministries” is a sign that God is working today to fulfil his great vision that, “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (Hab 2:14). This Christ-centred vision will find its ultimate fulfilment when the city of God, the Bride of Christ, and the new creation are one (Rev 21:9-27). To understand how Jesus would release his Church, and many in the world, from the corruption of the contemporary fallen Western mindset, we need to look at how the Spirit did it in the beginning.
Re- minded in Christ
“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies bas a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Rom 12:1-2,), is a good description of the transformation of the original apostles mindset. Before the cross, they repeatedly argued amongst themselves over “which of them was the greatest” (Luke 9:46-48; 22:44-47). No matter what Jesus said of his coming suffering and death, their satanically inflated egos got in the way every time (Matt 16:21-23). It was only through Christ’s own perfect submission as Son to Father (Mark 14:36) and as Servant to Master (Mark 10:45; Isa 42:1; Matt 12:18) could the unintegrated “pick up sticks” mind of the apostles with their contending egos be transformed into an ever-enlarging group of “one heart and soul” (Acts 4:32 cf. Acts 15:28). What happened to them was a share in what happened first to their Lord for them. The centre of their self-confidence, their ego strength, had to crucified, raised and ascended with Jesus in the power of the Spirit into the divine council (Gal 2:20). Peter exemplifies this progressive transformation and glorification of the mind (2 Cor 3:18). A transformation which any apostolic group must go through to attain city/state eldership.
Ascending into the Divine Council
Whilst already the anointed leader of the 12 (Matt 16:16-20), Peter was not yet seated as a member of the heavenly divine council with Jesus. To attain to this exalted status, he would have to be broken in his spirit (Ps 51:17; Isa 66:2). His emphatic self-confidence, “Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away.” (Matt 26:33), must be humiliated. Called to deny himself as a genuine apostolic leader (Matt 16:24), Peter will thrice deny Jesus. “while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed. 61 And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, “Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.” 62 And he went out and wept bitterly.” (Luke 22:60-62). Only in the mirror of Christ would Peter’s self-confidence be totally shattered and become fit to lead the Church (Matt 16:18). The Lord though was not yet finished with this Rock. The words of the sovereign resurrected Lord telling Peter, “by what kind of death he was to glorify God” (John 21:19), delivered this apostle from the need of any future self-promotion. He was now able to lead the apostolic Church in their spiritual ascension into the heavenly council. Those who prayerfully gathered on the day of Pentecost “in one accord” (Acts 1:14) were a company whose selfish egos had been slain by the crucifying Word of the Lord (Luke 24:25-26) and were now prepared to receive the Holy Spirit to complete their share in the life of God (John 7:37-39).
Our Ascension in the Spirit
Jesus testified, “No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.” (John 3:13) because not only was “heaven opened” to him for the descent of the Spirit at his baptism (Luke 3:21-22) but, in the same Spirit he remained in communion with God in the heavenly world even whilst on earth. Jesus’ great goal and highest joy (Heb 12:2) is that through his own death, resurrection, ascension, and glorification (John 7:37-39) he in now able to share with his Bride his heavenly conversation and communion with his Father in the power of the Spirit. Being raised up in Christ and seated in the heavenly places (Eph 2:6). with the angelic host (Heb 12:22) we are above the demonic “rulers and authorities” (Eph 3:10; 6:12). Christ’s wisdom far exceeds whatever they seeded in After the Ball and the terrible ongoing ravaging of Western culture. We must realise that we are seated amidst the heavenly elders (Rev 4:4 etc) focussed entirely on the all-conquering Lamb who through the intercession of his saints (Rev 5:8; 8:3-4) makes decisions that decide the progress of the kingdom of God on earth. His strategies are enacted by his people on earth as kings and priests (Rev 1:6; 5:10). The original Pentecost Day Church shared in such elevated things and were thus necessarily of “one heart and soul” (Acts 4:32 cf. Acts 15:28). They imaged the glorious will of God on earth as it is in heaven (Matt 6:10; John 17:22; Phil 3:20-21). Since all of this is manifestly biblical, even if rarely expounded across the churches, why are we Western Christians usually like a jumbled bundle of pick-up sticks and rarely like a wheel circling around the hub of Christ turning smoothly to enact his glorious victory in the world by discipling every sphere of life and culture? The answer will prove dreadfully obvious.
Healing The Splintered Mind
The average Christian, including our leaders, is much like the disciples before the cross, living a life which is autonomous, individualistic and self-serving. One described by the great theologians (Augustine, Luther, Barth) as life turned in on oneself (incurvatus in se). This is surely the case, not only for our millennials, but of the average congregational members of your church! Beguiled away from her first love (2 Cor 11:3; Rev 2:4) the Western Church usually gravitates to the popular contemporary political and marketplace strategies of the world, apart from the sole centrality, sufficiency and pre-eminence of Christ! (Col 1:18). If God has so patiently endured the fragmentation of the mind of the Western Church, he is surely working to a plan to heal that mind. Psalm 24:3 is a prophecy for today, “Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? 4 The one who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not trust in an idol or swear by a false god.” As the shattering of the Western mind by our capitulation to various idolatries means we have largely lost that ability to hear the prophetic Word of God (1 Cor 14:29-33), we need a transformed mind to hear Jesus together (Rom 12:1-2; 1 Cor 2:16). This transformation of Christian culture will only come about through shared sacrificial suffering.
Suffering with Christ
I have a measure of prophetic grace because of a lengthy history of many different sorts of people not listening to me. After plenty of time thinking I was, like Moses and Elijah, at the end of it all (cf. Ex 32:32; 1 Ki 19:4), at 70 years of age I have nothing to preserve? I am categorically clear, and have said this to various people, that the Botha wheel will never turn unless its hub i.e., the council of elders, is a “broken hub”. In the natural this is like trying to drive a car with a broken axle, but in the spiritual, it is a necessary truth. I do however see the Lord moving in his secret way of fulfilling this vision. Immediately after the WA Elders Round Table meeting Paul Botha had an acutely painful bout of colitis and had to be rushed to hospital. In the light of scripture, this is neither a simple sign of satanic intrusion, nor merely the cold sovereign work of God, but a heavenly guided “thorn in the flesh” and “messenger from Satan” designed by Jesus so that his power might be perfectly displayed in Paul’s weakness (2 Cor 12:7, 9). If I am discerning rightly, the Lord is making our brother Paul a prism for the glory of the cross. There can never be a genuine mature apostolic-prophetic council (Eph 2:20) without apostolic-prophetic suffering Acts 20:23; 2 Cor 1:5, 8-9; 4:7-12; 11:16-33; Phil 3:10; Col 1:24 etc.)
Where is this Going?
A seer friend of mine was granted in the Spirit a vision of a group of city elders praying over Perth. It was impossible to identify these nameless and faceless leaders as they were all face down prostrate in their prayers. Cf. “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.” (Isa 53:2) This application of the presence of the crucified Lord is exactly what our city, state and nation need for a release of all transforming grace. The Lord will have a council of elders who in themselves know they are totally powerless to undo the deep inroads of the demonic principalities into our culture. Only by prayerful entry into the divine council in the Spirit (Rev 1:10; 4:1ff.) in harmony with the holy and glorified creation can there be a table of elders who ascend to the ultimate pinnacle of the Lamb at the centre of all things, a centre shared by Jesus with his Father on the one throne of God. Such a council will begin to see things as they really are, and not treat human constructions, like denominations, movements, titles, and the like, too seriously. What will be absolutely real to them by revelation are the dimensions of the glorified humanity of the Son of God as they apply to all the spheres of life and culture. These folk will together know, “The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” (1 Tim 1:5)
They will know in the Spirit, that it is not how I am thinking or feel which is important, but understand that “the central experiencing human Subject” is Jesus himself! This means they will have insight and strategy, into the heart plan of the Father (John 1:18; Eph 3:14) to have a family in love, no matter what the cost to himself or us (http://cross-connect.net.au/about/cross-connect-vision/ ). It is the revelation of this high mystery which now “through the church” undoes “the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” (Eph 3:10). The elders+ common entry into the heavenly council will not be through shared gifts as such, but through gifts lovingly laid down on the altar of the cross for enemies who deserve nothing but wrath, gifts thereby purified from all the ravages of egocentricity, ancient to postmodern. This holy mindset will release deep and wholescale repentance across the church, in all ages.
An Unexpected Conclusion
Some years ago, in an upper room, a man of God from abroad spoke a strange prophetic word over my life. All he said was, “It Is Enough!” My sense today is that the saving plan of the Lord (cf. 2 Sam 24:16) has reached the point where he has heard the many cries and laments of his faithful servants (Ex 2:24; Luke 18:7), few though they may be, and his Word-Spirit action to answer for his Son’s sake is on the way. I believe the wheel is coming! Please try to understand this message no with your natural mind, but through prayer.