Latter Rain Update - June 1996

There is indeed a day of reckoning coming for our nation, and that day grows ever closer as we continue to leave God’s statutes and commands behind to seek after our own. As a nation, we have chosen to throw God out of our society and have embraced the devil’s morality. Make no mistake, God will indeed move in judgment against our country, but there is hope in this inevitable event. God gave this word of prophecy on April 7th of this year concerning the preservation of His people during this time:

...You will not have to build, you will not have to build. You will just have to move in! Places of refuge for you! You wonder, where shall we live, where shall we go, what shall we do? I have prepared them for you. There are people who think that they have made for themselves a good thing. But they do not know it is for you, My faithful ones. It is for you. They toil and they labor to build up unto themselves, to satisfy the pride of life and the lust of the eyes. But I say, it is prepared for you. And I laugh at them! I laugh at them, and I watch how they work. I watch how they plant. I watch how they put it here and put it there...Hah!!!Woooo! Hallelujah! They put it there in the rooms that they have prepared for you. You will just move in, and they will move out! Do not despair about where you shall go and what you shall do, for I have prepared a place for you, a place of refuge! I laugh at them for they do not seek Me. They build kingdoms, but they do not know that there is the kingdom that is greatest over all. So, My Beloved Ones, yes, he comes, but comfort yourselves in this: that I have never left My people. I have never abandoned My people. Do not judge Me like your fathers who have abandoned you, for I have never abandoned My people. In the day of trouble, I have not run from you. I have never run from those who would call upon My Name. I stand with you if you stand with Me. I will be there to protect you, I will direct you, I will tell you what to do and the day to do it. I will show you the way, the place, and I will tell you the time. Be alert. Don’t slumber. Don’t be dull-witted, but keep your eyes open and recognize the time. Yes, call upon Me, and I will answer you. I will show you the way, and stay together, stay together.

“EAT MY FLESH! DRINK MY BLOOD!” Jesus commanded the people in John 6:53-54. “For unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you!”

What strong words came from the teacher! Many of His disciples turned from Him after He made this statement and followed Him no more! What was Jesus trying to convey to them? Was He telling them to be cannibals?
Pastor Ron delved into this teaching entitled Flesh and Blood originally to reteach a previous lesson entitled, “Communion.” However, before we could understand communion, we had to understand who the Bread of Life is and the tremendous power of Jesus’ shed blood.

Jesus explained His role in a feast that the Jews had been celebrating entitled Sater, or the Jewish Passover, by saying, “Take, eat; this is My body,” and He picked up some bread from the feast table (Matt 26:26). Then He took the cup of wine and He commanded them to drink from it, saying, “This is My blood which is shed for many for the remission of sins.”
Jesus used the food on the table to symbolize how His own body would be sacrificed for the remission of their sin. His innocent, sinless blood would be shed to pay for our guilty blood to be purchased.

Under the Old Covenant, God gave the descendants of Abraham manna, a type of bread substance, to eat and sustain their lives. Obviously, it was only temporal sustenance, because they are all dead. Jesus stated in John 6:49. “I am the living bread which comes down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever...”

So how do we eat of Jesus’ body, this bread of life? We do this by receiving Him and His sacrifice of His flesh through faith. Jesus explained that He wasn’t speaking literally when He said in John 6:63, “It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit and they are life.”

Jesus’ blood was about to be shed so that ours wouldn’t have to be. We were the guilty ones. Jesus drank the cup of iniquity of our sins in the garden of Gethsemane and thus, He took on our sins. He paid the price, the shedding of His innocent blood, in order to remit our sins. Justice must be served on the guilty, but instead of us, Jesus become the guilty for us and offered His own body. This offering made us holy in the sight of God, something we were not, since the time before Adam sinned.
God, in seeing His Son slain for our sins from the foundation of the world, declared blood to be a sacred thing, and it was something that should not be eaten.

There is life in the blood, both physically and spiritually. In our natural body, it carries all the food, oxygen, and nutrients needed to sustain life. In like manner, Jesus’ blood carries all the requirements needed to sustain us spiritually in Him.
Blood has many characteristics. Life is in the blood, and it diffuses the life it carries into the body. Justice is served with blood; in fact, shed blood cries out for justice. It states in Genesis 4:10 that Abel’s blood cried out from the ground. Also, in Matthew 23:34-35, Jesus stated that the blood of the prophets, wise men, and scribes would be required from that generation of Pharisees. We also see that blood ratifies covenants. Under the Old Covenant, it was the blood of an animal, but under the New Covenant, it was the blood of Jesus. Blood also bears witness as stated in I John 5:6-8.

Next week, Pastor will begin explaining the Lord’s Supper and communion as this lesson continues. Until then, this teaching is recorded on tape for your listening. As always, the teaching anointing unveils truths that are not readily evident, and it is recommended that you listen to the tapes to fully gain a firm understanding of these concepts.

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