One of the benefits of age is the first hand experience of recent history. I have personally witnessed past “moves” of the Holy Spirit. We attended “Faith” conferences, “Healing” meetings, and witnessed the “Toronto Blessing”. I watched great evangelists minister live on TV, some with hundreds of thousands in attendance. Some people call those the good ol’ days, I simply call them the past. The ministry of Jesus Christ is to move us forward, upward, and into full maturity. We are not to stop or return to the past. We are to move onward and upward. He stated in Luke chapter 9:
57 Now it happened as they journeyed on the road, that someone said to Him, “Lord, I will follow You wherever You go.”
58 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”
59 Then He said to another, “Follow Me.”
But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.”
60 Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God.”
61 And another also said, “Lord, I will follow You, but let me first go and bid them farewell who are at my house.”
62 But Jesus said to him, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.”
Foxholes and nests have one thing in common, they are permanent, immovable locations. They represent past moves of the Holy Spirit and there are people and ministries today that cling to those past movements, somehow hoping that they will find the key to glory. Standing water stagnates and begins to stink after a period of time. Water in movement doesn’t.
If there is anything consistent in church history, it is the fact that over time revelation turns into church doctrine and later becomes empty traditions of men. Martin Luther had a revelation and later the Lutheran church was born. The baptism of the Holy Spirit was “revived” in Topeka, Kansas, around 1900 and later the Pentecostal church arose to prominence. Once church buildings are built, you can be assured that the revelation of the movement is coming to a close.
I recently made a trip to Glastonbury England to visit Brian and Frieda Williams. Those of you who attended Port Austin meetings in the early 2000’s may have met and heard Brian speak. Our Heavenly Father orchestrated the trip for manifold purposes. One such purpose was to hear “reel to reel” tapes of William Branham, one of the “fathers” of the past moves of the Holy Spirit. Bill was an uneducated man that was used by Our Heavenly Father to do great and mighty things. Many were healed and he often operated in the “word of knowledge” identifying those who had sickness and disease… they were healed. There is no doubt that his ministry was very fruitful. William Branham is gone and so is that move of the Spirit. Let’s move on and not try to resurrect a past move or revelation. There is no need to bury the father. There are those who have built permanent residences in the wilderness that have plenty of time to bury the dead. The will continue to focus and live in the past.
Some have participated in recent moves. Some of these moves may were prophetic in nature, other included healing methods, and yet other areas were of some specific spiritual focus. These are moves in the “current” house but Jesus instructed us to move on and not look back. Don’t look back at your past work. It’s done. It’s finished. We must focus our attention of what Our Heavenly Father is doing now. This is exactly why the children of Israel were to dwell in tents rather than build permanent structures. When the Cloud moved, they packed up and moved. I’m sure they kept it simple! This is a type and shadow of our spiritual walk. The wilderness represents the Holy Place where the candlestick with seven candles is found. Those seven candles represents the church age, the age of trials, testing, and tribulation. The Holy Place is not our destination, it is the Holy of Holies… in Heaven, the highest realm, the third Heaven, not the second. Candles have to be managed and maintained, the Shekinah Glory doesn’t. Do you want to continue living in the “high maintenance” realm? Not me, I see no need to focus on the past movements and try to reproduce them. We must keep our focus on the path before us. There are less and less of us on this path. That is okay. We are drawn toward the Light of HIS Presence. There is no going back!