The Silent Years Pt.2
MICAH 7:7-9
7 ¶ Therefore I will look unto the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me. (Micah chapter 7 is the last chapter of the book of Micah, and in the first half of this chapter he is describing the total social collapse of society of where the trust that people had in one another has completely evaporated to the point of where even close friends and immediate family members have turn against one another. And so even though this was written for around the time of the 8th century BC, this portion of scripture has a relevance to this time that we are living in today, because it is describing the human condition of how societies erode and fail)
8 Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD shall be a light unto me. (He has come to a place of where he can only put His trust completely in the Lord, because there is nothing left in society for him to trust anymore)
9 I will bear the indignation of the LORD, because I have sinned against him (We know that we were all born in sin, and yet none of us asked to be born that way and into this world of sin and temptation along with a fallen nature and a corrupted body (a body that has a death sentence attached to it from the day we were born). And so there is naturally a burden that is attached to that condition of what we have to bear in this life), until he plead my cause, and execute judgment for me (Until Christ would come and take that judgement for us): he will bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold his righteousness.
This verse in the Good News Translation reads…
9 We have sinned against the LORD, so now we must endure his anger for a while. But in the end he will defend us and right the wrongs that have been done to us (We have all experienced wrongs being done to us over our lifetime because of the fact that we live in a world and among people with fallen natures, and sadly most of us have also wronged others to some level. But if we were to trace all these wrongs back to their root source, then they are all the result of our condition of being born into a fallen and sinful world. And so it is this fallen human condition that God has promised to right all those wrongs by His redemptive love, and His promise is to bring us all out of the darkness of that condition and into the glorious light). He will bring us out to the light; we will live to see him save us.
LAMENTATIONS 3:25-26
25 The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.
26 It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD.
The Silent Years Pt.2
Last week we read the scripture - Isaiah 40:31 But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. – and we spoke about how this word “wait” how that it has a deeper meaning than just to tarry until. In the Hebrew it means “to look for with hope and expectation” and “to maintain a confident trust with an absolute certainty of that which has been promised will happen”. Because it is this inner hope that is the thing that drives and keeps up the strength within a person of what keeps them pressing and moving forward.
**And so to renew our strength, it comes by the renewal of our spiritual and inner certainty of the things that we have believed - of our confidence that God will keep His promises to us.
And this is why we have to be diligent to stay in the word so that we can keep our remembrance and our spirits constantly revived and our vision clear, because as the songwriter wrote “many friends and dear loved ones have lost their way, they have lost their vision of Christ”.
**We cannot afford to have our vision blurred of what has been promised for this hour by the distraction of this age – the prize is far too great to lose.
ISAIAH 30:15a
15 For thus saith the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved (We are revived and refreshed and delivered when we have our understanding returned back to the clear truth of the revelation of the word of God of what has been prophesied for us concerning this end time hour); in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength:
PSALM 46:10
10 Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.
**Last week we began this subject of “The Silent Years” by showing how that with every prophecy of the bible, there is a period of time that is attached to that prophecy of us having to wait before that prophecy would come to pass.
And none of us can know for sure concerning certain prophecies of the future of when thy will be fulfilled, because in some cases, it can take 800 years like with the prophecy in Isaiah about how that a virgin would conceive.
Or on the other hand, it may be a prophecy that could take place the very next day like what we saw at the time of when Elijah prophesied about the siege being over and food being sold at very cheap prices in 2 Kings 7 - because it is only God that knows the appointed time and purpose of each prophecy.
**But before any prophecy of the word can be fulfilled, it first requires the theatre and the stage to be completely set up along with all the right actors and all the right props, just like we mentioned about how that the hat had to be in the right place. Because the prophet couldn’t pray and the miracle couldn’t happen until the hat was in its correct position according to the prophecy.
THE.WORKING.OF.THE.HOLY.SPIRIT_ PRINCE.ALBERT.SK THURSDAY_ 56-0816
E-22 And said, "There'll be a man come out and get in a car packing a briefcase. Go at the door." And said, "When you do, there'll be a woman weeping. And when you go in, lay your hat down on the bed, and then she'll pick it up and lay it over here on a television. And there'll be another lady come in with a red sweater on and set down here. Then go lay your hands on this sick baby and say, 'THUS SAITH THE LORD.'"
And so all of those things and people had to be in their correct place first before the prophecy of the miracle was allowed to take place. And so that was the vision and the instruction – and not one little detail could fail.
THE.WORKING.OF.THE.HOLY.SPIRIT_ PRINCE.ALBERT.SK THURSDAY_ 56-0816
E-25 I said, "Thank you." I stepped in. I said--asked her what was the matter; it had congested lungs, pneumonia. And I... Little bitty fellow laying there... And I thought, looked in the room, just right, laid my hat down on the bed. But the lady went over and sat down; she never moved the hat. So I thought, "This is..." Now, can't--can't say a word now, just have to wait, or say about the vision or nothing.
I just keep talking to her; never asked prayer or nothing. I said, "And your baby, how old is it? And how long you lived here?" and so forth like that. And we got to talking. Well, then she got up and got my hat after while; I'd walked over side of the bed. She got my hat and laid it over on the television, but the lady wasn't there with the red sweater on. Can't pray. See? He isn't there yet. So then I--I kept talking, set down again.
And then, after while, the lady come in and set down. Another lady come in, which had been out in another room, or somewhere, she come in and set down, with the red sweater on. The lady with the brown coat on got up and went out. Can't say nothing yet. Just wait there.
And when they all got setting together, just right, then I said, "Stand up just a minute." I walked over to the baby. And I said, "You don't know me, and you...?... strangely. But THUS SAITH THE LORD; the baby's healed. The little baby turned over, and begin calling for its mother.
*And so God is showing us something here in this experience of the prophet, in that while we are waiting for scriptural prophecy to come to pass, we often have to wait for certain things to come into their correct position, and we term this waiting period the “silent years” of when it seems like that life and things are just going on and on as per normal, and things seem to be silent as we are waiting for the fulfilment of a certain prophecies and promises of God.
*But yet it is in fact during these “silent year” of when God is working every little detail in order to prepare the stage and the setting for that prophecy to come to pass.
HABAKKUK 2:3
3 For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.
While Abraham was waiting 25 years for the promise of God to be fulfilled in his own life, during that waiting time, he continued to draw his strength from El Shaddai, like how a baby draws strength from its mother’s milk.
BROKEN.CISTERNS_ JEFF.IN V-5 N-13 SUNDAY_ 64-0726E
134 Like father Abraham; he never pulled, he never fretted, he never worried. He had the Word. He layed upon El Shaddai's breast. When Abraham was a hundred years old, God appeared to him, and said, "I am the Almighty." The Hebrew word is El Shaddai, means, "the Breasted-One." "And you are old, and your strength is gone, but just lay upon My bosom and nurse your strength from this Fountain." Amen! What did he nurse himself to? A new body. He had the baby, by Sarah.
Notice how that for Abraham and Sarah, there was 25 “silent years” connected to the prophecy of what God had promised them personally, because when God promises anything, then there is first a period of time that He works and prepares everything to be in its right place of what is needed in order to set the stage for that prophecy to be fulfilled.
*There was a prophecy in Micah 5:2 that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem, but it took a political tax law to come into force first so that it would cause everyone to have to travel to their place of birth in order to be register for a Roman census that was ordered by Caesar Augustus – and so this political event took place just before the birth of Jesus so that the prophecy would be fulfilled.
**And so all the political happenings in the world today – we know that they are all working for the purpose of preparing the world for the fulfilment of end time prophecy.
**And so by all of this we know that it is actually the prophecy of the word of God that is the thing that governs over everything else, because once a prophecy of the word is spoken, then God begins to govern and control everything that is required in order to bring that prophecy to pass - because there is nothing more fundamental and powerful and certain than the prophecy of the word of God.
**And this is what we saw of what took place between Malachi and Mathew - of what is referred to as the 400 Years of Silence.
*We saw how that it looked like that God was silent during those years, and that nothing much was happening.
But when we study that period of time closer, we see that there was actually nothing silent about those years at all, because there was so much history that took place during that time that was necessary in order to set the stage for the fulfilment of the many prophecies concerning the coming of Christ and of His life and death and resurrection.
*There was the rise of Greece of when Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire - bringing Greek culture and language to the entire region.
*There was the Maccabean Revolt resulting in temporary Jewish independence and the rededication of the Temple.
*It was also during this time that new religious fractions such as the Pharisees and Sadducees emerged.
*Then there came the rise of Rome, so that by the time the New Testament opened, Israel is under the heavy hand of Roman rule and of king Herod.
*And so we compared this truth (of how God prepares the stage before the prophecy can be fulfilled) with the pattern of our own personal lives, of how that often our lives may look like that God is being silent, yet that is far from the reality.
Because everything that we have gone through and what we will yet go through in our lives, it is God setting the stage up for us in order to bring us to the expected end that He has planned for our lives.
And we saw that most clearly in the life of Joseph, of how that God had to put him through all of that training of the rejection of his brothers, and being falsely accused, and then serving time in the prison house – all those things was God preparing the stage in order to bring to pass the prophecy that was attached to his life.
***This is why we can be certain that God is controlling and using all the little things of our lives (both pleasant and unpleasant), and He is working it all out for our good at the end.
JEREMIAH 29:10-11
10 For thus saith the LORD, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place.
11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.
**God deals with us like the butterfly effect. He knows how to influence and change the smallest of the little details of our lives so that it will adjust the course of our lives in order to bring His promised word to pass for us at the end, because this is the realm of how God deals with us.
**He is dealing with us at the smallest and at the most unnoticed realm of within the most tiniest details of our lives.
*And this is why the bible tells us not to despise the day of small things, because it first takes the small things before the big things can happen.
It is the slightest adjustment of a small rudder that changes the course of the entire ship (James 3:4). And so God is the one who is the pilot and of who is in control of the small rudder of our big ship, and so this is how God steers our lives – by His unseen hand.
*God accomplishes great and major outcomes in our lives through quiet and faithful steps.
GALATIANS 6:9
9 And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.
This word “faint” means to become despondent - to become faint-hearted, to become weak in your spirit. Because when a person losses heart, then they lose their inner strength to carry on – the thing that makes them want to get out of bed in the morning.
*And so we are all in need of our strength to constantly be renewed in order for us to carry on, because this life is an endurance race and not a 100 yard sprint.
*There was the British slogan during the Second World War – “Keep calm and carry on”
THE.MARK.OF.THE.BEAST.AND.THE.SEAL.OF.GOD.2_ LONG.BEACH.CA FRIDAY_ 61-0217
E-30…So it's our--our duty to keep carrying on until He comes.
ACTS 7:30 (Speaking about the life of Moses)
30 ¶ And when forty years were expired, there appeared to him in the wilderness of mount Sina an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush.
*Brother Branham told us how that Moses spent the 40 first years of his life in Egypt being educated and learning all the ways of the Egyptians, and then the next 40 years of his life was spent in the wilderness in order to get all of his own self-worth and pride taken out of him of what had been put into him in the first 40 years.
And then God used him for the last 40 years of his life to lead a stiff-necked and mostly ungrateful people to a promised land that Moses himself never even got to enter into because of His own misconduct.
And so God had to put him through all of those “silent years” in order to train him for that work and purpose.
And He also had to be train in a way so that he wouldn’t get all puffed up with the pride of his position when he finally got to being the great prophet and leader of God’s people.
***And so we must never forget that when we are going through the rough times of life, that God is in every little detail of our lives, and that during certain times He will allow us to struggle, and He will even allow us to fail and to fall, because in order to make us into something great, He has to first bring humility into our lives so that we will come to understand that without Him, we can do nothing.
THINGS.THAT.ARE.TO.BE_ RIALTO.CA V-4 N-6 SUNDAY_ 65-1205
31 You were all pre-planned by God. Nothing happens by chance, with God. He knows all about it. It's all pre-planned, planned for many generations back, so that you could be here tonight. Did you know that?
LETTING.OFF.THE.PRESSURE_ JEFF.IN V-5 N-11 SUNDAY_ 62-0513E
145 … Nothing happens by chance; everything is ordained of God. No matter what happens, all things are going to work together for good.
Opening scriptures…
LAMENTATIONS 3:21-26
21 ¶ This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.
22 It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. (God’s compassions haven’t failed us because of how long things have seemed to go on – and so as Abraham’s faith grew stronger during his silent years, so must our faith grow stronger also)
23 They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.
24 The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him.
25 The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.
26 It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD.
HABAKKUK 2:3
3 For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.