Women to Women

True to Bible prophecy, the world has become so clever…indeed knowledge has increased and so has wickedness. The world and the devil have come up with all types of brilliant and mind-boggling strategies to lure millions away from God.

But let me tell you, God will not be left behind! He is the ORIGINAL MASTER STRATEGIST. In these end times, God will wield these five simple but thoroughly potent and effective strategies to bring in the lost, globalise church planting, manifest Himself and destroy the works of darkness. The five strategies are:

1. He will close up the gap between the clergy and the laity.
   Result: Many ordinary, insignificant and ‘faceless’ but devoted people will rise up and do extraordinary feats for God all over the nations. God’s name will be glorified and feared because the world will recognise that it is God’s power working through these ‘weaklings’ and ‘simpletons’ who have literally become ‘different persons’ when the Spirit of God impacts them.
    
2. He will accurately position every redeemed life into its place of destiny.
   Result: God will have His ‘contact points’ everywhere, ready to spring into action and carry out His directives accurately whenever and wherever He chooses to work. Like Joseph and Esther, those who have been positioned will have the spiritual stature and maturity to meet the needs in that specific place.
    
3. He will cause one to ‘chase a thousand,’ meaning, one of us can do the work of a thousand or cover the liabilities of a thousand, while two of us can put ten thousand to flight!
   Result: God will have no lack of workers since one can accomplish the work of a thousand, and two, ten thousand. There will not be a lack (of righteousness, faith, love, mercy, etc) within the Body of Jesus Christ as we will be completing and complementing one another by ‘covering’ one another’s liabilities. Even the unrighteous will be given special concessions as the righteous covers them with their righteousness and prevailing prayers.
    
4. He will cause the church to return to the Cross, which is His plumb line and ancient landmark.
   Result: As the Cross levels us on the inside, we will possess genuine Holy Ghost power to level and change circumstances and situations on the outside. The return to God’s ancient landmarks of self-denial, self-negation and self-renunciation will cause such an unleashing of the resurrection power of Jesus Christ on earth. The world will be shocked. The church will rise to the occasion and magnify Jesus to the world. The magnifying of self that was produced by a ‘Crossless’ Christianity and is so prevalent today will be a thing of the past.
    
5. He will remove the rift between heavenly and earthly beings and between humans and angels.
   Result: There will be a great manifestation of angelic beings on earth as God accelerates His activities on earth. Angels will be working alongside us, who are the heirs of salvation, to fulfil God’s great purposes. We will no longer be hampered by boundaries or distance when we learn to work with these heavenly beings who are mightier than us in functions.

THE THIRD STRATEGY

In this book (Book 3) I am writing on the third strategy. This strategy is about how God is going to use one life to ‘chase a thousand’ or ‘to fill up the lack’ of a thousand. In these end times where lust and licence, wickedness and lawlessness, blasphemy and unrighteousness abound, God will take into account even one righteous life and He will use it to cover or to chase a thousand more.

In this ‘old-new’ strategy, God will use the attainments of one righteous person to confound a thousand. He will also use that one righteous life to cover the liabilities of thousands. This is nothing new for Bible history reveals to us that God notices and takes into account even one life lived righteously before Him. So if you think that your life, lived in righteousness before God is of no avail, you are wrong.

THE POWER OF ONE LIFE

God made mention of His search for just one life to the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel. He told Jeremiah that if He could find just one person in Jerusalem who would live in righteousness, who executed judgment and sought the truth, He would pardon the entire city. Sadly, there was not even one. Even though He encouraged the prophet to ‘run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem’ to seek for such a person, such a person could not be found. How tragic. To the prophet Ezekiel, God lamented that He had the same problem – He could not find one man who would ‘fill up the gap’ and pray for the land so that He could deliver it (Jeremiah 5:1, Ezekiel 22:30).

How terribly the nation had fallen so that God could not find even one (not even one?) righteous life in that very religious nation. In the days of Isaiah, the Ancient of Days was already in pain when He realized that the nation had become so demoralized and degenerated that she could not even produce one citizen who would be God’s champion to stand up for the oppressed and to intercede for the land. What dark days these must be when a country (with thousands and millions of very religious people) is incapable of producing just one righteous man to stand before God.

Since a dead nation (Israel) could not arise of itself, God Himself, in this instance, rose up for her. Since she could not produce any champion, God Himself, out of His own love for His people, became her champion. God Himself, as the Righteous One was more than qualified to rise up on her behalf to bring salvation and healing to the land.

Isaiah 59:16–17
‘And he saw there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor; therefore his arm brought salvation unto him; and his righteousness, it sustained him. For he put on righteous-ness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salvation upon his head; and he put on the garments of vengeance for clothing, and was clad with zeal as a cloak.’

From all the three incidents, we realize that one life counts. God said that He would spare the nation of Israel with its thousands and millions if only that nation could produce just one man, one champion and one intercessor. What a brilliant strategy! strategy where one person can cover the liabilities of a thousand and a strategy where God will regard the righteous attainments of one as the righteous attainments of a thousand others! He is in fact saying, ‘Let one righteous man stand before Me and I will write off’’ all your liabilities and unrighteousness!Such a strategy befits the Ancient of Days for it shows His endless love and His unwillingness to see people perish in hell. He wants to see everyone saved. Even if people had fallen so deep that they are incapable of producing any righteousness of their own, God would gladly cover them with the righteousness of another… if they would turn to Him.


GOD WATCHES AND WEIGHS HUMAN BEHAVIOUR

Do you remember the story of King Belshazzar, the Babylonian king who saw the finger of God write these words on the wall of his palace: ‘Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting’? Read it in Daniel chapter four and you will realize that God does not only observe human behaviour, He also weighs them in His balances!

In the midst of our busyness, we often forget that God does take into account human behaviour and He records what He sees. Yes, He is actually watching us when we are most unaware of it and He is noting the auguries and forecasting our destiny.

He said, ‘The very hairs of your head are all numbered’ and ‘Not even one sparrow falls to the ground without my Father’s knowledge’ (Matt 10:29–30). He also warned us in 2 Chronicles 16:19 that His eyes are active, ‘running to and fro the earth’ and when He sees someone pursuing Him with the entirety of his/her heart, He will reveal Himself fully to that righteous person. If God has not been revealing much of Himself to us, we should ask ourselves what type of lives we are living.


RIGHTEOUSNESS IS NOT FLAWLESSNESS

God observed the lives of Abraham, Moses, Samuel, Rahab, etc and weighed them in His balances. He found these lives to be substantial – substantial enough to cover the lives of others. God could use their attainments to cover the liabilities or the loss of their ‘contingent’, be it their families, relatives, communities, tribes or nations.

As I studied the life of each of these people, I was surprised to find that these whom God considered righteous enough to ‘chase or to cover a thousand’ were not without defects. They were not flawless human beings. Abraham, for example, was definitely not a flawless saint. On two occasions, he was guilty of gross selfishness and lying. He did not stand up for his wife and was willing to sacrifice her for his own safety. He set a bad example before a heathen king who rebuked him.

Samuel and David too had their own flaws while Rahab was once a harlot. This ’woman with a past’ had so much prevailing power before God that God did not only use her to save her family, she was also given the honour of becoming a Messianic mother. Both Noah and Moses were far from flawless as both lost control of themselves, one through drunkenness and the other through anger and they had to reap untoward consequences. These people lived substantial lives that God considered as ‘righteous’ but they were not ‘flawless.’

God’s estimation of righteousness is so different from men’s estimation. Has He not instructed us that His thoughts and His ways are indeed far, far above ours?

Isaiah 55:8
‘For your thoughts are not my thoughts, neither are Your ways My ways, saith the Lord.’

Although these great saints were not flawless, each one of them had tremendous prevailing power before God because they lived in His revealed and authoritative will, that is, they lived in obedience to God. As a result, He was able to use their lives to do exploits and to cover the lives of the unrighteous. In these end times when human wickedness is on the rise, God will once again cause us to rediscover the power of this ancient truth: one life can ‘chase or cover a thousand’ if that life is lived righteously in the revealed and authoritative will of God.

It behoves us to live in obedience to God for God rates this as righteousness. When we live in righteousness, we can, like Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Samuel, etc. use our lives to do the work of a thousand. We may also cover others by pleading with God to withhold judgment from the unrighteous (be they family members, friends, cities or nations) and give them more time to repent.

The life of a righteous man has incalculable worth in God’s sight and definitely has inexpressible social worth. Abraham knew this secret and this is why he interceded, and asked God to spare the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah on the basis of just forty righteous men. The truth was, God was willing to spare the lives of those many thousands if there were just ten righteous men! In God’s estimation, ten righteous lives could actually cover the liabilities of those thousands of unrighteous lives in those two sinful cities. Yes, God was telling Abraham that He would consider the righteous attainments of ten righteous men as the attainments of those thousands of unrighteous people. In other words, God was using the righteousness of the ten men to ‘cover’ the unrighteousness of the rest.

God harkened to the prayers of one righteous man called Abraham and promised to give Sodom and Gomorrah a ‘concession’ by withholding judgment if only ten righteous men could be found. Sad to say, Abraham could not even find these ten men. Now, if ten lives could cover for thousands upon thousands, then how many could one person cover?

In God’s estimation, when one life is properly aligned with Him, it can possess such spiritual superiority that it can actually cover thousands of lives. God states it this way, ‘One of you shall chase a thousand and two can put ten thousand to flight.’ – From God’s Strategies for the End Times, Book Three: ‘One Shall Chase a Thousand’ by S USAN TANG, available in Christian bookstores. Used with permission.