The Harvest

Jesus described the end of the age. He said the "harvest is the end of the age." Whatever else may happen at the end of the age, one thing we know for sure: it is harvest-time. Jesus said angels would be activated and would accompany us in the harvest. (Matthew 13:39) Angels will help with the reaping of the fields. They will take people out who persist in evil. A divine sorting into holy and unholy groups is already underway. The stakes are high. This battle is over the harvest of souls that Jesus paid for on the cross.

Satan’s tactics are all designed to discourage the workers so as to prevent the harvest. Like Tobiah and Sanballat, a pair of evil workers who tried to discourage Nehemiah from rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 4), They are desiring to weaken us. Also, James the Apostle emphasized the need for wisdom over money in the last days. He said wealthy people are guilty by reason of the rust on their riches. "In the last days you have stored up your treasure." (James 5:3) Wealth is another mark of the last days. Covetousness will be uncovered in these last days, when wealth is abundant, but hoarded. It is a sin to live in luxury while laborers in the field have to do without. Why was God angry? Why was the Judge standing at the door? It wasn’t about people living comfortably– God has no problem with that at all. God wants us blessed! The Lord of the Harvest (Mt. 9:38) was angry because his workers were being deprived. His anger was about the harvest in the field being neglected. God waits for "the precious produce of the soil." (James 5:7) The season of harvest is simultaneous with the season of judgment. The threshing of the wheat looks and feels, to the wheat, like tribulation. The ancient paddle or rod used by Romans to crack the husk off the grain and let the breeze carry away the chaff was called in Latin a tribulatum.

Pressure is a good word to describe what is now coming against the saints. Everybody in the world feels it, but God’s people are especially targeted. Pressure is like heat. Eventually it cooks out and uncovers whatever constitutes our soul. Pressure comes from two sources: internal and external.

Internally, we can wreck our own lives if we ignore or if we conceal our sin, if we hang on to an inadequate self-image, if we hold on to old hurts and refuse to forgive, or if we settle for a woefully deficient barely-get-by kind of faith. Character issues are not peripheral to God’s purpose in our lives. Do you realize, that with sufficient Christ-like character, we can actually cause time to be on our side? We can be so strong in spirit, so joyful in praise, so filled with enduring hope and so out-fitted with genuine faith that we can actually wear the Devil out! I have seen it happen. This is the patience of the saints. The Judge is on our side. He will rule in our favor.

Externally, we face enemies that are not flesh and blood, but sometimes these enemies utilize people who don’t know what they are doing. Therefore, we need to adapt our ways and our thoughts to line up with God’s ways and God’s thoughts (see Isaiah 55) God has ways that reveal His wisdom. We will never defeat Satan using Satan’s ways. God’s wisdom works, not human cunning. Its source is heaven, not the world. Divine wisdom is (or should be) demonstrated by apostolic models of covenant love in communities that are living by overcoming faith. With sufficient Spirit-inspired faith, we can move mountains of Satanic resistance out of the way, advancing God’s kingdom as we keep putting our hand to the plow and doing His work.

God is restoring a new measure of apostolic and prophetic teaching to the Church that will enable us to deal with both of these realms using new insight into God’s Word and Gods ways.
God is training his children to persevere, to overcome, to band together so we can stand together, so we can survive and thrive in the heat of the battle, and live to see the glory of God, multitudes saved, Satan’s works destroyed, and Christ glorified among the nations. Real faith emerges from the fire purified, not destroyed. God’s payback time has arrived. The devil’s plan will backfire on him as we cast him out or wear him down. If he sticks around past his eviction notice, he’ll have to listen to us praising God and worshipping in the Spirit (Ephesians 6:14, 18). We have heard our Lord’s instructions, "having done all, stand therefore…"