Programme: Lekki Soul Centre (LSC)
Date: Wednesday, 17th January 2024
Transcript Summary
1. One recent emphasis of the Spirit of God to us is that there is a need for us to position ourselves more for the coming of the Lord, this year. Generally, there is a definite coming of the Lord that almost all believers are aware of, which is rapture. The Lord’s coming as rapture is a major teaching in the New Testament, taught by our Lord Jesus Christ and His apostles. 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17 and 1 Corinthians 15:51-52 highlight expressly the words of the Lord concerning rapture. The saints will be caught up physically and experience a change. Saints would come out of their graves like they did in Matthew 27 when Jesus rose from the dead.
2. Adam was an everlasting man in the garden of Eden. His soul was called a living soul, but he did not have all of it; he knew there were other measures of life he was meant to come into. Hence, he needed more measures of the coming and unveiling of the Lord. The visitations of the Lord God in the garden were meant to bring those measures to him gradually until he finished that course and attained all of everlasting life so as to partake of Eternal life. However, Adam fell short of this.
3. The wisdom and concept of coming has been since the beginning. In Genesis 17:1, the Lord appeared to Abraham. That appearance was a form of the coming of the Lord. This appearing is an encounter, but it is not just limited to an encounter, because not all encounters have the Lord’s coming behind them. The Lord’s coming is not just that the person of the LORD came like He came to Abraham, Moses, Enoch and others, but one in which the person receiving it finds entrance into the knowledge of Him.
4. The rapture will not occur until the Lord comes to His Church. If the Lord does not come to us as a Church, He will never come for us. We also need to know that the Lord will not come to the entire Church at once, but first to some people. There are comings of the Lord that should precede rapture, because at rapture, the Lord would be coming for a Church without spot, wrinkle, blemish, or any such thing.
5. Our Lord Jesus Christ in His resurrected estate has everything we will ever need in terms of growth and knowledge. He is an entity of the world to come, and has an eternal body. In Acts 2, Jesus sent the Holy Ghost to earth to accomplish some level of work in believers, and He will be here until Jesus comes. However, that allocation is not all of the Holy Ghost there is. The full stature of the Holy Ghost is the Lampstand, through which we get access to the seven spirits. But the last bowl southward of the lampstand represents the Holy Ghost allocation for the earth that can reach the earth. The Holy Ghost teaches the believer the milk of the word (Heb. 6:1-2), and grooms such from babyhood into childhood.
6. The first allocation of the Holy Ghost shows a particular expression of Jesus’ coming. So every one who gets born again comes into that ‘coming’. This initial coming of the Lord constitutes what the early church revolved around, before the Lord raised Saul of Tarsus. The chief blessing of that ‘coming’ of the Lord is the doctrine of ‘milk’. The chief blessing of any coming of the Lord is the word around that coming, and the Apostles had that word. Paul was the last in the order of apostles who bore witness to Jesus’ coming in the flesh. They were apostles of that dimension because He appeared to them. Every believer is a living witness and partaker of this first coming but there is another coming.
7. (1 Cor. 15:2-5). The first thing that Paul delivered, which he also received, was with regards to laying things in the soul; this is the first thing a believer should receive also. Jesus appeared to the disciples. However, this appearance of Jesus to them at resurrection is not “the appearing” majorly. His appearance to them was a confirmation that they are apostles of that order. There is an allocation for that order and there is a meal for it. That order of the Lord’s coming has within it the new birth experience, the doctrine of the milk of the word (Heb. 6:1-2), and the nine gifts of the Spirit. Peter, being the first of that order preached it, the 12 disciples did, James the Lord's brother, the 500 brethren and lastly Paul. They all saw and preached the Lord Jesus Christ.
8. Many believers in the body of Christ are within that first allocation of the Lord's coming. The Lord enacted that coming through the apostles which He gave the teaching of the milk of the word to. The purer the milk, the stronger the appearance. Kenneth Hagin, and many other ministers also experienced the appearance of the Lord to bear witness to that coming. So many times, when these ministers teach from almost any part of the scriptures, they teach Jesus.
9. “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief. [16] Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting.” (1 Tim. 1:15-16). Paul is the first person Jesus Christ came for when He chose to come into the world— which entails the system of the world, of which rulers of the darkness of this world are the peak of sin and death (Eph. 6:12). Principalities and powers constitute sin, while rulers of the darkness of this world constitute death.
10. This coming of the Lord to Paul was a unique one which He did out of His sovereignty. It was the coming of Jesus to give the meat of the word and the doctrine of Christ to him. He did not come in this manner first to Peter, John, or any of the other Apostles before him (Gal. 1 & 2). Jesus appeared to Paul for a specific purpose, which is clearly stated in Acts 26:16-17. It was to gain access to the soul and take away sins. This appearance is not another encounter, instead it is the beginning of the giving of the doctrine of Christ. Paul narrated this appearance thrice in the book of Acts (Acts 9, 22, and 26). This is the core of the beginning of Paul’s ministry. This is when Jesus came into the world.
11. The Lord can raise people with different graces to teach the milk of the word, but His appearance to such does not mean such a one must be an apostle. Many who call themselves apostles now do so based on 1 Corinthians 9:1, because they have ‘seen Jesus’, (referring to seeing visions of Him). Seeing Jesus in a vision does not equate being an Apostle. If it did, the women who saw Jesus immediately after He rose from the dead would have been the first apostles (Jn. 20:17).
12. (1 Tim. 1:15). This coming of the Lord was to announce uniquely, to register upon Saul’s senses, that Jesus came for something different. From that moment, Saul's soul was thrown into the wheel of revelation. The Lord opened up the activity of the seven spirits over him, as we see him later began to pray for the seven spirits of the Lord (Eph. 1:17-18; Col. 1:9). The operation of the Holy Ghost as the seven spirits is a higher level than that which is His expression at the level of new birth.
13. We ought not to run away from the complexities that come up at this level of preaching, as that is the means through which our souls gain entrance. To opt for simplicity is to be locked out. One of the ways to identify the coming of the Lord is through instructions.
14. (Rev. 1:1). Another example of someone who saw the Lord Jesus is John, but it was a different “type” of Jesus Christ. The revelation of Jesus Christ John saw has “things”. Jesus needs to be cracked down into things otherwise the soul will not inherit Him. Sin entered into man via “things”. Our thoughts are characterized by “things”; academic knowledge also form “things” in the soul – all combining together to constitute one thing in the soul of the man.
15. When the Lord appeared to Saul, He also gave him skill. This was a peculiar and personal ministration of Jesus to Paul (Gal. 1:11-12), and it was a commandment (Rom. 16:26); meaning the things he said were not his opinion but things that came as a result of Jesus appearing, and this appearing might have been a vision that he saw but behind the vision is a mandate of the throne.
16. God always has a pattern of revealing Himself to a person, and through that person to others. When God was to deliver Lot from the impending destruction that was to come upon the land of Sodom and Gomorrah, He did not go straight to Lot, but to His friend Abraham, even though Lot was a righteous one (2 Pet. 2:8). God always establishes order; He establishes a line of coming. Likewise, we have also received this privilege through God's servant, Rev. Kayode Oyegoke.
17. Many of us have been experiencing the coming of the Lord after the order of Christ. We have utilized His coming in the milk dimension of the word, while many have gotten to the second level of His coming, particularly those in the community of the Word of Righteousness. What happened in our souls through the doctrine of Christ is a measure of salvation, however, that can still be corrupted; there is another measure of salvation that is incorruptible, undefiled, that fadeth not away (1 Pet. 3:4) that we need to come into.
18. “Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting.” (1 Tim. 1:16). This Scripture reveals another coming of the Lord He has been heralding in recent years, through His servants. It started out as a doctrine that bothered on everlasting life, salvation, the incorruptible seed, the Father and the Lamb etc. but has now began to peak into His “coming.” If the Lord does not come, the knowledge we have would be of no profit to our souls.
19. The Lord came to Paul first and came to him again for things everlasting. The Lord later brought the same doctrine to Peter, John and James. This means that the Lord did not intend that only Paul should have it. He wants to get to everyone, but first had to raise some who were pillars. Likewise, in our generation, we have found the same mercy by the raising of God’s servants, Rev. Kayode and Rev. (Mrs.) Helen Oyegoke, alongside many other pastors and fathers whom the Lord has equipped to teach us these things.
20. The cry of the Spirit from last year is that there is a coming of the Lord for things everlasting. This coming has opened up Scriptures on incorruptibility, opening the eyes of our understanding, showing the divisions of first works, last works, Alpha, Omega, dealing with us after the manner of the seven golden candlesticks churches, that we may be free from hell and death.
21. Until the coming of the Lord in the levels of the milk of the word, the doctrine of Christ, and the doctrine of everlasting life are accomplished in us, rapture would not happen. So the onus rests on us, particularly those who are hearing these words, to hasten our walk and our salvation (2 Pet. 3:12-13).
Blessings!