There is a common grace that God gives to all, even those who do not recognize Him. These are our natural talents which, whether we acknowledge Him or not, come from God. This common grace is both individual and corporate. There are kingdom principles that heathen nations can implement which will bring blessings to them even if they do not recognize where the blessings come from. You can trace all advancement of a civilization to the way that civilization embraced kingdom principles.

There are events in history that are defining moments by which we can judge the true nature of many people, organizations, and governments. The terrorists attacks last Tuesday were one of those events in which the true nature of many will be revealed.

         True discipleship will lead to being like Christ and doing the works that He did. It will also lead to persecution just as He was persecuted. Even so, to do the works of Christ is the greatest experience we can have. To love as He loved us and to demonstrate this love with our lives is our highest calling. This is the goal of our discipleship—for the Master to continue living His life through His followers, doing the same works.

For the past few months we have been addressing the subject of our time, especially as we prepare the way for the kingdom by taking up the call to preach the gospel of the kingdom. As we see this present world collapsing into increasing discord and disorder, the kingdom will be marked by increasing peace and order. We must therefore order our own lives according to kingdom principles and be a demonstration of the kingdom. We will see an increasing contrast between the kingdoms of this world and the kingdom of God, and between the lives of those that have been built on each.

     In our pursuit of the Lord and knowing His voice, we must always keep in mind the basic truth given to us in I Corinthians 2:12-16:

      Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God,

    Prophetic impressions are the most basic prophetic revelation and are usually the way that the Lord begins to speak to us. This seems to be because we are called to be His friends, and He wants us to feel what He feels, not just be automatons who do what He tells us. God created man to have fellowship with Him, and He is seeking messengers who will share His heart for the message.

         Here we continue our study of the church at Thyatira that represents the church of the Middle Ages (538-1798). The Catholic church at that time had two major accomplishments that greatly benefited Western civilization. The first was stopping Islam from subduing Europe. The second was keeping belief in the present working of the Holy Spirit alive.

As we have been discussing, our Promised Land is nothing less than bringing the kingdom of God to the earth. We are preparing the way for this now. His kingdom is coming, not just to take control of the earth again, but to restore it.

Before we study the fruit of the Spirit and into much more about our inheritance in the Promised Land, we must first prepare the ground for the seed so that it can bear fruit, which is what we have been doing for the last few weeks. The good soil for that seed is the church. Church life, with all of its blessings and problems, is required to not only bear fruit, but fruit that will remain.