“But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation” (Heb. 9:11).
      “Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:4-5).
        Here’s the progression of God’s dwelling place on the earth: from Tabernacle, to Temple, to a spiritual House of Living Stones. Scripture also refers to this His House and the Mountain of the Lord.
        End-Time Lesson: Paul describes how this House is being built during the two great Days of the Church Age. “Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Eph. 2:19-22).
       This spiritual House is the “more perfect tabernacle not made with hands,” for each of us is a living stone fashioned after the image of Christ by the Holy Spirit. He doesn’t use a chisel to chip away at our ungodly habits and cracked thought patterns. He uses the gentle laser light of God’s Word to expose the darkened places in our soul and body.
         This spiritual reconstruction doesn’t happen automatically. The Holy Spirit offers us a blueprint of the next step in our being conformed to the image of Christ, but we have to give the “go ahead” to move forward with the reconstruction and be willing to do the work with Him. As with many such reconstruction jobs, sometimes it usually begins with demo day. We cooperate with the Spirit to expose those areas that are not “up to code” so the structure of our House can be assured and true.
       In Psalm 103:14, we are told that Father knows our frame. He knows that even though our spirit has been made new, the rest of our framework—our soul and body—need work. Philippians 1:6 informs us that this good work of being fashioned after the chief cornerstone will continue until Christ returns. And then, in a twinkling of an eye at the rapture, it will be complete.
        As the glorious Day of the Lord dawns, the Capstone will descend and gather His living stones and take us back to Heaven to be with Him wherever He goes. This “Living Temple” will then be seated as the immortal government of Heaven. We will remain in Heaven, ruling over the earth during the final 1,000-year Day (Christ’s millennial reign), for the earth is His footstool. By the way, this is why a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, complete with animal sacrifices, will be an abomination to God, an apostate temple.
         At the end of the Day, after the final judgment, God will make the new heavens and a new earth, and this completed Living Temple will descend to the new earth as the City described in Revelation 21. We are the City—the New Jerusalem—that is the center of the Kingdom of God on the new earth. It is populated with eternally righteous mankind.

     Most Christians refer to the prayer recorded in the Sermon on the Mount as the “Lord’s Prayer.” A better name would be the “Model Prayer,” for He gave it in response to the disciples’ desire that He teach them how to pray. John 17 records what is truly the Lord’s Prayer. It is what Jesus prayed after He washed the disciples’ feet and prepared them for the coming of the Comforter who would help them understand all that Jesus had taught them throughout His earthly ministry. He knew the time had come to finish His earthly mission.
       Jesus began by speaking on earth what was in Heaven—how He would suffer yet be glorified and return to the glory of the 3rd Heaven. “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.”
       Jesus begins to pray for the disciples whom God had given to Him for His earthly ministry. “They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. Now they have known that all things which You have given Me are from You. For I have given to them the words which You have given Me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came forth from You; and they have believed that You sent Me.”
       These Jewish men were part of God’s people. But God gave them to Jesus to continue to preach the New Covenant. They had received the message and acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah. In effect, the Lord’s unique prayer for His immediate disciples is what baptized them into the New Covenant of salvation by faith, for they had believed in Him and confessed Him before men. Later, they would receive the baptism of the Spirit for ministry at Pentecost.
        As Jesus continues to pray, He prays for all His disciples, present and future, who would continue His earthly ministry. “I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.”
       End-Time Lesson: Thus began the paradox of the life of a believer:  existing in this natural, physical world but not of this world. Since we cannot deny the natural aspects of our physical body, it seems like a paradox, for we connect to this natural world through our five natural senses. Our true existence—the “real us”—is our regenerated spirit, the new man that was “born again” when we accepted Jesus as our Savior.
          It’s interesting that some people speak of a sixth sense, by which those who develop this can interact with the realm of the spirits. Yet the Creator only gave us five senses. Five is the number of grace, God’s favor and goodness toward mankind. Six, on the other hand, symbolizes the world. In truth, any sixth sense is not from God. Instead, it comes from the corrupted, fallen spirit of a person who is duped into thinking he or she can access the entire spiritual realm. In reality, all they are contacting is the evil hierarchy in the heavenlies (the atmosphere above the earth).  What is received may be fact, but it comes through familiar spirits that use this to open the door to other demonic spirits, as with modern-day psychics.
         Each day every believer must recognize that our true existence is based on the fact that we are seated in the heavenly places with Christ by faith. This is what enables us to face whatever comes our way in our earthly existence. This is why we need to keep our minds stayed on Christ. This is why our Lord taught us, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matt. 6:19-21).
       This is why the Lord’s priestly prayer ends with these words: “Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth” (emphasis added). Jesus laid aside the glory of Heaven to come to the earth—the peculiar paradox of the divine Godhead becoming flesh to initiate the next stage in God’s mystery-plan. And now, we live in our own purposeful paradox of existing on earth but living according to Heaven’s ways so that we can be lights in the darkness, declaring His return at the appointed time. That is our message of comfort, hope, and victory!

      All through both the Old and the New Testaments we see how God didn’t choose the wise or the strong and powerful of this world. One of the marvels of the Bible is that God shows us the key characters in His-story as they really were: the good, the bad, and the ugly. It’s reassuring, isn’t it?
    In these last Days, we know there are two distinguishing characteristics: (1) the outpouring of the Holy Spirit; and (2) the extended nature of the tribulation, which Jesus also called the beginning of sorrows and birth pains.
     Any mother will tell you that pregnancy can have its not so pleasant moments. Then when the end of the predetermined gestation period draws near, the birth pains ramp up. When her water breaks and she transitions into heavy labor, the mother-to-be endures because she knows a wondrous birth is at hand. In her most trying time, the joy set before her carries her through.
         End-Time Lesson: In the face of our own trying times, Paul gives us this assurance: “I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given to you by Christ Jesus, that you were enriched in everything by Him in all utterance and all knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that you come short in no gift, eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end, that you may be blameless in the Day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (vs. 4-9).
        In case you’re wondering, we can know we are blameless because our sins are forgiven through the blood of Jesus. We’ve been fully reconciled to God through the gift of grace. If you don’t have that same assurance, now is the time to get it, for the time-specific offer to be part of the Body of Christ and ultimately the heavenly government shall end when He comes again. People will still be able to accept Jesus as their Savior after the rapture and become part of the redeemed family of God, but they will not partake of the heavenly calling as the immortal government of Heaven.
       What I want to draw your attention to is this: because Christ is confirmed in us through the Holy Spirit now abiding in us, we are to come short in no gift while we await the rapture at the start of the Day of the Lord. Why is this so important? Because those gifts are how God equips us for our present assignment.
       When we think of the gifts of the Spirit, we tend to focus primarily on the various lists of the gifts given to individual members of the Body for the corporate setting. That is, when we come together to worship and praise God, to fellowship around the Word of God, and minister to one another in our faith. These corporate gifts are meant to be in operation, yet limited to a few in each local body in order to maintain order and submit to the authority God has placed over that local body.
      Yet throughout the New Testament, and in particularly the two letters to the Corinthians, it is clear that God gave these same gifts of the spirit to each believer for our own individual walk, just as each of us carries the fruit of the Spirit in us. As we saw earlier, each of us is to grow in the wisdom of God. Each of us has access to greater knowledge of the Word through the Spirit. Each of us has been given a measure of Christ’s faith. Each of us has access to healing by the stripes that Jesus endured.
      As with the disciples, all of us are commissioned to preach the Gospel, lay hands on the sick, and bring deliverance, such that these signs and wonders confirm our witness. Each of us has the mind of Christ and has been commanded to transform our mind with the Word so that we can discern what is good and what is evil. Each of us is to hear from God as to His will for the specific circumstances in our life, and speak it forth on earth as in Heaven (prophesy).
     And finally, Paul teaches us that we are to pray with our understanding and pray with the Spirit. The latter is also known as speaking in an unknown language, tongues, or the prayer language. In 1 Cor. 14:1, Paul tells us we’re all to walk in the God-kind of love he describes in the 13th chapter. He then tells us to desire the spiritual. Some translations say to desire spiritual gifts, yet the word “gifts” is in italics. That alerts us that the word was not in the original transcripts. The translators added it afterwards, thinking that it would make things clearer. In this case, it muddied the text. We are meant to pursue all the spiritual blessings available to us through Christ.
       Jude was one of Jesus’ half-brothers. Jude affirms the power of praying in the Spirit. “But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life” (vs. 20-21). The next two verses seem to imply that when we pray in the Spirit, and get the interpretation through the Spirit, we know how to share our faith and the message of Christ’s coming again with others. Since only God knows the heart of a person, He knows what they need to hear to be convinced, either compassion or the blunt truth about the snare that is coming on the earth.
       This ability comes when we are baptized in the Spirit. Water baptism is our confession of faith that we have accepted Jesus as our Savior and that we identify with Him. When we accept Jesus, He baptizes us with fire, which is the anointing of God through the Holy Spirit living within us. We are given the fruit of the spirit as evidence of God’s life in us. We become citizens of the Kingdom and have access to all the blessings and spiritual gifts for our individual walk of faith. The working of these gifts for the corporate setting is a separate anointing granted by Christ for the benefits of others. 
         This may not be what you were taught in your denomination. That’s why it’s important to remember that man-made religion is not the same as faith in God and His Word. We need every tool available to complete our earthly assignment. So don’t believe those who say the gifts have passed away. And don’t fall short of every gift available to you, including praying in the Spirit. This gift is especially crucial in these times because it is the Spirit who helps us when we don’t know how or what to pray (Rom. 8:26).  

      In the first chapter of his gospel, the apostle John set the stage for our Lord’s first coming. “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it” (v. 4-5). That statement highlights the cosmic battle between God and evil. Verse 5 literally reads, “And the Light keeps on shining in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it or understood it.”
       This is why God’s ways are foolishness to mankind (1 Cor. 2:14; 3:19). This is why mankind insists on interpreting spiritual truth through earthly logic, according to natural laws instead of the spiritual laws of Heaven. This is why science can’t prove that God exists because it is based on natural hypotheses only. It cannot measure intangible spiritual truths.
         John calls Jesus is the Word of God. That Word became flesh and dwelt among us so that mankind could see God’s nature and glory and power. But more importantly, we could experience His grace and truth.
       Our Lord’s first coming gave us the right to become God’s children to as many as would receive Him. The Greek word for “right” here is exousia (ex-oo-see’ah). It means ability, privilege, freedom, power, capacity, and force. That force was God’s loving and just nature. Every born-again believer was not born into His Kingdom of Light by blood or man’s flesh, but of God.
          When Solomon finished building the temple he wondered, “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You. How much less this temple which I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27). Exodus 40:34 answered the king’s question, recording that God’s glory did fill the temple. Unfortunately, the glory eventually left because of the people’s disobedience. But with our Lord’s first coming, that glory came to the earth again.
         The Chronos Lesson: Even more astonishing, however, is that the glory was poured out into mankind at Pentecost, filling born-again believers with God’s Holy Spirit! It is the Spirit who empowers us to overcome the evil and lawlessness of these last Days. It is the Spirit that plants the seeds of love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in us so that those in darkness can see the fruit of God’s work in our lives.
           It is the Spirit that reveals the truths of God’s Word at work in us. When we understand His Word, we can understand God’s plans. When we are willing to let go of our preconceived ideas and the wisdom of man, and allow the Spirit to make the scriptural connections for us, we can understand God’s times and seasons. Then and only then can we have the comfort, hope, and victory that empower us to be His witness and be a light to this generation.   
       This is one way we can prepare the way for our Lord's second coming at the appointed time.