The Reigning Ones Part 5
The Reigning Ones Part 5
By Nita Johnson
January 2009
Following is a transcirption of the teachings in New Orleans.
Isaiah 11; 1And there shall come forth a Shoot out of the stock of Jesse [David’s father], and a Branch out of his roots shall grow and bear fruit. 2And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him–the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the reverential and obedient fear of the Lord– 3And shall make Him of quick understanding, and His delight shall be in the reverential and obedient fear of the Lord. And He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes, neither decide by the hearing of His ears; 4But with righteousness and justice shall He judge the poor and decide with fairness for the meek, the poor, and the downtrodden of the earth; and He shall smite the earth and the oppressor with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips He shall slay the wicked. 5And righteousness shall be the girdle of His waist and faithfulness the girdle of His loins.
We are talking about the Reining Ones, those whose mind it is to leave the world behind and go deep in God and, as a result, be used mightily by God. Years ago, I spent considerable time every day opening my Bible and praying the above passage to the Lord. I would tell Him, “Lord, I know that this passage is about my Messiah, the coming Christ; I understand that. However, there is something deep inside of me yearning and aching for the reality of this Scripture to be inside of me, as well. So, I ask you Lord, please give it to me. I want it more than I want to breathe.” I would pray sincerely in this manner every day.
This went on for two years. One particular day, as I was praying, the Lord appeared to me and said, “Nita, stand next to Me.” As I came and stood next to the Lord, a double yoke suddenly appeared on His shoulders, and then began to enlarge until it reached my shoulders and we became double-yoked. As this occurred, all my human passions, the good and bad, went down, down, down and out my feet. When I was empty, everything that was going on inside the Lord began to fill me: the Spirit of the Lord, the Spirit of wisdom, the Spirit of understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and the reverential and obedient fear of the Lord. The amazing thing is that when the Seven Spirits of God own you, it does something inside of you. It creates a humility and meekness in you because there is a total absence of pride. You don’t realize how much human pride you have until it is removed. Jesus walked with no pride, no lust, and no carnality of any manner. He was totally pure, all God and all man. When the Seven Spirits of God filled me, when the nature and character of my Lord filled me, all of these things were swallowed up in Him. It was no longer my nature or my character, but His nature and His character that filled me.
Once I was completely filled by Him, the Lord turned to me and said, “Nita, you have been praying every day for two years that I would let you have what is in Isaiah 11:2-5, I want you to know what you are now experiencing is this passage fulfilled in you. This is what it means to be consumed and possessed by the Seven Spirits of God.” Furthermore, He told me that when He walked the earth He would say to people, “All you who are heavy laden come unto Me and I will give you rest.” He quoted the whole passage, Matthew 11:28 to me.
Matthew 11:28-30: 28Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.
30For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
He shared with me: “As I would say this to the people, it is true that I was concerned that Judaism had become a means of bondage, rather than a means for worship and relationship with God. However, that is not what I was asking them to exchange with Me. I was asking them to take My yoke of life in the Spirit in exchange for their yoke, the yoke of the sinful nature.” When the yoke of the sinful nature is removed from the soul, the soul is at last free to make its ascent into God and thus experience the infilling of the Seven Spirits of God. This is life above the curse. Those who are filled in this manner are called the Reigning Ones because they really walk in two spheres at the same time. They rule and they reign from the Heavenly sphere while their feet walk on the ground. This was life as Jesus lived it.
He came to bring many sons into glory (Heb 2:10). In referring to this, the Bible isn’t just talking about people getting saved, becoming Christians, and then living for the world while they live for Jesus. It is referring to sons who have made a break from the things in the world, gone deep in God, and have grown to full maturity in Christ. It is talking about those who look like Jesus in their nature and character.
Now, some may wonder how this can be on this side of Heaven. However, God made a plan many thousands of years ago, before He ever created Adam. He knew Adam was going to fall; He knew that when He pulled His people Israel out of the world that they, too, would fail. He knew when He brought the Church into being that it would not always be what He created it to be, and He knew that there would be many failures along the way. However, He also knew that the day would come when a company of people would love Him so much that they would leave the world behind to go deep into God, and these people would live in the last days. His joy was to give these people His Kingdom, His very self, so He could then give these people to His Church. The Reigning Ones are not walking in glory simply for their own sake; they’re walking in glory because God is going to use them to bring His Church to its highest caliber of living in the life of the Spirit. They are going to be remarkable men and women.
The Reigning Ones will walk in the mind of the Lord because they will be filled with the seven Spirits of God. As I shared before, when you are filled with the seven Spirits of God, you no longer think your own thoughts. Jesus has literally come to take up His dwelling place in your soul; not just your spirit, but your entire soul is possessed by Christ. He rules there, lives there, He animates your being from this position of reigning and brings you to the position of reigning in Heaven as well. In addition, He owns your mind. You no longer think your own thoughts, you think His thoughts. He is thinking through you. Your heart belongs to Him. His passions are expressed through you. You are no longer living out of your own passions; instead, you are walking in the Spirit of wisdom so that your quest is no longer for the things of this world, but for God and His Kingdom. Human wisdom will lead you to the world every time, whereas divine wisdom will take you deeper into God and into the Kingdom. God’s wisdom will always lead you to God via the cross.
People that have embraced the cross and the life of the cross until the world has been crucified to them, and they to the world are the Reigning Ones.(Gal 6:14). They will live in Christ wholly and completely. They will have the Spirit of understanding and they will understand the wisdom of God. They will walk in wisdom and know how to implement it in these last days. The Church is going to need them because the darkness is going to be so great that the Church is going to be lost without God intervening by His Spirit in a remarkable way. Because of this, these people who will leave the world behind to go deep in Him and His wisdom will help to equip the Church to rule and reign during the days of darkness. The Spirit of wisdom will give them the insight into what it takes to live in God and bring God to earth in this remarkable way. The Spirit of understanding will impart to them an understanding of how to apply the wisdom given by the Spirit of wisdom. The Spirit of counsel is not only God’s counsel to them, but leave for the Church and the world.
Joseph of the Old Testament was one who walked in the Spirit of counsel. God lifted him up in a most wonderful way in Egypt through the Spirit of counsel. So the Spirit of counsel is not just for the individual receiving it, but God uses it to help nations, churches and people. As He did with Joseph in the past, so He will do today.
The Spirit of knowledge and the Spirit of the fear of the Lord
Proverbs 8; 13The reverent fear and worshipful awe of the Lord [includes] the hatred of evil; pride, arrogance, the evil way, and perverted and twisted speech I hate.
A Christian cannot grow in God without the fear of the Lord. It is the first thing one must lay hold of in order for growth to begin. You can be saved for over 30 years and not have the fear of God. When people don’t have the fear of God, it is easy to sin because they don’t necessarily feel convicted when they sin. Now, depending on the degree of the fear of God that you walk in, you may find it easy to do smaller sins but not greater ones. However, one who is really owned by the fear of God cannot sin. The pain of sinning against God is so deep and real that there is no desire to do it. This gift enables them to withstand every temptation no matter how strong it may be. They have come to the place as stated in Proverbs, that the fear of the Lord includes the hatred of evil, pride, arrogance, the evil way, and perverted, twisted speech.
Someone who walks in the fear of God hates what God hates and loves what God loves. It’s deeply painful for them to even consider sin of any kind. In the last 30 to 50 years the grace message has been perverted to the point that the Church feels that it can sin and be covered by grace and there is no call to deeper levels of holiness. The Church has not been taught that it really can walk in the same purity as Jesus Himself walked in. However, it is true: not only can we, but we have been called to walk as Jesus walked. Jesus says, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” He is calling us to perfection not unlike He Himself walked in, and this perfection develops in direct proportion to our fear of the Lord.
Many years ago when I was in Israel, I was spending time in worship. I felt myself going higher and deeper into the realm of worship and knew that in a moment I would be free of this world and in Heaven. I continued to push through and, suddenly, I was released from the earthly realm and found myself up in Heaven with the Father. It wasn’t a manifestation of the Father such as I had experienced before, where He had manifested Himself as a reigning King. Rather, it was the glory of the Father – such glory as I cannot even describe to you because of its sublime holiness. As the glory of the Father intensified and emanated into the room, the Father Himself became encircled by this glory. This glory was so brilliant, the majesty so incredible, the holiness so penetrating that I found myself in anguish. Here I was, an intercessor who loves the Lord, in the ministry for nearly thirty years, living a pure and holy life, but I was in anguish because of the holiness of God. He was so holy that even my refined spirit and soul could not bear to be in the light of His holiness.
Paul talks about God in this way in 1 Timothy 6:16. He speaks of Him as dwelling in a light that no man can gaze into and I can promise you that this aspect of God is truly of such a nature that no man can gaze into it. You cannot see into the bosom of God when He appears in His holiness in this way. Your soul cannot take it; He is too holy. Every part of my being was trembling with such fear of God because of His holiness. When you have been in that presence you cannot come back and sin easily or disobey easily. When you have been before the Spirit of God and learned to fear Him, you cannot even speak His name lightly because you are in such awe of Him. When you have been in this presence, it makes the world a totally different place; you see the world through different eyes.
Of course, beauty does exist in the world. Nature presents us with every kind of beauty imaginable. People are beautiful, and God loves people since He has created us in His own beautiful image. But there is also a seductive side to the world that exalts what is sinful; it exalts and breeds idolatry of that which is impure and very offensive in the eyes of God. To live in a world where sin and idolatry are rampant reminds me of what I saw while ministering in India. In that country it seems that there is a shrine on every street corner. Everywhere you look there is idolatry. The idols can be small or fifty feet tall, but they are everywhere and of every conceivable sort. There are around 350 million gods in India, so the idols takes on many shapes and sizes and where there isn’t an idol there is an idol shrine.
The idols always look so perverted. The idolatry is so sad and heart-breaking and it is the perversion of everything pure and holy. When you have been in His presence, you become acutely aware of the things that pervert the beauty of holiness and the majesty of God. The fear of God permeates your soul, and offending Him becomes very difficult. Following His direction can no longer be taken lightly. If He speaks, you persist and endure, even at the cost of your own discomfort, because you fear God and want to be in the presence of God and have access into His heart and into His life. Everything changes when God has created in you His holy fear. It is very different than man’s fear of God. Everything I’m sharing with you about the Seven Spirits of God is a quantum leap beyond what most Christians have experienced.
Proverbs 16; 6By mercy and love, truth and fidelity [to God and man–not by sacrificial offerings], iniquity is purged out of the heart, and by the reverent, worshipful fear of the Lord men depart from and avoid evil.
The fear of God teaches you to hate and avoid evil. You don’t hate and avoid evil to gain the fear of God. In Christ, He brings you the desire and willingness to subject yourself to all commands and demands of the Spirit, and to resist the commands and demands of the flesh. He takes you into an entirely different life.
Deuteronomy 6; 1Now this is the instruction, the laws, and the precepts which the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you might do them in the land to which you go to possess it, 2That you may [reverently] fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son’s son, and keep all His statutes and His commandments which I command you all the days of your life, and that your days may be prolonged.
This Scripture teaches us that living in the fear of God will prolong your life in holiness and in the pleasure of God. Most Christians are not aware of the fact that your time in this life is given for the purpose of preparing you for eternity. That is why you are here. You are here to prepare you for eternity. Your actions, attitudes and willingness to go deep in God will determine how you walk in eternity. If you never become more than a mundane Christian, if you are someone who never allows himself to be transformed, you will spend the rest of your life straddling two worlds. When you get to Heaven, you will be on the lowest rung and will remain there all the days of eternity. As Heaven continues to advance in the light and in the knowledge of God, you will always remain on the lowest rung on the ladder. Of course, you will be glad to be in Heaven rather than Hell, but you will never walk as close to the glory as someone who has prepared themselves.
I’ve been taken up into the Spirit and given the privilege of meeting some of the saints. That’s not sin; God has no problem with bringing saints from earth into Heaven to meet our brothers and sisters who have gone on ahead of us. He does have a problem with us talking to the dead, but as Jesus said about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, so He does not have a problem doing this. I have had the privilege of meeting some of the saints and I find that those who walked particularly close to God in this life shine with such a majesty and holiness in Heaven that it is difficult to look upon them. Those saints that did not go quite as far in God still shine and emanate the glory of God but they do not inspire the same kind of terror of the Lord in their presence as those who have gone deep.
The fear of the Lord
For instance, one saint I have had the privilege to meet is Moses. Because he walked so deep in God in his life, I could not bear to be near him very long because of the terror of the Lord that emanated from him. He lived in such holiness here, and in Heaven he lives in the top echelons because his soul was so refined here. When you have the fear of God, you are provoked to pull deeper and deeper into Him and away from the world, resulting in a purifying of your soul. It becomes more and more holy until you are happier, more at rest and peace. The quest to make your home in the presence of God becomes your passion, and it becomes unbearable for you not to walk in that tangible presence, because the fear of the Lord has taught you to hate evil. It has taught you to hate all things God hates and to love all that He loves.
Exodus 20; 18Now all the people perceived the thundering and the lightning and the noise of the trumpet and the smoking mountain, and as [they] looked they trembled with fear and fell back and stood afar off. 19And they said to Moses, You speak to us and we will listen, but let not God speak to us, lest we die. 20And Moses said to the people, Fear not; for God has come to prove you, so that the [reverential] fear of Him may be before you that you may not sin. 21And the people stood afar off, but Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.
Can you imagine such a scene? Imagine being one of the children of Israel at the bottom of that mountain. With all its burnings, thunder and trembling, you see Moses, your leader, going to the top and entering in through the fire, followed by the thundering voice of God. May I tell you something else that happened in the giving of the Ten Commandments? This is not known to the Gentile church, but it is recorded in Jewish history. When the Ten Commandments were given, something remarkable occurred. First, however, I want to say that when God the Father speaks, His words are so filled with power and life that they must produce something. God cannot speak without producing life; it is not possible. If God wants to speak a human being into existence, He simply says, “Gail, be,” or a world into existence, He speaks, “Earth, be.” His words must produce life because He is God.
So here He is on the top of the mountain, giving the Ten Commandments to the people of Israel. Every word coming out of the mouth of God is going forth down to the bottom of the mountain, encircling every Jewish soul and wrapping them in His glory. His words are taking their souls up into a place of revelation so pure and powerful that for a moment, each Jewish person is lifted out of the temporal and into the Spirit and they see the truth about God. They see the truth about the world, the temporal plain, and about the Kingdom of God. It’s not in our Bible, but it is part of Jewish history handed down from generation to generation since the days of the giving of the law. Israel was elevated to understand the Kingdom of Messiah.
When they came down from this experience back into the temporal realm, it could be equated to a Christian receiving prayer in a prayer line and the power of God taking their spirit off to Heaven. Then, they come back down and share about the glories they saw there. That’s what happened to Israel and that’s what made their transgressions so bad, because, for a moment, they did understand truth as God intended it to be understood. They understood that the giving of the law was not something that was an end in itself, but rather an instrument designed to make them understand their need for connection with the Kingdom. It was a remarkable experience.
So in the Mount Sinai experience we see that the people have been given the revelation of God to teach them the fear of God. Can you feel this same calling in your heart, too? God wants to give every Christian the fear of God. He wants to impart to you the fear of God that will allow Him to give you revelation of the Kingdom and the revelation of Jesus Christ. During the past two thousand years, the Church has had such a miniscule understanding and revelation of Jesus Christ that if we really knew the whole of it, it would boggle our minds that we have settled for so little. But the day is coming, and is close at hand, that the Church will walk in the full knowledge of Jesus Christ through these Reigning Ones who have paid the price to learn the revelation of God.
Think about John, the one who received the book of Revelation. After the Lord was taken, John continued his quest for God until he walked in union with Christ. He lived in the deep places of God. One day, as he is in deep worship, wrapped up in the Spirit, the revelation begins. Jesus appears to him, “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” and He begins to give him the revelation of Himself. No one told him about these things before. Of course Jesus had shared many things with him when He was still on this earth, but the revelations given to John as recorded in the book of Revelation were brand new; these revelations concerning the nations came directly from Jesus Christ. He was given to see what no man before him had seen. Not even the apostle Paul with all of his profound revelation had been given to see what John the beloved saw that day before the Lord Jesus Christ.
Think about what it would be like to be sitting and worshipping the Lord, when, suddenly, the Lord Jesus Christ appears to you and takes you up into the Heavenlies and teaches you the revelation of Himself. How would that change your heart, how would it change your life? We think we have the revelation of Jesus Christ, but we do not. There is so much of the Bible that has not yet been unveiled to this Church that it would break your heart if you knew how little you have compared to how much God wants to give you. To enter into the growth that God requires for these last days, the Church must have this revelation. God will bring this revelation through the Reigning Ones: those who have been filled with God Himself, and who live their lives by the Spirit of the fear of the Lord.
Proverbs 15; 33The reverent and worshipful fear of the Lord brings instruction in Wisdom, and humility comes before honor.
To have the fear of the Lord is to know instruction in humility. To have the fear of the Lord is to walk the path where God is ever increasing His honor upon you and your honor among men.
1 Chronicles 16; 29Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name. Bring an offering and come before Him; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness and in holy array. 30Tremble and reverently fear before Him, all the earth’s peoples; the world also shall be established, so it cannot be moved.
Isaiah 66: 2For all these things My hand has made, and so all these things have come into being [by and for Me], says the Lord. But this is the man to whom I will look and have regard: he who is humble and of a broken or wounded spirit, and who trembles at My word and reveres My commands.
If you want more attention from God, live your life in a place where you tremble at God’s Word. God is bringing those who will draw near to Him into a place where they tremble before Him. This is a genuine fear of the Lord. You can fear Him because you know He’s God and He’s holy and that you don’t want to do too much to offend Him. Rather, to live every moment of your life in fear and trembling of displeasing Him as the Bible teaches is an entirely different thing. It is a much more fruitful and productive life, where your heart knows happiness and joy as they cannot be known in any other way. Knowing the pleasure of the Lord continuously is truly life abundant. The Church doesn’t walk in this place now, but God is calling those who will to come and learn what it means to tremble at His Word, to learn what it means to walk in a broken and wounded spirit. I’m not talking about being hurt by somebody so that your heart is broken and your spirit is wounded; I’m talking about a state of spirit and soul that is created by the ministry of the Holy Spirit in one who is completely given over to the love of God.
There is a love that is so high and so holy, so pure and lovely, it is the most desired of all the virtues of Christ and cannot be attained without a broken and contrite heart. Only a heart that has been broken by the Spirit of God can know this divine love and understand the purity that flows through the genuine and true love of God. And the only one that can walk in that place is the one that knows the fear of God and has learned to tremble in God’s presence and at His Word.
What is life this side of Heaven? What is life, if not to know God deeply and intimately, to think His thoughts and know He has imparted to you something that is so holy to Him: His very own thoughts and passions? He is a holy God; when He touches you, it is holy. He wants you to be holy. When He gives you the privilege of seeing in the Spirit what He sees, that’s holy and He wants you to be holy. When He releases to you the insight into His presence, Word, truth and life, that is holy and He wants you to be holy. Why? Because He wants you to know Him, He wants to be more to you than just black ink on the white pages of a book. He wants you to know Him, to feel what He feels, to understand His Kingdom and things about the world, and the way He feels about, understands and sees them. He wants you to see the Church through His eyes. He wants you to see creation through His eyes and understand why God would make the world, the solar system and the stars! Why He has made man, why He made you – because He is love. He wants you to be touched by His revelation and to know and understand His will, good pleasure, and the things of this Kingdom that you have been born into. But to grasp this revelation, you must be holy. Someone can preach it, teach it and talk all about it, but you cannot know or experience it if you are not holy. He wants you to be holy so He can reveal Himself to you.
I can remember one time when God took me to Heaven. I was out on my daily walk with a friend. Each time I would tell her to bring Scripture, and we would study together as we walked. We were going over some scriptures, and I began to expound on the revelation of God, when, suddenly, my Spirit was in Heaven with the Father, standing before Him (I don’t know what my body was doing at the time). He began to wash me in liquid light, all the while talking to me about history: why He made Heaven and earth, why He made man and so on, all of which things are about to culminate in this very hour. Each time He asked me a question, “Why do you think I did this?” I would say to Him, “Lord, I don’t know,” because I’ve learned that when God asks you a question He’s not trying to figure out how much you know or asking you to teach Him something. What He wants to do is reveal the answer.
On that day, He began to share with me His grand purpose for Creation, all the way from the ancient past, up to this present hour. He said to me, “Do you know why I’m bringing history to this climax? Because I had it in my heart from the very beginning that there would come a day when I could pull out of the peoples of the earth a commonwealth of people who would love Me so much that they would leave the world behind to go deep in Me and allow Me to separate them completely from the world, so that they could know Me fully. And when they would finally come so close to Me that they were completely purified, I could bring them deep into Me and fill them with Myself. I have waited all these thousands of years to make My home in My people and to live My life through the temples that I have made. I am consumed by this passion.” Then He said, “And Nita, you don’t know what it’s like to know the passion of God.” When He said this, He put a tear drop of passion into my heart, and that little tear drop of passion was so compelling, so profound and powerful, so intense, that I began to shake and quake in every part of my being. I couldn’t contain the love, desire, the realization of the incredible price He paid, nor anything else inside that tear drop that drove God to do all He has done over all these thousands of years to prepare for Himself this company of people.
This is the day, the hour, the moment where He is calling His people out of the world to know Christ, and to live in the revelation that He had prepared for us from the beginning of time! I don’t care where you’ve walked with God in the past, because that does not matter. I don’t care where you have walked with God yesterday, or how many wrong decisions you have made. All that matters today is the decision that you make right now. Will you let the world go? If what awaits you at the end of the path is union with Christ, being filled with the fullness of Jesus Christ, isn’t that all that matters? When I ask if you will leave the world behind, I mean just that. You don’t make the decision tonight and then go home and watch your television. I mean leave the world behind, spend your time in prayer and in the Word. When you are at work, keep your mind on Christ. Learn to live in this world while you live in Christ. He did not pay the price on the cross to have a Bride covered with the filth of the world. He did it to have a Bride that was pure and holy, showing forth His glorious virtues to the praise and glory of His honor. Amen?
In Him,
Nita Johnson