Sonlight Devotional

Cecil duCille

March 17, 2009
Internet Broadcast

(For printable version click here.)

Praise God. We thank God for the privilege that He has given us that we can meet with His people in this fashion (the internet). Thank You, Jesus.

We thank God for the Word today. The Word for today is that “the bride hath made herself ready.” It is fascinating to think that God is saying we are responsible to make ourselves ready for the Bridegroom. It is fascinating and almost beyond our understanding to feel that the Almighty God Who made the heavens and the earth, the Almighty God Who made all things, should want to have a marriage relationship with humanity, a marriage relationship with a people who, as we are, don’t feel worthy of being in such a relationship with God, yet this was God’s plan from the very beginning. If we notice in all the scriptures, wherever God refers to marriage, it has a relationship to the association that God eventually wants with man, Himself being the male, and the church, the people of God, being the female, to bring forth people unto God in the likeness of Jesus Christ. He said, “Let us make man in our own image and after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). I always like to think of it like He is saying, “I am going to start out by making the image. Afterwards I am going to have this image develop into the likeness of God.”

Let us read scripture here before we go further. Revelation 19:5, And a voice came out of the throne, saying, Praise our God, all ye his servants, and ye that fear him, both small and great. 6And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. 7Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. 8And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints. 9And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God. Praise God.

Now, what do we really mean when we speak of the marriage supper of the Lamb? What do we understand that is to be happening right now? Actually, it took six days for God to make man and the seventh day He completed His work and rested. We are blessed, those of us who are listening today. We are blessed because the whole world is resting on us and the whole of God’s plan is resting upon this people at this time, that we should accomplish that which God has created and made and ordained. Therefore, we are the people of whom God is talking about when He says, “the marriage of the Lamb.” Nevertheless, we see some of the people of the ancient world coming right on to Jesus Christ and down through the ages, that God has actually been selecting His bride all along. In other words, the bride that we are talking about is a multi-membered body. If you notice, it said, “a voice of a great multitude,” a “voice of many waters.” The voice of the bride was like the “voice of many waters.” We can understand, then, that God is making a people for Himself at this time.

You ask yourself, “What is the purpose of a bride?”

Amen. We can see that the bride is going to bring forth something. Revelation 12:1, And there appeared a great wonder in heaven… This word heaven here refers to the church, the dwelling place of God. …a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet… The old time church that took the light from the sun was under her feet because now the sun was upon her. This church had sunlight, the glory of God. Remember, Jesus said, “Give her the glory that we had from the beginning, from the foundation of the world. Give this woman church that glory and the moon under her feet” (John 17). So then the glory was no longer on the moon church. The moon was the old church that God told you, “Come out of her and get up higher.” So, we see this church, a perfect church now, moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars… The twelve apostles, the apostolic doctrine, was her crown and the crown made her a queen. Amen. So, she was already married to the Lamb, Jesus Christ, and had the crown of twelve stars. Amen. Verse 2, And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered. This is what we call the tribulation. The travailing of the woman is the tribulation period through which the church is now going and is coming to the end of and God Almighty says, verse 3, And there appeared another wonder in heaven; (she is going to bring forth) and behold a great red dragon… Now, this tells us that we are not talking about the heaven of heavens where God dwells. We are talking about our heaven down here, the lowest heaven where God dwells in us in the church. So, there was another wonder in the church. …behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. Amen. Now, we are talking about a demonic system that had seven ruling sections and ten men ruling and they had seven crowns. Of course, the men did not have crowns, but had the churches or the areas of their operation. The heads can suggest different compartments or different denominations and they can suggest that these denominations had ten men, but it was the denominations that had the crowns, the power. The crowns show authority and power.

I want you to notice how scripture is written. When you talk about the devil’s tail, you are talking about the end of his situation. Amen. His head would be the beginning, but his tail would be the end and in the end he still had power in his tail. Revelation 12:4, And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born. Now, this child must be the sons of God. Amen. It must be the thing that God had created from the very beginning with Adam and Eve when He told them to multiply. It means that in the spiritual realm, God had something to come forth, a multiplication of humanity in the image of God and in the likeness of God. This now is God’s trump card to be played at the end of time, but Satan has decided that he is going to make a play for it. He is going to destroy this child when he is born.

I had a friend in Detroit who used to say, “Satan must be a fool. He couldn’t manage the woman, how did he expect to manage the manchild?”

Amen. He couldn’t manage the woman, therefore he had to wait there for her to have her child and he was going to kill the child. And his tail drew the third part of the stars… It is a sad story that we can clearly say that we have seen so many bright ones in the church have fallen and “bitten the dust.” They have come from the heights of heaven down to the earth. They have really let us down and deceived us, many men of God who have been deceived by Satan and thrown down and cast down by his tail. That is the end of the work that Satan is doing even at this very time. …the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born. We see, then, that he was cognizant of the fact that this woman was the wife of Christ Jesus or the wife of the Lamb and that she would do something in the earth that would completely finish him off.

Now, God in other places calls it the “elect.” He calls this the “elect.” He gives several names to this situation that we are facing right now. But the situation that the true church is facing – I am not talking about the Outer Court church. I am talking about those who are really serving God in Spirit and in truth and this church is to be birthed to bring forth something that is so powerful that Satan won’t have a chance.

Verse 5, And she brought forth a man child… I love this story. It didn’t say she brought forth a boy. It didn’t say she brought forth a male kid. It was a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne. 6And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days. This is marvelous. God is telling us about a period of three and a half years when Satan will get power, when the church will get power, when there will be the battle of Armageddon and the man child is going to fight the devil. If you were to go into battle and you read the back of the book and got the understanding of what’s going to happen, why would you still go? But here it is, verse 7, And there was war in heaven… The man child, therefore, is a church out of a church that will arise in the power of Almighty God, the vested power which God created from the very beginning that where He wants man to be. That this church, a people, individuals out of the church, will receive this power. God calls it the “man child” or the “elect” or whatever. He said, “…but for the elect’s sake should no flesh be saved…” (Matthew 24:22). That means to say Satan is going for keeps. He wants to destroy the humanity that God has created and he is going for keeps and what did God do? God created a people and He gave them the power to overthrow Satan. And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, 8And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.

Somebody said, “Wait! This is what happened in the high heavens when they cast Satan down.”

No. He is now talking about our heaven. This is the last heaven that Satan has any foothold in. The foothold that he had was given to him because man fell. You know the story how Adam fell and Satan took over and took away his authority and everything. This here is telling us that we are going to take back the authority at a certain time and the time is at this time. Amen. In our time and those of us who are alive now, we have enough life to live to see this come to pass. 8And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven.

Now verse 9, And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. 10And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. 11And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.

Brethren, let us see if we can connect this with the scripture that we read. Revelation 19:7, Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. We are rejoicing because the marriage of the Lamb is come and because the bride hath made herself ready. That is, God has thrown it wide open for the sons of men to be in the bride class and to be ready. It won’t take nine months, you know. The birth and the power is immediate. He said, “Receive power.” Now, let me read another scripture for you that tells you the same thing, so that we might not say, “Well, we are making something out of it.” Let’s go into Daniel 7:27, which says, And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him. We are looking now at a transfer of the kingdoms of this world into the Kingdom of God. In other words, the Kingdom of God is going to overthrow the kingdoms of this world. Amen. Verse 26, But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end. 27And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him.

Now, we must understand how scripture is written. Here are prophecies. Daniel prophesied 500 years (or something like that) before Jesus. We have Daniel, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah – these men prophesied long before Jesus came and they prophesied what would happen when Jesus came. Now, we are on the other side of those prophecies, where we have seen them all come to pass, coming to pass, from the coming of Jesus 2,000 plus years ago. Now we are seeing visions coming to pass and this is the last part of it. Amen.

In Revelation 11:15, we find, And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.

We see this and wonder, “Where is this going?” “Oh, this is a fable.”

Somebody says, “Oh, this is not going to happen for a long time to come.”

Not again. It is NOW the time when God Almighty is saying to us, “Get yourself ready. Be ready. Don’t be among the foolish virgins, be among the wise virgins.” NOW is the time that Jesus Christ has been talking about and the whole scripture has been talking about, that is the time of the coming of Jesus Christ into His temple. The first coming is where Jesus will appear first in the church. Matthew 25:1, Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom. Do you remember that? He said the white garment “is the righteousness of the saints.” They were righteous people but they had one fault – they did not allow the oil to get into the soul realm just as it was in the spirit realm. So that the spirit realm being perfect, the soul realm is imperfect even now and God is saying, “The bride must get herself ready.” She must get ready so that the oil that is in the spirit becomes also part of the soul. When we are talking about your soul, we are talking about your mind. The mind is the head of the soul. We are talking about your emotions, your will and your desires.

God is saying, “The bride must now get herself ready.” In other words, He promised that He would send watchmen. He promised that some people would receive the message. He promised that He would send messengers. He promised that He would send Michael the archangel to help us fight, to get the Kingdom of God ready for God. Now, what are we talking about? Amen. Well, we are talking about the Holy Spirit in our spirits; we are talking about the Holy Spirit in our souls. We are talking about the Spirit of God in my mind, that my mind must be sanctified. God Almighty says that your mind must come to the point where it cannot think evil, where it cannot dwell in evil, where it cannot harbor evil in it any longer. Your emotions must be purified so that your emotions can only feel godly emotions and all the bombardment of emotional sins that operate in us must be cast out.

God is saying that the strength of God is with us in preparing this area for God. Our emotions must be totally cleansed of all deviant emotions, emotions that are low down, that are taking us to be earthy. God Almighty said that when that emotional area is cleared and the Holy Spirit takes charge of your emotions, you will begin to feel God. Hallelujah. I believe there is a point of time when we are going to begin to see God, when we are going to begin to see the heavenlies. You see, whenever you are lifted up into that area of cleanliness that God wants you to be in, you begin to see differently. Yes, you have visions. In other words, you think they are visions but it is real; it is reality that you are seeing. What we are seeing here is not reality, because in a moment, in the twinkling of  the eye, this can pass away, but what you see in the other realm is real reality. Let me just explain a little to you here now. It all depends upon what frequency your soul works. Now, remember that your spirit works on a high frequency, because your spirit can contain God. Amen. God in your spirit means that there is a lifting, a pulling of man’s thoughts into the spirit realm.

Now, when somebody gets a word from the Spirit they say, “Oh, it is my mind telling me.” Where is your mind? Your mind is supposed to be in the Spirit and if your mind is in the Spirit you will have visions of heaven. Amen. When I say visions of heaven, you rise up to a point where you can see things that are heavenly right here with us. He said, Hebrews 12:1, Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses… You can actually be among the cloud of witnesses. Hallelujah. Consciously, because we are there unconsciously now. We go to church and we praise God and the spirits of God come down to help us praise, the angels praise with us and we don’t even know. We would just say that praise felt good. But the scriptures describe to us that when Jesus was born, the angels sang. The angels came down and the shepherds saw the angels and they received a message from the angels. Luke 2:11, For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. Heaven was so exuberant that it flooded over upon us.
God wants us to come to the place where our minds will be up in this area. When the mind gets up there it begins to lift all the other parts. Your emotions begin to respond. You can feel Him. I don’t know if you have ever felt Him, but you can feel heaven all around you. You can feel heaven around you. God said, Philippians 2:5, Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: 6Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: 7But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of man and coming here where we live.

God is saying that there is a lifting. The Spirit of God is lifting man to a higher level: that our thoughts will dwell on a higher level; our emotions will dwell on a higher level; our desires will be on a higher level. I have always been blessed with the thoughts from this little song that says:

When all other things on earth grow dim and I see only you

Man raises his thoughts to the point where all of the glory of earth means nothing to him in the presence of God. “Lord God, I want nothing but You. Only You. All that I have achieved, all that I have attained in this life means nothing to me. Only You, Jesus.” Desires are lifted to a higher level so that the will of man changes to become the will of God. Amen. That we want what God wants, so that we will what God wills. Then our minds and our whole heart and soul begin to be lifted. One day we find ourselves in the presence of God. The Bible says, And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him (Genesis 5:24). He was translated out of humanity because he had walked too close to heaven. Amen. It means that Enoch wanted God more than he wanted human life, more than he wanted anything else. His wife reported to us that Enoch walked with God and God took him. He went too close. He went too near. Now the time is come when God is calling man to come up higher. Come up higher.

“How do we get up there?”

Hallelujah. Let the Spirit take a hold of your mind and you will understand what will happen to you. You will begin to see things of God. You will begin to hear things of God. You will begin to understand things of God. Hallelujah. You will begin knowing what God is saying to us and you will see. And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; He was no longer Enoch. He ceased to be earthy. …for God took him. Can you imagine a phrase like that, that a man was taken by God because he had gone too close to heaven?

I want you to understand, brethren. He said to the church, “The bride hath made herself ready.” When your desires get so close to God, when your intentions, your hope, your emotions, your mind gets so close to God, God will lift you higher and higher and higher and it is possible God will take you sometimes. But right now, God wants a people here who will be concentrated and focused on God, that you would be focused on the Word of God, focused on the Spirit of God and your prayers would be that the Spirit of God take hold of your soul.

Sometimes people ask, “So, what do I pray for?”

Anything you pray for you are going to get it. But sometimes we go down and we pray for Mary and we pray for John and we pray for Tom and we pray for this and we pray for that and we pray for victory and we pray for overcoming, but then God wants you to begin to be conscious. To be conscious so that you pray that God will come into this vessel, “According to Your Word, O God,” and that God will lift this vessel to heaven’s height so Satan will be cast out of the Kingdom and the bride will be ready for the Lord.

Let me tell you, there is a selection going on right now. I do not know if God has all of His people already, but there is a selection going on right now; God Almighty is selecting a people; the “man child” is ready to be birthed. Let me read Revelation 11:3 for you. He says, And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. So it is in the same thousand two hundred and threescore days that we read about the bride (Revelation 12:6).

You understand that God is saying that the time has come when the sons of God must turn their eyes to heaven, because the hour of victory that God has created from the very beginning of the world for us is come. The saints in the heavenlies are on their toes and they are watching and praying and praising, because they see the manchild being developed. Yes, they see the manchild being developed and the day of his issue is yet to come. And I will give power unto my two witnesses – it means that the Spirit and the Word has brought these people to be the Spirit and the Word… Do you understand? God Almighty says that whatever you behold you will be. So you behold God, you believe the Word of God, you believe the Spirit of God. He is going to bring forth the Spirit and the Word in human beings, that we will walk the earth even as Christ Himself, the manifested Word of God. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

As we look at what God is doing, we must begin to present ourselves, because the way we are going to be lifted up is to open up ourselves to God. We must begin to say, “Lord Jesus, come into my temple. Cleanse every area, every corner. Remove every darkness. Remove everything within me that is contrary to life and immortality and give me the glory of God.” For He said, “I give them the glory…” The glory of God is now ours. We must open up to receive it and when this glory comes into us, this glory will lift our hearts and minds and souls into the heavenlies so that the soul will begin to be part of the heavenly realm. It says that Satan will be cast out of this soul.

It says that the bride “hath made herself ready.” What does that mean? It means that if you sit down there and say, “Oh, God will make me what I ought to be,” you will never be, because the bride must make herself ready. In other words, God has given us the power to make ourselves what He wants us to be. So, it is a willingness. God will give you some hard choices. God will say to choose Christ here on the one side or your family on the other side. Some of us are so deeply, terribly attached to our families that we are bound by this attachment. We make our families a barrier before God. May God Almighty help us to overcome this thing. Amen. Hallelujah.

Ephesians 5:27, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. It is possible, then, tobe human and to be holy and withoutblemish. To be holy means that I amobeying the Holy Spirit, the Spirit ofGod and to be without blemish meansthat I have been cleansed. I haveasked for cleansing and received it. Wehave to ask for cleansing. We have to believe God. Wehave to believe God that we can be cleansed, that we canbe holy. I know some preachers, some teachers say thatwe cannot be like Jesus, that we cannot be holy unless weleave this flesh. No, sir. God is saying here, if we look atColossians 1:21 for context, And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled 22In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight: Thatmeans that it is possible and that it isthe will of God that we be blameless,that we be holy, that we be withoutspot or blemish and it can be done ifwe believe it. By faith, we are goingto come march up into the holiest ofGod and be where God wanted us tobe from the very beginning.

He said, verse 23, If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister… In other words, God is saying that He has sent ministers;He has people on earth through whom He speaks. Yes.God has people on earth through whom He speaks. Thereare a lot of people who are saying God is saying this andGod is saying that and God isn’t really speaking throughthem. But then, if you have the Spirit of God in you, youmust be able to recognize those. So if you are deceived bythose, watch out, something is wrong with you. You needsome repentance, some cleansing, some help.

The Lord God is saying to us that God has prepared a ministry and He calls the ministry the fifth angel, the fifth messenger. This fifth messenger is getting stronger and stronger and stronger and rising up from earthiness into godliness from being carnal people. He said, “…You, that were sometime alienated…” and now you are made the very glory of God (Colossians 1:21).

Let us look at Ephesians 4:11, it is a well-used verse. And he gave some, apostles… Do you believe that? Do you believe that God gave some apostles? Do you believe that He gave some prophets? Do you believe that we have some of the brethren that work in the prophetic realm? We have men who are prophets and we have people who work in the prophetic realm that are part of the prophetic ministry, that have dreams and visions and impressions from God. Some of them hear the voice of God and they are part of this great prophetic ministry in the earth. …and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers… Jesus Christ didn’t make any “pastors,” He made shepherds. Verse 12, For the perfecting of the saints… That means to say that all that He is talking about here: of you being cleansed, of you being lifted up into a higher realm, of you being like Jesus Christ, of you having the mind of Christ, there it is. He said He has sent a ministry to help you to be such. For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: 13Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man… Yes, we will come to a perfect man. In other words, you have a little piece of the perfection of Christ, I have a little piece, the other person has a little piece when we come together unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: Hallelujah. Praise be to God.

Here we are in II Corinthians 11:2, For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. Now, we are talking about the basic concept thatGod has planted in the church: that we should not be denominationsbut that we should be under one Head, “oneLord, one faith, one baptism” (Ephesians 4:5). No longerdivided, no longer separated, no longer part of this andpart of that. Nothing of the kind. God Almighty says JesusChrist is the Head and the body comes out from the Head,the Head directs the body. My hands don’t go off doingtheir own thing. No, neither of my hands go off doingtheir own thing. They work according to the head and thehead directs the movement of thebody. My speech, my thoughts, everythingis all molded into one beingthat functions perfectly according toGod’s order. But if we have our ownway, if we have our own thing, if wehave our own church, we are awayfrom God, because there is only onechurch and this church has JesusChrist as Head. Brother, sister, if youhave Jesus Christ as Head and I haveJesus Christ as Head, then we are inthe same church and the churchmeans the body of Jesus Christ andthis body at present is developing amanchild. And out of this body iscoming a marvel of God in the earth. This marvel ofGod is self-supporting – when I say self-supporting, I meana body that has the Spirit of the living God in them andthat the fullness of the godhead bodily dwells in us. Thatis terrible to say, isn’t it? It’s true. God Almighty says itcan work, it can happen; the living God will dwell in usjust as He dwelt in Christ. The fullness of the body of thegodhead bodily incorporated in humanbeings and we will be one.

Now He said in Colossians 2:8, Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. 9For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. Father, Son and Holy Ghost, verse 10, And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power: Now, if you turn to John 17 again you will see how this is done. Jesus Christ explained it explicitly, exactly how it is done. John 17:23, “I in you and you in me and I in the Father.” So, where are we? In the Father and the Father in us so that we become part of the godhead, and that is the marriage. That is the marriage covenant that Jesus Christ is making with us. “After these days I make a new covenant with the house of Israel, not according to the old covenant that was made before, because in this covenant I will be in them and they shall be my people and I shall be their God” (Jeremiah 31:31, Hebrews 8:8). Amen. So, then, the living God Almighty is creating a system whereby He will multiply Himself through the human race through the Body of Christ. This is the highest calling that humanity could ever have and this is the most glorious thing that God has ever done on earth, to incorporate Himself within human beings so that we become one with Him and He with us.

Yes, brethren, the bride hath made herself ready. Let me put it another way. The bride is making herself ready. Are you part of that bride? You say you don’t know. Well, get there and know quickly. Ask God and He will show you. Are you a part of this bride whom Jesus Christ says is making herself ready? “Be ye ready, saith the Lord your God, for you know not what hour the Lord will come.” Because the God of heaven has so ordained it that the Spirit of the living God will help you to be made ready.

May God help us and may the Lord God bless us and grant us His peace in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.