Sonlight Devotional

Mark Jantzi

(The following are the comments given by Mark Jantzi later in this same meeting to add to what was given by Janet in the above message.)

Can I add a few things to what I think the Lord is saying concerning what was said earlier by my wife Janet?

The Lord showed this word to her a little bit ago.  I knew what the Lord was speaking about to her about, and I have been meditating on that a little bit as to how it pertains to some of the things that are being said here.

In this first passage, in Matthew 11, the Lord said, “My people are like children—they are still in the marketplace.”  I think that the description that Cecil gave of the “Outer Court” speaks of this marketplace.

Those of you who were in Michigan at the conference last year, the entire theme that God was speaking there was, “You have come out, but you have not yet come in.”  Okay.  You have come out of the world.  Some of you have come out of Babylon, and in coming out, we came first into the “Outer Court,” but what God is saying is that He wants a people in this “Holy Place.”  You have come out of the world—you have come out of these things—but you have not yet come into the “Holy Place.”   The Holy Place is where God will prepare us for this time of separating, because we are not yet a people that dwell where He in the end desires to bring us, and that is into the Holy of Holies “under the shadow of the Almighty” (Ref. Psalm 91:1).  What I am saying is that to come into the Holy Place we are going to have to leave the marketplace.

We come, meeting after meeting, and we cry, “God, I want to be changed,” and what has happened is that we have come up to a thing called “the veil.”  It is the thing that you must go through in going from the Holy Place into the Holy of Holies.  Amen.  The book of Hebrews in Chapter 10, Verse 20, makes it very clear that the veil is “flesh.”  We see that again in 2 Corinthians 3:15 where it speaks of a veil being over the eyes of the children of Israel when the Law is read.  God, however, wants a people now with whom that veil can be taken away.  So then, the first problem is that we have come out of the world, but we have not come in, even into the Holy Place.

“Marketplace” is a place of much activity.  Marketplace is a place of “my” activity, and “my” thing.  It is a place of buying and selling, and of the basic dealing of Christ when He comes suddenly into His temple.  If this is what God is saying in this hour, Brethren, then He is coming for the purpose of cleansing His Temple!  Now, in as much as it is, we can say that there is nothing sinful about market activity.  Buying and selling is not against the law, but there comes a point where we are going to have to separate; and either we say, “I am going to follow the Lord’s business from now on,” or we say, “I am going to remain here, and I am going to carry on my business.”

Now, God did not say that your business was illegal [It will only be illegal if you disobey God], but you are still going to have to make a choice.  Your business is going to have to decrease to the extent that “His” business can find place.  As long as we continue to fill a hundred per cent of our life with “my” business, then there is going to be no place at all for God’s business!  We are a diligent, hard working people, but what God is saying to us is that we have been filling our entire being with “our” business!

There are several other things here.  One of the things about Outer Court is “playing at religion!”  On the one hand, there is a fine line between what is a cult and what are the true people, but on the other hand there is also a fine line between what is denomination and what is the Church of God!  So you walk between several fine lines here.

In religion, there is the carrying on of “ritual.”  There is a ritual that “It is time to mourn.”  There is a ritual that “It is time to laugh.”  These are things that we can program into our meetings.  Do you understand what I am saying?  We can have a routine and a procedure: “It is time to laugh!  Everybody laugh!”  The leader gets up and says, “It is time to laugh!” and so we are playing wedding music, you know?  “It is time to mourn.  Now, everybody repent!”  You know?  “Now, all fall down!”

These things, you see, are carried on in denominations.  They publish a little bulletin, and they say, “We will have revival!”  Well, how do you know you are going to have revival?  The thing that makes for revival in that system is that they call in a speaker.  He speaks strong, and so they call in another speaker after him, and he speaks.  They have a topic that each one is going to bring and they have a theme, and this is called “revival.”

The other thing that I feel we need to point out here (concerning the place that Janet quoted from in Jeremiah 2 (where the people of God had forsaken the fountain of living waters and had hewn out cisterns) is that we are also speaking of Outer Court versus (or in comparison to) the Holy Place.  The thing of Outer Court is the “carrying on of religion.”  I like Clayt Sonmore’s definition:  “The City of Religion vs. The City of God.”  Amen?  There is a “City of Religion.”  There is a great gathering of people in that city, and the novice will not know the difference.  He will come in, and he will say, “Isn’t this great?  This is a wonderful place to be!”

In the Outer Court, however, there is also a cistern.  By cistern, I mean a spiritual reservoir of some kind for spirit life; and cistern is, I guess, the best word for it.  In the passage in Jeremiah that Janet quoted, He said, “You wanted water.  You did not like the dry times, and you went and you made a cistern!”  So He was saying that this cistern is a thing that man makes against those times.  However, you see, Brethren, we have to go through dry times in order that we will find the “Fountain.”

The first thing they experienced after they crossed the Red Sea was the “dry” time; and what was the first response out of the people?  It was not going to the “Fountain,” but it was murmuring and complaining.  The “Living Fountain” was in their midst, and in spite of their murmuring and complaining, followed them and finally He had to manifest Himself in their midst as the “Rock.”  However, what man wants to do is to make a “cistern.”  This is characteristic of man-made religion.  This whole business started in the Garden of Eden.  Man felt guilt, he felt condemnation, but his method was to cover it all up; and he made “fig leaf” religion!  That is man’s religion.  Rather than go to God (repent; get the blood; and get the thing taken care of), man’s thing was to “hide.”

So man, in religion, also makes cisterns.  He realizes that water is life, and so he says, “Well, we are going to store up; and we are going to have a reservoir here, and a reservoir here, and have one there….”   However, there is a problem with this.  God says in Jeremiah 2, “These things that you are planning to sustain you in dry times—you have a problem with them.  You are filling them with water, and the water is leaking out because they are broken and they cannot hold water; and furthermore, anything else that you build will end up the same way.”

So, the “Living Water” is found in the Holy Place, and I believe I can repeat what Janet asked, “How many of you are going about the business of hearing the voice of God?”  If you drove a thousand miles to hear someone else speak, it may have been in vain, unless you learn to hear the voice of God!

Brother Pete made a statement earlier concerning the place where the only thing you would see would be the concrete, because we would be down before God on our faces.  Brethren, this is why we have these hard times in our life; it is so that we will be brought to the time where we have learned to hear the voice of God.

You have heard me speak of this before, and you may be tired of hearing it again, but there was a time in my life several years ago when my whole world caved in!  Brethren, if your world is caving in, bless God!  I hope you do not have that happen to you every year of your life, but it is an opportunity, a time to learn to hear the voice of God; because it may be that you are one of those who will not cry out until you are desperate!  How many of you believe that?

So here is the issue that I think God is hitting at today.  He is hitting at these issues: DO YOU BELIEVE?  DO YOU BELIEVE THE MESSAGE?  DO YOU BELIEVE THE WORD?  Sister Sharon got up here yesterday when we were singing one of these songs, and she said straight out, “You do not believe that song!  You do not believe what you are saying!  If you believed what you are saying, your actions and the manifestation of what is coming from you would be different.”  In addition, God is hitting at the issue that if you believe that you might be in the marketplace, carrying on marketplace activities, then what are you going to do about it?  You are going to cry out to God, “I want to come on in!”

As I started to say about this time of crisis in my life, it was then in those days that I first began to hear the voice of God, and it was because I went down on my face.  It was not concrete (it was a hardwood floor), but I learned to know the detail of the grain of that oak floor, because, in fact, my nose was touching that floor, and I stayed on my face.  My tears were going down into the cracks of those boards and I was crying out to God, “Do not leave me in this desperate place.  Do not abandon me in this place, Oh Lord.”  Finally, I came to the point where I said, “God, I do not know how to hear You.  I am not practiced in hearing the voice of God, but I am convinced of one thing.  I have read enough about You that I know that You know how to get through to me.  You have talked to some pretty stubborn people in times past.  You got through to old Jacob.  You got through to David.  You got through to all these guys, and you know how to get through to me!  And I am going to stay here on my face until I hear from You!”

I did not tell God I was going to fast for forty days, I just said, “I am hanging with You until I can hear Your voice, because I know You are talking!”  God answered me and when He spoke, it was not in these ears.  He put a trumpet (a spiritual trumpet) right here [to my heart] and He blew the words right through me; and He blew these words, “Will you bear with Me a little while longer?”

What He was saying to me is that “Your tribulation is not over yet!”  Now, that was not the word that I wanted to hear, but I rejoiced!  I rejoiced because I had heard the word of God!  He truly spoke to me and I heard it.  I gladly said, “Yes!”  (In my mind thinking, “Oh!  Maybe another three or four months and it is going to be over….”  It was, in fact, another five or six years, but I was able now to go through it—because I had heard the voice of God!  I knew that He knew.)  Amen!

I just wanted to add that to what was said here.