Sonlight Devotional

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Scripture reading: Revelation 11:5-6

Revelation 11:5 says, “And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed.”

We are talking about a people who will have the power of the spoken word. We want to remind you how powerful the spoken word can be. When we think of Elijah, we understand the place where God is bringing His people – people whose mouth will not speak anything else but the Word of the living God.

1 Kings 18:37 and 38, “Hear me, O LORD, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the LORD God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again. Then the fire of the LORD fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.” Elijah called fire from heaven.

On another occasion men came to arrest him and they were burnt with fire. 2 Kings 1:10-13a, “And Elijah answered and said to the captain of fifty, If I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And there came down fire from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty. Again also he sent unto him another captain of fifty with his fifty. And he answered and said unto him, O man of God, thus hath the king said, Come down quickly. And Elijah answered and said unto them, If I be a man of God, let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And the fire of God came down from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty. And he sent again a captain of the third fifty with his fifty.“ This man humbled himself before God and God spared him. There is precedence in the Word of God for the sons of God to speak and for fire to go forth and destroy the enemy.

In Revelation 11:5a we read, “And if any man will hurt them.” Notice that the first captain of fifty intended to hurt Elijah. The second captain of fifty intended to kill Elijah. However the third captain of fifty knelt down and humbled himself before Elijah and before God and besought him and said unto him, “O man of God, I pray thee, let my life, and the life of these fifty thy servants, be precious in thy sight” (2 Kings 1:13c). He was not there to kill Elijah. God said to Elijah, “Go down with him.” We are going to see this very thing happen again. When people come to kill the sons of God, the man child church, then God will let fire devour them. God said, “IN THIS MANNER be killed” (Revelation 11:5b).

Verse 6a, “These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy.” James 5:17 notes that Elijah shut up heaven that “it rained not” for “three years and six months.” 1 Kings 17:1-3, “And Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said unto Ahab, As the LORD God of Israel liveth, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word. And the word of the LORD came unto him, saying, Get thee hence, and turn thee eastward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith, that is before Jordan.”

It was Elijah who spoke the word. I want you to remember this, for this is very important in this study. Elijah was given the power to speak the word and to shut up heaven, “there shall not be dew nor rain these years.” In the fourth year, heaven was opened when he again spoke the word. Notice the resemblance of this ministry of power. Elijah shut up the heaven for three and a half years, and the sons of God will do the same. “These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy.”

Revelation 11:6b, “and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will.”

This verse sounds exactly like what happened with Moses. It will be war. The sons of God will not be using carnal weapons of war to fight. They will use the weapons of their warfare which are spiritual weapons. When a man goes and agitates against those who are aborting babies and shoots the doctor (it has happened a number of times now) this is entirely ungodly and out of order. When he does that, he is saying that his God is not powerful enough to take care of the situation, so he is going to do it himself. Many people have lost the concept of God, of who God is. If we serve God and then take a gun and go out and shoot, then our God is weak.

Real power would be to get down and pray. The abortion places would shut down because men believed God, but these people do not believe God. I hear the evangelists preaching on television and giving the following scenario: if we were able to kill Hitler, we would be proclaimed as heroes. The truth is that we are not here to kill people. We are here to save souls. Whenever God gives the sons of God the power to call down fire from heaven and to stop the enemy, it is to save His people. We will be praying, “GOD SAVE YOUR PEOPLE.”

When someone rises up to destroy the sons of God, God will allow the spoken word to come forth in the mighty power that Elijah and Moses had and that we have seen all throughout Scripture. The fullness of this power is coming and Christians who go out and buy guns and shoot people are a disgrace to God and are playing right into the hands of the enemy. Brethren, pray that God might have mercy upon His people and separate us from those who choose to dwell in the outer court and are ready to be destroyed.

(Excerpt from The Book of Revelation, Volume 2, pages 12-14)

Thought for today: Real power is to get down on our knees to pray and believe God.