Sonlight Devotional

The Covenant of Baptism

December 26, 2024 by Admin

Scripture reading: John 3:3-8, Matthew 3:11

Have you ever thought of what baptism really is? Baptism is a covenant that the believer makes with God. It is permanent. It is a death, a burial, and a resurrection. The thing that dies is not the thing that rises. The thing that rises is a Christ thing. The man’s heart, his mind, his soul, and his behavior must change radically. It is not “Oh, I got changed yesterday.” No sir, it is a continuous change, a gradual change. The ugly caterpillar goes into a chrysalis and changes, changes, changes, until he undergoes his metamorphosis and becomes a beautiful butterfly. Until that day, the change is yet continuing, or should continue.

However, this change is arrested, retarded, or stopped by some of the church doctrines that we have. The believer is no longer functioning under God, for he has not made CHRIST HIS LORD. Jesus is my Saviour, oh yes. I did not have to do anything. All I needed to be saved by Jesus was to be a sinner which I did not do; I was born that way. Born a sinner, Jesus saves you, and now you must turn around and make a covenant with Him that you will follow Him all the way. That is baptism. Outside of this, there is no baptism. You could be wet with water until you continuously drip. You will not be baptized unless that consciousness has come to you.

Some of you have been baptized and feel if you go down in the name of Jesus (someone said “Jesus” over you) and come up again, you are made perfect. You are mistaken. Those of you who believe that you are baptized to become a member of a church and get the right hand of fellowship when you are baptized, YOU ARE NOT BAPTIZED. You must make the covenant with God and then go down in the water. That is baptism and you must know what you are doing. Baptism has the following three steps: Water, Holy Spirit, and Christ. Man baptizes you in water, Jesus baptizes you in the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit baptizes you into Christ. That brings you into the holy place.

There is the outer court, the holy place, and then you are still going on further. You are going into the holy of holies where the overshadowing of God will deliver you from all harm. Psalm 91:1 says, “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” You will go into the ark of the covenant, where you become a permanent part of God.

(Excerpt from The Book of Revelation, Volume 2, pg. 4-5)

Thought for today: Baptism is a covenant that requires continual change until our metamorphosis is complete and we are fully changed into the image and likeness of God.

Posted in The Covenant | Tagged Ark of the Covenant, Baptism in the Holy Spirit, Baptism into Christ, Covenant with God, Psalm 91, Water Baptism | Leave a Comment »

The Two Witnesses (Part Two)

December 25, 2024 by Admin

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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.

Posted in Body of Christ | Tagged Prophet Elijah, Revelation 11, Salvation | Leave a Comment »

The Two Witnesses (Part One)

December 24, 2024 by Admin

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Scripture reading: Revelation 11:3-4

Revelation 11:3 says, “And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.” “A thousand two hundred and threescore days” is the same three and a half years that Revelation 11:2 describes as “forty and two months.” Verse 4, “These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth.”

Many times and in many places, many churches and people guess and wonder what these “two witnesses” are. WHO ARE THEY? In their work they do resemble Elijah and Moses, but then they resemble Jesus Christ, because what God is saying here, is that they are going to be lifted up to the stature of Christ. This many-membered Body is going to be lifted up to the stature of Christ! Why did He call them the “two witnesses?”

Let us look at Zechariah 4:1-6. “And the angel that talked with me came again, and waked me, as a man that is wakened out of his sleep, And said unto me, What seest thou? And I said, I have looked, and behold a candlestick all of gold, with a bowl upon the top of it, and his seven lamps thereon, and seven pipes to the seven lamps, which are upon the top thereof: And two olive trees by it, one upon the right side of the bowl, and the other upon the left side thereof. So I answered and spake to the angel that talked with me, saying, What are these, my lord? Then the angel that talked with me answered and said unto me, Knowest thou not what these be? And I said, No, my lord. Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is THE WORD of the LORD unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by MY SPIRIT, saith the LORD of Hosts.”

What Zechariah saw was the Word of God and the Spirit of God pouring oil, golden oil, into “the bowl.” The “candlestick,“ or the lampstand as we call it, has “seven lamps.” Each lamp has a wick and a place for the oil to come up. This “candlestick,” or lampstand which Zechariah saw, was ONE VERY LARGE BOWL. In the time coming, the capacity for the church to receive the oil from God will be greater, more magnificent, and more wonderful than ever before. They will no longer have seven different places for the oil. There will be one great big ocean of oil sitting on top. The golden pipes from the two olive trees standing on the side will be pouring oil into this bowl and keeping a sumptuous supply.

God is saying that during the tribulation, during the time of darkness, during the destruction, there will be “TWO OLIVE TREES” feeding His people. I do believe that we are in the tribulation already, but I do believe that there is going to be a terrible time of three and a half years when it will be impossible for any natural human being to survive as a Christian; but that God, in the midst of this, will be feeding His people and giving them power to survive and power to overcome the beast and the antichrist and all his hosts.

Zechariah, in this passage, is showing us the picture of “THE SPIRIT” and “THE WORD.” You say, “Lord how could it be?” The answer is simple. “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us…” (John 1:14) in order that we who are flesh might be made to be the Word. God is bringing us into a place where we will be the epistles, the LIVING “EPISTLES…known and read of all men,” as said by Paul. See 2 Corinthians 3:1 and 2. The people of God who walk in a high place with Jesus Christ, will become “the two olive trees.” Olive trees produce olive oil. These “olive trees” will be producing sumptuous oil. He said that golden oil will be poured into the church, into the great massive bowl, and it will keep them alive and give them power to overcome.

(Excerpt from The Book of Revelation, Volume 2, pages 11-12)

Thought for today: God is calling you to be part of the Two Witness company who will feed His people.

Posted in Body of Christ | Tagged Elijah and Moses, Lampstand, Revelation 3, Two Witnesses in Revelation | Leave a Comment »

The Seventy Weeks of Daniel

December 23, 2024 by Admin

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Scripture reading: Daniel 9:24-27

Let us look at the mystery of Daniel’s seventy weeks as described in Daniel 9.

Daniel 9:24, “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy.” Everything will be done to finish the end of the age.

Verse 25, “Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.”

If the people in the time of Jesus Christ (the scribes and the Bible men, the Pharisees and the theologians) were really on the ball, they could have pinpointed the time of Jesus’ arrival. God had told them that it would be “seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks” and the Prince shall come. That is seven and sixty-two, SIXTY-NINE WEEKS. From the time that the commandment was given to restore and build Jerusalem to the time of Christ’s coming was sixty-nine weeks. See how simple God made it? They could have calculated it.

Verse 26, “And AFTER threescore and two weeks…” meaning to say, “after (THESE) threescore and two weeks (the “seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks” which equal sixty-nine weeks) shall Messiah be cut off.” “Messiah” shall “be cut off” in the seventieth week. “…Messiah” shall “be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince (meaning the people of the antichrist, the little horn in Daniel 7) that shall come, shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.”

We can identify from this verse who the people of the antichrist are, because it is the people who will destroy the temple and destroy Jerusalem. Now we know who did that. Titus destroyed the temple and destroyed Jerusalem, and remember, the scripture said it was AFTER “THE MESSIAH, THE PRINCE” CAME, after Jesus Christ. Therefore, it was Titus that did it and Titus was the general of a Roman army. We are looking for the antichrist then to be from Rome.

Daniel 9:27a, “And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week.” Jesus Christ will “confirm the covenant…for one week,” that is for SEVEN YEARS. That means that God ordained the seventieth week as the week in which God would walk and talk in a people. Remember the great promise that God gave? Jeremiah 31:33b and c, “After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.” 2 Corinthians 6:16b, “I will dwell in them, and walk in them.” Hebrews 8:10b, “I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts.” God wants a people in whom He can walk and talk – A LIVING, WALKING, TALKING TEMPLE and dwelling place for God.

“He…confirm(ed) the covenant…for one week.” We understand that the covenant is confirmed for a week and that the covenant-keeper, that is the one man who could keep the covenant with God, DIED. Daniel 9:27b, “And in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.” Jesus Christ was slain in the middle of the week. Three and a half years after He started His ministry, He was slain. That means that the promise had to wait, for there was no son to inherit it. As soon as another son is born, we will inherit this promise.

We understand that the birth of the man child will NOT be one man, but will be a many-membered man. This many-membered man is called THE MAN CHILD. This man child will take up the promise of God. The three and a half years that Jesus Christ left for the church will be taken up because we will come forth in the image of Christ Jesus according to the Word of God. Romans 8:29, “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.“ It is God’s will, God’s intention, that Christ should have many children exactly like Himself. There will be those who are moving in that fullness at the seventh trumpet of God, when all the mystery of God shall be finished.

(Excerpt from The Book of Revelation, Volume 2, pages 9-11)

Thought for today: Remember, God wants a people in whom He can walk and talk …a dwelling place for God.

Posted in Time of the End | Tagged Coming of Jesus, End-Time, God's Mystery, God's Seventh Trumpet, Man Child | Leave a Comment »