The Day of New Beginnings
And a Little Child Shall Lead Them
There is a realm we have yet to fully enter. It’s the realm of reality beyond process. As we know, the realm of process is valid and binding to those who live in it. It’s the realm Christianity has lived in, including us, since Jesus died on the cross. Maturity has been a process of growing spiritually and progressively seeing the work of the cross have its way in our lives. You have to be 18 before you can be 21, right? Only in the realm of process is this true.
I believe maturity is going to be defined differently. We have not seen yet what maturity will mean in the realm beyond process. We who have walked the process road into maturity must break through. But once the breakthrough fully comes, the sky is the limit as far as becoming goes. We have barely scratched the surface of the ministry of impartation. We don’t know yet the wonder and glory of how people will change and mature through pure impartation.
We have talked about the leapfrog principle. We have yet to see its manifestation the way we are going to. It was prophesied many years ago that resurrection life would be received by faith as easily as we now accept Christ into our lives for initial salvation. In this sense, the children will receive through impartation and move into things it’s taken a lifetime to attain in the process realm. This is the leapfrog principle in its fullness. It’s the realm of the plowman overtaking the reaper (Amos 9:13-14). That means the growing season that separates the planting from the harvesting disappears and there is a perpetual reaping of what has been sown. This leapfrogging is to be our greatest joy; the realm of instant change which is the realm of impartation, leapfrogging over the lower realm of process.
I had an intense discussion once with a brother over some of these issues. At the time I was seeing from a great distance what we are laying hold of now. He insisted that the only reason I could see certain spiritual truths was because of the lifetime of the dealings of the Lord making it possible. He also insisted no child or babe in Christ was going to attain or experience what I had except through the process of the cross and growing into maturity. Paul called himself Paul the Aged. Yet chronologically he was probably only in his 50’s. What Paul meant was that because of the sufferings of Christ he had experienced, he had attained a level of maturity only those who had suffered likewise could understand. Now, I will make a bold statement. While suffering has been the one channel above all others that God has used to bring us forth, I don’t believe it will always be this way. The sufferings of Christ belong to the time realm of process. I don’t believe they will be the channel of growth and change in the realm we are moving into. The sufferings have been necessary that all may understand the consequences of disobedience such as Adam and Eve’s in the Garden. But I believe it must all give way to a greater glory. That was the point of contention with the aforementioned brother. Isa. 11:6-9 states:
6 The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat,the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.
7 The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
8 The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper’s nest.
9 They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
These passages speak mystically of a new order where all things we have known give way to something greater. Everything in these passages violates the order of process we have known. Children don’t lead adults, wolves don’t live with lambs, and if a child puts his hand in the hole of a viper, he winds up dead. It’s a new order of creation and with it comes a new order of the way we grow and change and become.