Several years ago, when I was beginning to interpret and obey the heavenly vision I had about the nations, I wrote a book, The Spirit and Power of Elijah. In it, I began to work out some principles for preparing the Lord a people ready to respond in the next season. I was doing so because of the vision and the need for a new leadership paradigm in the kingdom.
Now, nearly 14 years after the heavenly vision, the book sold out in Brasil, and I find myself tonight coming to a sudden revelation download about where we are with this process in terms of the United States. We are ready for a Mount Carmel showdown in the United States, and that showdown will reach a point of political crisis because of a point of cultural crisis. However, that cannot become a distraction for the Elijah company in creating a spiritual crisis.
“Your head crowns you like Carmel, and the king is secured in his place by your flowing, royal tapestries.” (Song of Songs 7:5)
The Elijah story is one of preparation for confrontation, and the spirit and power of Elijah always apply at this point of conflict. The confrontation is about lordship, and the Elijah company fights every challenge to the lordship of Jesus Christ.
We must ask, “What kind of people can participate in an Elijah company?” What is the spirit and power of Elijah that remains in the earth in what we refer to as the mantle of Elijah?
These were questions I answered in the book, and these are questions that apply to how to assemble, prepare, position, and lead that kind of prophetic company. While this can be done by any kingdom leader, that kingdom leader must operate in the spirit and power of Elijah. The kingdom leader must become a prophetic leader.
A prophetic leader accurately anticipates what is coming next and prepares the Lord a people ready to respond in the next season.
I am very concerned that while we have had Elijah leaders, the process of preparing the Lord a people has been short circuited by efforts to preparing ourselves a people. Once the shown down occurs and the rain falls again, will the Elijah’s run or realize that the day of the Remnant has arrived?
This isn’t about the several leaders who lead the showdown as targets of the prevailing spiritual condition but the preparation and positioning of the Remnant for establishing and expanding the confrontation’s shift in who crowns the Bride.
We sometimes mistake the confrontation on Mount Carmel as one between Elijah and Jezebel, but she wasn’t there. King Ahab was. The battle on Mount Carmel was to defeat Jezebel but to reset the lordship of Jehovah. That infuriated Jezebel, and Elijah was unprepared for the next step.
To properly finish our assignments, we must always be focused upon the Remnant more than the specific confrontation. Winning one battle does not finish the war. Finishing the war merely begins the process of expanding the kingdom culture: kingdom without culture is a smoking altar on a distant mountain, soon to become a memorial instead of a mandate.
Objections:
- We need to focus completely upon the Mount Carmel or we will not win that confrontation.
No, that is exactly what Elijah did. He ran when the confrontation didn’t fix all the problems. He was bewildered by the confrontation’s amazing and miraculous success, just as we often are when God does something as powerful as the lightning strike on Carmel. We assume that a victory in one skirmish will translate into instant success when that victory is the turning point toward the establishing and expansion of that victory.
Defeating some prophets of Baal in a public way does not translate into Awakening. It is a strategic victory about lordship, but lordship becomes the source point for expanding the culture of the King.
Jesus has already won the ultimate victory over the ultimate enemy, yet His mandate is to disciple cultures, teaching them to do all that He commands the Remnant. We should read this as “kingdom has a culture that you must prepare people to live as kingdom on earth norms, principles, procedures, and protocols of how kingdom functions is necessary to kingdom.”
After the blood of 400 prophets washed off Elijah as he ran down the mountain of reestablished lordship, he was immediately confused that this mighty victory didn’t fix everything. We suffer the same level of immaturity in leadership. We prepare ourselves a people when we should prepare the Lord a people: we should prepare the Remnant for more than a miraculous moment or successful confrontation. Having won the victory for the King, we are now positioned to expand the culture of His kingdom.
- Once we restore the lordship of Jesus, He will take care of fixing the culture.
No. If that were true, He would also restore His own lordship! The point of the confrontation on Mount Carmel is to validate His representatives and position His Remnant. After that moment, the validated leader runs off into the wilderness, and God asked him what he is doing there.
Jehovah validates Elijah and the prophet immediately run away from his responsibilities as a leader thinking he is the only one left. God laughs at him! “I have 7,000 who haven’t bowed the knee, Elijah. I have a Remnant waiting for the next step, now get out there and do your job.”
God told him what to do with the rest of his life. Elijah then started doing what he should have been doing all along: he started preparing the Lord a people so that a prophetic company, an Elijah company would be available for leadership in the land.
By “prophetic company” I do not now assume only prophets but people who can accurately anticipate what’s coming next and be prepared for the Lord to respond to what He is doing next.
Having taken the high places, we are ready to take the low places, not to maintain the high places as memorials of past victories. If Jesus wished to do it Himself, it would already be done. The point of the entire strategy is for men to do it, for the Lord to have a people who represent Him in the earth with influence necessary to expand His influence.
- All this talk about Old Testament doesn’t relate to the New Testament.
No, it is the fulfillment and fullness of a Divine pattern. The pattern of prophetic leadership was introduced to welcome Messiah. Messiah would do another confrontation with universal and eternal consequence of victory, but first He would prepare representatives to establishing and expand His culture. The pattern is consistent with the prophetic anticipation of it, beginning with John the Baptist as the Elijah who would come. Accepting John would have been the beginning. His rejection produced the rejection of Messiah.
