TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6
Scripture: 2 Kings 1:9-12

                2 Kings 1:9-12 states, “Then the king sent to him a captain of fifty with his fifty men. So he went up to him; and there he was, sitting on the top of a hill. And he spoke to him: ‘Man of God, the king has said, ‘Come down!’ So Elijah answered and said to the captain of fifty, ‘If I am a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty men.’ And fire came down from heaven and consumed him and his fifty. Then he sent to him another captain of fifty with his fifty men. And he answered and said to him: ‘Man of God, thus has the king said, “Come down quickly!”’ So Elijah answered and said to them, ‘If I am a man of God, let fire come down from heaven and consume you and your fifty men.’ And the fire of God came down from heaven and consumed him and his fifty.”  About four years ago, the Lord brought me to this passage and said, ‘What Elijah experienced here is coming to the church, and I want you to prepare the church.  The true picture of what is transpiring in the Spirit comes through the Hebrew word yaw-rad.  Yaw-rad means, ‘to bow down as an inferior to the superior’ and is also a word used for ‘subdue.’  When political government says to spiritual government, ‘I am going to subdue you.  I am going to make you bow down and worship at my Throne,’ the church has historically had to say ‘No!’ and suffer the penalties.  It was true of Peter, James and John.  It was true of the church in the early book of Acts.  Throughout church history, the pattern that was set by the apostles has been the one that true believers followed.  And yet, there is spiritual truth here about God’s fire.  Whenever government says, ‘Accept the perversion of homosexuality…accept the murder of innocent children in abortion,’ the church has to stand up and be the conscience in that hour and say, ‘No!  God does not accept it and we cannot accept it.  You may not like it, but you are inviting the God of fire to visit you, and when He does, He will eternally remove you so that there is nothing left!’  When the political ruler issued the yaw-rad, there were two that came back at him.  It should not really be any different in our season, but the church today is slow to represent the judicial Christ.  By not understanding that we have an obligation to pray God’s judicial fire on the head of every governmental official who wants to legislate the murder of innocent children, we are forfeiting what God has made available.  There is no fear of God in the land and the church is at fault because God is ready to move.