Derek Prince - This Is What Is Needed For The Church to Be Restored
This is an excerpt from: Israel and the Church: Parallel Restoration
Now I want to move on to the picture of restoration which is found in Joel 2. I’ll only read from verse 21 «Fear not, O land, be glad and rejoice, for the Lord has done marvelous things [has done great things]. Do not be afraid, you beasts of the field, for the open pastures are springing up and the tree bears it fruit. The fig tree and the vine yield their strength».
You’ll notice in the forefront of restoration are the same two trees that were in the forefront of desolation, the fig tree and the vine. Taking the symbolism which I am suggesting, that means Israel and the church. Restoration is affecting both simultaneously. Then it goes on: «Be glad then, you children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God, for He’s given you the former rain faithfully and He will cause the rain to come down for you, the former rain and the latter rain, in the first month». Which is by the Jewish calendar the Passover month, April.
You see, rain is the thing that produces fruitfulness. Rain throughout the Bible is a picture of the Holy Spirit. So, the Lord is saying it’s the Holy Spirit that will bring new life and restoration. Then it goes on: «The threshing floor shall be full of wheat, and the vats shall overflow with new wine and oil». Notice the three great basic staples, the wheat, the wine and the oil are being restored. I believe that’s the period in which we are living. To look only at the church for a moment, it was the beginning of the move of the Holy Spirit in supernatural power, in visible supernatural demonstration that initiated the process of restoration.
One of the things that we need to bear in mind is that God’s order, and I’m going to repeat the words I used before, are repentance, refreshing, restoration and return. In the 1960's, to take only one experience, the church in the United States experienced a tremendous refreshing. How many of you can remember that? How many of you were saved about 1970-72? Just put your hand up. That’s an amazing number of people. And many of them were Jewish. It’s the first time that I think the Holy Spirit moved among a significant number of Jewish people at the same time. It was the beginning of the fig tree putting on visible, spiritual fruit. One of our problems in the Charismatic movement, and I tell people I don’t think the Charismatic movement is any longer a movement because it isn’t moving!
I’ve been part of it since 1963. But one of our problems is we have misunderstood the purpose of God because refreshing is merely a stage toward restoration. But a lot of Charismatics have said, «Isn’t this wonderful! We can be happy, we can clap our hands, we can sing new choruses. We feel wonderful. So, that’s it». It’s not. Refreshing is given for the sake of restoration. People who merely enjoy refreshing but do not go on to restoration are missing the whole purpose of God. Restoration is a tough business. It requires hard work, sacrifice, prayer, faith. Let me give you just one more picture from the Old Testament, Leviticus 25, about the trumpet of the Jubilee. It says… You know what I’m talking about, the 50th year.
It says in verse 8, «You shall count seven sabbaths of years for yourself [that's seven times seven years which is 49], and the time of the seven sabbaths of years shall be to you forty-nine years. Then you shall cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, on the Day of Atonement. You shall make the trumpet to sound throughout all your land, and you shall consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, and each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family». That I believe is what God is aiming for, a time when each returns to his possessions and each finds his place again in the family. What a difference American history would be for the past fifty years if America had had a period like that.
Think of all the scattered, broken families that never have a time of returning to their possession and to their families. But, your possession is your possession whether you’re in it or not. And what God is seeking to do for both Israel and the church is to bring us back into our possession. I believe the trumpet of the Jubilee, spiritually speaking, has sounded, and God said it’s time for everyone to get back to his possessions. Now, in the prophet Obadiah, which is so short that it doesn’t have any chapters, there is a wonderful verse that speaks about this. It’s Obadiah 17, and it says: «But on Mount Zion there shall be deliverance and there shall be holiness. The house of Jacob shall possess their possessions».
You see, they’re the possessions of the house of Jacob whether they possess them or not. But God wants them back in their possession. But, there are two things needed and this is totally true for the church. There has to be deliverance and there has to be holiness. Without that restoration will not be complete. You see, there’s a parallel between the agents of desolation. In each case, for Israel and for the church, it was an invading army of insects.
Look in Joel. In each case the root cause was unbelief and disobedience that exposed Israel to the invading army, but precisely the same causes produced a similar result in the church. The church slid into unbelief and disobedience, carnality and every form of sin, and lost its inheritance. For the church to come back it’s going to require the two things that Obadiah specified, which are, deliverance and holiness. Israel was invaded by locusts, the church has been invaded by demons.
Whether this is a popular theme or not, it happens to be true that if we want restoration we have to get rid of the demons. There’s deliverance, then holiness, and then possessing our possessions. You see, I believe myself that the most important emphasis for the church today is holiness, which has almost been forgotten. Holiness requires deliverance because demons contaminate, they defile, they inhibit us from the free flow of God’s holiness. So, the pathway is deliverance, holiness, and we shall possess our possessions. I’ve been actively engaged in the ministry of deliverance for 30 years. I’ve encountered tremendous opposition.
I think most people have forgotten about that now. But there was a time when Don Basham and I were officially characterized as heretics by the Assemblies of God because we were casting demons out of Christians. I always wondered what they expected us to do. Leave them in! Of course, that wasn’t the way they viewed it. I just want to point out to you that this parallel is extremely illuminating. The more you go into it the more you see an understand your position.