Self-pitiful Millennium Edition (ME) and the 144,000

When Jesus’ cloud sits on our mercy seat, He heals His people of unbelief and they don’t need to feel sorry for themselves or pity themselves anymore. God, by the gift of His Spirit, has touched them and shown them that He pities them and knows their sorrows. They know that He is touched with the feelings of their infirmities. Through His emboldening “power of the Highest” He creates His boys and girls to be sons of thunder. They have confidence and might because their confidence is in Him who has “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.” (Isa. 11:2).

 

Power and energy and self-esteem are the reward for humbling their will to the will of God as expressed in His holy Law. He brings them forth from the cauldron of the battle of the wills between their flesh and His Spirit, brands plucked from the fire. “For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.” (Gal. 5:17).

 

His Law had worked wrath in them; for where there had been no law, there had been no guilt and shame for their instinctual fraying away conviction at the sight of righteousness. They were alive until the Law came along. They were smooth sailing; life was good. But, by His longsuffering grace, Christ brought them to a knowledge of God’s Law and then through His firmness and patient gentleness He brought them to brokenness and surrender to God’s will, and then to repentance. Then they saw themselves as self-pitiful and rotten to the core. Poor me! Poor, poor me!! Neighbor, how could you do that to poor, poor me?! Sibling, why do you treat poor me like that?! Supervisor, policeman, tax-collector, why should you be like that to poor me?! Poor me!

Upon throwing away that grotesque condition of the mind and heart, they received the great reward—a new heart and mind, one with strength and power against self, but mercy toward others, through the power of the comforting Spirit of truth. This “blessing of Abraham …through Jesus Christ”, the “promise of the Spirit through faith” (Gal. 3:14) was the work of God to seal them “with that holy Spirit of promise.” (Eph. 1:13).

 

Now, they have freedom—free from self-pity. The “Spirit of Christ” (Rom. 8:9)  has put His abhorrence of self-pity into them; His Law of dependence He has written on their hearts. The shackles of licking their wounds have disappeared. And oh, how they are glad for that! Free! No more baggage! No more eating themselves into oblivion to mollify their complaints. No more appeasing self by damaging their temple made for the dwelling place of God. They have a new propensity to accept hard things and discomfort. They have the Spirit that the holy prophets and Reformers had which enabled them to face the rigors and dangers of speaking the truth, who were often politically incorrect, though their hearts were fully for the souls of the national leaders.

These holy men of old only wanted the best for the leaders and the people; but that meant reproving the idolatrous self-pleasures that Satan had placed in the social customs and church traditions. But, these who had received power to become sons of God did their duty and spoke the words that His Spirit gave them, leaving the consequences with God. Nothing could derail them from the new life of faith and freedom in Christ, who was the Prince of self-denial and strength. Nothing was too hard for their Lord, and so nothing was too hard for them. They were for signs and wonders from their Lord of hosts who dwelled in Mt. Zion, their source of His Spirit of truth and grace.

 

Peter’s “Pity Thyself, Lord: this shall not be unto Thee.” (Matt. 16:22, margin) was anathema to Jesus. Get thee behind Me, Satan! Christ’s kingdom has ever been built upon self-forgetfulness, self-sacrificing love. But, Lucifer is full of self-pity and complaints. He and his miserable hosts are all on a binge of self-appeasement and blaming others in order to defray reproach, rebuke, and discomfort of conscience. Satan’s kingdom has ever been built upon self-pity, and this principle the devil sought to insert into the church before the church was even born. He used Peter, Christ’s favorite and most hoped for disciple as the medium for insinuating his kingdom into Christ’s. Simultaneously, he sought to undermine Christ’s firm resolution to go through with the sacrifice of Himself, the ultimate expression of His Father’s government and the constitution of Their kingdom. “Pity thyself!” will never be heard on the throne and can never enter the kingdom of heaven.

 

Often Jesus, the burden heavy upon His own heart, sought to open to the disciples the scenes of His trial and suffering. But their eyes were holden. The knowledge was unwelcome, and they did not see. Self-pity, that shrank from fellowship with Christ in suffering, prompted Peter’s remonstrance… His words expressed the thought and feeling of the Twelve. Education, p. 88.

 

“Self-pity...shrank from fellowship with Christ in suffering.” If we want to be a part of the 144,000 warriors for God, we will need to be strong and of good courage. We will need the character of Christ perfectly replicated in us. There will be no room for self-pity in that army. Is there room for self-pity in any earthly army? If you have ever been in the military, you know the answer is a big N-O! Feeling sorry for self will not exist in the children of God. There will be zero tolerance of sorrow for self. No licking our wounds; no spats with others for some imagined mistreatment. Grace will change the nature, the chemistry in the whole being. Toughness will be the new goal; patience, tolerance, forbearance and forgiveness will be the order of the day, every day. Physical exercise, a manna diet, waiting upon the Lord and being renewed in strength every day, will be desirable and doable. The spirit of Satan will be harried out of the hosts of the Lord.

 

The small group retained in Gideon’s army were men determined to be self-denying. Everyone else was sent home. How quickly the unnumbered adversarial hosts fled before them! Some men of Ephraim could have helped, but self-indulgent fears kept them in hiding until the Lord had collected His chosen men. Then they accused Gideon of going alone without help from the nation; their pride and arrogance daring to stand before the faithful servant of God and accuse him of not sharing the glory but hording it all for himself. That man of valor put all the accusation back on them and summarily humbled them with a strong response. They backed down and accepted the humbling. Others refused to give food to sustain the fighting men until it could be evident that they were on the winning side. And as he forewarned them for their selfishness, after the war was won he tore down their shameful tower and taught them a lesson about their characters of briars and thorns—by using briars and thorns on their characters!

 

This boldness gives us an inside look at the 144,000 hosts of the Latter Rain. Sanctified and empowered by divine power, upon which they will trust, no one will be able to stand before their powerful testimony from heaven. They will tear down Babylon’s falsehoods and corruptions, and burn them with fire. The Beast and its hosts of locusts will fly away back into the bottomless pit, with their scorpion tails between their legs.

 

This is why the 144,000 will be God’s special vanguard that stand before His throne day and night, protecting His government. Their glory will exceed the angels’, while progenitors of other worlds like Adam might come and say to Jesus concerning the 144,000 who live on the world where He has established His city, “It was a true report that I heard in mine own land of Thy acts and of Thy wisdom. Happy are Thy men, happy are these Thy servants, which stand continually before Thee, and that hear Thy wisdom. Blessed be Thy God, which delighted in Thee, to set Thee on the throne of Earth: because the LORD loved Earth for ever, therefore made He Thee King, to do judgment and justice.” (Modified from 1Kings 10:6-9).

Wouldn’t you like to be one of the 144,000 and suffer shame for His name?