February 9, 2001

Monica,

I want to give you some more reason to believe that Jesus was not fooling, exaggerating, or talking figuratively when he said the following:

I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

Look at the life of Elisha, starting in Chapter 2 of 2 Kings. After Elisha received a double portion of the Holy Spirit that was on Elijah, he did the works that we later saw Jesus do. Yet he himself had sinned and come short of the glory of God. His righteousness was as filthy rags. Only Jesus Christ the Lord lived a sinless life. Elisha had sinned, and his sin stain was still on him because Jesus had not yet gone to the cross. After Elisha got the Holy Spirit on him, he cursed some young people and had bears kill forty-two of the kids (2 Kings 2:23-25). That was not exactly Christ-like behavior, but I believe he was immature yet even though he had the Holy Spirit on him.

Later, when he had matured in his walk, he did many wonderful things similar to what Jesus did in the New Testament. With 20 little bread cakes (enough to feed 5 people) he fed a 100 men and had some left over, and he did it the same way Jesus later did it--by telling his servant to do it. When the servant went and did, the power was there. (Chapter 4:42-44)

In Chapter 5, he healed a man of leprosy as Jesus did. In Chapter 6, he made an iron axe head float on water similar to Jesus walking on water.

He often knew what people were thinking and doing when he wasn’t even physically near them.

The similarities are obvious. The works Jesus did he did also though perhaps not quite as great, and he was stained with his own sin yet. Jesus tells us that we too will do the works he did, and we will go beyond that and do greater works. We have an advantage over Elisha. We are spotlessly clean because Jesus bore our sin. We (our real selves, our spirits) are perfectly righteous because we have received a free gift of righteousness. And we have Jesus’ own words telling us that we can do what he did and greater works.

We (the church for 2000 years) haven’t done much of this yet for several reasons. We had bad teaching, concerning sin and righteousness (focusing on sin in our flesh instead of on our righteous spirits). We never saw ourselves fully as sons of God, brothers of Jesus, joint heirs with him. And we always loved laws more than the voice of God. God gave the law to Moses in the first place because the Hebrews said, "Tell God not to speak to us. Write done what we are to do and we will do it."

When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, "Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die."

They cringed in fear just as Adam was afraid of God after he sinned. We, however, are spotless and righteous because Jesus bore our sin and gave us his righteousness. Therefore, we approach the throne of grace with confidence (Hebrews 4:16). We should not be afraid to hear the voice of God speak to us. We should be led by the Holy Spirit as sons of God. We should also be doing the works that Jesus did.

I am confident that, indeed, Jesus will have a large number of disciples doing the works he did here in the last days. He is coming back very soon. There will be some of us living spirit-directed lives and doing the works he did. Evil is going to get more evil, and the church is going to get more powerful. Good and evil will be completely polarized just before Jesus calls us to the Wedding Feast. Monica, you and Nehm will be part of that group who are walking this Christ-like path when he comes back. You will be doing things that the world will marvel at, and you will see it as normal manifestations of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, on you, and guiding you.

Love,

Dad

P.S. I had this sealed in the envelope ready to mail when Father pointed something else out to me that needs to be added here.

"...For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them."

In other words, it might be extremely important in this end-time ministry that you be yoked with the right person or people. You and the right husband walking in agreement could be very powerful. Or you and the right prayer partner or covenant friend walking in agreement could be very powerful. But just make sure you don’t get deceived about whom to marry. I don’t think that is possible because I know your heart well enough to know you have honestly asked God to lead you to the right one, and I know you are not getting impatient. You will wait for the Lord.

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