SERMON TITLE: The golden gate highway

SYNOPSIS

The central Christian mission is pursuing the Kingdom of God, not just salvation or healing, which are secondary effects. Believers on the Golden Gate Highway to glory must maintain holiness, righteousness, and faithfulness.

TRANSCRIPT

Praise the Lord.

I thank God for the joy of fellowship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. When the golden gates of divine glory were flung open to us yesterday, it was a blessed, memorable, and glorious occasion. The opening event yesterday brought the introduction to us of the crowns of divine glory awaiting the children and servants of God the Father, after the completion of the commission and works of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in the pursuit of the Father’s Kingdom order, reign, and rule on earth.

We found out yesterday that the Christian calling, life, and service have many challenges. We normally think of sin, temptations, suffering, threats to life, and the burdens in service. When I heard my son speaking here, he was referring to 1 John, the three propositions: the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life.

And these are the things the Holy Spirit made John to write to us. What we are going to discuss here are not those things. We’ll come to it and we’ll see.

To be sure, there are mountains to climb. There are valleys and plain fields to traverse in the Master’s service. We also know that as the Lord is the Master, the servant is no greater than the Master.

The Lord ended up dying on the cross as a seal of his mission. The suffering, challenges, and death led him to be given a place. The suffering, the challenges, and death on the tree led him to be given a place of honor and glory on the right side of the Father by the Father’s throne.

And he’s been given a name above every name, except the Father’s own name, in heaven and on earth. Not only in the present world, but also the world to come. That is to say, there is a glorious end after all the challenges and the high calling of Christ and the church’s mission. So if we meet challenges on the Christian mission, or the church’s mission, we should take it in stride, in full confidence. As the Lord said, “I am the beginning and the ending”. If you are faithful to him and stand with him, whatever the challenge is, you shall overcome.

You can be of good cheer, because “I have overcome”. And how do we overcome? Through Faith. Faith in me. Not faith as a power, but faith in God. So today, he is calling us and assuring us that if we follow him fervently unto the end, we can be sure that whatever the challenge is, we shall overcome and receive the crowns.

We discovered, therefore, yesterday that what is most essential and critical is that we should be found in the garment of holiness, righteousness, and faithfulness unto the end. That God, having called us, especially we ministers, and every Christian, has a holy garment that sets us apart. The Bible says, “By Thy word, the truth”. There’s a glorious, divine garment that comes upon us as soon as we are born again and when you are appointed as a minister, you have a higher garment of representing the Almighty God himself. So he wants us to retain this garment of holiness, righteousness, and faithfulness unto the end, whatever the challenge is. Then shall we enter divine glory with three golden crowns of glory as a reward, namely the crown of righteousness, life, and glory.

These three crowns constitute a glorious end to the divine calling. When you think that there’s a crown of righteousness, a crown of life, and a crown of glory. Then whatever the challenge is a wealthier scheme.

What about the challenge of seeming poverty? Some of us start out thinking if you are a Christian minister, you cannot be poor. What is poverty? Is it because you have no cash in your pockets, or you don’t have a house or a bicycle to your name? Is that poverty?  Let nobody persuade you that you are poor. Those who are poor are those who think you are poor because you don’t follow their example. Because they have missed the thing; the Christian calling and glory is not in possessions.  Jesus said life does not consist of the things that a man possesses.

You are working and working hand in hand with Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. That is why when you go and get some other power, use human money, power, or something to make these things glorious, so that you can possess these things as evidence of success, you are a little fool.

Your holiness, righteousness, and faithfulness, in spite of all the challenges, is what makes you enter divine glory and you attain the crowns and rewards that God gives us.

We were reminded yesterday also that the high calling also, at the end, ends with classified 12 categories of children and servants of God. We are given the right of entry through the 12 gates. We found that apart from these major crowns of pure gold, our works, our callings, standing, ministry, and missions, classify us according to some categories.

In the order of the 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 apostles, and the 12 gates to the city of God.  Don’t think I’m interested in numerology. That’s not Christianity. I don’t believe in numerology so don’t quote me that 12 is so important. God chose to have 12 children from Jacob and he called him Israel. Was Jacob having girl children? A girl child. But why are they not counted? Because they came from the man. The woman is not separate from the man. The woman concept is a derivative of man. So spiritually speaking, she’s an extension of man and not herself complete. Though when she’s born again, she can retain her divinity structure. If God takes man, he has to take the fullness of man because every man has a woman in him. So it’s not that he ignores women but he didn’t create a woman. What did he do? He took the rib of a man and made her. So man represents what? He said “male and female created He them”. So don’t criticize God that the Bible is wrong or those who wrote it didn’t think of woman. So everywhere you have “man, woman. These are the foolishness of our age and you’ll find theologians saying this. This is worldly wisdom. It’s not spiritual. It’s not biblical. It’s not Christian. It may be some other thing, but not these ones.

That’s why I’ve been telling pastors that we’re in a different world. This is an IT world where children have iPhones and therefore you have to treat them as this iPhone generation. They are human beings just as we were. The man in the bush, the forest man, the dark-aged man in the bush, who has no clothing like this, who didn’t see this light, is the same as you and I. We are the same. The technology, the science, and the age, it’s not important. Human being remains human being. All nature is man. Praise the Lord.

So God says he devised these categories of the 12 tribes. And because of the honor of the 12 tribes, he took twelve apostles. And the city of God in the end, where men will dwell, also has twelve gates.

So there are 12 categories. Even if you are a pastor or apostle or prophet, whatever it is, you belong to a certain category. So everybody who earns a crown, all the three crowns, he will be placed in one category.

Are you getting my point? I hope you are getting me. Everybody in all the places, the 12 gates… many of them who are rewarded may have the three crowns. Yet they can be found in all categories.

No, no, no. In other words, what I’m trying to suggest, or what the speech is making us realize, is that whatever your calling, whether a pastor or a non-pastor, a professional, a doctor, a lawyer, and you are following Christ, you are following a certain category of classification as to which tribe you belong. So when you are able, you also win crowns.

It is not only pastors who win crowns. Every saint must win a crown. And you enter there, you are getting to the gate.

There’s a gate that you belong to. Yesterday we saw the gates and the various pearls. The jasper, the amethyst, and all the rest.

Revelation 21. So God is telling us that this high calling and these crowns will qualify us. We belong to certain categories or classes of people in his tribe.

These crowns of divine glory in the various categories of calling, ministry, service, and life, demand love, consistency, humility, passion, and endurance until the end. That is, they satisfy holiness, righteousness, and faithfulness. In addition, to be able to qualify in those categories, they demand love, consistency, humility, passion, and endurance until the end.

In the process, however, we meet challenges in choices we make on the way. After we have made a choice for God, there are choices that come our way. To sway us from the original choice we made for God.

So these choices we face are all intended to get us away from the original choice that we made, that we are children of God and servants of God. The challenges we are talking about are the challenges Jesus faced. Satan was trying to persuade him, after he had been called by God and anointed by God and ready for mission, to make challenges. Satan was trying to let him make new choices in spite of his original choice.

So your destiny is determined by the choices. Even after you have come back, it depends on your choices. That’s what Jesus said.

Be careful. Those choices may not come from God. Because God has made a choice, and you made that original choice for God.

So just be there and he will take you to the end. Amen. So it is these challenges—choices that the devil brought, or will bring to our way—that we are concerned with in this three-day program.

The major choices we confront were thrown before Jesus Christ himself in his encounter with the devil, before his mission began. But it also came during his mission. So ours also come during the beginning and/or during the end.

Ours will come at the beginning and/or during the mission. There were these challenges we are talking about, which we found yesterday. We’ll come over.

You may face them as Jesus faced them at the beginning, but they do not come in a consistent manner or a package, such as Jesus faced. As you are moving in the Lord from the beginning, your choice of God will not be in dispute. But then along the way, voices, other factors arise.

Then you begin to make choices. And as the Lord told me, if he is the beginning and the end, the only choice you make is for him, and you don’t make any other choice again. And this is the gravity of Christ’s encounter.

Christ made sure that he was for God, and he made a decision. This meant he was called and sent. Therefore, there was no question of changing master in mystery.

I call it changing Masters in mystery. After God has called you and you are serving him, you were very audacious. You fast and pray 75 times in one day.

You have diligence in church service. You walk miles. You are fasting and praying to get a holy anointing.

You go to mountains, and you speak to the sea, and you speak to this. You want anointing. Trust me, a child of God.

And a minister, how? In the process, I hope you didn’t meet Satan at that time, because many people meet Satan even in those places. But while you are now doing the work, you think he gave you up. He gave up his life.

He didn’t. He will bring in subtle suggestions. Yesterday, we saw that.

He brings suggestions. And his purpose is to stray you away from your original choice. Hallelujah.

Yesterday, we thought that. I’m just trying. I’m not going by yesterday’s message.

But that’s an issue that confronts us. Many people, I call it changing masters in mystery. You started the journey with God.

You were judicious. You were attentive. You didn’t care what you ate.

Your shoe was one shoe for one year. Your socks were can-can, tum-tum. Sometimes, because you didn’t have to, you can go.

In those days, you could buy what? Charlie Wotton. And you didn’t care to sit down. You bought nice sandals, quality sandals that would work the whole year.

You can do all things. And you don’t care. Praise the Lord.

When you were a young guy, you didn’t plait your hair. It was not for you to show. As soon as you grew a beard, you began to plait your hair.

After plaiting your hair, you want a wig. After a wig, you want to stray snakes down here. You want to get some color on your shoulder to say you’re a mermaid.

And you call that beauty. You call that what? What is it? Yes. They come.

What do they change? They change. What do you call it? They change in fashion. They change in fashion.

Men also have their style. You have a cross thing here. You have bongos.

You have earrings. Your hairstyle is changing. You have a bongo style.

A T-shirt. Beloved, we face many challenges. When they told the girls that they should cover their hair, we said, “Me, I brought the kufi”.

“Mr. Agbozo, you’re right .” “You’re the man .” “Osofo, Nankasa, you’re the man”.

“You’re the man .” He said, “Me, I’m a man .” “I’m a man”.

“You’re a man .” “I can’t be their mother”. Or somebody will say, “If the people who sit before me are judges and lawyers, CEOs, and they have four-wheel drive, and they have big houses, I’m their pastor”.

“I demand to be one”.

“Because this is my car .” “They are my people .” Do you take the example from those people? Or do you take them from Jesus and the prophets? Because that’s not the example for us.

I’m not teaching that. I’m wasting your time. So this major fracture in the process of ministry and life after Jesus Christ… there are challenges that Jesus faced.

And we will face them. Because the servant is not greater than the Master. So essentially, we are prompted to choose fulfillment and joy among five major choices in the calling and service.

The first is the pursuit of self-fulfillment in the divine calling, standing, authority and power, grace and glory as children and servants of God. The first choice that we face is self-fulfillment.

The second challenge or choice is the pursuit of fulfillment in human glory. That is man trying to be God. The first Adam failed.

I call it the First Adam’s falling order. Because man wants to be God. So even while you have become a child of God, a minister, a servant of God, you want to follow the human Adamic falling order.

That is, we’ll come and discuss it very soon. The third challenge we face is the pursuit of fulfillment and glory in Satan’s kingdom power and world order and its glory on Earth.

The fourth choice is the pursuit of fulfillment in Satan-man kingdom order and glory, yet in the calling itself. What I’m saying is that there’s a man glory, there’s a self glory, there’s a man or human glory, there’s a Satan glory. But there’s also a fourth one which is a combination between man and Satan.

To form a new category of challenge. The fifth choice is the pursuit of fulfillment in the kingdom glory order of the Father on Earth. In your holiness, righteousness, and faithfulness in that high calling and service as children and servants of God.

I’m not teaching here too much, but if you take Paul’s example in Galatians 2 and in Philippians chapter 3, he has made a choice. He wants to not just conform to Jesus Christ, but he wants to follow the steps of the high calling that made Jesus what he is. And this is the open door we have entered as servants, children first, and servants of God.

Jesus came to establish these two relationships—children of God, servant of God—in the human system for our benefit. And he opened this door of children and servants of God in their worship and service of God. And this is the order which brought you as a minister and first as a saint, as a born-again person, and second as a minister.

And this condition is what God expects you to remain holy, righteous, and faithful until the end. And so whatever challenges, whatever propositions, whatever alternatives you find in life, you don’t change your mind. You remain consistent, non-changing.

Yes, we say “Consistent, non-changing, and non-impeachable”. There’s nothing that should happen in your life that makes you change from your high calling.

Paul was saying that there’s a challenge of living death, the challenge of the glory of the world. Now, you say, “I count all these things as loss”. That a man may win Christ and follow that high calling and reach perfection in that high calling. You see the challenge that we are facing? Jesus Christ.

So there are four propositions that I can call the anti-Christ or anti-God system, which has found its way in the church. And this is what Satan tried to get Jesus right at the beginning to change his mind. Jesus turned every individual proposition down.

He remained faithful even unto death. What death? Death on the cross. That’s the holy order from heaven for us.

The Lord made me understand that the four propositions—self, man, Satan, and Satan-man order of glory—are graves into which we fall, and that make us fail as children and servants of God. The Lord described this as graves. The first four are graves. Big graves on your journey. Not a pothole, Praise the Lord, not a pothole, but a big grave.

And if your four-wheel drive, or your motorbike, or your plane is moving, there’s a grave there. If you fall into it, you can’t get out. In a way, somewhere, as I mentioned earlier, sin, unrighteousness, evil, weakness of the flesh—these are things that one can overcome if we call upon the name of the Lord.

And when we enter into this grave, there’s no way. There’s no way. So the challenges here are not the human factor, the sin factor.

Yes, it’s important. But this is a higher order of challenge. And it’s subtle, such that, unless you are faithful, consistent, and righteous, and holy unto God, you may not even see it.

Let me repeat. These graves are such that, unless you are holy. Your holiness is standing unchallenged.

Your righteousness, obedience, and conduct, and the dependence on God, and the word, the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit must be maintained. And you are not changing. Faithfulness, in this sense, means that whatever the challenge is, even if it’s poverty… Paul says in Romans chapter 8, what you are suffering for is in the love of God.

And let everything, let even death face you. Let people throw stones at you. Let them kill you.

You will not change. And if you are faithful in spite of all this, Revelation chapter 2, verses 8 to 10, he said, even some of us shall be put into prison for how many days? Ten days. I take it one day as 10 years. For 100 years, because God has called you, your enemies, Satan, everybody comes against you.

And no matter what you do, Praise the Lord, you can make it. Somebody comes to my mind, a brother… it is he? He just came to my mind now.

Because God’s calling is on you. Because you are even in the church, and even the whole church is against you. The people around you, as a minister, don’t agree with you.

And then they come together against you. They plan against you to make you fall. Satan can put unlimited things regarding the flesh to you, or something, money, or something to you, and you fall.

But Ikarunikwate sekapuntikarmuda, yaketakadebitisanda, whatever the challenge, whatever the death, the height, the depth, the width, the breadth, the length, the days involved, remain faithful. Holy, righteous, and faithful. Where? Unto the end.

And if you are put in prison and you die, and there’s no hope for you even to say anything, the grave cannot keep you. There’s a resurrection word, spirit. God will raise you from the dead, on that glorious day.

On what day? When he comes to take his people. You may not have even finished your mission, but you finish it. According to Christ, he will perfect it. What will happen? Christ will perfect it.

And perhaps the crown you should have had, and the glory you should have had, he will give it to you. Because this was destined for you. And you didn’t turn against God, but evil spirits and men and situations turn, but you remain faithful.

Oh, Hallelujah. I want to suggest today, in the name of my Lord Jesus Christ, you reach that destination. He will perfect all things.

Paul said, “You can kill me, but you cannot hold the gospel under your control”. “You can kill me, but this gospel…” Hallelujah, it became necessary for God to raise stones to praise him. You know, how did the stone hear you? Hear the message? Your message will be rejected, the stones heard.

And the stones will rise to praise God. And your inference, your impartation to stones, will be a record for you in heaven. Are you hearing me? He said, he will raise stones to glorify him.

So if you are in the church, and the people, everybody, all the elders, everybody turns against you, everybody says damnation, they kill you, but you preach the word that some stones have heard, those stones will rise up one day, and shine in your glory. Because it is your work that made them go there. So the stones which could not be killed, but nobody noticed the stones, the stones will be evidence of your work.

And that day the stones will cry, “He made it possible for us”. But who made it possible? Who would know who the stones are? It’s the Lord himself, because he’s the one who’s using. Let them put you on the tree and stab you, the stones will talk.

The stones where Jesus was, they stopped. And who declared who Jesus was? One of the soldiers who was made to stand. He said, “I perceive that this is the man of God”.

He’s back to where? Into captivity where? In Egypt. His name. His name is not greater than David.

But if you die, Hallelujah, if you die, haakaboutaina, in this glorious service, the stones will cry out. By the time you are dying, the stones are saying this is the man of God. And that because he died, we too shall follow the same God because he was bold to face the challenges and that we, whatever we do, we don’t care, we are stones, we shall serve God. So you find stones praising God for you. That’s your record. Will you say Amen?

I want you to come along. I know a pastor friend of mine. He used to come and visit me. He has one suit and one shirt and one tie in one shoe. And when he comes, when everybody is sleeping at night, he would wash the suit and the shirt every day. After this walk alone in the morning, he will iron it before everybody is up. The guy is so neat with a bowtie. I got his tag. He would come by the road. You think he just arrived in a new suit. He’s in the same old suit, but keep me, we are plenty. Papa, are you going? It is not how many shoes you have, or how many shoes you have, whether you have a walking back or starting walking wardrobe or static wardrobe. What is critical is the faith, the Christ in you. What you are, Jesus Christ, you are. Oh yes, the mighty Hallelujah, you are Lord. I wish this were all night. Oh, you are. Oh, what does he say? Every knee shall bow. Yes, to you, Lord. Have it. Come confess that Jesus is Lord. Every knee shall bow. Every knee shall bow to you, Lord. Every tongue confess that you are. If you stand by this great Lord, and even they kill you or push you out of the way, those who put you out right, they will confess one day. But who confess better? The stones where they stole you and died. The stone, the witnesses, and then we testify before Jehovah. But this man, the pain you inflict as a band…. Many Christians the other day said, “In the park, pastor, they put him on the tree and they killed him”. Somebody sent it to me that we should pray for the Christians in the park. Beloved, but those things happen. It’s not the blood of that man that you say. It is whose blood? Christ’s. Thank you. I wish I could lay hands on you now. My hand is there. As the pastor said, he said, “As you hear, there’s a new impartation. There’s a new…” I’m laying hands on you, not me, but Christ is filling you afresh. Come on to the Lord. You are ready in the Lord. Don’t turn back. He said those four propositions are meant to change you away from your initial choice of God. But remain faithful unto God unto the end. If I had to stop here and to come on tomorrow, which I had… Beloved, the Lord told me that these are graves. The Lord made me understand that the four propositions of self, human, Satan, and Satan-man order of glory are graves into which we fall and fail as children and servants of God. These open graves constitute the major propositions, far greater than the suffering, patience, and the endurance. In other words, if you follow Satan, or follow yourself, or the human system, or you follow the Satan-man arrangement, the challenge is far greater in effect than the suffering you suffer and patiently waiting for God. Praise the Lord. The choice to make this light and easy for you, I agree, is a grave. So when you are going through challenges of this nature, don’t turn back and don’t denounce Christ, because that’s what they want you to do—denounce your calling. Don’t blame anybody. Don’t think that, “Ah, your wife says because you have become a pastor, the children are suffering”. God knows that. He gave them to me because he knows I’m their father. And whatever we get as father and son and wife and family, we share, and they are part of my sacrifice. I cannot do otherwise but let the children grow in Christ. I can spend the whole night to pray for my children that Satan cannot touch them. He can do anything to me. He can make me not have money to give them good food, but he cannot touch them because I pray for them. They are not in his kingdom, and they will not accept the child of God’s petition, the child of disobedience: “Papa is not giving us food, so let’s go and find food for ourselves.”. That’s how some pastors are today.

We shall enter into an examination of this satanic strategy. Not so much with the pitfalls of sin, unrighteousness, and uncleanness, which have been overcome with efforts and calling upon the name of the Lord, as with the four open graves we identified yesterday. The four open graves are well spelled out in Matthew chapter 4, reading from verse 1 through 11. Because we don’t have time, I would make reference to them. The Christian, the Christ mission foundation. Before examining the four graves in the high calling and church mission and service, let us briefly go over the foundation and prime issue in the high calling of childhood and servitude of the Father in Christ. Christ himself, as the scripture describes him, is the foundation and cornerstone of the church. Ephesians 2:19-21 and 1 Corinthians 3:9-16. Ephesians 2:19 to verse 20 is key. 1 Corinthians 3:9-16, verse 11 is very key. Jesus Christ is the foundation of the church of discipleship and all things. He is the foundation, or the foundation… other than that which is Christ himself. You see, when the Obama direction of the religious… if you know that decision, I talked of what the Department of Religion’s statement in America is. I’ll come back to it later. It is what you saw. Everybody can enter the church, and don’t make Christ the only qualification for a member of the church. That’s what America’s State Directive is giving the people. You know, by denying Christ, they are not put aside. If you don’t want to deny Christ, then you won’t be tax-exempted. And so what? Are the members who are Christians not prepared to pay taxes so that they remain true and have liberty to call upon the name of Jesus to belong to them? So what is the state doing? You don’t do anything in Ghana. You should say that Christians, all pastors, everybody should come and pay tax, and we have to work to pay the tax. We’ll see. Call upon a new tax. This is not an alternative to my study as a Christian. We pay taxes every day. We go and buy boots in the shop. In Ghana, there are taxes on petrol, taxes everywhere. Even very soon Obama will say, “tax on air you breathe”. Praise the Lord. And if they had their way, they would do it. They would disperse it.

Obama will say, “Since America is controlling air with power, you can’t breathe until he gets you addicted to the IMF”. That is, they give you money to buy air. Praise the Lord. So Christ is the foundation, and nobody can persuade you to do otherwise. Amen.

The prime mission in Matthew chapter 4: the kingdom of God on earth. If you read Matthew chapter 4 from verse 12 to 25, you have the foundation of love and the purpose for which the challenges came. For which Christ came. Bottom line, if you go through the Bible, you will see that the prime purpose of Christ’s mission is preaching the kingdom of God.

Christ has not come to preach salvation. Salvation is preached after he has died on the tree. He didn’t preach salvation.

He preached what? The kingdom of God. “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand”. And when, in Matthew 4:23, he went about preaching what? The kingdom. Then in the process he also healed.

But the healing is not the purpose of the calling. It’s just a side effect. The critical issue is what? The preaching of the gospel. And so the Bible tells us, when the devil left Jesus, who came and served him? Angels.

We will go through this soon. He came and served him. Then not long ago, he heard the word that they had killed John the Baptist.

He knows that the challenge is with God. If they killed John the Baptist, then he will be killed also. And he knows that he will be killed.

And therefore his main mission. He went about doing good. Yes. But his main mission is preaching. The church is not preaching the kingdom.

But the church is only a word: Salvation. In healing. In deliverance. In miracles. In powers.

And demonstrating acceptable mechanisms for you before human beings. And in the course of these acceptable mechanisms, they go to apply human knowledge, human wisdom, psychology, philosophy, and all these. Anthropology and all these in the church.

They go back and take human power and they start obeying Satan and get power so that they can do the healing and deliverance. This is not the purpose, the main purpose of Christ. That’s a side effect.

The critical question is the kingdom. And the whole church, as the Lord told me in 1984, has derailed from the kingdom. So the kingdom does not get significance.

Today the kingdom is called dominion. Which is only a rehearsal or refreshment of prosperity. But God did not take dominion from man even when he sinned.

So we are not going to take dominion again. Praise the Lord. The kingdom is not human dominion.

The kingdom is God’s dominion. If somebody tells you the kingdom is dominion so you can command resources, he’s telling you to get out of there. Then you make yourself the resources. Your power to command resources means you are in the kingdom.

That’s a lie. The kingdom is that you submit and worship Jesus Christ and the Father. With the assistance of the Holy Spirit.

That’s the kingdom. It’s God’s reign and rule, not your reign and rule by nature. All resources, money in the bank.

And some prophets can even give you your bank number. And they say it’s prophecy. You should find out the power behind such foolish things.

He can tell you your bank number. He can tell you your cash balance. These are all satanic plots, pretending to be prophetic.

Praise the Lord. If you are in such a system, remember that this is Kabuta. I am not being wicked, I am being loving.

And if you are in such a church or such a prophet who is himself lost, then know that this is a system of the lost and perishing, and come out. I don’t say don’t go to it, but don’t believe their trash. So they are going to have prayer in 24 hours.

Miracle, this and that.

We are the witnesses of him, that he preached the kingdom. So the kingdom, his path, has preeminence over salvation and healing. Because after the people have been healed and forgiven their sins, it’s the kingdom that they can enter.

And that’s why they grow in it, to eternity. Preaching the gospel of the kingdom is Christ’s major mission agenda. Sin, disease, sickness, all are but side obstacles and challenges in human life and existence.

The side effects consist of sin, human frailty, and weaknesses. The human frailty and weakness factor on one hand, and on the other hand, certain deaths in the serpent’s seed of the human war phenomenon. Hebrews chapter 2, verses 8 through 18.

Jesus, having taken the nature of man, faced all the challenges of fallen man, and became the captain of human salvation and redemption through suffering on man’s behalf. Jesus as high priest was not, and is not, above the travails of humanity. He suffered in all these things in himself, and overcame them on behalf of all of us.

In all cases, he won victory. He won victory as child and as servant of God, for and on behalf of all of us. But his mission was and is still preaching, pursuing, building, and establishing the kingdom of God on earth.

Salvation, healing, and deliverance were not his mission message. The kingdom of God was and is his mission and message, so is the church’s. Matthew 16:13-19, as against Luke 10:17-19.

In Luke, we’re given power to heal diseases and cast out demons. It’s important. In Mark, the healing and others to cast out demons.

But the major mission is the kingdom. Matthew 16 is critical, and I think you don’t need me to visit it, but go and read.

“Who do men say that I am”? “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God”. “Upon this rock, upon this confession, upon this declaration, upon this revelation that has come, I will build my church”.

And if all agree that I am the Christ, then they shall be accepted.

The open door of divine glory, the call of the 12 disciples, and after the order of the 12 tribes of Israel, and 12 golden gates to the city of God, is the prime objective for the high calling and service. In this respect, we have this on the Golden Gate Highway. In other words, all that I said is that as you’re moving in this Golden Gate Highway, you meet destruction, you meet graves.

Thank you very much. Amen.