Episode 7: Hold Your Hilltop

Most Christians agree that we're living in the last days, and since the Bible explains that darkness will increase in those days, it may seem like Jesus could return any day.

But what if that's not the case?

What if we're not as close to the Rapture as we think? What if there are still things that need to happen before certain end time prophecies can be fulfilled? 

And what if some of those prophecies hinge on the actions of the Body of Christ in the Earth? Should we build our bunkers and look wistfully toward Heaven as the world burns around us? Or are we the ones holding the fire hose?

Check out this week's episode to find out how you can play an active part in bringing Heaven closer to Earth.

AJ Elliott
www.authorajelliott.com

The views expressed in this podcast are those of the author and do not reflect the official guidance or position of the United States government, the Department of Defense, the United States Air Force, or the United States Space Force.

Transcript

End Times Prophecies

Generally speaking, most Christians are aware of end times prophecy, and they're aware that the closer we get to the end times referred to in Revelation that the darkness and evil in the world is supposed to increase. For many Christians, when they see darkness and evil and corruption increasing in the world, they take it as just another sign that we’re getting closer to the end. Whether you believe in a rapture or don't believe in a rapture, it's the belief that the end is imminent, so we need to just hunker down and ride it out till we go to heaven. 

This leads to a resigned attitude on the part of the body of Christ in the Earth. And it's also based on the assumption that the end could happen any day. But if we look at the scripture, that's not actually true. 

There are certain things that still have to happen before Jesus can return, and we don't see them happening yet. There are still certain prophecies that haven't been fulfilled. Take a look at 1 Thessalonians 5: “Now brothers, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying peace and safety, destruction will come on them suddenly as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. 

People are usually familiar with the concept of the day of the Lord coming like a thief in the night and destruction coming quickly. But the part that always caught my attention is where it says, “While people are saying peace and safety”, destruction will come. Even when I was in my young teenage years, if I looked around, people were not saying peace and safety. In fact, my whole life, and increasingly so, if you look around the world, people are saying war and death and destruction.

So this verse is referring to something that we still haven't seen. Let’s look at 2 Thessalonians 2: “Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you brothers not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by some prophecy, report, or letter supposed to have come from us saying that the day of the Lord has already come. Don't let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.”

This verse is talking about the antichrist, the one they call the man of lawlessness. It says, “He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped so that he sets himself up in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be God. Don't you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things? And now you know what is holding him back so that he may be revealed at the proper time. For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work, but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so until he's taken out of the way, and then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus Christ will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming.”

Notice what it says about the secret power of lawlessness:  “The one who now holds it back will continue to do so until he is taken out of the way.” 

Who is the one that now holds it back? 

It's the church. It's the body of Christ and the earth. We are the ones who are supposed to hold back the secret power of lawlessness. 

It says that power is already at work, and we've seen that for centuries. It's the secret power, it works in secret until it comes into the open, and we've seen this throughout history. When Nazi Germany started to rise up, it was put forward as a positive thing until its true nature was revealed. It was the same with the communism of the Cold War. It was put forward as a positive movement. But communism has killed more people than all of the world wars. It's the Antichrist system that is trying to come into manifestation in the earth. 

But it isn't time yet, because there are these certain prophecies that haven't yet been fulfilled.

In Matthew 24:14, Jesus is talking about the end times and he says, “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” Well, the gospel hasn't yet been preached to the entire world.

Unreached Corners

About fifteen years ago, I heard about this movement called the Back to Jerusalem movement. The idea behind it is that when the gospel left Jerusalem, it traveled predominantly westward. If it continues all the way around the world, then eventually it has to go back to Jerusalem from the east.

This is just one example, but there are multiple places and nations around the world where the gospel has never been, and those places have to be reached before that particular prophecy can be fulfilled. The end can't come until the gospel is preached everywhere. 

Somewhere, perhaps in the South Pacific, there's an island of natives whose technology hasn't changed in something like 200 years. They’re a very violent tribe, to the point that anyone who sets foot on their shore will be killed. There was a young missionary sometime in the last decade or so, who decided that he was going to go evangelize this island. He got a, a guide to take him out there in a boat. As I remember the story, the guide wouldn't even leave the boat to go onto the shore. He had the missionary jump off the boat in shallow water and go in. So this young missionary walked up with his Bible on this very primitive island, and when he set foot on the shore, they just killed him and took his body away.

There's a spiritual stronghold on that island, and one day there will be someone or multiple people who go and evangelize that place, because the gospel has to be preached everywhere. But before the end can come, every place, including that island, has to be reached with the gospel.

What does that mean for us, and how does that relate to what we read in Thessalonians about the body of Christ holding back the secret power of lawlessness? Well, what would have to happen for all of these places to be reached with the gospel? Yes, there is an underground church in many places, but in order for the gospel to really be preached everywhere in the world, the body of Christ has to expand, has to have greater power, and has to be able to push back the darkness that is keeping it out of certain places. Christianity has to become stronger.

The End Times Church 

As the end times come, Christianity is not supposed to diminish. It not only has to become stronger, it has to gain the upper hand. It’s only when Christianity has the upper hand that it can get into every part of the world. Also, if you go back to the other verse that we read about, where people will be saying “peace and safety” — the only way that happens is if the church becomes very strong, so that it is predominant.

One more scripture we need to look at is Numbers 14:20-21, “Then the Lord said, I have pardoned according to your word. But truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord.” (NKJV)

When God says, as I live, that's a very serious promise, because he's saying — If I don't do this, then I, God will cease to exist. He says, as I live, all the earth will be filled with my glory. We haven't seen that yet. God is everywhere in the earth, but his glory has not filled the entire earth. There are plenty of places where that glory is not manifesting. This is talking about a scenario where the gospel and the light of Christianity and the light of God is brought up to such a high level that it is all over the entire earth. That’s something the world has never seen.

If you put all of these scriptures together, it starts to build a picture of what this would have to look like—a time where people are saying peace and safety, and where the gospel is preached everywhere in the entire world, and where the glory of God fills the whole earth.

In order for those three things to happen, it would require the Church in the earth to be very strong, active, and full of power. That's not a scenario that can happen if the church is hiding out in their hovels, waiting for the end to come. We're supposed to grow in power, and we're supposed to be actively pushing back the darkness.

A lot of Christians will make the assumption that God is just going to do all of this, and he is, and he does, but he's chosen to do certain things through us. Jesus was often a little stern with his disciples, wanting them to do the things that he was showing them. He kept saying, I've given you an example, you go and cast out these devils. You go and do this. I've shown you what to do. There's multiple times where they got in a bad spot and they ran to him for help, and he asked, where's your faith? It seems pretty clear that we have a role to play. God is sovereign, and the power is his, but he still expects us to wield it.

A Behemoth Sleeping

Where does that leave us? Well, the church started to wake up a little, because they saw the antichrist system starting to emerge again. But now some people have started to relax, and think that we can go back to normal. But that's the problem, because normal was what got us to the point of seeing the power of lawlessness start to rise.

On the whole, the church wasn't really fighting back against darkness that was pushing and growing in the earth, and so we got to this point where it was just so bad the church had to do something. What that reveals is that if the church doesn't fight back, then the antichrist system can come into power in the earth on our watch.

Over in Ephesians 6:13, it says, “Therefore put on the whole armor of God so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground. And after you have done everything to stand, stand firm.” 

We could paraphrase this as, “After you've done everything necessary to hold your position, then hold your position.” After you've gained the hilltop, then you have to hold the hilltop. And the reason is that the enemy isn't lying on the ground bloody, they are regrouping. I heard a news story recently that there is a Satanic group in Kansas that wants to hold a black mass on the Capitol grounds. I don't know how they're going to do this, but these are their plans. And a couple of weeks ago, there was an SNL skit that went a little viral, because there was supposedly an actual occultic ritual taking place in one scene.

It is the occultic world that manifests as one of the main enemies to Christianity. That's what we've seen in our generation. Some years ago, around 2015 or 2016, the pastor of the church that I was attending at the time pointed out that Washington DC was full of witchcraft. At the time, it came as a surprise to me.  It doesn't seem strange now, but back then, it hadn't occurred to me. But of course it would be that way, because it's a seat of power. And it's the seat of power in a nation that is predominantly Christian and is responsible for a lot of the gospel going around the world, so of course, Satan would want to gain a foothold there. 

If we consider all the other manifestations of darkness around the world, those entities haven't crawled into dark corners. Not yet. There's a point in a battle where you gain the upper hand, and there's a point where the enemy is actually defeated. We haven't come to that final point yet.

Holding the Hilltop with Spiritual Gifts

We need to not only hold our hilltop, but we need to take more ground, and take the light further. So how do we do that? How do we avoid going back to the same old thing that we’ve been doing up to now? 

From an individual perspective, if you have particular spiritual gifts that you know you are able to operate in, work to develop those. Find mentors and teachers who can help you develop those gifts.

And don't stop praying. Don't stop pressing in. Don't resign yourself to just waiting around for the rapture. We're in a different part of the battle now. Maybe we're shifting from defense to offense, but there's still a battle to be fought. And it's not only about reaching the loss, although of course that's important; but the other side of it is holding our ground and continuing to advance the kingdom.

We can also be open to greater displays of God's power than we've seen before. I remember when I was a teenager, I was in a pretty large active youth group and a new member was visiting the church. She was asking one of our volunteer youth leaders about what the church believed, and asked if we believed in speaking in tongues. And the youth leader said, no. 

I'd never seen anyone speak in tongues at that particular church, but I'd never also heard anyone say that they didn't believe it. It just wasn't something that was emphasized. But when I heard someone actually say, no, we don't believe that, I thought, well, do you believe all of the Bible or don't you?

Yes, different congregations have different opinions about that, but there are some who are kind of frightened of supernatural displays of God's power, or things that can't be naturally explained. There’s no need to be so frightened that we won't allow God to do something different—because he always does something different.

There are demonic forms of spiritual manifestation that aren't of God, but if there's a demonic version, then there has to be a God version, because Satan can't create anything. The bottom line is, we need to let God out of our box and not be too timid to allow the Holy Spirit to do something just because we haven't experienced it before.

We're in a time now where we've seen modern day prophets appear and start to speak. And they've come under a lot of attack from the church. That’s the kind of thing that really holds the body of Christ back. But it's those who are willing to flow with God, and see where the Holy Spirit is going, who will be the real victors in this fight.

Lastly, when it comes to developing your spiritual gifts, this doesn’t only mean the nine gifts of the spirit. It’s also talents, like artistic gifts. We often recognize these as God-given gifts, but when we think about using them for the church, it's usually in the context of using dance or music for evangelism, like on as outreach or for a missions trip. Or we use music in worship—and these gifts are meant are meant to worship God, but they're also for so much more than that.

The artistic talents that God gives us aren't just so that God can sit back on a Sunday afternoon and be entertained. They have a fundamental spiritual purpose. I was at a Bible convention years ago, and they would have different worship music throughout the various sessions. There was one man who was very skilled at playing the trumpet, and one of the Bible teachers pointed out that he played the trumpet by the spirit.

At the time, that was a novel thought for me. People who are open to the use of tongues usually recognize that you can sing in tongues—you can sing by the spirit. But I thought to myself then, if you can play the trumpet by the spirit, then you can also dance by the spirit.

The biggest unrecognized aspect of these talents is that they're not only for making beautiful worship, but they have direct application in spiritual combat. When music and dance and even painting and drawing becomes prophetic and is used in a prophetic manner, it can be utilized as a direct spiritual weapon to stop the plans of the enemy and carry forward the plans of the kingdom.

I think that's one aspect of the church that's going to become more prevalent going forward. That’s also part of what I meant when I said that we need to let God out of our box and be open to new ways of fighting, new ways of fighting in the Spirit. 

When I wrote Turning Pointe, I didn't write it as a fantasy, because I believe that the events depicted there are true to life. I think that that's what we're going to see more of.

 So don't surrender your hilltop, because the church has a long way to go. It will take all of us to represent the fulfillment of Jesus. 

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan.