Melchizedek and Abram--Part 2

When God intends to intervene in the earth, He must first raise up someone on earth to bear witness to that which He wants to do. In this way all things are established by a double witness, in this case the witness of heaven and earth (Deut. 4:26).

We know that God planned from the beginning to part the Red Sea at a particular time. Did God just do this all by Himself? Yes and no. No man helped Him do it, but God also followed the lawful procedure as expressed by His mind and character--the law. He started 80 years earlier by having Moses born. He trained Moses for 80 years, first in Egypt and then in Midian, so that when He led Israel out of Egypt to the Red Sea, He would (by this time) stretch forth his rod over the sea to bear witness of the divine plan to part it.

We must view the divine law as the game plan, the lawful manner in which God intends to rule and judge the earth. In a way, it is a self-imposed restriction, because God is restricted by the principles of His own character. He will never do something in a manner that goes against who He is--His personal character. So in that sense the law restricts His actions. But because He is more intelligent than we are, He is able to hide His intentions within the confines of His law so that we are actually surprised at the manner in which He intervenes in the earth.

This principle of the double witness applies also with Melchizedek and Abram. God sent Shem to Canaan for the same reason that He later caused Jesus to be born as the Son of Man in the earth. Jesus did only what the Father did, and said only what the Father said. He was the "Amen" of God (Rev. 3:14). And so His statement in John 12:32 was the Father's statement of intent, of which He bore witness on earth, and therefore it will come to pass:

"And I, if I be lifted up from the earth [i.e., crucified], will draw [drag] all men to Myself. But He was saying this to indicate the kind of death by which He was to die."

It was necessary that a Perfect Man be born on earth who would bear witness to ALL that the Father had planned, in order to conform the entire plan to the lawful procedure by which this plan must be fulfilled.

But getting back to Melchizedek, God sent him to Canaan to build Jerusalem and rule it under the title of Melchizedek, "King of Righteousness." This was to make him an inhabitant of Canaan, from which position he had certain rights that others did not have. When he met Abram with bread and wine, he bore witness to the divine plan to set all men free--even the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah. He bore witness to the calling of Abram as the next in line for the Birthright, the one who would inherit the Promised Land and remove the curse from it.

Abram died before Shem, so the Birthright was actually passed down to Isaac, who bestowed it upon Jacob-Israel. The Israelites had to go to Egypt for a while, in order to return to Canaan to fulfill God's redemption plan. Whereas Shem only ruled one city, the Israelites under Joshua were called to take the entire land of Canaan and put it under the feet of Jesus Christ, who is the Yahweh of the Old Testament. To do this, they were instructed to destroy all false religion in the land, all idolatry, all "lords" that had usurped this portion of God's creation (Kingdom).

But this was only the second step in the course of Kingdom history. First of all, Canaan was only a small portion of God's creation. Secondly, Israel was to take the land with a very limited anointing, having rejected the Pentecostal anointing at Horeb, and likewise having rejected the feast of Tabernacles when they believed the evil report of the 10 spies (Num. 13).

And so, Israel was doomed to fail in their attempt to remove the curse from Canaan. In fact, they violated the law so much that they themselves eventually came under the curse of the law even as the Canaanites. So God removed them from the land for the same reason that He had removed the Canaanites earlier. The curse of the law remained upon Canaan and upon Israel and Judah.

Nonetheless, the types and patterns were established sufficiently to give us insight into the next phase of Kingdom history. In the New Testament, Jesus came to fulfill the Melchizedek type. He was the lawful King, the inheritor of the throne of Jerusalem. But He was rejected and His disciples dispersed, in order to enlarge the story and bring it into its proper world-wide setting.

The disciples of Jesus received the greater anointing of Pentecost in order to empower them to "baptize all nations." No longer was the Kingdom pattern limited to a sliver of land, but now God was about to express Isaiah's truth, "the God of the whole earth shall He be called" (Isaiah 54:5). The people's narrow view that Yahweh was merely a local deity was shattered. The view that Yahweh was merely the God of Israel and Judah was shattered. For the first time God was seen clearly as the Creator and Owner of the entire earth.

Unfortunately, Pentecost turned out to be insufficient as well. The type of King Saul, crowned on Pentecost (1 Sam. 12:17), proved to be accurate. Though the calling of the Pentecostal disciples was as legitimate as Israel's calling under Moses, both proved to be inadequate in removing the curse from the earth. Paul tells us that Pentecost gave us only an "earnest" of the Spirit (2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5; Eph. 1:14), and this was not enough to complete the work.

But there is a third and final feast that we see. It is the feast of Tabernacles, by which "you may be filled up to all the fullness of God" (Eph. 3:19). By this greater empowerment, the overcomers will indeed complete the work of removing the curse, not only from Canaan, but from the entire earth. The curse from Adam (Gen. 3:17) will be removed, and in the end, all things will be put back under the feet (rule) of Jesus Christ, the lawful Heir of all things.

We have seen much revelation since 2002 in regard to removing the curse. This is the calling of Abraham and is the primary responsibility of those who hold the Birthright. Israel failed to fulfill its responsibility, and the Saul-Church failed as well. In more recent times, the Birthright was given back to Esau (1948) in order to fulfill Isaac's promise to him in Gen. 27:40.

This, I believe, was the final impediment to the overcomers' claim to the Birthright. The Scepter of David was given to the overcomers on Nov. 30, 2000 at the end of the 7-1/2 year transition from Saul to David. We now await the second portion of the Birthright, which is the Sonship, otherwise known as the Fruitfulness Mandate, which I explained in The Struggle for the Birthright.

I am quite sure that the Sonship transfer will occur at the fulfillment of the feast of Tabernacles in some year yet to come. This will complete the empowerment of the overcomers and allow them to complete the work that others failed to do in the past. This gives us some insight into the purpose of the Tabernacles Age to come. Removing the curse is ultimately the removal of all other "lords" who claim ownership of God's territory.

Melchizedek met Abram with bread and wine, bearing witness to his calling in relation to Canaan. Jesus came in the same manner to raise the level of fulfillment to a world-wide scale. We today are likewise bearing witness to the Father's plan to bring all things under the feet of Christ and are in the process already of removing the curse from the portions of the earth that our feet tread. Note the revelation from May 28, 2009 and my trip reports in June.

We are part of a great historic plan, and the future of the Kingdom looks good. Be part of the solution.