“Speak to Zerubbabel, governor of Judah, saying:
‘I will shake heaven and earth.’”(Hag. 2:21, NKJV)
Back to the mantle of Zerubbabel. One of the most important workings that the spirit of Zerubbabel brings about, is similar to that which Ahab grudgingly said to Elijah in 1 Kings 18:17: “Is that you, O troubler of Israel?” In the teaching of Day 1049-1051 we examined aspects of this, with specific reference to the role that the Bride plays in “the removal of those things that are being shaken, as of things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain” (Heb. 12:27).
The paraphrasing context of the Message in which these very nuanced words are said, is particularly interesting, and offers an important perspective: “The phrase ‘one last shaking’ means a thorough housecleaning, getting rid of all the historical and religious junk so that the unshakable essentials stand clear and uncluttered. Do you see what we’ve got? An unshakable kingdom! And do you see how thankful we must be? Not only thankful, but brimming with worship, deeply reverent before God. For God is not an indifferent bystander. He’s actively cleaning house, torching all that needs to burn, and he won’t quit until it’s all cleansed. God himself is Fire!” (Heb. 12:27-29).
The Bride are called as “troublers” to bring about these shakings, but they first need to be shaken themselves. This is already prophetically promised in the Old Testament in Hag. 2:6-7: “For thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘Once more (it is a little while) I will shake heaven and earth, the sea and dry land; and I will shake all nations, and they shall come to the Desire of All Nations, and I will fill this temple with glory,’ says the Lord of hosts.”
It is clear from this verse that God brings about this shaking, but if one reads this along with Joel 3:16 a wider perspective is granted: “The Lord also will roar from Zion, and utter His voice from Jerusalem; the heavens and earth will shake …” As we are looking at this Old Testament Scripture with a prophetic-typological view, Zion and (the New) Jerusalem are both references to the New Testament Bride of Christ (Heb. 12:22; Rev. 21:2). If we then read the verse in those terms, it reads as follows: “The Lord will also roar through/from the Bride, and utter His voice through the Body of Christ; the heavens and earth will shake …”
There are those who think that the end times will be marked by all types of shaking, including actual earthquakes, for instance, as Mark 13:8 apparently suggests: “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be earthquakes in various places, and there will be famines and troubles. These are the beginnings of sorrows.” The end time expectations of many Charismatic circles are known as “Jacob’s trouble”, based in part on this Scripture. [In the teaching of Day 350-353 and also in the teaching of Day 1205-1207 this deceptive logic was dealt with in great detail.] These troubles/earthquakes were certainly physical in nature, but they also happened before around 70 AC, when the second temple of Jerusalem was destroyed. For complete documentation of this issue, look at the following books: Before Jerusalem Fell: Dating the Book of Revelation – An Exegetical and Historical Argument for a Pre-A.D. 70 Composition by Kenneth L. Gentry, Jnr.; as well as The Apocalypse Fulfilled by P.S. Desprez.
The greatest problem with reading the explicitly apocalyptic books of the Bible is that most Christians tend to consider them in literal terms. I am often accused of seeing all things in spiritual terms, but alas this is not something I need to make an effort of doing, as most Scriptures are already cast in spiritual terms by the Holy Spirit! It is clearly people’s carnal way of thought that has them always wanting to literalise the Word of God! Selah. Jesus himself declared the following: “The words that I speak to you are spirit …” (John 6:63)! Therefore he declares in Matt. 13:14-16, following Isa. 6:9-10: “And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says: ‘Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive; for the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them.’ But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear.’”
Most of the exegesis of the book of Revelation reads the following three verses in this symbolic book in absolutely literal terms: “I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood. And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind. Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place.” (Rev. 6:12-14).
Readers of these teachings will immediately realise why I specifically chose those three verses – you’ll struggle to find a better description of “troubles”! Over the course of the dramatic unfolding of the revelation of the Christ in every believer, something happens with this sixth unveiling, something terrifying happens within us as the natural earth (Gen. 2:7; 3:19) – we are after all “made of dust” (1 Cor. 15:47). Everything that is specified in the Scripture from Revelation quoted above, is specifically related to spiritual events that shake you. It starts with an earthquake, and ends with the heavens that shut LIKE A SCROLL. The purpose of this troubling of the natural man is to get rid of everything that is still attached to the LAW. (Remember: The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law.” – 1 Cor. 15:56). The purpose is made painfully clear in Rom. 7:6: “But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.”
Now is not the time to do an exegesis of this section of Revelation (God willing we will eventually get to this). But to illustrate the issue at hand, let’s look at this quote from a book published in 1683, with perhaps the longest title of a book I’ve ever encountered. It’s written by Jane Leade, a mystic and prophet, who in some instances still seem to have had a limited, sometimes even wrong understanding of certain things, but who had amazing revelation, at that point already, about how the spiritual person deals with things that are clearly not natural, as 1 Cor. 2:13-14 puts it: “These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” Carefully read her spiritual explanation of Rev. 6:12-14 in her book The Revelation of Revelations: Particularly as an Essay Towards the Unsealing, Opening and Discovering the Seven Seals, the Seven Thunders, the New Jerusalem State, the Twelve Gates and the Magical Eye. The which have not hitherto so far been brought forth to light (except to the Spiritual Discerner) to any degree of Satisfaction, as to the understanding of the grand Mystery (http://www.janelead.org/writings.html): “I proceed now to the opening of the sixth seal where the first thing observable is the great earthquake, representing the terrible shaking of the very foundation of the old earth in which is the original seed of sin (the hour of whose judgment is come) and the trumpet hath sounded for the dissolving this first earth and heavens that their place may be no more found. The wind of the mighty Spirit blows upon all flesh to make it die and wither. The sun of the outward reason is changed into blackness and the moon of the senses into blood, and all the starry imaginations drop like untimely fruit, and every island and mountain of strength melteth away. There can be no hiding in this day — a consumption being determined upon the whole universe which has been under the Beast’s captivity.
“We may call this a blessed ruin or undoing to see a destruction come upon all that hath kept the Lamb and His kingdom out. This causes a great outcry and perplexity in the properties of degenerate nature where the king of reason and the captains, the senses, do not know whither to flee from the face of Him who is come to make all things new, which could not be until all of the old building was broken down and taken to pieces where the fretting leprosy of sin did still rise. The wisdom of God could no better way contrive for the laying of a sound and sinless foundation for the New Jerusalem according to this fore-contrived model, than by that express word which came unto me, that none could or ever should come to the opening of the seventh seal till all this was fully finished. And I must give witness that is happening and doth not seem grievous because of what is to succeed and follow when the next seal shall be opened within.”
It is immensely interesting that this woman was so far ahead of the way of thinking of her time. On the website where her documents are now electronically archived, the following quote is found, which fits so well with the theme of this specific teaching: “Shake, shake your earthly dust away. Now it’s the Spirit’s Day, that will admit of no delay.”
In the natural earthquake the Lord is not (1 Kings 19:11), in the spiritual earthquake He appears.
Indeed: “I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake …” As illustration, let us look at the first manifestation of the second coming of Jesus, his parousia WITHIN us – our inner earthquake.
Throughout Scripture earthquakes are often manifestations of Godly presence. Isa. 19:6 makes it clear: “You will be punished by the Lord of hosts with thunder and earthquake and great noise, with storm and tempest and the flame of devouring fire.” When God descended, in the time of Moses, onto the mountain Sinai, we read that “the whole mountain shook violently”, just as when Jesus arose from the dead, we read in Matt. 28:2: “And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat on it.”
The mantle of Zerubbabel brings on the spiritual earthquake – a sudden, absolutely powerful and violent overthrowing of the accepted, normal and natural state of things in your life. Beware – this is the beginning of the end – as Dan. 8:17 suggests: “the vision refers to the time of the end”.
- Selah: Answer the critics who often argue that the Bible should not be read in spiritual terms.
- Read: 83, 120 & 121; Judg. 5-9.
- Memorise: 121.
- For a more in-depth understanding: Read one of the three texts mentioned above.
