Hi all,
I am writing a few days before a good part of Christendom expects the rapture to happen, September 23, at the start of the Feast of Trumpets/Rosh haShanah. A pastor from South Africa, Joshua Mhlakela, claimed that he had a visitation from Jesus a few years ago in which Jesus told him the rapture would happen on September 23, 2025.
I’ve received emails rebuking me for not believing him, and even more emails asking IF I believed it. Based on scripture and things the Lord has told me (Word and Spirit), I don’t see it happening this year. I’m not sure why so many have accepted the idea that a lone man has been told a secret that Jesus, Peter, Paul, James, and John didn’t know. Jeremiah 23 makes it clear many have visions of their own heart, of their own imaginations, which I’ve taught on extensively. Sadly, I believe this to be the case with this year’s prediction of the rapture on 23 September. We are all one heart beat from heaven, so let us live with that knoweldge.
My heart is that of a pastor
…grieved at the repeated errors made by those who think of themselves as mature, who chase after false words and false prophets. Worse, when they are proven to have been false, will they move on without examining why they were so susceptible to error? Certainly, they will be embarrassed by their posts spreading and endorsing false words, maybe even hurt if it didn’t happen; but will they humble themselves, learn, and grow?
Years ago, during a visitation, the Lord gave me a vision of what I call ‘butterfly Christians’. It was of a brightly lit square field, with darkness starting at the borders of the field. Everyone in the field was chasing butterflies. They all wore lightweight linen robes of white and were so caught up chasing butterflies that they didn’t notice the darkness around them.
Then, as I watched, one person noticed on the edge of the field, where the darkness started, a person sitting in rags, watching the butterfly chasers (they never caught one, and they were never able to stay focused on a single butterfly for long). In fact, the whole field was ringed with people sitting in darkness watching the butterfly chasers.
Then one person in white sat down across from a person in rags in the dark and gave them food to eat. Immediately, that person’s rags turned to a white linen robe, and their area became bathed in bright light. Then, one by one, others stopped chasing butterflies to notice those in darkness, and each sat 1 to 1, and gave them food. These actions changed the person’s rags worn in darkness to white linen, clean and bright like the butterfly chasers. As they did so, the light expanded, encompassing each person, making the field just that much larger.
Sadly, there are still butterfly chasers in the body of Christ today – but many are starting to notice the darkness around them.
No more chasing butterflies as of 9/10/25 for us in the USA (The day Charlie Kirk was assassinated)
Charlie Kirk was a noted Christian man who loved debating on college campuses, taking questions, politely and boldly answering them. He was articulate, polite, direct, and knowledgeable beyond his 31 years. His assassination has polarized and mobilized thousands more ‘Charlie Kirks’, having the opposite effect the assassin wanted – he wanted to silence a great voice and that be the end of it, but he instead awakened thousands of other voices for the Lord and right. Many college-age people have become even more bold in the days since, and will, I’m sure, continue to affect many lives for the Lord and right.
While national events grab our attention ‘out there’, let us not forget we must walk with the Lord where we live, with whom our lives touch, each day. When the ‘Arab Spring’ was happening, in early 2011, during a visitation I had with the Lord, I asked Him many questions about this nation and that nation, if they would be radicalized. Finally, He stopped me: “What are these things to you? As for you, you must be about the Father’s business.” That has stayed with me. No matter what swirls around us, we must be faithful today to what He asks of us today. “Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.” (Mt 6:38)
Meeting in home among those we know will continue to rise (in the west especially) as popular culture turns against Christians and conservatives. In the first century, they didn’t meet in homes because of persecution; they just adapted the synagogue system, which at that time largely met in homes. But a house church is out of the public eye, being family-based. Adam, Eve, and the Lord were the first ‘house church’, and He has never stopped using the family, which He invented, as the primary means through which the gospel spreads. He intends the family and the relationships that spring from family to be the main way the ways of the Lord are spread throughout the earth. We are seeing Christians stepping away from auditorium buildings called church, and stopping their ‘floating’ between churches, to settle down into healthy Christian relationships that meet in homes.
I tell people not to necessarily try to start a house church, but to start a relationship. Invest in the relationships first, and let any gatherings in homes for food, prayer, study, or discussions flow as a result of those relationships.
There are 4 spheres of relationships found in the NT, to whom the gospel spreads, and through whom miracles happen. They are: Family, friends, neighbors, co-workers. In John 1: 41-51 we see family, as Andrew introduced his brother, Peter to Jesus. Then we are told Philip was from the same town, which is neighbors. Philip then introduced his friend, Nathaniel, to Jesus. Family, friends, neighbors. In Luke 5:10 we are told that Peter, James, and John were partners in a fishing business. Co-workers.
We were raised in a church culture that believes anointed meetings make disciples, but that’s wrong.
The Bible teaches it is spiritual fathers and mothers who make disciples. It is through relationships that we grow. I have said for at least 25 years now, that the Father in His wisdom made righteousness proven through relationships. Anyone can say they are a Christian, but righteousness is proven within the framework of relationships.
Consider the Christians of the 1st century did not have a New Testament in their pockets. The most they had for decades were a few letters floating around, copied and taken with messengers, here a little, there a little. There were no chapters and verses, there were just a few letters written between 50-90AD that weren’t assembled into our New Testament until after the Roman Empire had legalized Christianity. How did they grow in Christ without anyone having a Bible?
It was through relationships, observing others walk out their faith that the gospel spread, and it was through relationships that believers became disciples: “Teaching them to observe and do all things I commanded you.” Observe means to do. They have to observe us in action, and then they walk with Him as we do. Mt 28: 20
Consider that people from the nations present in Passover at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion were the same nations represented on Pentecost. Jewish law required attendance in Jerusalem 3x a year*: Passover week, Pentecost, and in the fall for Tabernacles. So the people in town at Pentecost were largely the same group present during Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. At Pentecost we are told in Acts 2 lands of modern nations of Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Crete, Saudi Arabia, were represented by Jews and converted Gentiles who asked Peter what this talking in tongues was all about. *Dt 16: 16-17
Without any New Testament in their pockets, they took faith in Christ back into those nations. Acts 8:1 says that the persecution of Steven was so severe, ‘every disciple moved out of the city (Jerusalem) except the apostles’, moving to Judea and Samaria. In Acts 11: 19-20 we are told they actually went further, into the island of Cyprus, and Phoenicia, Cyrene, and Antioch. In Acts 8:26-40 the Ethiopian eunuch took the gospel to Ethiopia. All this without a New Testament in print.
Antioch was in Turkey, and in Acts 11: 19-30 we are told some of those who had left Jerusalem in Acts 8: 1-2, went to Antioch and told non-Jews (Greeks) about Jesus – whom they received readily! We were first called Christians in Antioch.
In one of his earliest letters, Paul said the faith of the Thessalonians was ‘known everywhere’ (I Th 1:8), and Romans 1: 8 says their faith was reported all over the (Roman) world. He said similar things of the Colossians in 1:23, that all over the world the gospel spreads. By the year 64 when Rome burned, Nero blamed Christians, they were so numerous!
All of this was done without a New Testament in print. Why is it today we think ‘If we can just get a Bible in their hands!’ or ‘take them to church’? Why do we think this? Because we have been trained in an auditorium church where 1 person feeds the baby birds in the pews a few bites of Bible, urges them to read their Bible, and everyone is trained to think THAT is the primary means of growth in Christ. The Word is certainly important, but believing and knowing God is personal, of the heart, not of the mind. It is a walk WITH the Father and Lord: “This is eternal life, to know you the only true God, and your son, Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” John 17:3. At some point believers must become ‘knowers’. That process is called discipleship.
I’ve been saying from the start of CWOWI that the gospel started as a relationship in Israel when God came to man. It went to Greece to become a philosophy, to Rome to become a religion, to Europe to become a tradition, and to the USA to become an enterprise.
Folks, the time in the Spirit is to return to our roots of relationship-based faith. As Jesus told me in the visitation of February 4, 2001: “As it was in the beginning so it must be now: I’m moving in relationships.” He is returning the Christian faith to its roots: Relationship-based faith expressed through strong relationships founded in family.
Let us be consumed with Christ in us! HE is sufficient to change lives! Christ is in us; we have the Creator within our spirits. Share Him, and let references to scripture on a page flow from the relationship we have with our Father and our Lord. Amen!
Blessings, thank you for your prayers and your financial support. You keep us supplied, the Lord using you to sustain us.
John & Barb, Brian & Amy
