THE Rob Rufus Sermon Marrying Grace and Glory!!

I have been browsing through my archives of Rob Rufus sermons trying to work out for me when I fell head over heels in love with the vision that he was preaching. Obviously I first heard Rob speak at "Together on a Mission 2006" and he spoke at three seminars and one main session. But much of his teaching ministry was focused on the gifts of the Holy Spirit and I don't recall his kingdom vision being so clearly emphasised. So where did that glorious combination of the grace of God and the glory of God come together for me? Finally I remembered!

On July 8th 2007, Rob Rufus preached at the Church of Christ the King in Brighton and I sat completely riveted and undone. I hope you will see from the entire transcript I have written below as to why "Grace and Glory" came together so clearly! (I did already type up my brief notes I took while I was at CCK with Scott here).

"Thanks Joel it’s so wonderful to be with you and so quickly feel the generous-hearted, big-hearted spirit of this church. I admire what I call Antioch churches or base churches or Ephesus style churches. They are not like the Corinthians. The Corinthians were a people of power and there is nothing wrong with that. In fact you are a people of power and the gifts but the Corinthians lived with a self-indulgent mentality – for them the boundaries of the kingdom of heaven ended with their congregations.

But in Antioch the boundaries of the kingdom of heaven ended no-where! It was global in their vision.

They lived with open-handedness and big hearts. You talk about these kinds of financial figures coming in and it speaks of a people living in grace.

Only grace-motivated people can live with such generosity. I believe that people who live as Antioch churches and live for the nations ultimately will have far more powerful anointings in signs and wonders than the Corinthian churches will ever have.

Corinth churches will implode by their own selfish indulgence whereas Antioch churches give away their best and pay a high price and live open-handedly and give their best ministries away. They live to give – they live for the nations because they are caught up with the global vision.

The Bible says in Romans 4 that the children of Abraham – which we are – are heirs of the world! We are the heirs of the world! Brighton is too small a place for this church! The UK is too small a place – the nations are your inheritance!

You have made them your inheritance and have got behind a global vision more than most churches I know in the world. I know some others like you but they are not many with this sort of heart. You have given away some of your best and some of your best is often travelling a lot. It takes a particular kind of people to understand what that is all about. Many Christians come to church for “what’s in it for me”. I don’t want the service to be too long or too short. Personal preferences are a very ungodly and selfish and non-kingdom way of thinking.

The kingdom of heaven is given to those who think and know that the kingdom is not given to me and worship doesn’t cater to my temperament or my culture or my personality. Worship is not for me but for God and worship must cater to His temperament and His personality and the culture of the Kingdom. We are on a journey of being changed. We are transitioning from UK and South African culture into the culture of the kingdom. In the culture of the kingdom joy comes joy comes on our homes, marriages, health and finances. We must learn to live in another realm.

This church – you have learned to sow. My wife has a prophetic word which she will share in a moment. You have sewed and sewed and I want to tell you – that your time to reap is coming in an unprecedented way. I look in this building and I can see thousands and thousands and thousands. Glenda why don’t you come?

*Glenda Rufus brings her prophetic word*.

Wonderful. Please open your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 10. For me it is a staggering privilege to be here today. Some of you know that I grew up in a family where there was no Christianity at all. My dad was a complete atheist – my mum an agnostic. Christianity was ridiculed as a silly superstition in the face of so called advancing science and at the age of 22 at university I become an atheist as well and started to live with the bizarre conclusion of atheism that there is no beauty and that this universe is the result of impersonal time and impersonal chance and impersonal matter organising itself in an impersonal way into personal complexities that thus contradict the 2nd law of thermodynamics – which is irrational by the way.

That in the chromosomes there is a language that is almost infinite that appeared fully formed in the beginning of time. When you live with the idea of atheism you understand that there is no free will and human beings are chemically determined machines and therefore there is no love, no beauty, there’s no art – there is just an existential leap to pretend there’s meaning in life. In that state I began to cry out for the reality of the living God.

I looked at the Church (and I don’t say this critically) but I was very disappointed. I looked at things with no Christian background and what I saw I just didn’t want to be a part of.

I looked at various religions and read the Koran. I studied transcendental meditation and then I became a serious practicing Hare Krishna and strict Hindu living very legalistically. I mean abstinence as a married man!

Getting up at 2am and I found all of those religious practices and lifestyles didn’t bring me closer to God – did not bring me closer to God and did not help me to know God.

In the Hindu temple (this is the truth) Jesus of Nazareth manifestly appeared to me – I nearly fell over in the Presence of God. I hadn’t heard the voice of God before. I didn’t know what was happening but I heard the inward audible voice of God speak to me and say; “Come to Me Rob – all you that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest for My yoke is easy and My burden is light”. I got born again in a Hindu temple on the spot – Jesus of Nazareth came into a Hindu temple!

I had a living encounter with the resurrected Lord of glory! Budda’s tomb occupied. Mohammed’s tomb – occupied. But there is an empty tomb in Jerusalem – He is alive!

I had an encounter with this living Jesus and I became part of the Church and I loved the Church but very soon I began to realise that the Church was trying to put on me similar rules and regulations that I have had in religious Hinduism. I became confused and found myself getting further and further from God. There were little moments of light when people showed me grace and the understanding of the New Covenant but by and large there was a kind of legalistic drivenness that I was a part of.

In 1984/1985 Terry Virgo came to Durban, South Africa and I was co-ordinating all the pastors of the region at that time and for some reason I was sitting at the back of the school hall which was fortunate because I could cry and weep. Terry Virgo spoke on the grace of God and as he preached and as the Scriptures unfolded he didn’t try and hysterically sweep us off our feet with a lot of emotive language – he simply used the Word of God in context and as he talked the lights came on and I saw grace for the first time like I was born again – again! At the end he prayed that chains would fall off and I want to say this publicly in this context.

I don’t think Terry will ever know and I say this with integrity and it’s most appropriate to say it – the impact that had on shaping and fashioning my life and from then on God gave me an assignment to give birth to grace generation churches and to bring the message of the gospel in the earth.

In one month we say 40, 000 downloads off our website in Hong Kong as we preached the message of grace.

All over the world there’s a cry for freedom and liberty and a restoration of the gospel of grace – that is in the earth today.

I just praise God for what’s come out of Brighton and this church. How many of you know that there are defining moments in your life and from then on you make a departure and you begin to move in a certain way? How many of you can believe in God that today can be a defining moment for everyone and you can make a departure and move in a particular flow that you have never moved in before? There are defining moments of revelation!

In 1999 when we were still living in Australia there were a series of shark attacks on the south coast of Australia where we have many great white sharks. They weigh 2 tons and can swim at 60 km/hr and can swallow you whole. They’re the best sharks to be attacked by because it’s all over very quickly. In that week there were 2 fatal shark attacks on our coast. One was a New Zealander who had just got married and was on his honeymoon. His new wife was watching on the cliff tops and he had finished surfing and was paddling back into the shore when his new wife and a friend saw a great white come up behind him and take him and his surfboard and go down. 100 meters and bits of his surfboard came up and that was the last they saw of him.

Then the next day an Australian surfer was taken. In that week I was surfing with a friend – an elder of the church I was leading. We were out there and it was starting to get dark and he said he was going to paddle in. We had been talking about sharks and shark attacks. He paddled in and I was out there on my own. About 400 meters out in the surf I began to wonder why I was out there and that I should go in myself. There were no sets of waves to catch but then I looked to my right because I could hear a sound coming through the water and there was a shark coming very fast towards me. It wasn’t a porpoise – I know porpoises and dolphins. He was coming very fast and there was no ambiguity. He wasn’t trying to aside whether to attack or not. When it got to a point near me, his fin went under the water and I want to tell you something right there. I had a profound revelation. I realised in profundity and revelation that I am not a brave man.

It was very disillusioning because I thought I was brave but at that profound defining moment I had not used a swear word for 28 years. I was in the military before I got saved and I could swear like a poet! When I got saved that was one of the things that went away instantly. But in that moment when I thought my life was coming to an end, a prayer of praise and thanksgiving or bold faith in the covenant of God’s shield of protection did not come from my mouth but a horrible swear word. Now I was struck with a problem of integrity; “God when I most need to be holy I have now just sworn”. So I am repenting and praying at the same time and I lay on my board and lay there flat and think if I start paddling I will splash the water and pull this thing on me. But then I thought the longer I stay here, the longer my averages of surviving go down anyway so let’s go! It was 400 meters to the beach and I don’t know how long it took me but it must have been a world record because I was still paddling up the sand!

I want to tell you today that you will have a profound revelation not necessarily that already our courage and our boldness comes from God.

When I am under the anointing I am not afraid of anyone – not devils, not demons – under the anointing!

But outside the anointing I am a shy person posing as an extrovert. I believe something is going to happen here in people’s lives that is profound. I’d like to pray;

“Heavenly Father in the Name of Jesus thank You that Your Word declares that Your foolishness is greater than the wisdom of man and that Your weakness is more powerful than the strength of man. Take the foolishness of Rob Rufus and take the weakness of Rob Rufus and manifest Your glory today. Manifest Your wisdom – manifest Your infallible power – let the cloud of Your glory come and fill this place. Let the cherubim come and let the ministering spirits of fire come and activate healings, miracles, signs and wonders. Baptise us in the cloud of the glory Lord in Jesus’ Name – Amen!”.

(1 Corinthians 10:1-2). Here we see that Israel was baptized into Moses when they went through and went into the cloud. I want to talk about what it truly means to be in Christ – and that to be in Christ is to be baptised in the sea which is to be fully immersed in water for those who believe but that it also includes something else – it means to encounter the cloud.

Now they were baptised into Moses but we are baptised into Christ which means water baptism in the sea but also coming into the New Covenant – a New Testament cloud of the glory of God. Five years ago I was on a visit to South Africa and went up into the Drakensburg Mountains. I went up there to pray and wait on God all on my own. I had seen signs and wonders and I had seen miracles for 25 years but I knew that I knew that I knew that there was much much more and I knew for this world to be opened up to the Gospel we are going to have to see things that happened in the book of Acts – we are going to have to have to see our shadows healing the sick as we walk through the streets of Brighton.

I was walking through the streets of Brighton 2 days ago and I saw the Hare Krishna’s and I prayed “Oh Lord I want to speak to one of them and share the Gospel with them”. I was just down in the Lanes and I saw one and felt God say “That’s the one”. There were four of them there and I said “Lord would you bring him to me” and I stood there pretending to look at my watch for 5 minutes. I looked up and there he was. He tried to preach the Hare Krishna doctrine to me and I started sharing with him and I said “30 years ago I was standing where you are standing”. He suddenly knew that I knew the doctrines of the Krishna consciousness. I told him about the uniqueness of Jesus Christ born of a virgin. Buddha and Mohammad weren’t and every guru wasn’t – they were born in sin of fallen parents. Jesus is a towering figure of uniqueness because He was born and conceived of a virgin and therefore didn’t carry the sin heritage of man. So this dear man listened to me for 15 minutes in the streets of Brighton as I told him about the wonderful news of Jesus Christ.

But I tell you this – the race is running too fast. We are not going to be able to win people one by one – important as that is. God wants the cloud of His glory to come and hang over regions and cities like He did in Wales and Azusa Street where hundreds of thousands of people were born again. If the cloud of the glory would come over Hong Kong, millions of Hong Kong people would be saved. We wouldn’t need crusades and outreaches that take 10 months to organise and TV programmes if the glory cloud comes (and it will) over China and over Hong Kong and over Brighton and the cities of Britain – hundreds of thousands of millions of people will be swept into the kingdom of heaven and the glory of God will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.

It says in the last days I will pour out My Spirit on ALL flesh not just church flesh – but I will pour out My Spirit on ALL flesh and that has never been fulfilled yet!

1 billion – 300 million Chinese in China and only 100 million are saved! That’s 1 billion – 200 million are on their way to a Christ-less eternity!

One of these days God will pour out His Spirit on every human being on this planet and the glory of God will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea and there will be more in heaven than there are in hell!

There are more people alive on planet earth now than have ever lived collectively – God has waited for the climax of the consummation of the ages and His glory is about to be released. On the 6th June we crossed a line –

We are not in wilderness wandering. We are not in survival strategy! NOW we are in a strategy of possessing land – we have to think differently! We are targeting – we are going in! We are talking cities – we are changing things now! We are not just surviving!

Just the other day it was the 7/7/07 – we have come into a new time and I was up in the mountains saying “God I don’t just want a little bit here and there! We need Your glory! We need Your covering! We need Your Presence to come in full manifestation on the earth as Your prophets promised!”. An open vision came to me- an open vision and I saw the cloud of God’s glory. I said “God it is so beautiful that is Your manifest substance – the tangible goodness of God in self-weighty manifestation. God Himself in manifest glory!”. When you touch that glory it is heaven’s voltage, heaven’s divine energy – the energy of God. God Himself in naked tangible manifestation has come on us! That’s our inheritance as New Testament Christians!

“All have sinned and fallen short of the glory”. God created man by taking glory particles – not the dust of the earth. The Hebrew actually means “glory particles”. Before the earth was cursed man was formed by glory particles and the God of glory breathed into the shape of man made of glory of particles and man became a living soul and stood up in the glory – clothed in the glory – full of the glory and manifested the glory. When Adam fell he was the first man to be born again from spiritual life and glory to spiritual death and spiritually naked of the glory. He was naked of the glory!

They clothed themselves with fig leaves and religions today try to counterfeit or substitute for an absence of the glory through rules and rituals and ceremonies. Jesus restored us to the glory where sin abounded in the first Adam, grace abounded much more in the last Adam.

We are already seated in heavenly places in Jesus Christ. We are in the glory – the glory is our inheritance! To be in Christ is not just to be baptised in water but to come into a cloud of New Covenant glory. I saw that glory in the mountains – I saw it in open vision and said “Lord it’s so far away – it’s so far”. He said,

“Son you like many over the last few centuries have stood and seen the glory from afar. In fact son you have come to the outer edge of the glory – you have pressed against it trying to get in and you have prayed for days without stopping. You have gone night and day praying and fasting without stopping because you want to get into the glory. You have pressed your face against it in desperation because you know there’s more. But there is a peripheral fence that you couldn’t get through and supernatural crumbs have fallen over the fence – here a crumb of a sign or wonder and here a crumb of a miracle.

You have faithfully administered these crumbs around the world – just a little crumb here and a little crumb there. Here someone incurable in a wheelchair and told that they would die. You prayed – a little crumb – and they got out the wheelchair and years and years later of health. Here a blind eye opened – a little crumb – here a deaf ear opened and they got a new eardrum verified by doctors”. But He said, “Son it’s just been a little crumb and a little crumb but you are going to go beyond the peripheral fence and you will stand in the centre of My glory and you will radiate miracles effortlessly”.

I believe that there are cherubim that guard the glory. Cherubim are mighty angels that guard the glory. When Adam fell from life into death, God set up a cherubim with a flaming sword (which is the Word of God) to guard the tree of life. You cannot touch the tree of life when you are under rules, regulations and laws. If you are under the tree of the knowledge of good and evil trying not to do evil but good under the consciousness of that fruit, you can have no access to the tree of life. I believe there is a protection that no-one is going to stand in the glory of New Covenant life – in the glory of that power and presence with the residue of Old Covenant thinking, Old Covenant mentalities, Old Covenant approaches that think it is about how much I pray or how holy I am or how obedient I am or how good or how spiritual I am that will gain me access into that glory.

If we get into that glory through our own works then we will abuse that glory if we don’t understand that the access to that glory is through the finished work of Jesus Christ in the Cross and that is it.

We will always boast in our weakness and always boast in His grace. I believe in obedience and I believe in living holy and I believe in those things but they have to be fruit.

We are called to an obedience of faith (Romans 1:5) not the obedience of the law. It isn’t our good works that produce faith – it is our faith that produces good works. That isn’t just semantics but it is the difference between New Testament glory and Old Testament tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

As soon as we step out from the consciousness of good and evil regulations, human performance and come into a New Covenant revelation and come 100% into the New then the cherubim will lift that fence and we will go in and I believe that is happening in the earth. I believe this without flattery because I believe flattery is a form of manipulation and is one of the most ungodly things that people do to one another. This is not flattery – I say this from my heart;

I believe God has raised up NFI and given you a grace culture and an understanding of the New Covenant for several decades and positioned you to possess the glory that is available in the New Covenant to step into 2007 in the cloud of the glory and stand in the middle of the cloud and radiate miracles effortlessly.

You wonder why it’s hard to get lots of people out of wheelchairs, why we don’t see our shadows heal the sick, why we don’t see many blind eyes and hundreds of deaf ears opened and thousands reaching out to us and power coming out of us – but you see friends, when you are operating just with the crumbs that are falling over the fence we may get mighty miracles here and there but when we are no longer administering crumbs from outside the glory cloud, but when we are standing in the centre of the glory cloud then miracles will be the easiest thing in the world! Amen?

I believe that there are two glories that the Bible teaches. One of the remarkable things about the theology of what you are in is that you believe in reading the Bible in context. And I believe that 2 Corinthians chapter 3 – it is amazing to me that the Corinthians were the most carnal people. They were drunk at communion and were having sex with temple prostitutes and one guy – God alone knows what he was doing with his mother in law because Paul says it was even embarrassing to unsaved Corinthians who were expert sinners. These people were ones who needed to have dos and don’t put on them but Paul writes to them for me the most amazing chapter in the whole New Testament and distinguishes the difference between the Old and New Covenant.

And he never says “Stop the gifts – I’ve had enough”. He gives loving administration to the gifts but says have more gifts – I would that all prophesy I want you all to speak in tongues – I want you to desire the mighty gifts of the Spirit. So Paul didn’t quench the gifts.

But he writes this chapter and distinguishes between Old and New Covenant glory. It is my deep conviction that much of the church lives in a mixture of Old and New Covenant culture and thinking. And because they understand grace to some degree and believe we are in the New Covenant, it kind of camouflages the fact that a whole lot of Old Covenant thinking and mentality is hanging around.

So Paul makes a very clear distinction and there can be no ambiguity after reading 2 Corinthians 3. He says in (v4) that we don’t have any confidence in ourselves but God has made us competent ministers of a New Covenant not of the letter that kills but of the Spirit that gives life! So when he says “not of the letter which kills” people says “I wonder what that letter which kills is” – well he doesn’t leave it for our speculation and goes on in the next verse to say “the ministry that came on tablets of stone” (clearly the 10 Commandments) “is a ministry of death”.
So the preaching of the 10 Commandments to the church is a ministry of death! That is to be preached to the lost so that they know they have fallen short of the glory of God and need a Saviour.

The preaching of the 10 Commandments is a ministry that brings death and the Bible says it also brings condemnation. It brings a fading glory. So the Old Covenant glory brings a ministry of death, condemnation and it fades away. But the New Covenant glory makes us bold and very confident, a spirit of freedom and liberty and there is a glory that shines and will never end or fail and will stay full and awesome and powerful.

I have used this passage wrongly – I spoke about “from glory to glory”. I think if we read it in context it doesn’t mean from glory to glory to glory. There are two glories! I think if we read it in context there are just two glories! Paul means that in the spirit of liberty we are to be changed from Old Covenant glory to New Covenant glory! In the context!

So this is what I believe – that the Old Covenant glory which was fading and brought death and condemnation – that glory revealed God’s opinion of you and me totally and absolutely through the law.

When God looks at you through the law, the law is so perfect that every one of us is breaking the law. Jesus said that one looks at a woman lustfully is to have sex with her and that carries the death sentence. Just to hate someone without cause is to commit murder and that carries a death sentence. The first law is broken if we do not love God with every fibre of our being. Under that law God demands a perfect righteousness of us and any failure is the judgement of infinite justice which is everlasting darkness forever and ever.

Under grace and the New Covenant – the glory revealed God’s opinion of you through Jesus Christ. The law says “Do-do-do”. Grace says “It is DONE – it is DONE – it is DONE!”. “It is FINISHED!”.

If we come into revelation of New Covenant glory then it is revelation that God looks at you every moment of every day as though you are perfect all the time through the eyes of grace. Moses had to hide his eyes with a veil because in the Scripture when Moses came down the mountain people were put to death by God and people ran. In that Old Covenant glory they saw God’s opinion of them through the law and they couldn’t see it.

Under the New Covenant glory through the finished work of the Cross only those who understand their standing in Christ, the cherubim’s are backing off their guard and letting humble people with reality and no delusions about their own goodness but with revelation of their standing in Christ – they are letting them right into the glory and stand there and radiate the power of God in signs and wonders. They will never boast that it is because of their own prayer life or works.

People in the earth will see the glory radiated from the face of Jesus and they will be healed as we walk by. They will cry out as we walk and live in the cloud and they will get saved as we walk by.

The glory of God is going to come and when it covers the church it will start covering the community around us as well.

On the 10th June this year I was preaching the clear distinction between Old and New Covenant in our church in Hong Kong and was speaking through a Cantonese interpreter. 5 minutes getting up to talk I felt an unusual Presence come into the meeting – I felt the glory of God was here in a most amazing way in the room and after the sermon I was speaking to a lady called Mariana who is a top class business lawyer in Hong Kong – a very clever and intelligent lady. She is a prophetess that sees into the spirit realm. She said “Rob after you starting preaching I saw two very large angels come in and position themselves either side of you with large trumpets in their mouths. One was on your left and one was on your right about fifteen feet above you and were overlooking the congregation”. I knew straight away why those angels had come. When the trumpets were heard in the Book of Exodus it was to say that the cloud of glory was ready to move – get ready themselves to move. And those angels were saying to our church, “Move out of all remnants of Old Covenant thinking – all residues of Ishmael fleshly type and human effort”.

I believe in prayer and fasting and I pray and fast every week most weeks. But I know that fasting doesn’t earn the blessing. It simply positions me to be more sensitive to God.

“Move out of all remnants of Old Covenant mentality and thinking and transition wholly to New Covenant thinking and New Covenant mentality”. I believe that I heard God say on the 10th June that the fence is coming down. It is coming down! He said that we as a church were transitioning beyond the peripheral fence and were no longer administering the crumbs. And folks the crumbs give great miracles! The crumbs bring people out of wheelchairs and open blind eyes. I have seen it! But the trumpet has sounded and the cherubim are standing down.

And God said, “Son it is happening all over the earth where churches who believe in grace and the New Covenant and are not under the law any more – all over the earth there is a trumpet sound that churches are moving into the glory”.
Now I want to close in the next two hours (*laughter*).

You can never see the cloud of the glory while you are in the land of slavery. I was in the land of slavery as a Hare Krishna and I was in the land of slavery as a Christian under rules and regulations. God had deep concern for Israel under Egyptian slavery. He heard the people’s cry and brings them out by His mighty hand. God brought us out of the law by His mighty hand and didn’t spare His own Son.

His own Son was cursed with the curse of the law so that we can come out from the land of slavery into the blessing of Abraham into the Promised Land flowing with milk and honey, into signs and wonders and financial miracles and wholeness

But you see while they were in the land of slavery they could not see the glory. In Exodus 13 as they come out from the geography of Egypt, from the geography of slavery they look up and see the cloud of the glory of God. The first time they see the cloud of the glory and experience something of the glory was when they come out of slavery. In slavery – no glory. In Galatians 5:1-4 Paul said don’t be yoked with a yoke of slavery again. Paul said clearly what that slavery was – it is the law! And he says you that try and be justified by the law have made Christ of no value at all. Once we try and live by the law doesn’t mean we are not saved, it just means Christ has become of no value. If Christ was of full value in the church then He would be doing now what He did 2000 years ago. If Christ was operating in full value in the church then the dead would be raised, blind eyes would be opened, bread would be multiplied and people would be walking on the water.

But His value is diminished by the degree to which we are living under Old Covenant law and thinking.

Become alienated from Christ and you become slaves. The champion of grace – Paul – says there will be doctrines of demons taught and many will depart from the faith – that is the Christian faith - and listen to these lying spirits! Now many of us would think these doctrines of demons would be licentiousness, go out and sin and do as much as you want.

These lying spirits, these doctrines of demons that people will abandon the faith for are teachings that forbid you to be married and forbid eating of certain foods. The doctrines of demons are doctrines of legalism that teach people, “Don’t do this – don’t do that”. They keep people eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil so the cherubim must keep the way to the tree of life – the glory cloud – barred with the peripheral fence.

When the legalists came down to the church at Antioch and told the believers to go and do the Law of Moses, the apostles came down quickly to intervene. Even in Jerusalem there were legalists who tried to intervene.

This thing of legalism in the church is not just a small thing – the enemy knows that if the church comes into full revelation of what it means to be in Christ (NOT in Moses) baptised as a believer not only in water but also coming into the cloud of the glory. We will never see the cloud of the glory in the land of slavery. As soon as they came out of slavery they saw the cloud of glory but it was still at a distance and it was in front of them. It was a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. It was there but distant and was always moving away as they followed it.

Pharaoh was coming out of the land of slavery to chase them and bring them back into slavery. How many of you know what it is to be to come out of legalism into an understanding of grace and rest in the truth that “It is finished” and enjoy peace and know heavens open to you but suddenly the drivenness that you haven’t prayed enough, or gone to Church and felt guilty comes upon you? So I am not the Christian type. You know a bit of freedom and then the slave masters come and bring you back into the land of slavery. You won’t see the cloud of glory in the land of slavery.

That is a church description like the modern church today! Out of law but not in the cloud. Occasional signs and wonders and they are more conscious of the slave masters coming up behind them than the cloud of glory in front of them. It is a picture of the Church in 2007 prophetically. Now there is the Red Sea – Exodus 14. The slave masters are getting closer. In Exodus 14:20 God moves the cloud of glory that was in front of them all the time and the angel of God (the identity I believe is Jesus not an angel – the Pre-Incarnate Christ) and the cloud of glory goes to the back of Israel and gets between them and their slave masters. That was when they were baptised into the cloud when the cloud moved right through the whole nation and separated them from the slave masters. That cloud of glory so confused the slave masters that when they went into the Red Sea, it totally destroyed them.

That is what we are coming into now. Turn to Matthew 17 and let’s close with this. Prophetically I believe this is where we are located and seem to hear other prophets saying similar things. The church is going into the cloud of the glory and we will radiate miracles effortlessly. It is Bill Johnson who says “Revelation is an invitation to a divine encounter”.

If you don’t have a divine encounter after having a revelation then you will just be puffed up with knowledge. If God reveals the New Covenant it is an invitation to go into the cloud and experience the cloud of the glory of God.

(Matthew 17:1-8) – I believe we are already passing the peripheral fence. “No one except Jesus”. There were six men on the mountain. Jesus represents grace. Moses the Law and Elijah the Old Covenant prophets and judgement. Peter had not yet got his Acts 15 revelation and he wants to make Jesus compatible with Moses and Elijah. He wants to have a synchronistic religion. I have people telling me to preach a balanced message of grace and law. Paul didn’t get put in prison for preaching the law but for preaching grace. The wonder of the gospel is that wicked people are declared righteous by a holy God. In New Covenant grace signs and wonders will cover cities. Balance this message?! That’s what Peter was trying to do. He wanted Old Covenant prophets bringing judgement in the church with some law to sort the problems out.

How do you balance hate with love? They are mutually incompatible! Yet much of the church mixes grace with law and wonders why we only have crumbs of the miracles. On the mount the stone was replaced by grace. Moses came down Mount Sinai and people ran from him. When Jesus came down the Mount people ran to Him and He cast out demons and healed. Elijah represents the Old Covenant judgement. Under the Old Covenant the sacrifices were never enough. Under the law the sacrifice was always far less than the wrath of God. Elijah got 12 big stones, an ox and water and God fell with fire on that sacrifice and everything was consumed. Nothing was left and the wrath that fell exceeded the sacrifice!

On the Cross of Jesus, God the Father took His magnifying glass and gathered the sins from the beginning to the end of time and how we have flaunted our self righteousness in the face of God and focussed it on Jesus of Nazareth. The wrath of God – the full judgement of God fell on Jesus and when it was done, Jesus could say in triumph “It is finished!”. The sacrifice was greater than the wrath! The condemnation was perfectly over! The curse of law is permamently over! How can you be declared perfectly righteous when you don’t always do righteous things? Because Jesus who never knew one little bit of sin in His life was made sin without being sinful or ever doing sinful acts once so that you and I who really have never done any righteous acts – can be made righteous in God’s eyes! God the Father treated Jesus on the Cross as the worst sinner on the planet so that you can be treated as the most righteous son or daughter on the planet. Hebrews 8-10 says that the sacrifices were insufficient. They had to be made over and over again.

In Hebrews 10:14 it says there is one sacrifice and we have been made PERFECT FOREVER! When the Father looks at you, you are PERFECT FOREVER! How long is forever? FOREVER! If I sin now will I be perfect in the Father’s eyes? This verse says yes! If Rob Rufus sins then what do I do? In the righteousness of God I am perfect forever!

In the cloud of the glory you will see only Jesus. Elijah and Moses won’t be there. The formula that sums the New Covenant says; “Jesus plus anything equals nothing”. “Jesus plus Moses and Elijah equals curse – equals demons visiting your head – confusion and condemnation and self-righteous that stinks. Jesus plus law equals nothing”. BUT! Jesus plus nothing equals EVERYTHING! Equals the Promised Land – the cloud of the glory! It sees you perfect forever. Jesus plus nothing means the dead can be raised, cancer healed, AIDS healed, the peripheral fence taken away and the church will be baptised into the glory. In the cloud of the glory you will just look at people and they will be healed. The methodology outside the cloud of glory is screaming and shouting but in the cloud, “Stretch out your hand”. As Jesus walks by, they stretched out their hand and they kept jumping up! The Gospels keep saying “He healed them ALL”. Then He says “As the Father sent Me, so I send you”. He breathed into His disciples and so these cowards became conscious of conquest. The consciousness of righteousness and the realms of the glory.

On the 10th June a little Filipino lady had a great growth on her neck and I knew we were penetrated the cloud. I said “Gloria come now – the Lord will heal you”. She came sixteen or seventeen feet towards me and I have never seen anyone fall that fast. She walked into something and the cherubim had lifted the fence. She collapsed before people could catch her and when she went for surgery and they scanned her and the doctors couldn’t find a trace. The whole lump – the whole growth had disappeared. The cloud had done it effortlessly! In that service I would just look at someone and they would fall.

New Testament prophets will focus on redemption and give you hope to get out of sin. They are not scary people!

As a church we are going into the cloud deeper and deeper. This conference we will go into the cloud deeper and deeper. Everyone in this room knows that there is a whole lot more in store. Jesus said the works that He did, everyone who believes will do greater works and the miracles will be done effortlessly".