Chag sameach Rosh Chodesh and welcome to the first day of the eighth biblical month. My apologies for having to shift the time from a morning to an afternoon service but I was literally not given this message until two hours ago, and then for a second delay - our equipment is, alas, dying. However, we are here, finally. I have learned when operating in the prophetic that you can never force anything and that if you do it will open doors to wrong spirits. All we can do is wait on Yahweh and if nothing happens to be about our daily affairs.

Have you ever seen someone putting spoonful after spoonful of sugar into a glass of water and noting that beyond a certain point the sugar won't dissolve anymore and just collects at the bottom? When this happens a liquid is said to be fully saturated and hard though you may try you just can't get any more solid to dissolve, at least not without changing the temperature or pressure. Sometimes I get saturated with so much information on the internet that I just want to turn it off. You proabably have similar experiences when you have too much school work to do and then try to cram it into a far too short-a-period of time. Those who are not lazy, at any rate, have a tendency to overdo things at times. One of my problems was workaholism. Then there are those who like eating too much chocolate until they are sick or over-exercising and wonder why they are cramping as their body switches to anaerobic respiration and starts making lactic acid in their muscles because there isn't enough oxygen available.

Two thing I have had to learn about searchers for the truth is that you cannot expect them to know more than they actually know and that if you over-saturate them they are likely to run away. We all of us have different capacities when it comes to the absorption of information. It isn't, in any case, just a question of emptying a jug of truth into someone's gaping mouth. They also need time to process it into useful information that will address their needs where they currently are. I know I have tendency to do this sometimes in my sermons in my zeal to get the emet (truth) out.

A funny joke an oil executive in Oslo told me once has always stuck a cord. There was a conference abroad in which all the guests were gathered for a celebratory dinner marking the end of the conference. A short waiter was serving vegetables at table when the man he was serving rudely blurted out so everyone could hear, "What do you mean by serving such small potatoes?" He then went on to say that in his country potatoes were three or four times as large as the pathetic potatoes he was being served. The waiter, not to be outdone by this foreigner's arrogance, replied: "Sir, in our country we serve potatoes that fit our mouths" and got thunderous applause from the delegates to the chagrin of the rude customer.

There's an awful lot that the Remnant has to learn, and so much unlearning to be done in advance of the truth being served. As Yah'shua (Jesus) warned, many attempt to force their way into the Kingdom (Mt.11:12) and are not willing to enter it little by little as they are prepared and able. Now I realise in context that the passage refers to the enemies of the Besorah (Gospel) trying to snuff it out but there is a good case for making a midrash out of it as I just did. We have to adapt to the Kingdom, not the Kingdom to us and our expectations and prejudices. The Kingdom doesn't come in different colours, shapes and sizes like a pair of pants to accomodate every secular culture. There's only one Kingdom and we have to fit into it.

Every day I meet new people, mostly online, who find our website and excitedly express their joy at having found so much to feast on. Sometimes I post their remarks on the main page. It's the main reason Yahweh commanded it's creation. Indeed only the other day I came across the original sketch of the vision I saw on a commuter train between Oslo and my home in the Norwegian countryside about 30 years ago instructing me to set up a website, and at that time I knew next to nothing about the Internet. If I were to put up the old website after, say, its' first five years, for you to read now, I doubt you would have been too impressed. We learn, grow and mature in stages. A lot of early material has had to be thrown out or rewritten because of assumptions made about Yahweh's future course of action, notwithstanding the many prophecies which actually laid much of it out in advance.

The first message I have to share with you today is this: if Yahweh has given you an instruction and you fail to comply, and then later return in a more contrite state than before when you initially rejected it, you will not always find Him very sympathetic especially if you're looking for a different answer. He expects you to obey the original instruction, if it is still possible to do so and circumstances have not too radically changed.

King Rehoboam, following the death of his father King Solomon, you may remember, sought advice on how to treat his people as his father, in his latter years, had been very foolish and had inflicted corvée or forced labour on Israel contrary to the express instrustions in Torah forbidding it. He sought wisdom from his older, wiser counsellors and then from his younger, hot-headed companions after a delegation of the people had placed demands to be liberated from Solomon's oppression. The older counsellors urged him to ease off and lessen the people's burden, but his young companions urged him to impose even greater slavery - 'scorpions' rather than 'whips' was the way they put it. The text reads:

"So the king turned down the people's demands (Elohim/God caused him to do it in order to fulfil His prediction {1 Ki.11:30-31} spoken to Jeroboam by Ahijah the Shilonite). When the people realised what the king was saying they turned around and deserted him" (2 Chr.11:15-16a, Living Bible).

This is similar, is it not, to Yahweh causing Pharaoh's heart to be hardened in the matter of the demand by Moses that the Israelites be released from their slavery (Ex.4:21). There are always multiple levels to prophetic reality. Though we absolutely do have free agency, we do not have the freedom to determine every historical outcome and at times Yahweh must intervene to make sure that that outcome takes place. On one level, Yahweh had prophesied through Ahijah that Israel would be divided into two nations, northern 10-Tribed Israel and southern 2-Tribed Judah. Had that been prevented by Rehoboam taking the good counsel of his older, wiser advisers, and Israel had stayed together as one nation, Yahweh's Davar (Word) would have been rendered null-and-void and He would have been unseated as Elohim (God).

What He speaks, if it is an unconditional prophecy, must happen. However, there was more than preserving His integrity at stake here because on another level there was 'The Plan', if I can call it that, of how on the big scale everything would work out historically. It was necessary for Israel to split and go their separate ways because of Yahweh's future plans for mankind. We must never forget these things. Might Rehoboam had followed the older counsellors' advice? He might have, it sounds like he might have as you read around 2 Chronicles 10, and yet it is also clear that Rehoboam, like Pharaoh, already had a disposition towards stubbornness, rashness and unkindness that was simply brought to early fruition by Yahweh intervening to impose His will on the outcome. It isn't as the Calvinists would have you believe, at any rate.

As I was pondering some of these things this morning, I saw in my mind's eye - not exactly a 'vision' - someone with a plastic bag full of jigsaw puzzle pieces but with no picture to work from. He emptied the bag into a pile on the table. Each piece of the puzzle is a bit like the fragmented knowledge that fills the world and which each soul owns for him- or herself, depending what he receives, what he keeps and what he throws out - rather like a pile of unconnected memes which is pretty much what the Internet has reduced knowledge to these days. The Internet has done severs damage to education even if it has done good in widely providing otherwise inaccessible information to the masses. Tools like that, like science knowledge in general, have good and evil outcomes. The searcher after truth has got to painstakingly assemble this puzzle that contains both the truths and lies he currently believes and to lay them next to each other in order to finally separate them out by contrasting both with each other.

I know I have used this analogy before, but it's a good one. Growing up in wisdom consists of building patches of puzzle here and there and later, hopefully, joining them together. And if you've ever built a puzzle you'll know that family members, if you let them, get interested and join in the fun and do some assembling when you're not there! Unless we're so stubborn as not to want any help at all, we are usually grateful for it. I certainly am when those who enjoy reconstructing 'water' or 'sky' fill in the gaps I usually leave to last. Personally, I am very grateful to all the people who, along the way of life, have supplied me with missing pieces or used a lot of sweat putting chunks of the puzzle together. As each person does this, so the puzzle starts to rapidly grow. As a Messianic who wrote to me yesterday: "I just discovered your website and you sure are bringing many pieces of the gospel together. Thank you!" Then he offered me some of his research for my feedback. Sometimes the research of such brethren bears fruit and sometimes it leads to a dead-end but the fact that people are eagerly searching is the important thing as well as learning how to pregressively fine-tune into the Ruach (Spirit). Apparently Elohim (God) likes seekers:

"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened" (Matt.7:7-8, NKJV).

But sometimes you just have to stop, and stand back, as you reach saturation point. In 1977, when I was a young and immature seeker, I had dipped my student's bowl into all kinds of teachings and in the end I just couldn't figure it all out on my own. So I stopped, concluding that Yahweh alone could tell me what I needed to know. We have our human limits and sometimes there's just too much information to process. I fasted and prayed all night and the upshot was, after a long struggle, I got born-again. You all know my testimony.

However, I then fatefully 'rushed ahead', virtually demanding to be told which church I should join because that is what some Christians had urged me to do and I ended up taking a 'wrong' turn, at least as far as the church I ended up joining for three years was concerned. It never occurred to me He might not actually want me in a church...yet. I learned a lot, mind you, which has become very useful since, but it did mean taking a deviation off the Derech (Way) set out for me by Elohim (God)...though sometimes I wonder if joining was 'right' for that time. Yahweh certainly used what I picked up. Back then it was harder for me to know what Yahweh would be doing 30-40 years down the road because I had no idea. And I suspect it is like that for everyone. In a way I envy the last generation having so much work already done for them, as Solomon had all the building blocks and money provided for by his father, David, for the temple, and in a way I do not because the struggle is what makes the final meal so especially delicious. You never forget what you have fought for. Nevertheless, they in their turn, will have much struggle too. Just don't waste time down side-alleys or in doing nothing at all. You have to step out in emunah (faith) and then you will start to see...

Every piece of the puzzle is important. Yesterday I was contacted by a very thoughtful messianic believer, whom I mentioned earlier, who had concluded, based on his study of the Festivals, that there were three raptures! That's 3-4 comings of Christ! There were lots of really good insights in his article. However, he had built his thesis upon a faulty assumption concerning the claims made by 'rapture' teachers and once he has understood the deception behind that false teaching, he will see clearly that what Scripture is actually talking about, and what the pilgrim festivals are pointing to, is the three resurrections. Additionally, knowing that our final destination is not the spirit world, or 'heaven', but a glorified earth, will help him put together the missing pieces in his puzzle. But the fact he had the guts to put out what he had found is what is needed. That's what I amd all the other seekers have been doing,

Just as interesting was a comment someone had written on his article, which ran along the lines, "The Lord has revealed the same thing to me too!" I don't know how many times I have heard people saying that about contradictory teachings - they can't all be right - so a warning: Don't say 'God told me so' when in reality what you have arrived at is a tentative conclusion based on limited systematic (or not so systematic) reasoning because we can all arrive at similar conclusions and assume 'God said this to me' when in reality what we have really done is simply built our thesis including the same false assumptions of those who agree with us. Be exceedingly careful. Multiple agreement does not necessarily equate with truth.

As I have been working through editing the Second Edition of the Olive Branch revelations I have had to ask myself some really hard and searching questions about 'Thus saith the Lord' statements because it's so easy to make them uncritically. I can quote a passage of the New Testament where Yah'shua (Jesus) speaks and confidently say, 'Thus saith the Lord' or 'So says Yahweh' but when something is coming through me personally (or someone else) - whether a revelation, prophecy or a theological study, I think we need to be very careful before we append Yahweh's Name to it. In my fear of doing wrong there have been times when I have wanted to scrub all the 'Thus saith Yahweh' statements, just as I hope we are all very careful before we dare to say, 'The Spirit told me this' or 'God said that to me'. Over-confidence is just as dangerous as a lack of confidence, both can land you into serious trouble, as I know from experience.

I get impatient, we all get impatient, to understand the emet (truth) but understanding is never handed on a silver platter. Wisdom is even harder to acquire because it's not something consciously done - you can't 'do a course' on wisdom and 'become' wise, any more than you can be 'humble' by just making a resolution to be 'humble' thereafter. We're all on a long, complex journey, and frankly there are things I really have a hard time struggling over. Right now I am, as they say in London Cockney, 'doing my nut' (going crazy) trying to understand the Fall, the natural world I see around me, and the story the Cosmos as a whole is telling me through the latest scientific discoveries which are pouring in every day. The Universe is just as wild as nature! What's worse, there's a wildness in us which we have got to silence by 'crucifing the flesh' (which none of us really wants to do, to our own detriment) by dying to self, if we are ever to hear from Yahweh properly.

A reader once very kindly said that my website was 'accelerated learning'. That made me very pleased to hear. Truth is flooding the earth suddenly and it's a giddy experience. It's hard at times to process it all and it's going to take time for the Remnant to reach the concensus Paul said was necessary for the Body to thrive:

"And He Himself gave [ministers]...till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of Elohim (God), to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Messiah; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the emet (truth) in ahavah (love), may grow up in all things into Him who is the head - Messiah..." (Eph.4:11-15, NKJV).

But there are still lots of unanswered questions and they must remain unanswered until Yahweh ordains the season for their understanding, and that's usually when we need that understanding in order to not only meet the enemy on his own gound but on higher ground.

There are so many hot potatoes that seekers must force themselves to hold (even if they're burning their pride and prejudices) and to look at them squarely and to start asking questions about who Yahweh really is, not the cariacature taught by our traditions. Most of the people I present them to throw them back at me in anger or with a superior 'holier-than-thou' attitude but that's what we should both expect and get used to.