Believers’ Convention 2024 (Day 2 – Morning Session)
Date: Monday, 19th August, 2024
Minister: Reverend Kayode Oyegoke
Topic: Becoming a Minister of the Heavenly Order
Transcript Excerpt
(Hebrews 1:1-9; 12:22-25). Jesus is the speaker of the New Testament. He is actually the preacher of the New Testament ministry. He is the first minister of the New Testament. There is no minister who starts as a full New Testament minister, we grow into it. To come into the New Testament ministry proper, we ought to hunger for more of God to find that place where we can be positioned in the core of the New Testament ministry. It takes some time to make a New Testament minister. A full blown minister of the New Testament is seen in Hebrews 8.
“Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; [2] A minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.” (Heb. 8:1-2). The intention of this convention is to create a new appetite for ministers who are in ministries. Our Lord Jesus is a minister of the Sanctuary and of the true tabernacle. The word ‘Sanctuary’ refers to ‘Holy Place’. There are places God hallowed for priestly ministry: the Outer Court, Holy Place and Most Holy. They were initially in heaven from the beginning of creation. When God created heaven and the earth, He first built a temple in heaven for angels; this was later shown to Moses for him to make a copy for the tabernacle.
“Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.” (Heb. 8:5). This shows that there has been an original tabernacle before Moses made a copy on earth. God used Moses to help us see what the tabernacle looks like, and to prove that these heavenly places actually exist. There were several references to this tabernacle in the book of Revelation.
The Jews engage with the heavenly pattern in warfare. They carry the Ark which symbolizes the Most Holy place, the priests blowing the trumpet serve as the Holy Place, and the armies with the swords represent the Courts. That was how Israel moved around Jericho for seven days, and at the seventh time on the seventh day, Jericho fell.
Moses downloaded heavens on earth on that mountain, then he started building. He took nine months to build the tabernacle. This is the same time a baby takes to grow in the womb. The nine months have three gestational periods, having three months each to have the full stature of a man. It takes time for God to form/grow His Son in a person. Building a church goes beyond having many members, what is important is that they grow. If one can grow them according to the heavenly design, he has done well. In the New Testament, God is no longer building temples made with hands; rather He wants to build people.
“But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; [12] Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us…” (Heb. 9:11-15). Jesus entered into a tabernacle—/into heaven itself (Heb. 9:24). Although Jesus is entered for us, we are also meant to come in. This is not like that of the Mosaic covenant when Moses brought Israel around the mountain and they could not bear the voice of God. God could not achieve what He wanted to do because the people could not endure it, so God ended up writing on stones. If God had succeeded in writing in their hearts, there would have been no need for an ark.
The Lord had to put His presence in an ark. He expected them to get to the land of promise through His angel and the direction that the ark paved. Beyond a covenant, the ark became a testimony. The ark was so contagious that its power injected the priests with its presence, such that as their feet touched Jordan, it parted (Josh. 3:13). That was how it was supposed to be if the law had been written in their hearts—Israel would have been great and all nations would have patterned themselves after Israel. That was God’s intention but Israel failed, Israel sinned, Israel could not fulfill the covenant.
God does want us to be ‘under’ the covenant like the Jews. The Jews were supposed to be ‘in’ the covenant. We are not under the law, but under grace; and God does not want us to be under grace for too long, He wants grace to be inside of us. Our High Priest is full of grace and truth, so we are supposed to be one with the covenant.
A full blown minister of the New Testament, like Jesus showed us an example, sits on the throne. What we see seated on the throne is the New Testament ministry. He is not seated just to come and rapture us home, no! He has something He wants to do. Jesus started something and it has not ended. For Jesus, the end is that those under the new covenant are not only under it but find access into the covenant because the covenant is the commonwealth of Israel. It is the provision of God for God’s people.
The High Priest went into heaven expecting till His enemies are made His footstool (Ps. 110:1). Until this happens, there would not be what we call rapture. Rapture is the finishing of the end programme. Rapture would come at the last trump (1 Cor. 15:52). If we have the last trump, it means there are others that must have been sounding which we ought to pay more attention to. The last trumpet is for our flesh.
Satan used to be a heavenly being like the rest of the angels (Ezek. 28:12-14). He still likes to be in the heavens; he thrives in any form of heaven. His activities are limited when he is on the earth. Isaiah 14:12 describes what God intends to do with Satan and He will do it using the New Testament saints.
Satan was given an assignment in the holy mountain of God– Mount Zion. That is where God expects Christians to come to in the spirit. This is not rapture. The Hebrew church was on earth but Paul told them that they had come unto mount Zion. You do not come to mount Zion the moment you get born again, you have to grow into it. If you are on mount Zion, certain activities should be observed; the quality of your worship should tally with the service on mount Zion.
“But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, [23]To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, [24]And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.” (Heb. 12:22-24). This is where Jesus is— mount Zion. This means the place of covenant is on mount Zion. Jesus is the mediator of the new covenant. Mount Zion is actually the Sanctuary in heaven. Heavenly places are made after the tabernacle in heaven. The first heaven is the Court, second heaven is the Sanctuary, third heaven is the Most Holy Place. God designed heaven after the classes of holiness.
In the Court, we have the Levites; there are angelic beings that are Levites also in the first heaven. Then the second heaven is purely a world of priests; the angels there are priests. The third heaven is for high priests. Lucifer was a high priest. God gave him the charge of the Sanctuary the way God gave Aaron the charge of the earthly Sanctuary. Aaron was a high priest of the Most Holy Place, but he trims the golden candlesticks in the Holy Place (Num. 8:2-3).
In the days of Eli, the light of the Sanctuary began to go dim and it affected his eyes. This tells us the eye of a nation is the high priest. We need high priests, men whom God has raised high and given priestly eyes. The first High Priest is Jesus but He does not want to be the only one; He wants brethren to come into the Most Holy. The Most Holy is a vocation, a priestly life.
“For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.” (Heb. 2:10). God wants men to come to glory. You do not attain this glory described here the day you become born again. However, this is your destiny and end. You ought to be a being of glory but you cannot be glorified unless you are saved to this point. It is called saving you to the uttermost.
Jesus entered into His glory after resurrection. That is why Jesus was able to physically appear in the presence of God for us. If Jesus’ body after resurrection was still in the cave of Joseph and His spirit departed, He would not do this ministry. That was why He prayed for His soul and body (Ps. 16:10); because a priest will need to be complete in order to stand before God. Jesus would need to have a kind of body to go through heavens, a body qualified to be in the presence of God, to sit at the right hand of the Majesty on high to plead our case. Jesus and the Holy Ghost are Intercessors, the Father is the Performer. Jesus wants us to come to where He is.
In the Old Testament, Israel could not fulfill the covenant, but God found a way to put it on stones and in a tabernacle; while the children of Israel were called “comers” – “For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. ” (Heb. 10:1). Gentiles were not called to come, they were oblivious of the activities of God towards the Jews. God wanted to make the Israelites perfect. Perfection is a season when the law lifts from the stone into their hearts; but that nation did not fulfill it. They were under the law but they were supposed to come to a place where it would be in them.
Jesus did the will of God from the beginning to the end (Heb. 10:7-8). The end of the will was the battle at the garden of Gethsemane. At that point when Jesus died on the cross, He knew that something left Him (Matt. 27:46). Then God gave Him up to sin for three days. That is what is called sin offering, sin took Him for three days, it took Him to hell. (Ps. 88:4-5). No wonder Jesus asked (which David caught in prophecy), “Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise and praise thee? Selah” (Ps. 88:10). On the third day, the glory of God left paradise and went to hell, sin became righteousness, the power of death was fractured completely, death was swallowed up in victory. Jesus woke up; He suddenly became the King of glory. Hell first witnessed this, so hell knows this message.
Jesus destroyed Satan, Jesus annihilated him that had the power of death (Heb. 2:14). Jesus took all that the devil is and turned it to all that God is, in a man. His first message was in hell. He preached to souls in hell and they believed Him (1 Pet. 3:19). Jesus was raised from the dead by God’s power. The power that raised Him took Him from the lowest place to the highest place, and He sat on the throne. This tells us that no matter how low you are, He can raise you.
The heaven God created in Genesis 1:8 is not where angels dwell, it is the heaven of man. There is a heaven, and there are heavens inside that heaven. Then there is another heaven over us. Satan was driven out of the heavens into hell. Then he came into Eden to deceive man, but he did not want to stop on earth, gradually he graduated from being a serpent to a dragon. His former heaven was superior. He used temptation as an advantage; it is legal as we must be tempted. Satan tempted man and Adam gave him room. However, Satan did not take our heaven immediately after Adam died, it took some time. By the time of the flood, Satan was in the air.
Noah built an ark and after sometime, the rain came. What God was doing was salvation, because man was going bad. God is merciful, He had to bring earth to an end to restart it again. Out of the ark came Noah and His family, and a new generation arose.
Nimrod, the son of Ham, rose up and did the same thing Cain did. He took men from Ararath to begin a new civilisation and the purpose of this was to take them from the presence of God (Gen. 10:9-10). He was a second Cain that departed from the presence of God after the tower of Babel which led to the scattering of the children of God all over the earth. They were scattered according to the number of the children of Israel which is twelve (Deut. 32:8). Everyone on earth is numbered amongst the children of Israel; we are Israel.
From Genesis to Malachi until Matthew when Jesus came, was a battle of seeds, but God won that battle. God orchestrated a famine in Israel, just to drive Elimelech and his family out of Israel to Moab, to fetch a Moabite soul, Ruth. Ruth had the soul of a cleaver (Ruth 1:16). From Ruth, God got David, a man after His heart (Acts 13:22); that genetic trait was from Ruth. It is not easy to find a man after God’s heart; it can take generations to find one man that can do all the will of God.
Ephraim and Joseph all failed. God also gave Benjamin a chance through Saul, but Saul also failed. So God had vindicated Himself from the cry of Racheal and turned to Leah. David (a man from Judah) came from Leah but it took some time. It can take generations to find a man after God’s heart who will do all his will. Saul never thought of restoring the Ark and he did not want the priestly hold on Israel as he preferred controlling Israel. God set Saul up when Samuel called him to sacrifice. Saul wanted his own dominion, he was impatient and could not wait for Samuel but went ahead to offer the sacrifice; that led to the kingdom being taken from him.
The heart of David flowed into Joseph. When Mary, his betrothed, got pregnant with Jesus, He decided to put her away privily and not cause her public disgrace (Matt. 1:19). If Joseph had not decided to put her away privily, Jesus might have died in the womb. It was possible for Jesus, as a baby, to be killed. That was why Joseph and Mary had to run away with Jesus when Herod sought to kill Him (Matt. 2:13). This is a wisdom that teaches us to guard what God is doing inside us, to hide under radar and not be too quick to share things God tells us in secret. All that the devil wanted was to stop Jesus.
“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! [13] For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: [14] I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.” (Isa. 14:12-14). Heaven in verse 12 is not the first heaven, but a lower inferior heaven. This was the fall from our heaven, the air. Adam used to own it before. The devil is using the air as a springboard to go up to higher heavens. Satan was talking about ascension into heaven, meaning that the heaven where he was was not the highest.
Jesus’ death and resurrection alone cannot pull Satan down. By legal authority, Satan hung in heaven and is still hanging there because many still obey him. He is the one who is making us not respond to God. We are using his life to live, his wisdom. He is selling a product and he made that product something that man cannot do without; it is called the power of Satan, and it is readily available because he does not want to go away.
“The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool. [2] The Lord shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion: rule thou in the midst of thine enemies. [3] Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.” (Ps. 110:1-3). God is going to raise a rod— people of authority—that would come out of the Church to ascend into the air where Satan is and disrupt his governance by the life of the Spirit. With the power of God, they would take heaven until it is difficult for Satan to stay there. Then Christians will be willing to do the will of God, willing to disengage from everything Satan offers; they will be willing to reject Satan completely. Then there would be a mass departure from the devil.
Worship means to take a journey. Old Testament saints went to a carnal tabernacle. New Testament saints go up, not by physically dying or in prayers; there is a way you go up after the recommended revelation in obeying God to go up. When the will of God is revealed and people do it, they would begin to go up. When their affection is no longer set on earth, the would go up. That is the essence of faith (Heb. 11:1). Faith is the exercise of relying on and practicing the unseen life. That is how to go up, you believe it and do it as if you have seen it. You go up until you begin to enter the tabernacle.
The Hebrew church got to a place where they were told to come boldly; they were comers (Heb. 4:16). The time of need is when you meet the High Priest. We ought to go up to Zion where we would meet the head of the Church, Jesus, the Mediator. That is the proper time to be introduced to the new covenant. He is the Messenger of the covenant. We have to go up, get to the mountain, get to the second heaven to meet Him. Some Christians are walking on the earth but they are not here, they have found the heavenly places. We ought to ascend up into the spirit.
“The earth is the LORD’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. [2] For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods. [3] Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? or who shall stand in his holy place?” (Ps. 24:1-3). If your attention is on the seas, there would be billow waves and many things contending for you to settle your troubles. However, there was a challenge thrown to earthly people: who shall ascend? It is not easy to ascend from earth where the foundation is waters. The presence of water confirms it is unstable and the devil uses it to his advantage, but one can ascend. When the word of ascension comes telling you to set your affection on things above, and you respond accordingly, you would ascend, and you would abide in the hills of the Lord.
“He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.” (Ps. 24:4). Vanity is a wicked thing that the devil has created for men not to go up. To swear deceitfully is to commit to getting this world at all cost. This world is a great distraction to going up. To be really useful on earth, one needs to be heavenly. When earth was in trouble, earth could not help itself, heaven had to send help. You can go up when your heart is filled with unseen activities of the heavens.
To be in a place, be with the people of the place. Real heavens do not do malice. Real heavens keep marriage; marriage survives in their hearts. You would not need to settle disputes when your heart is heavenly. Real heavens are babies at heart. Jesus is waiting for us in heaven. Jesus has come to a place and some people need to meet Him there. What He wants to communicate to you is what the end is about, which is that hearts should become heavenly.
Jesus told His disciples, “Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.” (Luke 10:20). This is not referring to names being written in the book of life. Here, you write your name in heaven by doing the heavenly, becoming heavens in your soul (Heb. 12:23). By embodying conversations that come from heaven, names can be embossed. When God gives you conversations, it is for your names to be written in heaven; when that happens, you become a heavenly dweller.
There are those who dwell in heaven (Rev. 12:12); and this is not referring to angels but saints who are not earthly. Our Lord Jesus passed into heavens to bring you into heavens; He can bring your soul there.
Blessings!