AUDIO VERSION OF MESSAGE

In this message, I share more about the completion of the Holy of Holies and offering our lives to become a carrier of the sound coming from the Mercy Seat. 

Transcript of ‘A Corporate Oracle in the Earth’

Last time I spoke to you about Haggai chapter 1 and went into the whole subject of the panelling for the Holy of Holies being made of cypress. I have been meditating more on this topic and I just want to share with you the things that the Holy Spirit has given me on that. We spoke about how a tree has to be cut down in order to be useful. It's wonderful if a tree grows tall and rooted in the earth and almost reaches the heavens in its evergreen state. But any tree whose wood is going to be used for the temple has to be cut down. It has to be severed at its root and processed. Cypress wood has many amazing qualities; it's exceedingly durable, was used to build ships, floors and doors, musical instruments and also for lance and spear shafts. So, cypress wood is connected to instruments of war and worship. We actually see cypress is mentioned in the book of Nahum:

‘The shield of his mighty men is made red, the valiant in scarlet, the chariot splash of steel in the day of his preparation and the cypress spears are brandished’. ~ Nahum 2:3

So, when we talk about a tree being cut down, it's really all about complete surrender; about death to self. It is about offering your life to become panelling to make the Holy of Holies and the roof of the temple. It's saying, “Lord, my life is yours, I lay upon the altar, bind me with cords as a living sacrifice, it's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. Use my laid-down life, build a speaking place”.

If you remember Solomon called the Holy of Holies ‘the Oracle’, which means ‘the speaking place’. So, in a sense, the Oracle or the speaking place that is panelled with boards of cypress is a sound-producer. It acts almost like a microphone or a speaker, which both receives and broadcasts the sound of the One who speaks inside the Oracle. When you think of the Holy of Holies built with that cladding of cypress, those boards are standing tall and yet they are hewn down and joined shoulder to shoulder in unity. No longer in their rooted place on the mountain, they have completely surrendered and willing be taken wherever God wants to take them, and allowing their lives to be hewn into the correct dimensions to panel the inside of the Holy of Holies. Their laid-down lives form the framework of the golden bowl which broadcasts a sound that comes from the Oracle.

I did a bit of research into gold and the silver vessels in the temple and it seems the silver vessels were used to bring flour offerings with frankincense; you see in Numbers 7 where it lists all the offerings of the heads of the different tribes - they brought the offering of fine flour in silver bowls, but the Holy of Holies is clad completely on top of the cypress with gold and inside is  the ark; which is also completely covered over with gold. Being a vessel of gold in the Master's house is really about being appointed a place to stand in the temple of the Lord that is connected to the Holy of Holies. The only vessel that entered there was held by the holy High Priest - a golden senser that carried the incense from the altar of incense on Yom Kippur. There was also a golden bowl that carried the blood that the High Priest was to sprinkle, in order to sanctify the Holy of Holies. So gold is always connected with the Holy of Holies or the Speaking Place.

When those who desire to be vessels of gold have cleansed themselves and have completely surrendered to whatever the will of the Lord is (remember that Jesus said in the Garden of Gethsemane, ‘If only this cup would pass from me, nevertheless, not My will, but Yours be done’), that's what a tree being chopped down looks like; complete surrender. He was put in chains and led away to face a farce of a trial - and ultimately crucified. And we see that Jesus depicts being the oracle of God because what came from Jesus in his final place of surrender upon that cross was the sound of the Blood. That sound release began to be heard in Gethsemane, when He sweated drops of holy Blood and the angels had to minister to Him and strengthen Him for what lay ahead. But from that moment on, the overriding sound that came from His fully surrendered life was the sound of the Blood.

If you think of the Holy of Holies and those hewn down cypress trees becoming a receptacle or a speaker for the sound of the Voice that speaks in that place, the only sound that is released in the Holy of Holies is the sound of the Blood that is poured out upon the Mercy Seat. So those vessels of gold that have allowed their lives to be hewn down and completely surrendered to the Spirit of the living God to do with as He wishes are formed into a corporate receptacle or golden bowl that is the speaker releasing continuously the sound of the Blood. That is a very, very powerful thing! It's what we are pressing in to, to be positioned before the throne of God.

You remember Joshua, the High Priest who stood before the Lord in Zechariah in his filthy garments, and he underwent a change of garment and received royal robes; garments of State, after this, he was crowned. And God said to him, “If you will keep My charge, I will give you places to stand among those who walk here”. And at that moment when God said that, he was standing before the Throne of God. The mercy seat of God is the Throne of God, so the mercy seat on top of the ark is essentially a throne from which the voice of God speaks - and what is the sound that comes from the Throne? It is the sound and the frequency of the Blood. Basically, what the Lord was saying to Joshua, the High Priest was, “I will appoint you to be assembled as part of the Oracle - to be part of those cypress trees which are hewn down and made into panelling and clad with gold”. They become part of the Oracle, the speaking place where a man ceases from his own labours and only works the works of God.

Zechariah also explains that Joshua, the High Priest is seated on a throne and he's crowned - this is the hallmark of the Melchizedek Priesthood ruling and reigning and operating in a kingly and a priestly anointing! They are doing it from a seated place; a place of no longer being in a season of your own labours, but in a Sabbath rest of working only the works of God. Actually, by your positioning as part of the construction of the Holy of Holies; forming this part of the Temple of God, you have already become dead to what is past, cut off from all that has gone before.

We have some really wrong concepts about dying to self. We almost have a sense that if we die to self, we will have no voice. However, dying to self and complete surrender to God does not silence your voice, it clarifies the sound that comes from your life because there is no longer any flesh releasing a sound or a frequency. When a tree is cut down, it is no longer connected to its root in the earthly realm. It is free to be transported to wherever it needs to be taken; to be used for whatever it needs to be used for - whether it is a musical instrument, a lance shaft or spear handle or even a ship. So, complete surrender to the Spirit of the Living God and a complete dying to your own life and living for God has the effect of clarifying the sound and the frequency that comes from your life. All flesh is gone; silenced, and the sweet clarity of a holy sound which is unable to be silenced is released. Do you remember Abel and how he chose a better sacrifice? Hebrews 11:4 speaks about the sacrifice that Abel offered to God, which was a sacrifice involving blood. And because of his choice, it says that though Abel is dead, he still speaks. So, the dying to self and the complete surrender is a spiritual transaction that transfers you out of the place where you are doing works for the Lord in the Holy Place, and it moves you through that veil. Into the Holy of Holies, where there is no natural light, only glory light and only the works of God are done. When you are in a place Sabbath rest, there is no sweat, where there's only gold and you do not function by the light of the sun or moon. He is the light within you.

Now. In Revelation, which speaks of the city that descends out of heaven from God, referred to as the wife of a Lamb, a bride who has made herself ready, it says in those scriptures she no longer has need of the sun with the moon, because the Lamb is her light. In other words, that's speaking about the Holy of Holies because there is no sun or moon. There is no natural light. There's no artificial light. There's not even lamplight. All that is in there is the light of the glory of God.

I want to just share a little bit more about the qualities of cypress wood: it grows abundantly in the mountains and is very hard, fragrant wood. Cypress trees are planted in graveyards even today. So, cypress is always associated with death and with resurrection. In ancient Israel, a cypress tree represented healing, uprightness, being evergreen and eternal life. These are trees are able to endure very harsh climates and poor soil, and they live sometimes for thousands of years. So, the cypress tree symbolizes someone who's managed to grow tall and strong, in spite of being planted in a very bad situation or in poor soil. The quality of the soil does not determine the size of the cypress tree and the bigger the cypress tree, the more wood is made available when that tree is cut down.

There is also a very interesting thing which is mentioned in one of the Jewish texts: that there used to be an ancient custom when a boy was born, a cedar tree was planted and when a girl was born, a cypress tree was planted. This is very interesting because in this, we see the connection of the cypress with the feminine or with the Bride of Christ. I had to think of those cypress boards cladding the inside of the Holy of Holies or encircling the inside of the Holy of Holies, around the ark of God, and it just triggered a connection with the scripture in Jeremiah 31:22, where the prophet says:

‘The Lord has created a new thing in the earth, a woman shall compass (or encircle) a man.’

So, the cypress boards in the Holy of Holies are encompassing or surrounding the ark of God, or the manifest presence of Yahweh. Therefore, we have in the Holy of Holies an actual representation of Jeremiah 31:22 with the Bridal Company;the golden and faceless vessels who have surrendered their lives; they are trees of the field who have lost their lives, willing to be cut down and used for the purposes of God, to become a corporate bridal Company; holy vessels encompassing a man. This Man is the manifest presence of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Song of songs also mentions cypress. In chapter 4: 13, it says: ‘Your plants are a paradise of pomegranates, with the fruits of the orchard, cyprres with spikenard’. So, in the garden of the Bride of Christ, cypress is growing. In Genesis 6: 14, Noah is instructed to make himself an ark of gopher wood, to put rooms in it and cover it within and without with cypress. How interesting is that! It became a vessel of deliverance for a righteous seed; the eight within the ark closed in by God. The judgment of God did not touch them! They were dwelling in a holy place, cleansed or sealed, panelled inside with cypress - just like the Holy of Holies would be in the temple of God.

There is another beautiful scripture in Isaiah 60:13, which says ‘The glory of Lebanon will come to you; the cypress, the plane and the pine tree together to make My Holy Place beautiful and the resting place of My feet will be full of glory’. Let’s look at that verse in another translation:

‘The glory of Lebanon will come to thee; the cypress, the pine and the box together to beautify the place of My sanctuary, and I will make the place of My feet glorious’. KJV

So we see there that the cypress tree is connected to beautifying the sanctuary, the place where God finds rest; the place where God dwells. Remember Psalm 114: ‘He made Judah his sanctuary’. And it says in Isaiah 16:13, ‘I will make the place of My feet glorious’. What is the place of his feet? It is the place where He manifests Himself, where He positions Himself. Jesus walked all over Israel but with His earthly body’s feet. But it was in the temple that the manifest presence of God’s Spirit rested within the Ark of the Covenant, the Golden Ark of the Covenant in the golden-clad Holy of Holies.

I want to speak to you about something that has always puzzled me: in 1 John 5:7,8 it speaks about there being three that bear record in heaven and three that bear witness in the earth. I have struggled for many, many years to understand and get a revelation of these two verses. Why is there a list of three different things that witness in heaven and three other things that witness together in the earth? Then I discovered 1 John was written in Aramaic because John, the disciple, spoke Aramaic, Bullinger informed me that the text did not read that before the 16th century! The Aramaic was translated into Greek and also into Latin, but before the 16th century, all the words from where it says ‘in heaven’ to ‘in Earth’ are NOT IN THE ORIGINAL TEXT! They were first seen in the margin of some Latin copies and have since then crept into the text. You know, when you make notes in the margins of your Bible of extra understanding that you've received from a sermon that you heard or something like that, and you write it in the margin or you put a date next to it. Well, somebody who spoke Latin started writing in the margin of the copy of the Word of God, and eventually it moved from the margin into the main body of the text, BUT IT WAS NEVER THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE. So, what it should read in 1 John 5:5, 7 & 8 from the translation of the original Aramaic (called The Peshitta translation by Etheridge 1915) is this:

‘who is he who conquers the universe, which he who believes that Yeshua is the son of God. This is He who came by water and blood, Yeshua the Messiah. It was not by water only, but by water and blood. And the Spirit testifies because the Spirit is the truth. And they are three testifying. 5:8 and they are three testifying: Spirit, water and the Blood and the three of them are one.’

Isn't that much simpler? Why would there be a different sound in heaven than in the earth? There is one sound and it's a three-in-one sound made by the Spirit, the water and the Blood.

It is a three-fold sound that is in complete and total harmony. Now, the word for ‘testifying’ is the Greek word ‘martureo’. I don't know the original Aramaic word, but martureo means ‘to be a witness or to testify’. In other words, the Spirit, the water and the Blood are speaking. It doesn't say ‘and there were three testifying’ or ‘three testified’ past tense. It says in the present tense, in other words, it's a continually ongoing activity. The Spirit is speaking, the water of the Word speaking and the Blood is speaking. And the three of them completely harmonize and are the same frequency and the same sound - just like in a court case, when you have three different witnesses who give their account of a situation. Imagine the court - Spirit speaks first and He says something. Then the water of the Word is called up to speak and says exactly the same thing. And then thirdly, the Blood is called up to speak and the Blood is the third witness. And the Blood sees exactly the same thing as the Spirit and the water! In the mouth of two or three witnesses a thing is established to be the complete and utter truth.

So, these cypress trees that yeild their lives to be part of the cladding and the panelling of the Holy of Holies - that place where there is no natural light, where there is complete walking by faith by the direction of the voice of God - these cypress trees; these saints, holy vessels who have become more holy, become broadcasters, as in sound speakers, that release and carry and amplify from their lives the testimony of the Blood that speaks. That's why when God said to me a while back, “I will saturate your tongue with the power of the Blood,” what He was saying is, “If you will surrender to Me, if you will separate the holy from the impure and the precious from the vile, you will be as My mouth. I will use your life to receive and be filled saturated with the sound of the Blood of the Lamb, which is the sound of the Spirit of Truth. And this testimony is completely borne out by the water of the Word, so that when you open your mouth, the sound and the frequency that is released is the Spirit of Might”. THAT is why those who know their God shall be strong and do exploits! That is why those who are wise will instruct and lead many to righteousness in the days of the persecution of the saints, (which we have now entered).

So I want to say to you, precious remnant of God, expect to get a bit of resistance to your realignment in this transition bridge month. Expect the enemy to try and interfere, to distract, to burden you with unnecessary things, because he does not want you to come up higher and to get wood for the Holy of Holies. he does not want you to come to a place of complete surrender. Your life would become boards of cypress in the hand of the Lord, to create the panelling for the Holy of Holies of the temple, which is His Body. Don't let the enemy distract you. Don't be sucked into everything that's being put out upon the media about what the enemy is busy with. This is the season and the time for extreme focus. Do the prayer work, do the worship work, do the letting go and surrendering in whatever area you need to, to become a son of God that can be completely led by the Spirit of God - disconnected from the earth, severed from earthly roots, with a clear, pure, sweet sound coming from your holy vessel.

May the Lord bless you and help you in this season, the Holy Spirit is here as a gift from Yeshua to lead us into all truth. There are three witnesses; the Spirit, the water and the Blood, and these three are one - they release the same frequency and YOU can be a vessel that releases that frequency.

Selah