The Twelve Gates Of The Holly City

Chapter Seven

(Having a Great High Wall with Twelve Gates)

 

Rev. 21:12 says,

"It had a great high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the twelve gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel."

The wall is a hedge, and the purpose of the wall is to keep out all enemies. Job had a hedge around him, and the Church is spoken of as a vineyard. There is a wall great and high. Perfect protection and immunity from all enemies. The gates of hell shall not prevail against this City. The walls are being constructed even now, line upon line, and our enemies are finding it harder and harder to get us.

There are some things happening now, that a year ago would have made you blow up. It would have gotten to you, and you would not have been able to stand. However, because you made a decision to make your stand on God's Word, and make all your decisions on His Word, these things do not even concern you now.

Now instead of fussing at those who oppose you, you have sympathy for them and pray that their eyes might be opened as yours have been. These things do not bother us as much, because the wall is getting higher and higher.

Let us look at a person in the Bible who had a wall so great and so high that nothing could break through. Would you like to hear how He described that wall? In John 14:30, Jesus says,

"I will not speak with you much longer, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold on me."

Jesus was really saying that there is a wall around me that is so great and so high that the devil can't get a foothold on me. There is no crack in this wall and there is no opening in this wall. In other words, there is no aspect of My life or My ministry where the devil can get a foothold. He has no part in Me.

In Matt. 5:27-30, Jesus said:

"You have heard it said, `Do not commit adultery', but I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go to hell."

Jesus was dealing here with a principle of purity, and He meant to do something definite and drastic. Here is a Kingdom Principle: I would rather go into the Kingdom halt or maimed than to go to hell.

After Jacob wrestled with the Lord, he walked around with a limp, but his nature was changed. Don't ever look down on someone who is maimed, because it may be self-inflicted. They mean business so much that they will not participate with you in what may be lawful for you to do, but they realize that this is a weak spot in their makeup, and they refuse to let the devil have a foothold in their life anymore.

Jesus said in Luke 14:21:

"Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame."

This is who is going to be at the banquet at the end of this age. Jer. 31:8-9 says:

"See, I will bring them from the land of the north and gather them from the ends of the earth. Among them will be the blind and the lame, expectant mothers and women in labor; a great throng will return. They will come with weeping; they will pray as I bring them back. I will lead them beside streams of water on a level path where they will not stumble, because I am Israel's father, and Ephraim is my firstborn son."

This is not talking about natural things. If you know that there is an area of your life where satan has a foothold, do not play with it, deal with it. The Babylonian concept, or the old order concept is; I can grit my teeth and handle it. No you can't!

Have you ever wondered why all of a sudden someone that you thought really had their act together, fell? You say, "Well, I would have never believed that." The reason is; because they covered their tracks well. They white washed their problem by keeping that desire down. But when the right situation came the pressure became too much and under those circumstances the desire surfaced and they acted.

The wine skin will crack every time and the wine will be spilled. Do not think for one minute that you can grit your teeth and be able to keep your foot on the devil, because you can not. This is why we have to go through these twelve gates. Like the formation of pearls they cause pain and much irritation

and in the natural leave us with a limp. If you want to enter this City and become a part of these people it will costs you something.

So He said: "Go out in the streets and the alleys and get those people that refuse to allow the enemy to gain a foothold in their lives, for they are the people I am looking for." He is talking about pastors who every now and then will love God's people enough to pluck out an eye or cut off a hand in order to save the body. I would rather do that with one member of a local body than see the whole body perish.

Zechariah 2:1-5 says:

"Then I looked up--and there before me was a man with a measuring line in his hand. I asked, `Where are you going'? He answered me, `To measure Jerusalem, to find out how wide and how long it is'. [Any time you see in the Scripture someone about to measure anything, they are checking on the condition of that which they are about to measure.] Then the angel who was speaking to me left, and another came to meet him and said, `Run tell that young man, Jerusalem will be a city without walls because of the great number of men and livestock in it. And I [meaning Jesus] will be a wall of fire around it', declares the Lord, `and I will be a glory within.'"

How many want to be a member of a church where God speaks and says, "I am going to be a wall of fire around you, and My nature will be within you?" Is that wall getting higher and higher around you? Can you sense the presence of God becoming greater and greater? Elisha told his servant Gahazi in 2 Kings 6:17:

"Don't be afraid," the prophet answered. "Those who are with us are more than those who are with them." And Elisha prayed, "O LORD, open his eyes so he may see." Then the LORD opened the servant's eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha."

David said in Psalms 34:7:

" The angel of the LORD encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them."

Zechariah 2:6-13 says:

"`Come! Come! Flee from the land of the north,' declares the Lord, `for I have scattered you to the four winds of heaven,' declares the Lord. `Come, O Zion! Escape, you who live in the daughter of Babylon' [denominations or nondenominations - anything contrary to the Word], `and flee from her.' For this is what the Lord Almighty says: `After he has honored me and has set me against the nations that have plundered you, for what ever touches the apple of my eye, I well surely raise my hand against them so that their salves will plunder them'. Then you will know the Lord almighty has sent me. `Shout and be glad, O Daughter of Zion. For I am coming, and I will live among you', declares the Lord. Many nations will be joined to the Lord in that day and become my people. I will live among you and you will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me to you. The lord will inherit Judah as His portion in the holy land and will again choose Jerusalem. Be still before the Lord, all mankind, because he has roused himself from His holy dwelling."

2. Rev. 3:12 says,

"Him who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God and the name of the City of my God, the new Jerusalem, which is coming down out of heaven from my God; and I will write on him my new Name."

The name of God, or His nature is what brings us into this new City.

Let me summarize what we have learned in our foundation teaching concerning the City. The City is a people and that people is a dwelling place or an abode for the fullness of God. The City is the body of Christ, the Lamb's wife, and that City is the perfected Church. The twelve gates are twelve experiences which we must go through in order to enter this City and they progressively unfold from The Christ nature that is within the people of God.

As we progress from glory to glory, from line upon line, there will unfold from within you, the Christ nature, all twelve of these experiences. In order to be a part of this people, we must progress through all twelve of these gates. The fearful and the unbelieving are on the outside. These are twelve entrances into the light which is truth.

We will discover in the next chapter that the first gate has the name Reuben on it. Reuben means, "Behold a Son." We know that the first thing one must do to inherit eternal life is to be born again.

There is only one street in this City and this street is made of gold which speaks of one walk in God and it speaks of a nature in us that is made perfect through suffering. The wall of this City represents His presence which is a hedge and protection from the enemy. The wall speaks of the truth that no enemy can get into that City. Jesus said that the evil one had no place in Him and has no place in the people of this City.

This City is not going up, it is coming down. Because we are natural minded, we think of up being up, and down being down. However, when it speaks of this City coming down, the City is descending down out of a higher realm or order. Out of the spirit realm. This City is descending down out of the invisible realm of the spirit into the visible realm of the natural.

The City speaks of a people who are going to become visible to the nations. There will be a people on the earth who will manifest the divine nature of the son of God.

Each gate is a pearl and pearl speaks of a great price. In the natural it takes much pain and irritation to produce a pearl. There is more to being saved than just being born again and receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit. If you are to go into maturity it will cost you something. The pearl speaks of the fellowship of His sufferings.

Heb. 5:1-10 says:

"Every high priest is selected from among men [that means they are separated from men] and is appointed, or ordained to represent them in matters related to God."

The purpose of your appointment of ordination is for men. Any ministry that is ordained to promote a person is not like the pattern we see here. The charismatic crowd that is only interested in the manifestation of spiritual gifts is no different from the other crowd that is only interested in the rapture!

I am ordained not for myself, but for others. The totality of Jesus's ministry, was, is, and always will be for others.

"To offer gifts and sacrifices for sins." This people are going to be offering something. They are not takers, they are givers. He is looking for people who can have compassion on the ignorant. I am not talking about others. I am talking about myself. When I study and hear other learned men speaking, I

realize how ignorant I am, and I have the tendency to condemn myself for not knowing more. So I must learn to have compassion, first of all on me, and then for my brother. I must learn to have compassion on those who are weak; and we are surrounded by those who are weak.

"He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness. This is why he has to offer sacrifices for his own sins, as well as the sins of the people. No one takes this honor upon himself;"

You do not get filled with the Holy Spirit and then hang your shingle out that says `Counselor' hours 8-5. The greatest cancers to the body of Christ today are novices, self-ordained, who do not know what they are talking about. The only ones more foolish than they, are the ones who go to them and listen to what they are saying. The reason people go to them is because they know if they go to a seasoned ministry, they would have to get their lives straightened out.

"No one takes this honor upon himself, he must be called by God, just as Aaron was. [Even Jesus was ordained by His Father.] So Christ also did not take upon himself the glory of becoming a high priest. But, God said to Him, `You are My Son; today I have become your Father.' And he said another place, `You are priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek. During the days of Jesus's life on earth, He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death."

Jesus even had to die to his own self-life, for He said, "I do nothing of Myself." Jesus paved the way as a pattern for you and me that where He walked, we might also walk, not for ourselves, but for God.

"He was heard because of His reverent submission. Although He was a son, He learned obedience from what He suffered."

Even though Jesus was the Son of God, He had to learn to be obedient. This is a principle in God's Word, and if we are to learn to be like Jesus, we must also learn to be obedient. Notice that obedience is learned through suffering or going through the twelve gates. The Greek word for obedience is `HOOP-AK-O-AY', #5218 and comes from two Greek words. `Hoopo' means `under' and `a-koo-oh' means `to hear.'

The real meaning of the word `obedience' is to hear a word of wisdom and then come under subjection to what you heard. To hear the word of God and to become doers of that Word. Why don't some people hear? They refuse to `come'.

"....and once made perfect, He BECAME the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him,"

Jesus obeyed his Father and became (meaning He also had to go through the same process that we have to in order to become mature) the author of eternal salvation. Just as Jesus had to obey the Father, He says that we have to obey Him. Just as He submitted Himself to the Word of His Father, so He says that we have to submit ourselves to His word. Someone says, "Well, How do I do that?"

Paul said in Eph 4:11-13:

"When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men. He gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers,"

There is no possible way into this City apart from hearing the word of the Lord, the voice of the Lord, through these ministries. The very purpose of these ministries is:

"to prepare God's people for Works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ."

Jesus was made perfect by a step by step process of obedience and every step was a step of pain and of great price. . Heb. 2:6 says:

"What is man that you are mindful of him, the Son of Man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the angels;"

This is a quotation of Psalm 8:4-6, and the original Hebrew word for angel as used here is, #430 `ELOHIYM' which is the name of God in the creative sense. What this is saying here, is that man was made just a little lower than God Himself.

"....you crowned Him with glory and honor and put everything under His feet."

In putting everything under Him, God left nothing that was not subject to Him. Yet at present, we do not see everything subject to Him. Yet, any ministry that preaches that God's purpose is that we put all enemies under our feet and that there will be a City or a people that will all be victorious, will be rejected by the large majority of the church. And this is largely the reason Jesus cannot come at this time.

Paul preached a glorious church without spot or wrinkle. Without the spot and the acne and pimples of the charismatics because they are in their adolescence and immaturity. And not the wrinkles and the deadness of the Pentecostals. And we see not yet all things put beneath His feet. This is just another way of saying that we are not there yet. I am not there yet and neither are you. I am not yet a part of the City. I have just come through some of those gates and so have you.

I still have some gates to go through. I have only experienced some of the gates. I have only paid part of the price. You see, I am not yet fully one with Him in my understand and that is why I am pressing on in my attempt to come into the full knowledge of Him.

"But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels,

now crowned with glory and honor because He suffered death. So

that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone."

"In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for

whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author

of their salvation perfect through suffering. Both the one who

makes men holy (Jesus) and those who are made holy are of the

same family."

If Jesus was made holy by suffering, then we also must follow the pattern He followed and be made perfect through suffering also. When you hear the word suffering, you automatically think of physical pain. What do you think hurt Jesus the most? We did by rejecting Him!! The twelve gates are twelve steps of pain and suffering and discomfort and irritation to the flesh, but joy and delight to the spirit.

You will be mocked and derided and crucified and as you are persecuted for Jesus sake, you can leap for joy and identify with the prophets, because just maybe He is making you one of them.

Revelation 17:3 says:

"There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls."

Notice that her appearance on the surface looks just like the Bride; scarlet, gold, precious stones and pearls. She was a whited sepuicher but inside she was full of deception and drunk with the blood of the saints. Do not be deceived when someone comes to you and says, "Well they must be of God. They have paid such a price. They sold their homes and have given up their jobs and everything for this message they are preaching."

Here, you see that the harlot is also dressed in pearls. How can you tell the difference? The woman in chapter seventeen is receiving all the glory and praise, but the woman in chapter twenty-one is the

one doing the praising and the giving!

The pearl is formed within an oyster as an abnormal growth. Have you ever found in your walk and your life that all of a sudden something is not quite normal? Immediately the old order says, "SIN"! Isn't it interesting that the first time you were on fire for the Lord, and really turned on to Jesus, someone

called you abnormal. You are different, kind of crazy. This much learning hath made thee mad!

What the world considers normality is insanity. The world is going crazy, but not in the manner that you might think. There is a very fine line between a genius and someone who is crazy. A man who is really out of it, as they say, lives in his own world which he has made up and created, and most people do not understand him. The whole church world is living in a world that they created and they need delivered.

In olden times, pearl divers believed each pearl had a distinct personality in life. Their belief was so real to them, that gems resembled humans in some ways. Pearls could become ailing, loose their brilliance, become a lackluster paleness. This gave rise to a unique profession, that of a pearl doctor. Unfortunately, no knowledge is available of his treatment or cures. Prize pearls have natural beauty and a shimmering loveliness that beg a description. Delicate tints play upon surfaces from gleaming, silvery white through several colors to glistening black. The hues are so varied that one can find almost every colored tint. Rarest of all are the rainbow pearls, exquisite gems, beyond duplication, and exhibit every color of the rainbow.

A pearl is formed when an irritant which is any of many foreign substances, something that is not natural to the oyster, such as grains of sand, bits of shell, parasites, eggs of marine animals, perhaps even the oyster itself, or even mud, enters and lodges in the tissue of the oyster.

The oyster's attempt to isolate the irritation, covers the offender with macra which hardens quickly and successive layers of macra are added like a painter applying consecutive coats of varnish in the oyster's effort to relieve himself. In this effort, a gem is born. The thing that causes a pearl to be formed is a foreign substance.

God has taken His word and sent it to us, and when it first came, it was a foreign substance. The word of the Kingdom has been lodged in us and all of us, in one way or another, have tried to get rid of it. By trying to get rid of it, we have made it grow. How many have really struggled with revelation knowledge? The very thing you were struggling with caused life in you to be formed. This is the reason you do not see me get too excited when I see you struggle with the Word.

The struggling is necessary for you to have the proper growth in your inner man, and if I would interfere with that process, I would actually be hindering what the Word is causing to be born in you. In struggling against these things, you are strengthened in your growth. Too many pastors have hindered the growth of the body of Christ by wanting to keep their congregations dependent upon them to make all their major decisions.

The people of God become a City where the fullness of the Godhead dwells in bodily form, a gem of a people, crystal clear and transparent, full of the life of God.