78. Characteristics of the Joshua Generation (#6-10)

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

In the previous post we began looking at 40 characteristics of the Joshua Generation, and today we are looking at the next 5.

6. The Joshua Generation will be men and women of faith, who speak and live by the word of God.

That was the difference between the generations: being able to speak – and live – the words of faith.  In spite of opposition, Joshua and Caleb spoke out the promises of God.
Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said, “We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we will surely overcome it” (Num 13:30).

There is going to be plenty of opposition to come. Most of it will be religious opposition, because the institution of the church is out to rob the true church of authority and power. There is going to be warfare. It has taken place before: whenever God starts to do something new and fresh, whenever He starts to pour out His Spirit in a new way, the previous generation opposes it because they do not want to give up control.

But you cannot control this: you have to go with what God is doing. The Joshua generation will not be into control: as we have seen, they will be gentle and humble of heart. We need to be men and women who are willing to live by faith and are unashamed to speak out the truth, challenge people’s understanding, and challenge the doctrines and mindsets which have robbed people of their true inheritance. Almost inevitably this is going to cause trouble, but we have authority, and we are going to see people rescued from those things.

7. The Joshua Generation will have (and operate in) a militant spirit, and will fully follow the Lord.

But My servant Caleb, because he has had a different spirit and has followed Me fully… (Num 14:24).

If you look at how Caleb entered the Promised Land, he was saying, “Bring it on! Give me the land of the giants, because I’m going to go in and take it”. And even when he was in his eighties, he was still strong to go in and out to battle and to war. He was still overcoming. The Joshua generation may have people in it who are 80, 90, or over 100. It is not about age, it is about attitude. They have a different spirit, a militant spirit – as Jesus said, it is the violent who take the kingdom by force.

It is a breakthrough spirit. These are people who are willing to be breakers, who will break things open so that others can come in and receive. That is what God is calling us to do, and to follow Him fully (not partially). It will take a militant breakthrough spirit to push through into the dimensions to which God is calling us, and we need to be prepared for that.

8. The Joshua Generation will be sensitive to and feel grief over sin.

We do not look back at a previous generation and say, “Well, tough on them, they have missed it”. We look at people and see they are still needing encouragement to come in. Over the church in general we have to have an attitude of intercession, an attitude of standing in the gap. Not an attitude of pride, but of willingness to do what we can to see more and more people drawn in.

And where we see the church as an institution in sin, our spirit needs to be moved to act:

Joshua the son of Nun and Caleb the son of Jephunneh, of those who had spied out the land, tore their clothes (Num 14:6).

When the others said, “We are not entering in”, they tore their clothes as an expression of sorrow and of intercession for them. That is how we need to be.

9. The Joshua Generation will be men and women of the Spirit

So the LORD said to Moses, “Take Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Spirit” (Num 27:18).

We need to be filled with the Holy Spirit, to be baptised in the Holy Spirit in fullness, and to be so continually. It is not a one-off experience: we need daily to be filled, to be overflowing, and to be operating in the dimensions of the Spirit. In the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and in the fruit of the Holy Spirit. We need to go up to whole new dimensions of the glory that is manifested through the Holy Spirit.

I did a teaching about the five rivers that are present with us. We can enter into those rivers and be rebaptised into our born-again experience, into our baptism in water experience, into our baptism in the Spirit experience, into our baptism of fire experience, and our baptism of glory experience. We need to continually enter into each of these because our ongoing relationship with the Holy Spirit is going to take us to higher realms. He is willing to reveal things to us, because He is the Spirit of Truth who is ready to disclose those things that are to come.

If you want to discover and understand and enter into that whole realm of the Spirit, you can read and meditate on John chapters 12 to 17. Those chapters are all about being connected to and flowing in the Spirit of God, and there is so much more than we know, waiting for us to uncover and experience.

10. The Joshua Generation will be chosen, anointed and commissioned by God for the task.

It was several years ago now that God just gave me a series of four words: investiture, succession, enthronement and coronation. I shared them with some of you at the time, but I didn’t fully understand them or what God intended by them. As I have kept those words in my heart, He has continued to give me revelation of them and I have prayed over people to receive new and fresh mantles of authority.

In fact I have been to the Mantle Room in heaven and seen row upon row of mantles of authority and power, waiting to be conferred on people. Some are the mantles of saints from previous generations, people like Smith Wigglesworth and Maria Woodworth-Etter, who have carried something of that authority in the supernatural realm. Many of those mantles are about to be released.

Some of the wells of past generations are going to be unblocked and are going to flow again; but also there are be new wells to be dug, and new mantles released, new levels of authority to be taken up. People are going to be exercising authority and doing things that today you might find it hard to even imagine or conceive of. They will need to do so if they are to be victorious in the battles which are going to take place. They will include some of us: because those are battles we may have to fight. We are going to need to be anointed, because we are chosen, and we are going to be commissioned.

Investiture is just the first part of that commissioning process. I remember watching Prince Charles’ investiture as Prince of Wales many years ago on TV. But although he has been invested, he is still only the heir to the throne at the moment. He is still the prince: he is not yet King. There is more to come for him. And there is more to come for us: God will give us revelation of what that is.

Lay your hand on Joshua; and have him stand before Eleazar the priest and before all the congregation, and commission him in their sight. You shall put some of your authority on him… (Num 27:18-20).

God is going to release more of His authority to His people. We will be commissioned to enter into a further dimension of our inheritance, our Promised Land.

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31. Authentic Supernatural Power and Authority

Mike Parsons – 

We have seen how Joseph was called from the dungeon by Pharoah to interpret his dreams, and how he used the harvest of the years of plenty to provide food for the years of famine (Genesis 41). Joseph was able to do this because he had a relationship with God, and knew how to operate in the supernatural. In our days, God intends us to operate in the same way, and intends us to do signs and wonders just as Jesus did, because of our relationship with Him.

Supernatural

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father (John 14:12).

The reason we need to be doing the greater works, and to train others up to do them too, is because as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man (Matt 24:37). We have already written a little about how it was in the days of Noah, how there were manifestations of evil in heavenly places which were then worked out on the earth. Those times are going to come again, and we need to be ready with supernatural power.

Purified

I have seen pictures and visions of fires burning in the atmosphere of the earth, the kingdom that is in darkness. The fires are purifying those realms of authority, the principalities and powers, presently occupied by the prince of the power of the air.

We are connected to the kingdom of God and the kingdom of heaven in the heavenly realms. We can go and meet with God: we can meet Him face to face, we can have encounters with Him in that heavenly realm. We need to be familiar with what heaven is like, if we are to bring it here on earth. We do not need to go through the atmosphere of the earth to access the heavenlies: we can access them via a direct connection, because the door is always open to us. But when we come back to the realm of the kingdom of the earth, we can go back through the kingdom in darkness to bring the light; dispel the darkness and take authority there. Some of you have already had revelation of thrones and how you need to be seated in places of authority in the heavenly realms.

God is going to cause the kingdom in darkness to be purified. I have seen fire going up into the atmosphere realms from this realm: I have seen maps of places with fire going up from them and just engulfing and purifying that realm. That realm was never intended for the enemy: it was intended for God’s people, for Adam and Eve, for us. We should occupy that realm and rule from there.

The counterfeit and the authentic

So we need to reclaim everything that has been counterfeited and lost. New Age people and occultists are operating in realms of the spirit in ways that actually put most Christians to shame: they can do things supernaturally that most Christians wouldn’t even dream about. Now I completely agree that they are doing so from totally the wrong source of power, but in fact they are just counterfeiting what God calls His people to do.

We have to be a supernatural people: we need to demonstrate true spiritual authority. Light is going to triumph over darkness, but darkness is going to be seen. There is going to be a challenge just like with the prophets of Baal, there is going to be a calling down of fire from heaven; where we challenge the forces of evil, we challenge the demonic realm – and we win. You need to know that: we win. He that is in us is greater than he that is operating in those realms and in the world.

We win, but we are going to have to be ready to win. We are going to operate in authentic supernatural power: there are going to be transportations and translations and so on; and although just now the church seems to be saying “stay away from that stuff”, in reality much of what we see in the occult is only a counterfeit of how we should truly be operating. Where a counterfeit exists, it proves there also exists an authentic original.

Yes, we “stay away” from the power source that they are tapping into, but we need to reclaim what has been counterfeited and demonstrate to the world what true spiritual power and authority looks like. We need to use the keys of the kingdom effectively, and God is going to teach us how to do so.

I know that some of you are engaging these realms already: some of you are engaging the courts of heaven; some of you are engaging these thrones; but they have a system of authority that we have to deal with and we have to break down. God is going to train us and equip us to do this, so that we can bring light; so that we can occupy those realms of authority and release that authority on earth.

In releasing that authority on earth, we release the gospel to go out, and bring in a harvest.

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30. Centre of the World Stage

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

centrestage 

People from past generations have longed to see what God is doing in our day, and we have the privilege of being able to be involved in it. It is not something to be taken lightly: we must embrace who we are, we must embrace who God is calling us to be.

God is beginning to raise up a Joshua generation, who will bring in that harvest of labourers who in turn will bring in the final harvest at the end of the age. The Joshua generation will be a people of a different spirit; we will look at that in due course. The scripture that God is using to introduce this is found in Genesis 41: it is the story of Joseph.

We see in this chapter that Joseph was in the dungeon when Pharoah called for him They brought him up out of dungeon, and he shaved and put on new clothes so that he was fit to be brought into Pharoah’s presence. Pharoah sent for Joseph because he had had some dreams, and he had heard that Joseph had a supernatural ability to interpret them.

Supernatural

The church worldwide is going to be brought out of the dungeon – the dungeon of irrelevance, the dungeon of obscurity – and is going to find itself placed in the centre of the world stage. God is preparing us for that right now. It is a supernatural people who will be given this place of prominence: just as Joseph could interpret dreams and visions, they too will be a people who operate in the supernatural.

And it is a supernatural church that is required, not an institution, nor a religion, but an ekklesia which enjoys a relationship with the Living God in which He is saying ‘Come out of the dungeon’. He is saying that to some as individuals: come up out of the pit, come into the shining light, and let God use you. He is calling the church out into the light: just as it was said of Esther (Esth 4:14), we have come to the kingdom, come to royalty, for such a time as this. Our calling is to be royalty, and it will be clear that we are the sons of the King. We have a destiny in God, and we are called for such a time as this.

A time of preparation

Pharoah had two dreams which Joseph interpreted. They predicted a seven-year period of abundance followed by a seven-year period of total famine. And in the seven years of abundance, they would need to do something to prepare for the seven years of famine. In our days, God is saying that there is a period of abundance coming to the church in which a harvest will be coming in. This will be a harvest of labourers, and we need to be ready for that harvest. That harvest is what will be needed in the period of famine that will follow.

Pharoah said to His servants, “Can we find a man like this in whom there is a divine spirit?” (Gen 41:38). God wants us to know His Spirit is in us, that we are a habitation of God, of His Presence and power; that His kingdom is within us, manifesting through us. That is what it is going to take, around the world, to be prepared for this harvest.

As we read on, we see what Joseph did: he gathered 20% of all the food that was harvested in the years of abundance, and placed this food in cities: in every city he gathered the food from its own surrounding fields. I have listened to lots of prophetic words and voices about this recently and I believe that what God is saying is that we will see 20% of the population of the planet gathered as the first stage of the harvest: 20% of the people around the cities of refuge that God is establishing around the world are going to come in and be saved.

That adds up to quite a lot of people – about a billion or so – which is why we are going to need a much bigger building, in fact we are going to need this whole site that we have marked out, this whole campus that we have been believing for. There are going to be plenty of others like us too, in other places. A harvest, a billion people to be trained up as labourers in the even bigger harvest to come. Others have seen this billion people: some believe that it is the whole of the end time harvest, but I cannot believe God will be satisfied unless there are at least far more people saved than not.

Cities Of Refuge

When the famine came, as predicted in Pharoah’s dream, where did all the people of the earth go to get what they needed? They came to Egypt, they came to Joseph: there was no grain anywhere else. The whole world was in the grip of famine. And this is what is going to happen when we are ready, when the harvest of labourers is gathered into the cities of refuge. Those cities of refuge are the apostolic resource centres, regional centres which God is raising up around the world. They will have relationship with each other and responsibility for the people around them in their own area, to draw in that 20%.

I am not saying that is going to be just one church: it will be God’s people coming together in an area, in unity, in order to release this. So we need to be ready, to be prepared for that harvest of harvesters to come in. That is what God is doing with us here: He is calling us to be an equipping centre, to help train up all those people.

Prodigals return

Prodigals are going to return: that is one of the first signs of this, that we see the prodigals start to come back, people who have been hurt, disappointed, disillusioned, and who have walked away from God as a result. Angels are going to go out and draw them back in (in all this we are going to be working alongside angelic reapers). Family members, our children, and others, are going to be coming back.

We need to be ready for them, to train them and equip them in the supernatural, to do the works of Jesus and the greater works too: nothing else is going to be enough. All the nature miracles, walking on water, stilling storms, supernaturally multiplying resources, signs and wonders: all the things Jesus did, God intends us to be doing. And it is for all of us, not just for specialists, it is for every single individual Christian to be doing the works of Jesus. “Those who believe will do the works that I do” (John 14:12). That is what Jesus said: all we have to do is believe.

Soundtrack: Jake Hamilton – The Anthem (opens in new tab/window)

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