According to Malachi, the day will arrive when the Lord suddenly comes to His temple, not to the world but to His temple. When He appears He will purify those who have been set aside to serve Him. The result will be servants who come before the Lord in righteous behavior.

Well, Peter tells us we are the holy nation, the royal priesthood. We know the eternal Temple of God is the Christian Church. It seems to me the Lord has come to us today to cleanse us from the sin that keeps us in slavery.

The passages in the New Testament that inform us we are not to continue in the sins of the flesh, and that if we do we will not inherit the Kingdom of God, have always been there in the text. Also the exhortation to not permit sin to have mastery over us has always been in the sixth chapter of the Book of Romans. But for whatever reason we have not been able to grasp these warnings and exhortations.

Now the veil is being lifted. Now God is highlighting the passages He wants emphasized in our day.

We have been at Pentecost, so to speak, throughout the present century. The observance that comes after the feast of Pentecost is the Blowing of Trumpets—Rosh Hashanah of the Jews. The Blowing of Trumpets is New Year's day in the Jewish calendar, the beginning of the year of kings and contracts.

The spiritual significance of the Blowing of Trumpets is that it represents the entrance of the Kingdom of God into the earth. The Lord Jesus said, "If I with the finger of God cast out devils then the Kingdom of God has come to you."

Now consider: before the Lord Jesus came, no prophet is recorded as having cast out devils. The Hebrew prophets healed afflictions but did not cast out devils.

The moment Jesus came He began to cast out devils, for the Kingdom of God comes by the casting out of devils.

Yet the Lord, when reading from Isaiah, closed the scroll just before the expression "the day of vengeance of our God." Therefore although the Lord cast out numerous demons of blindness and deafness He never once cast out a demon of moral bondage, such as lying or gossiping. The time had not come for God's vengeance on moral bondage.

I think the day of vengeance of our God has begun, and it has commenced with God's judgment on the evil forces dwelling in the flesh of those believers who fervently are seeking the Lord. These sources of bondage have been present and sometimes active in us, but God has not called our attention to them while we were pursuing other aspects of our discipleship. The blood of Jesus has kept us without condemnation in God's sight. Now the Lord is ready to judge our sins. He is pointing them out to us. We are to confess our sins and turn away from them with His help.

To be continued.