An Exciting Word for 2018: ARK is Part of the Greater Move of God
My book and my calling are only small expressions of a mighty move of God that is rising up all over the world, comprising dynamic new movements and amazing works by His hand. I believe it is the second coming of the spirit of Elijah, predicted by the prophets long ago. They foresaw that it would come at the end of this age, to restore God’s people.
Malachi 3:1 speaks of such a move of God just before the beginning of Jesus’ earthly ministry. The spirit of Elijah is a “message with power” to catch the attention of God’s distracted and confused people, and prepare them for the arrival of Messiah. The prophet declares that this coming preparation will be like a “refiners fire or a launderer’s soap . . . that will purify the sons of Levi….” (Mal.3:2-3).
The prophet also makes a clear distinction between the first coming of this restoration movement and its second coming. In Malachi 4:5 the prophet says the Elijah visitation will also happen “just before the great and dreadful day of the Lord.” This is a promise of restoring and preparing God’s people before the second coming of Jesus Christ. Malachi did not fully see how that would play out in history, but we do.
Over 40 years ago, as the last ebb of the Jesus movement was passing away, I sat wondering if the greatest spiritual movement of my life had already come and gone. At that moment, the Lord gave me a promise that a much greater move of God was to come later — and I would see it and participate in it.
Late last fall, as I was attending a powerful spiritual conference, the Lord spoke to my spirit and said that what I had so long waited for had come! I was both excited and awed. As I sat listening to conference speakers recount the astonishing number of new movements springing up around the world, the Lord helped me see that these are all expressions of the second coming of Elijah.
My calling is to be His voice — a messenger before His face — along with thousands of others calling God’s people to faith and renewal. The body of Christ must prepare for the greatest movement of all: The awakening of the world church to the closeness of Jesus’ coming.
What is happening will dwarf what has happened the past. God is not just planting churches around the world and reviving spiritually desolate regions. No — God is planting movements. Sweeping movements. I would define a movement as an idea that inspires people to action, such that the idea spreads from person to person until it impacts whole nations. Today I can point to hundreds of such movements aflame in the world for the glory of God.
In this century we have instant global communication at our fingertips. Anyone with an iPhone or laptop can have a worldwide audience and capture the attention of thousands, even millions, with viral messages. Never before has a generation had such tools available to it. What an awesome opportunity and responsibility.
God is moving things to a whole new level and we must move with Him. This is ARK’s message. The greatest restoration of the church is in progress. The greatest harvest ever seen by the church is being stirred up by the divine shaking of nations. It is what ARK has joined itself to, and it is what I believe I am calling each of you to. Join the movement!
— Dr. Daniel J. Griffiths
For All Seasons, All Peoples, All Families…
In 2017, life moves very quickly. People change jobs and relocate. Families are scattered. Outlines of family trees become faint and blurred – so much that it may be hard for us to trace the march of earlier generations through time.
We might be able to connect dots of living memory as far back as our great-grandparents, piecing together at our own genealogy. Beyond that, we may have only a list of names on paper – if we have anything at all.
Not so for God. He is a God of the generations who since the beginning of time has had a plan.
Acts 17:26 says, “From one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth, and He determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.”
We may not be used to thinking in generational terms – but we should. Bill Johnson, pastor of Bethel Church in Redding, California, has said, “My ceiling will be the next generation’s floor.” Over and over throughout the Old Testament we see great people like Nehemiah and Daniel interceding on behalf of their people, with exactly that focus.
This privilege is also given to us. We can pray through generational sinful patterns, attitudes, and wounds that have descended through our family lines, and still affect us today.
1 Peter 1:18 states, “For you know it was not with perishable things…that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ.”
As we confess, repent, renounce and pray healing into our family lines, we become freer to receive what God intended for the generations from the beginning. The aim is not to “break off” our bloodlines, but to cleanse them by the blood of Jesus.
Jesus has much so richness that He has given to pour down through the generations of families and cultures – a flow that so often has been blocked or restricted by sinful patterns of behavior, attitudes, false belief systems, and hurts. Those hurts were meant to be healed and restored through the blood of Christ.
It stands, then, that as God, I AM, is outside of time, and He gives us the ministry of praying for generations past, that we can also pray the future into being. We can declare and decree what He had originally intended for our families.
What is the destiny that God intended for your family?
What is the specific calling that He gave to you?
What dreams has He given you for your family? For the nation? For the world?
As we are called to pray for all generations, we can begin to declare into being the Lord’s purposes—praying through the past and declaring the future. In this we partner with Him for all peoples, cultures, nations: God wants them to walk into His goodness.
What is it that the Lord would have you pray? As Holy Spirit brings to mind some specifics, we repent for the false ways of acting and thinking we have held. We pray for healing of heart, mind, spirit, and body, and proclaim truth in and over us and our families, our nation, and the world in which we live.
We have a Heavenly Father who wants only good. He gives us the honor of bringing the kingdom to earth as we begin to see our lives as much larger than ourselves. We ARE families, cultures, nations, and we can declare and decree His glory into our lives.
The Redeemer of all is at work, in us and through us. Your kingdom come, Lord, for all times and all seasons, all peoples and all families.
— Ellen Brutsch
ARK Advisory Board Member
Board Chairperson, Wholeness Through Christ USA/Canada
Resist End-times Fatalism
It is true some of the most challenging days are ahead for the church of Jesus Christ. But more important, the greatest days of the church are ahead.
It is time to develop courage and audacious faith in the hearts of God’s people.
I realize that God’s shaking of the nations is reaching climactic proportions. That makes for startling news. But we must see beyond the shaking to the multitudes searching for God’s unshakable salvation in Jesus Christ. We are entering a time of amazing harvest.
Haggai prophesied that God would make the end-times church glorious and powerful. Isa. 60:1-3 says that such glory is going to arise in the church that whole nations will be drawn to the Lord. The future of the church is going to be dazzling.
But first must come the shaking of the church, which is what my second book in the series The Last Shaking will address. The church must repent of its disunity, its self-promotional focus, and its compromise of God’s word. The Lord has no Plan B: He is going to find a faithful remnant who will live sold-out lives for Him.
It is time to increase faith! It is time to build expectant hearts that God will do all He said he would do. Indeed we will need courage, but the rewards for standing tall in faith are going to be incredible.
— Dr. Daniel J. Griffiths
