The Kingdom and the Glory

Prophet Elisee Yao / 6 Oct 2019

The glory is about the kingdom. God’s children are part of a kingdom that is confrontational, not passive. This is why Jesus told Peter that “…upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it” (Matt 16:18, NIV). Jesus tells us here not to let hell attack us (defensive), but rather that we should attack hell (offensive)! Have you ever wondered why Jesus said the ‘gates’ of hell? No kingdom goes to war using gates to fight with; rather, in battle, one army advances upon another army’s gates to overcome it. So when Jesus said this, He meant that we should be the ones who are advancing upon the gates of the enemy. If we have been given the authority to attack, why do we keep emphasizing that the kingdom of darkness is attacking us? People don’t understand the principles of the kingdom, so they become passive, vulnerable, and open to attack.

How Do We Advance Upon the Enemy?

If the Bible tells us that there is a “good fight” (1 Tim 1:18, 6:12, and 2 Tim 4:7), then surely there must be a bad fight. You cannot attack Satan by saying, “I bind you!”; that is not an attack, that is resistance. A genuine attack is when you display the kingdom, when you start to win souls, and you start to take people out of the kingdom of darkness into light, THEN you are in offensive mode.

Two Kingdoms

There are two primary kingdoms in opposition to one another: the kingdom of darkness, and the kingdom of light. Those called Satanists are very active because they understand their kingdom mandate and principles. Christians are passive and defensive when they don’t understand the mandate of Heaven.

Matthew 10:1-7 (New International Version)
¹Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness. ²These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; ³Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; ⁴Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him. ⁵These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. ⁶Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. ⁷As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ ⁸Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.

Your kingdom mandate is to be offensive in your interactions with Satan, so Jesus gave us authority over the enemy and all the powers of darkness. Jesus giving us authority is like the General of an army sending a soldier into battle fully equipped with suitable weapons to wage war successfully. Knowing what we would have to face, Jesus equipped us with authority over unclean spirits and to heal all manner of illness.

Authority is greater than power.

There is a difference between authority and power. Power does the work; authority controls it. The president, for example, does not have to do the work because he has authority. He simply gives instructions and people follow through. So authority is greater than power. Likewise, the General of the army may not be the strongest in stature but no soldier can challenge him because of his seat of authority. So it’s not about power, it’s about position. The Bible tells us that we have been “raised up” and given a position that is higher as we are seated in “heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:6, NKJV) far above all principalities. You are sitting in heavenly places right now! As you sit where you are, you are sitting far above all evil principalities, so it is foolish to treat yourself as passive, ignorant, and powerless.

Our Kingdom Mandate

Jesus said ‘as you go’ (v7), not as you sit, meaning that the kingdom is mobile and dynamic. Jesus added, “as you go, proclaim…: ‘the kingdom of heaven has come near’”. This is the message we must all preach. But how will people know that the kingdom has come? We need to let people see it which means that we mustn’t just talk the kingdom, we must do the kingdom. You cannot say that the kingdom is in your house or within you, while darkness is prevailing in that same place. You have been given authority over the darkness and all principalities within it. When the kingdom comes, it automatically repels and disperses darkness. Jesus said preach this, and then show them, meaning, don’t just talk, act. 

Don’t just talk the kingdom; do the kingdom.

The kingdom of God displays the glory of God. The reason why God gives us a kingdom mandate is to expose Satan and his schemes. God gave Adam a mandate on this earth. Adam traded it in, but Jesus came to restore this mandate (also why He is called the second Adam). This is the authority restored and invested in you! You are a man or a woman of immense authority. If we could allow this divine insight to sink in, and truly grasp this principle, we could fight against any and all attempts of the enemy to manipulate and intimidate us.

It is Time to Arise and Shine

Isaiah 60:1-3 (New King James Version)
¹Arise, shine; For your light has come! And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you. ² For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, And deep darkness the people; But the Lord will arise over you, And His glory will be seen upon you. ³ The Gentiles shall come to your light, And kings to the brightness of your rising.

The Bible tells us to arise and shine! If we don’t arise, we won’t shine. It is up to each of us; we can decide when we want to shine. But the day that we choose to arise, believing with full conviction in our hearts, we will shine; it is a promise. ‘Your light has come!’ means that your light has already come. Don’t wait for some day in the future when you can do it now by making a decision to act. Choose, today, to draw a line in the sand. We may not be able to change our circumstances, but we can decide to change our mindsets. The glory of the Lord is attracted to rising. When you decide to rise, the glory starts to settle upon you. It’s not about your physical location, but your spiritual position. The people of Egypt, for example, shared the same land (location) as the Israelites but the Bible tells us that in this same land, one side was dark and other side was light.

If you don’t arise, you won’t shine.

If you want to beat your situation, do not try to run away from it because if you do, you will never overcome. What you need to do is switch focus. Even when thick “darkness shall cover the earth, and deep darkness the people”, the Lord will arise upon you as His glory appears upon you (v2). We must come to a place in our lives where we understand that the glory of the Lord is not intimidated by darkness. God is not intimidated by our situation because He knows how to turn it around. On the contrary, God is actually excited when there is chaos. Remember that Jesus didn’t come to heal the healthy but the sick; Jesus came because there was a need. If there is no need, God is not wanted. When chaos ensues, God is needed. In Genesis 1, the Bible tells us that there was darkness on the face of the earth (i.e. the world was in a chaotic, formless state). Then, the glory of the Lord hovered over the situation, and when order was decreed, order took place. “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands” (Psalm 19). When God has spoken over your life and order comes, everything in you will glorify God.

Jesus came because there was a need…if there is no need, God is not wanted.

The Glory Forced into the Natural

The glory of God is tangible, not some mystical thing. “The gentiles will come to your light And kings to the brightness of your [dawn]” (v3). The nation will come because they see. And what will they see? A physical manifestation, because the unsaved cannot see what is in the spirit, only what is in the natural. So God will force His glory into the natural. When the glory arises upon you it beautifies you. Once you are beautified, the nations will come from afar and ask you for your secret and you will have the answer: Jesus. 

Isaiah 40:5 (New King James Version)
The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, And all flesh shall see it together; For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Psalm 97:6 (New International Version)
The heavens declare His righteousness, And all the peoples see His glory.

We need to acknowledge the glory of God. Isaiah 40 was a prophetic word spoken in connection with Jesus, as Jesus is both the glory and the image of God. When Jesus was in Jerusalem, people literally saw him. John says that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory” (John 1:14). The Light was in the world, but the World did not comprehend it. All flesh saw Jesus being the very manifestation of the glory. This means that if the glory is on you, people (especially the unsaved) will surely see it. Anyone who sees the sky sees the glory, even if they do not know what they are beholding, since “the skies proclaim the work of His hands” (Psalm 19:1). When God wants to do something in our lives, He does something that transpires in the natural. The spirit must manifest in the natural – if there is no manifestation in the natural, then seek God for that manifestation.

When Abba sent Jesus, the Word (in the realm of the spirit) pierced the dimension of the spirit, forcibly came to the natural, and the Word found His destination in the womb of a woman. The womb is the legal entry point into this world. The only exception was Adam (being formed by God from mud) who came through the womb of the earth, not the womb of a woman. But every child born after Adam came from the womb of Eve.

Therefore, anything that hasn’t come through the womb is unlawful on earth, which is why Jesus said that those who came before Him were thieves (John 10:8). Jesus was not talking about the Pharisees, but the devil. Satan broke the law by falling from heaven, and entering the dimension of earth where he cannot function unless he steals what we have. Satan only has power on this earth because he has stolen the right. But any entity that has not come onto earth legally, does not have dominion. This is the reason why the Angel of the Lord could not overcome Jacob. Because God gave Jacob dominion over earth, the Angel of Lord (not being in His realm of authority), could not beat Jacob.

Jesus, by comparison, is not a law breaker - He arrived on earth through the legal entry point. So the Word became flesh, and a woman had to push that Word out onto the earth. This is symbolic in that everything that comes from the Spiritual realm onto the earth needs a push (travail). When a woman is about to give birth the pushing becomes natural; it is not something that she has to even think about. Likewise, we need to come to a place where we push naturally because God wants to display His glory on earth through us.  

We Have Dual Authority

Matt 28:18 (New International Version)
…All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.

Jesus was named Son of man because He was given dominion over the earth. Unlike Satan, Jesus didn’t come as a thief, He came as a legal man. We are also born legally on earth to function in authority here, but we need to be born by the realm of heaven as well so that we can have authority in the spiritual realm too. The Womb of heaven is the Spirit, this is what is meant by “that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6, NKJV). The Holy Spirit puts us in the womb of the Spirit when we are born again which then gives us the legality to function in the spirit. When this happens, you can function in heaven and on earth with authority at the same time! “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms…” (Eph 2:6, NIV). So when heaven speaks, you are there as well as on earth. You rule in both dimensions when you are born again. This bi-dimensional authority (or dual authority) means that you can beat Satan no matter where he is because you can function within, and have authority over, the two realms simultaneously.

Peter had a fishing company (it was a family business), so naturally he was trained up from a young boy to be a fisherman. Peter had been fishing in the natural that evening; he had cast his net all night and, having caught nothing, came home to mend his net. Jesus (being bi-dimensional: from heaven and earth) told Peter to take his boat deeper. Before this though, Jesus had wanted to preach and didn’t have a pulpit, so Jesus asked Peter if He could borrow his boat. When Jesus stepped into Peter’s boat, He preached to the multitudes from the pulpit of the boat. All the while Peter didn’t know that the environment was so charged; he could not acknowledge that they had shifted from the natural to the supernatural, because his mind was still carnal. So later when Jesus tells Peter to go into deep waters, Peter, being a seasoned man of his trade, is at first defensive. Peter knew that the fish positioned themselves on the surface of the water at night, and went deep for oxygen during the day. “Nevertheless,” he said, “at Your word I will let down the net” (Luke 5:5). The instant Peter obeyed his net moved from the natural to the supernatural. He cast the same net that he hadn’t been able to catch any fish with, but when the net hit the water this time, the fish responded to the ‘altar call’. There was a Voice in the net calling them. When you are obedient to God there will be a voice in your action, whereby you can call the things that are not, into being. They caught so many fish that the net was breaking (Luke 5:6). From that day Peter understood that Jesus was not just a man – the glory of God was upon Him.

Peter had to give up his boat for Jesus. Maybe you have to give up something for Jesus today. We all have to give that thing up and let Jesus step into the boat, so that He can make our boat His pulpit. We need to let Jesus speak through our mouths, then once we have let Him do what He needs to do through us, Jesus will care for our needs. If we take care of His needs, He will take care of ours. If you give Him your boat, He will give you fish. 

If you give Him your boat, He will give you fish. 

Exercise Your Authority

The glory of God in your life has this purpose: to advance the kingdom. The glory manifests in you so that the Kingdom of God can forcibly advance upon the camp of the enemy (the kingdom of darkness). A kingdom mandate produces kingdom action. When you are on a kingdom assignment, you have the authority to access and download powerful, spiritual weapons of warfare from heaven. You have such authority that you can disperse the strongmen of any city you enter into, and deliver your people without fear. No matter what witches are there, you are there by a higher authority. They will recognize the glory of God upon you and they will flee so that you can reclaim the territory. When you have a kingdom mandate, God will keep you until your mission is complete. 

You are a Sons and daughters of the kingdom and a weapon of mass destruction! The time has come for you to manifest the kingdom.