The Vision by Rick Joyner
Episode 62
The Last-Day Church

I knew the short talk with Paul would have consequences that would take a long time to fully understand. In a way, I felt that I had received a blessing from the entire eternal church. We really were being cheered on by the great cloud of witnesses. They looked at us like proud parents who wanted better things for their children than they themselve had known. Their greatest joy would be to see the church m the last days become everything the church in their day had failed to attain. I also knew I was still falling far short of wh they had prepared for us to walk in.
"The last-day church will not be greater than Paul's generation, even if she does greater works," the Lord interjected. "All that is done is done by My grace. However, I will make more of My grace and power available to the last-day church, because she must accomplish more than the church in any age has yet accomplished.
"Last-day believers will walk in all the power that I demonstrated, and more, because they will be the final representatives of all who have gone before them. The church will demonstrate My nature and My ways as they have never been demonstrated before by men. It is because I am giving you more grace, and to whom much is given much will be required."
This just made me think even more about Paul. "How could we even become as dedicated and faithful as he had been?" I thought to myself.
"I am not asking you to attain that," the Lord answered.
"I am asking you to abide in Me. You cannot continue to measure yourself by others— not even Paul. You will always fall short of the one you look to, but if you are looking to Me you will go far beyond what you would have otherwise accomplished. As you yourself have taught, it was when the two on the road to Emmaus saw Me break the bread that their eyes were opened. When you read Paul's letters, or anyone else's writings, you must hear Me. Only when you receive your bread directly from Me will the eyes of your heart be opened.
"You can be distracted the most by those who are the most like
Me if you do not see through them to see Me. There is also another
trap for thase who come to know more of My anointing and power than others. They are often distracted by looking at themselves. As I was saying before you talked to Paul, My servants must become blind so that they can see. I let you talk to him then because he is one of My best examples of this. It was because of My grace that I allowed him to persecute My church. When he saw My light, he understood that his own reasoning had led him into direct conflict with the very truth he claimed to be serving.
"Your reasoning will always do that. It will lead you to do that which is exactly contrary to My will. Greater anointing brings greater danger of this happening to you, if you do not leam what Paul did. If you do not take up your cross every day, laying down all that you are and all that you have before it, you will fall because of the authority and power that I will give you. Until you learn to do all things for the sake of the gospel, the more influence that you have, the greater the danger of this you will face.
"Sometimes My anointed ones are deceived into thinking that because I give them a little supernatural knowledge or power, their ways must therefore be My ways, and everything they think must be what I think. This is a great deception, and many have stumbled because of it. You think like Me when you are in perfect union with Me. Even with the most anointed who have yet walked the earth-such as Paul-this union has only been partial, and for brief periods of time.
"Paul walked with Me as close as any man ever has. Even so, he was also beset by fears and weaknesses that were not from Me. I could have delivered him from these, as he requested several times, but I had a reason for not delivering him. Paul's great wisdom was to embrace his weaknesses, understanding that if I had delivered him from them, I would not have been able to trust him with the level of revelation and power that I did.
"Paul recognized his own weaknesses and learned to distinguish between them and the revelation of My Spirit. When he was beset with weakness or fear, he knew he was not seeing from My perspective, but from his own. This caused him to seek Me and depend on Me even more. He was also careful not to confuse what came from his own mind and heart with the thoughts of My mind and heart. Therefore I could trust him with revelations that I could not entrust to others."