THE RULE OF THE CLOUD (2024)

THE RULE OF THE CLOUD

 May 5, 2024, the Year of our Lord

Pastor Carolyn Sissom

Many of of us in Eastgate Church are of those blessed with the Outpouring of the Holy Spirit which started around 1967.  We have witnessed, experienced and been partakers of Great and awesome outpourings of the Holy Spirit.  We also were partakers what is now known as the Faith movement (1972).  I did not personally receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues until 1973.  That was fifty-one years ago.  During this exciting and wonderful life changing fifty-one years, I have followed the Glory and Presence of the Lord through these seasons of grace into the Prophetic revelation movement and now the Apostolic.

All of this was birthed out of the traditional church with much persecution and rejection by the main stream both socially and by church leaders.

Great conflicts have raged through the centuries as God sends forth His Holy Spirit of truth into the earth, and the haters of truth resisted and do continue to resist.  This is inevitable, as light has no communion with darkness. 

Those of us who have followed on and do follow on listen and press in for what the Holy Spirit is saying to the churches.  This following after the Presence of God is the Rule of the Cloud which is the Rule of His Glory.

Like the Israelites who moved from wilderness to tabernacle, to tent, to temple, we too are on a pilgrim journey from glory unto glory.  Once we tasted the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and powers of the world to come (Heb. 6:4),  nothing else can ever satisfy.  We must follow the cloud and ever press into more, more, and more.

The presence and glory of God are  the whole purpose of the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Without His presence, there is no purpose for us gathering together.  We must diligently follow the Rule of the Cloud.  In the wilderness church, as long as the cloud tarried upon the tabernacle, the children of Israel abode in their tents.  When the cloud was taken up, they journeyed (Num. 9: 15-23).

The walk in the Spirit is entirely contrary to much of our present-day teaching concerning ministry and service for the Lord.  It is not for Him to follow us and bless our efforts.  It is not for Him to establish and confirm our initiative.  No, the Rule of the Cloud and the Law of the Spirit is that we follow the Cloud and God’s direction.  He must go before us and we follow.  As we follow, we will discover His glory will follow after.

For we shall not go out with haste, nor go by flight for the Lord will go before us, and the God of Israel will be our rear guard (Isa. 52:12).

We cannot rush ahead of God.  That would be “haste.”  Nor can we run away from some disagreeable circumstance or job to do as we like.  That would be “flight.”  He must go ahead and open up the way.  The Lord will then follow after to confirm and establish.  He gives clear direction on His path.  

Many are sensitive to criticism of those who do not know the way God leads.  Others simply refuse to move on with God once they have discovered a quiet resting place in their religious wilderness – a nice little oasis, a beautiful Elim of God’s provision.  That is what Little White Church was for me.  I thought it would be my rocking-chair into heaven.

But when God moves, we must pull up our stakes and move forward with Him, even when we do not know where we were going.  It was not man who moved us out of Little White Church.  It was God. 

Transitional times are always difficult times for God’s people.  It is true in the natural realm, and it is also true in the spiritual.  The people of the United States are going through a transition.  The church is going through a transition.  There has been a falling-away since COVID.  That was one of Satan’s plans to thwart the great outpouring which is coming to the Church.  The transition of the church will be known by the prophets and those who are following the Rule of the Cloud.  Jesus reminded us, “No man also having drunk old wine straightway desires new; for he says, ‘the old is better.’” (Lk. 5:39).   Only those with an adventurous, pioneer spirit will step forward into the unknown.  As usual, men of the world are often “wiser in their generation” than the children of light."  They will continue to reach forth into the realms of space; and are constantly developing new methods and new inventions to meet the challenge of the unreachable.  But men in the Church sit back and feel they have everything there is to be had in the realm of the Spirit.  Satan, himself, with all his principalities and powers in the world of darkness, is daily bringing forth new, diabolical weapons of destruction, and using them to destroy the spirits, souls and bodies of men.  God’s people can envision nothing better than a restoration of something we had in the Church over 2000 years ago.  No!  I am looking into a greater weight of glory where the wheat of God’s harvest fields come into full maturity. 

Genesis is the book of beginnings.  Revelation is the book of the consummation.  In between we have God’s dealings with His people whereby He leads them forward toward this great fulfillment.  He is the Alpha and He is the Omega.  He changes not.  But in His character as Alpha and as Omega, His desire is to change His people from what they were in the beginning to what He has planned they shall become in the end.

We are always slow to adjust, slow to respond to what He is doing, and are inclined to wander from the pathway.  He is always at hand to bring us back and restore us to the original path, but never to leave us there to crystallize or to stagnate.  We are a people of the Way, as we are called in the book of Acts.  It is back to the pathway, and onward to the Celestial City.   There is a vast difference between the seed and the fruit, the worm and the butterfly, the seed and the tomato… The Divine intent is to be found in the former, but the finished product is always vastly different from the original.

True ministry is always rejected before it is recognized.  It must be this way, because without rejection there can be no channel for grace to flow forth, no room for the spirit of the dove and the spirit of the lamb… which God always requires for the outflow of grace from his own heart.  True ministry is conceived in the womb of suffering, born in travail and sorrow, and cradled in a cross. 

As the apostle Paul compares the old covenant with the new, he arrives at this ultimate conclusion; “the old covenant had no glory at all, “by reason of the glory that excels.”  The former covenant was ushered in with glory but was doomed to pass away; while the latter covenant was not only ushered in with great glory, but it was destined to remain or subsist in glory.  Let us remember this: it was not God’s intention that the New covenant would begin in a burst of glory, and then dissipate with the apostasy of the last days! The old covenant was a ministration of death and condemnation; the latter is a ministration of righteousness and life   - a covenant that continues on in Glory!  This comparison causes the apostle to declare with great boldness: “We use great plainness of speech, and not as Moses!” (2 Co. 3:12-13) Not as Moses, which put a veil over his face so the Israelites could not see the departure of the glory!  Paul explained they had spiritual blindness.  They lacked obedience.  They lacked faith.  They lacked vision.  They could not see the glory into which God would bring them; and the veil that Moses put on his face was really because of the veil that was already there on their own hearts.

There is a ministration of the glory of God for us in this day of the New Covenant that far exceeds what Moses had, as far as the glory of the sun exceeds the glory of the moon.

The moon reflects the glory of the sun, and is likened to the Church which reflects the glory of Christ.  “Moreover, the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun” (Isa. 30:26).

In this time of chaos, confusion, riots, lies of politicians, and destruction, can we the church not see what God has in mind for His people?  A people who shall walk in the full glory and radiance of the Son of Righteousness Himself, the Lord Jesus!  Does this in anyway detract from the glory of the exalted Christ?  No!  Rather it means that as God’s glory increases in His people, that glory redounds again and again to the glory of the exalted Christ, for the prophet continues:

“The light of the sun shall be seven-fold,

As the light of seven days,

In the day that the LORD binds up

The breach of this people,

And heals the stroke of their wound. (Isa. 30:26).

New Testament church, the veil has been removed from our face.

2 Co. 3:18: Bat we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

Lord Jesus, may our ears be truly pierced by the circumcision of your Holy Spirit that we may hear only the words you are uttering direct from the throne, and then have grace and authority to declare the Truth to the sheep of your pasture.

John 16:13:  He (the Holy Spirit) shall not speak of Himself, but whatsoever He shall hear that shall He speak.  He shall not speak from Himself because he abides in the body of Christ on earth, and is in fact the very life of that Body.  Let us hear only what the Spirit is saying to the Churches.  It is indeed a high calling and impossible of attainment by any human effort. 

Lord we have received justification by faith, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit and their various out-workings.  These are in the realm of the impossible.  But when the time came for God to bring them forth into the realm of human experience, God made every provision to that end, and sent forth the Word and the Holy Spirit to activate and indwell us.  We are of those people who grasped the Word and received the Holy Spirit which God sent forth.   You and I as well as others who are blessed to have been part of the Great outpouring by the Holy Spirit.

Since the year 2001, we the church have been in continual war and warfare just as the nations of the earth have been in continual war and warfare.  How can this be?  It means to me that we are breaking through into a greater weight of glory and Satan is fighting with full force to stop this great outpouring of Glory.  Yes! Greater than Pentecost.  Beyond Pentecost!

Pentecost was the first-fruits.  Let us follow the Cloud, move when the Cloud moves and hear what the Holy Spirit is saying to the churches.  

Carolyn Sissom, Pastor

Eastgate Ministries Church

www.eastgateministries.com

10115 West Hidden Lakes Lane

Richmond, TX.

Scripture from N.K.J. and K.J. I entered into the labors of George H. Warnock, From Tent to Temple.  Comments and conclusions are my own and not meant to reflect the views of Brother Warnock.