Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord: Part 1

Below is but a small measure of revelation that my father had received from the Lord. I hope this will be a blessing to you. All that is written below are the words of my father.

January 13, 20?? 

In loving memory of my father
Robert Louis (Bob) Padgett
July 28, 1931-May 22, 2023

In our last two messages we shared with you some thoughts about "What Shall This Man Do?" We emphasized that we must keep our garments clean, which has nothing to do with our natural garments. Now let us consider a more general answer to "What Shall This Man Do?" namely, "Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord." The most important exhortation that should confront each one of us today and every day is, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord." That word occurs for the first time in Isaiah 40:3. 

3 The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 

4 Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: 

5 And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it. Isaiah 40:3-5

The same message is spoken of seven times in the New Testament (two in Matthew; two in Mark; and three in Luke). So, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord" occurs eight times in Scripture. That word is not a request; it is a command; it is a command for us to do something ... to prepare the way of the Lord.

Just prior to the beginning of the ministry of Jesus on earth, in 

Matthew 3:1-3, "In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea, And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight." 

John the Baptist was to have been the fulfillment of preaching the word of preparation. Mark 1:2 says, 

"As it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send My messenger before Thy face, which shall prepare Thy way before Thee." 

But repentance is never a popular word ... so John the Baptist was rejected and killed.

The time of John the Baptist was a time of transition ... a transition from the dispensation of law to the dispensation of grace. The time of the new John the Baptist Company is also a time of transition ... a transition to the age of the kingdom. We are on the verge of the dawning of a new dispensation. And with a new dispensation, that which was divinely given in the previous dispensation is divinely set aside in the new dispensation. Abraham had three wives ... Hagar (the law), Sarah (the church age), and Keturah (the age of the kingdom). "Keturah" means to "turn into incense, as by fire." God is raising up a people who have been tried by the fire and turned into an altar of praise to our God. The new John the Baptist Company will consist of people like Amos, who said, 

"I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son; but I was an herdman, and a gatherer of sycomore fruit. And the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said unto me, Go, prophesy unto my people Israel" (Amos 9:14-15).

That one voice crying in the wilderness will be a company of some number of believers. Only the Lord knows how many and who specifically will be a part of this company. This group of believers will constitute one voice from the wilderness. Their unified message will not be as a result of conferring with one another. They will all get the word of God from the Source, directly.

Today, we personally know a few mature ministries who are in the wilderness. They have been tried by fire, tried through much suffering in a variety of forms, tried by a lack of (human) fellowship that is common to the natural temple. But they have been counted worthy by the Lord to suffer in His Name. They have found that the Lord Himself is sufficient for all of their needs. They have been chosen as a tenth of a tenth of believers (Nehemiah 10:38). Many are called but few are chosen. The reason that few are chosen is because few choose. It depends upon our response to God. It depends upon the decisions that we make.

As the fining pot for silver, and the furnace for gold; so is a man to his praise. Proverbs 27:21

The New American Standard says "the crucible is for silver." Silver speaks of redemption. We are being tried in a crucible, in the wilderness. Certainly the Lord is waiting to provide for all of our needs in the wilderness: food (manna), water (Moses struck the rock), money (Matthew 17:27), healing, guidance, protection, and on and on. Lord, increase our faith!

In Matthew 4:1, "Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil." 

The wilderness is God's proving ground. Waters break out in the wilderness, not in the cities, not in the traditional churches. Note that Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness; He did not just decide to go there. So it is also with all of the faithful believers who are suffering in the wilderness. They have been led into their place of suffering by the Holy Spirit. Now when we are in the wilderness, our response to God leading us there is crucial. We can murmur and complain and just die in the wilderness, as did all of the Israelites (except two adults) when they came out of Egypt. Or we can patiently endure, just waiting for relief. Or we can be overcomers. Only we as individuals can make that choice. It is OUR decision. But make sure you know what you are doing if you pray, "Lord make me an overcomer," because then the Lord will give you something to overcome. When we look at the response of Jesus, in Matthew 4, it is abundantly clear that Jesus was the Prime Overcomer. What happened as a result? Jesus began to preach, "Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand" (Matthew 4:17); and in Matthew 4:23, "And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people." So it shall be with the overcomers. When the Lord blows the trumpet, there will be a new release of a healing ministry. This healing ministry will NOT be like what we have seen to date. It will be a complete healing of body, soul, and spirit. "And saviours [deliverers] shall come up on mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be the LORD'S" (Obadiah 21). In addition, the message to be preached is the gospel of the Kingdom.

So God has all the while been preparing the overcomers, the remnant, the man child. He has scattered them into the wilderness and has refined them as silver is refined in the fire. He has used suffering of all different kinds to press his remnant into Christ. And He has a timetable for the true to emerge. Only the Lord knows when that time is. But surely that time is close at hand. One characteristic of the overcomers is that they will trouble all Israel because of the apostasy of the church. Darkness hates the light.

And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, Art thou he that troubleth Israel? 1 Kings 18:17

The preparation of a soul to stand with (or in) Christ in the Kingdom of God is severe, demanding, and stringent. The parable of the sower in Matthew 13 speaks of preparing good ground to receive the good seed. Much old ground has to be plowed and prepared to receive the word of the kingdom of God. Many long years ago I rented a rototiller to try to prepare a small plot of land to plant a few vegetables. It was hard work! Once we allow the Holy Spirit to begin His work in our soul, He desires to restore and then release that soul to live life in a freedom which only the remnant of the Lord can know. Somewhere back in 1970 I received an unsolicited prophecy from one of the very few true prophets that I have met in my life. He said that he had seen a vision of the Lord slitting the soles of my shoes so that my toes would have room to wriggle around. I knew exactly what he meant by that prophecy. However, I had to wait another ten years for the fulfillment of that prophecy. But on May 30, 1980, the Lord sovereignly brought about the fulfillment of that word. Immediately I sensed a freedom and a liberty in my spirit that I had never experienced before. For me, that was indeed a day of jubilee in my life ... a jubilee that I have basked in for almost 40 years. At the same time, I am fully aware that what I experienced of the freedom and liberty of the Lord was/is only a drop in the bucket compared to the glorious liberty of the sons of God that still lies ahead.

What kind of preparation occurred just before Jesus was rejected and crucified? It was a natural preparation. On what we now call Palm Sunday, upon Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the people strewed their garments and palm branches and palm leaves in His path. Although there are many varieties of palm trees, what we see in Scripture refers to the date-palm, which brings forth fruit.

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he (John the Baptist) said unto them, "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance" (Matthew 3:7-8). But there was no genuine repentance. There was no fruit, just branches and leaves. Even the common people were simply looking for a natural king to deliver them from their oppressors.

The preparation for the second coming of our King will no longer be purely natural ... it must be a spiritual preparation. We must prepare His way in our hearts. There will still be garments, palm branches, and palm leaves, but in the realm of the Spirit. There will also be the fruit of the palm tree, the fruit of the Spirit. We must prepare His way with the garment of praise (Isaiah 61:3), wearing linen garments... the garments of His righteousness.

The date-palm tree is very striking in its appearance ... upright and beautiful. The tree is very fruitful, its foliage is perpetually green, and its foliage grows very high, as if reaching upward toward heaven. It grows ever upward, even when loaded with weights. And "the righteous shall flourish like the palm tree" (Psalm 92:12). The fruit of the Spirit must become a manifested reality. Jesus said that we will know them by their fruit... the fruit of the Spirit.

Our preparation is to allow the Holy Spirit to mold us into that which He desires. Our attitude is critical. Sometimes I get the impression that we are an "I know that" church. We have received much (good) teaching (and some not so good) and read so many books that "we know that." So we are no longer flexible and pliable in the Lord's hands. We have crystallized our doctrine, got it all down pat, searched the scriptures, and lead our own lives. We have built three tabernacles and here we stand. It is no wonder that after an initial spurt of growth, the real life of the Spirit departs from our fellowships. After some period of time, the Spirit of God is no longer in control. We are running on our own steam, following our own traditions, having a great time, and never knowing that something is wrong. Because the most difficult aspect of preparing the way of the Lord is to see the need for such, we will use several examples to emphasize this need. Let us consider the "handwriting on the wall."

Belshazzar, the king of Babylon, saw the handwriting on the wall but he could neither read nor interpret it. He saw the fingers of a man's hand which wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king's palace (Daniel 5:5-6). It filled him with fear and foreboding. His fears were well-founded! For him, the "days of recompence" were come. Daniel not only read the writing for Belshazzar but also interpreted it. Daniel 5:25-28, 

"And this is the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians."

MENE, MENE means numbered, numbered. Any time any word is repeated in Scripture, it carries great emphasis. The significance is that the days of the king of Babylon were numbered and finished. TEKEL means weighed. The king of Babylon was weighed in the balance and found wanting. UPHARSIN (called PERES in Daniel 5:28) means divided or broken. His kingdom was divided. The United States has never been so divided, except possibly during the Civil War. Even the visible church is divided, just like the Church at Corinth, or worse. "MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN" is current events. It speaks prophetically of the United States right now!

Amos saw the handwriting on the wall. He read it rightly. He said (Amos 3:8), 

"The lion hath roared, who will not fear? The Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy?" 

Amos continued (Amos 9:8), 

"Behold the eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth."

Hosea saw the handwriting on the wall. It spoke of judgment swift and sure, deadly and devastating. Hosea saw Israel following a path that could only end in complete destruction (Hosea 2:13, 4:7, 5:4, 5:7, 6:7, 7:13, 9:9, 10:4, 13:2, and a host of other Scriptures.) 

And there came a writing to him from Elijah the prophet, saying, ... 

2 Chronicles 21:12

The most interesting aspect of what follows that verse is that the letter came to Jehoram, the king of Judah, six years AFTER Elijah had been translated. Elijah saw that some things had been set in motion by Jehoram and Elijah knew the consequences that must follow, barring a sovereign intervention by the Lord, because Elijah knew the ways of the Lord. Elijah saw the handwriting on the wall.

Call the role of the prophets. Which of the Old Testament prophets did NOT see the handwriting on the wall? Moreover, the messages of the prophets are timeless, independent of any culture. It was not through the priesthood with its ritual and ceremony that God revealed Himself but through "His servants the prophets."

Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets. Amos 3:7

Note that verse does NOT say "He revealeth His secret unto the prophets;" it says "He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets;" servants first, prophets second.

The August 2005 destruction from hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, particularly in New Orleans, was perhaps the most devastating natural event in the history of the United States. It caused at least 125 billion dollars in damages and claimed at least 1800 lives. But not everyone saw the handwriting on the wall from that judgment. We sincerely doubt that President George W. Bush or members of Congress saw the significance of Katrina. They saw it only as a horrible natural disaster. Only the Lord knows how many genuine believers saw Katrina as the handwriting on the wall.

President Bush spoke about rebuilding New Orleans to restore it to the "once proud city that it used to be." That, of course, required billions of taxpayer dollars. Even in the natural realm it did not seem wise to pour billions of dollars into rebuilding New Orleans unless the city was moved to higher ground. Scripture warns us against building our house on sand. The Lord may even send a worse hurricane to destroy it again. New Orleans, like many other large cities, is full of evil, drugs, darkness, prostitutes, Mardi Gras orgies, crime of every sort, etc.

The Lord woke me up at 3:30 a.m. on September 3, 2005, about 5 days after Katrina, and reminded me of the similarity between the New Orleans debacle and what I personally witnessed many years ago. A rather large Assembly of God Church, a few miles from where we live, after building a very large church structure, decided to add on a full-size gymnasium for their "members." Of course they had no problem raising the money for such a venture. Charismatic Christians are eager to pour money into almost anything that their pastor wants. All went smoothly until they started to put the roof on the gymnasium. Then the Lord sent a very strong wind and blew off many of the shingles and part of the plywood sheathing. Undoubtedly what happened next was that the pastor and the elders met together and determined what to do. I might as well have been sitting in on the meeting. They rebuked the devil and spent more money to repair the roof. Very shortly after that the Lord sent another strong wind and blew off part of the roof a second time. They never got the message! I am sure that it never entered their minds that the gymnasium was displeasing to the Lord. So they repaired the roof yet once more!

The last thing I heard about that Assembly of God church was through some Christian friends of ours, who said they stopped going there when the pastor passed the collection plate four times during one service! If we persist in doing things our way, the Lord will let us do our own thing, but His blessing and presence will depart. Shortly after the Lord delivered the Jews out of Egypt, we read in Psalm 106:13-15, 

"They soon forgat His works; they waited not for His counsel: But lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, and tempted God in the desert. And He gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul."

Of course we should not expect our secular leaders to see the handwriting on the wall. They do not have eyes to see or ears to hear or a heart to understand that which the Lord is about. The trumpet call can be heard only in Zion, which speaks of the very elect, the remnant, the overcomers. Perhaps many professing Christians have, at one time or another, quoted the verse in 1 Peter 4:17, 

"For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?" 

The question is, "Is it sufficient to just quote that verse?" or does the Lord require something more?

The prophet Isaiah spoke about the first coming of the Lord, which is recorded in Isaiah 40:3-5 (quoted at the start of this message). However, if I read those verses in Isaiah correctly, Isaiah also prophesied of the second coming of the Lord in those same verses in Isaiah 40:3-5. Why can I believe that? because Isaiah 40, verses 4 and 5 were not fulfilled upon the first coming of Jesus. Every valley was not exalted at His first coming; every mountain and hill was not made low at His first coming, the crooked was not made straight, and the rough places were not made plain. Further, all flesh together did not at that time see the glory of the LORD revealed. It is not unusual that some events prophesied in the Bible have two separate fulfillments ... the first fulfillment being partial and the second fulfillment being complete.

Now let us read what Jesus said about John the Baptist in Luke 7:24-28, 

"And when the messengers of John were departed, He began to speak unto the people concerning John, What went ye out into the wilderness for to see? a reed shaken with the wind? But what went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they which are gorgeously apparelled, and live delicately, are in kings' courts. But what went ye out for to see? a prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and much more than a prophet. This is he, of whom it is written [in Malachi 3:1], Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. For I say unto you, among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist: but he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he."

Let us emphasize that the words of both Isaiah and John the Baptist, namely, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord," are commandments. They are not optional; our preparing the way of the Lord is not if we feel like it or if we have time. They are commandments. If anyone thinks there are no longer any commandments under the New Covenant, then perhaps that person should read the New Testament again. Jesus spoke many commandments to His disciples and to us, such as

"Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect" (Matthew 5:48).

Therefore, to repeat, the most important exhortation that any man could speak today is "Prepare ye the way of the Lord"... prepare for the second coming of the Lord to earth. That is a personal word to each of us; it is also a corporate word. We need an enlarged vision in this hour ... we need to know where we are going and how to get there.

The most important handwriting on the wall is that Jesus is coming back to earth soon! Are you looking for him? Are you prepared for Him? Now the next questions are "Why do we need to prepare the way of the Lord? How do we prepare the way of the Lord? How do we make His paths straight? What happens after we prepare the way of the Lord?" May the Holy Spirit stir up our hearts to prepare for the Lord's soon coming. We hope to provide at least some partial answers to those questions in our next message.