Messengers in the Night by Christine Beadsworth

Recently I spoke to you about Lot and how the messengers brought him into the house and shut and sealed the door in a way that the unclean men outside couldn’t get to Lot. I’ve been pondering on the situation of Lot being in Sodom and living in Sodom. You know, when Lot was told by Abraham to choose where he wanted to live, he chose the valley that seemed to him to be absolutely the most beautiful in the whole area. He chose according to his own fleshly appetites and by the sight of his own eyes he judged and yet the place that he considered beautiful, turned out to be the place that mushroomed into Sodom and Gomorrah, a place of incredible uncleanness and wickedness. Yet Lot just carried on living there and that has just amazed me. Why didn’t he move? It wasn’t the only place he could have lived. It seems strange that he would be vexed in his soul day after day and yet carry on living there and I realised that Lot must have had a lot invested there. That must have been where he ran his business or had his livelihood in some sense. He had built his home; his family had grown up there. Abraham was dwelling in tents, but Lot was living in a city and that is quite an interesting dichotomy, because we are called to be sojourners on this earth, dwelling in tents, in a sense and not be permanently dwelling in the world and its ways.

So this morning when I woke up, I was still pondering on Lot being in Sodom and then I remembered again  that in the book of Revelation, Jerusalem is referred to as Sodom and Egypt and so, in a sense, Lot dwelling in Sodom is really a picture of those who are righteous and in right standing with God, dwelling within the Church System, which a lot of uncleanness is going on, yet they keep on living there and staying there year after year after year with their righteous souls being vexed by the goings on. Yet they just never move out of that place and there are a lot of reasons why people don’t want to move. Yet we see that God sent messengers to Lot in order to minister to him, within the house, in the night season and then bring him out of Sodom. It seems to me that in these days that we are in, Lot, for us, depicts the Bride of Christ, because Lot means ‘veiled one’. We see him depicting the Bride gradually becoming clearer and clearer and more visible, as Lot first of all separates from the men outside in the square, comes in and is separate within his own house and then eventually, in the morning watch, is thrust outside the city and comes out of Sodom and Gomorrah. Do you remember the Lord said: “Come out of her My people that you may not share in her plagues”? So the Bride too, in this day, is becoming more and more easily discernible by her separation from the religious masses in the broad place that leads to destruction; within this place, this Jerusalem that God calls Sodom in the end times. The messengers of God were sent specifically to minister to the veiled one or the Bride, at this time. So I’m seeing that God is sending out messengers in this day to those of His who are part of His Bride, who have been entrapped within a system which has become unclean, but who, within their hearts, are seeking after righteousness.

There is another picture of messengers being sent to the Bride, or to the Beloved, who is in the house or in the system and we find it in Song of Songs. In Chapter 5:2 it says: “I sleep, but my heart wakes. It’s the voice of my beloved that knocks, saying ‘Open to me my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled one, for my head is filled with dew and my locks with the drops of the night’” and then she responds by saying: “I’ve put off my coat, how can I put it on? I’ve washed my feet, how can I defile them?” and so we see there’s a picture here of the Bride who has been working all day and as night falls, she’s tired. She’s taken off her garment, she’s taken off her shoes, she’s washed her feet, she’s in bed and even when she hears the voice of her beloved, she’s hesitating, just as Lot hesitated as the messengers reasoned with him to come out of Sodom, to follow their heeding, because God was going to destroy the place. The Bride has been working in the Vineyard, in the Religious System of what we know today as the Church, but in many instances where the world has taken over the Church and become Sodom and Gomorrah under the guise of religious garments. When we read those verses in Song of Songs chapter 5:3, in the Amplified it says: “Weary from a day in the vineyards I’ve already sought my rest. I’ve put off my garment – how could I put it on again? I have washed my feet – how can I again soil them?” and we see here that the Bride, in some way, seems to associate the voice of her beloved with something that’s going to be work, with something that’s going to make her tired. ‘I’ve already been working, now you’re calling me again. What do you want me to do now?’ and yet the Bridegroom has only come to call her to Himself, to come away with Him. He has come with dew on His hair in the night and dew is always representative of the revelation of Christ even as the dew brought the manna(the bread from Heaven) in the Wilderness.

Yet she’s saying: Oh!, I don’t even know if I really want to respond and I’m tired and she’s not wearing her shoes of the Gospel of Peace; she’s taken them off. She’s washed her own feet. She’s feeling that her feet are going to be defiled and made dirty by getting up and doing this thing in the middle of the night and yet, this is her Bridegroom who’s come for her. You know, the Bridegroom is coming for the Bride at a moment when she doesn’t expect Him; when she’s not ready for Him and because we’ve so often responded to the voice of man telling us to work in the vineyards, we often mix that up with what the voice of the Bridegroom sounds like and He’s calling us to intimacy; He’s not calling us to labour. He’s calling us to rest; He’s not calling us to work.

It says in verse 4: “My Beloved put His hand by the hole of the door and my bowels were moved for Him. I rose up to open to my Beloved and my hands dropped with myrrh, my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh upon the handles of the lock”. So we see here, there is something happening in stages. When she sees His hand by the hole of the door, then her heart is stirred. When the Bride sees the hand of her Beloved moving and visible in her arena and in her life, her heart is stirred again towards her first love, the Bridegroom and she rises up to open to that knock. Just like in Revelation 3, Jesus says: “I stand at the door and knock, whoever comes and opens for Me, I will come in and sup with him and he with Me” and so, the moving of His hand in the area where she is residing, causes her to now want to arise and run after the Bridegroom again. Isn’t that amazing how God is so generous and so kind to us? When we are reluctant to respond to His knock, He moves His hand on our behalf in a way that we see His hand, it stirs our heart so that we will arise and awake.

It says that when she took hold of the door handle, her hands dropped with myrrh and her fingers with sweet smelling myrrh. When you want to follow a theme of what a word symbolises, you have to look at other instances where that word appears and in the same chapter, when she’s describing her beloved to the other women in the street, she says: “His lips are like lilies dropping sweet smelling myrrh”. So myrrh is representative of words, words of cleansing. Myrrh is a deodorant, an antiseptic; myrrh drives out infection. Myrrh has many uses in the natural and in the spiritual, it represents similar things. Myrrh was used to embalm dead bodies. It’s connected with surrender, with death to self, with embalming.
When she’s describing her Beloved to the women in the street, she says: “His lips are like lilies, dropping sweet smelling myrrh”. Now that word “lily” is actually a lily trumpet in the Hebrew and a trumpet makes a sound, so we know that there’s a sound coming from the lips of her Beloved that ministers myrrh to her. What is really interesting, is that word for “sweet smelling myrrh”, that she found on the handles of the lock. That word “sweet smelling” is actually “abar” in Hebrew and it means: “to cross over, to transition, to cover in copulation, to carry over”. So, the myrrh that is found on the handles of the lock when the Bridegroom comes and knocks is a myrrh of transition. It’s a myrrh to transition the Bride out of the place she’s in and into a new place and that’s what He leaves with her.

It’s very interesting how it all happens in Song of songs chapter 5, because he knocks and he speaks to her and she hears his words and she sees his hand and then her heart is stirred and she arises to open up for him and then he disappears. He’s gone and isn’t that just like the Lord? Sometimes He just speaks enough to make us hunger for more and then He disappears and we need to pursue and go after Him, but that’s why He does it. It’s almost like hide and seek. He speaks just enough to give us a foretaste of what He has for us and to make us pursue Him, but He wants us to pursue Him to bring us out of the place where we’re in.

That place where the bride was, where it says: “my fingers were touched with sweet smelling myrrh upon the handles of the lock”, she was locked in that place. She was shut in for the night season in that place. It was almost, in a sense, a cell, a prison cell for her, because she was in the system. She was working for the Lord in the vineyard. It was exhausting and the Bridegroom was absent, but now He’s come for her in the night season and she’s locked in, but He leaves myrrh, sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handle of the lock. He does this in order to transition her out of that place that’s become a prison cell, into the street. What He leaves there, the words of sweet smelling myrrh that He speaks to her, makes her open that door wide and go out.

It says in Song of Songs 5:6, “I opened to my Beloved, but my Beloved has withdrawn himself and gone and my soul failed me. I sought Him and I couldn’t find Him. I called Him, but he gave me no answer. The watchmen that went about the city found me and they smote me and wounded me. The keepers of the walls took away my veil from me. I charge you, o daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, tell him I am sick with love [I am simply sick to be with him]” it says in the Amplified.
So here we see the unveiling of the Bride. The keepers of the walls and the watchmen of the city, that religious city, wound the Bride and smite her. They also take away her veil, so she’s no longer veiled; her face is seen. Remember Lot, the one whose name means ‘veiled’, was in Sodom, but he was not of Sodom. He was veiled and the only time they recognised that he was different, was when he began to speak to them in the broad way or the square and say: “Don’t have homosexual relations, have normal sexual relations” and then they said he was judging them. So there was a bit of unveiling that happened then, but the true revelation of who Lot was, as a type of the Bride, came when he came out of Sodom completely, just as this Bride in Song of Songs came out of that place where she was resting, after working in the vineyard.

That sweet smelling myrrh transitioned her into a new place and she was out in the street and the watchmen of that religious city took away her veil and she became unveiled, so she could be seen for who she really was - the Bride who was after the Bridegroom. She can’t help herself, she just says, “If you find him, tell him I’m sick to be with him”. The love in her heart for the Bridegroom just spills out of her lips and it causes those who she’s speaking to, to say, “tell us about him, tell us more, so that we can see him. We also want to be with him!” This is the reason why the Bridegroom comes to the Bride in that place where she’s locked in, in order to transition her out into the open air, to those who need to hear about Him.
You know, sometimes we’re locked up in the Religious System and in Christian circles and some of us have no unsaved friends. Some of us have no contact with those who do not know the Lord, because day after day we’re involved with Church activities and religious activities and Programmes and Courses and Conferences. The Bride of Christ is not meant to be in that place. She’s meant to be running after the Bridegroom and so He comes to her with that sweet smelling transition myrrh, to transition her and that’s what I want to say to the Bride of Christ at this time: I really believe that we’re in a transition time.
That Bridegroom or man who came to knock on the door, can also represent a company who have reached mature manhood. Remember in Ephesians 4:11&12 it says the 5 fold ministry is given “to equip the Saints for the work of service until we all reach mature manhood, to the full stature of the Son of God” and so this also represents a company who have reached that full stature and they’ve come to transition the Bride, just as those Messengers came to transition Lot out of Sodom and into a place of safety.

These messengers are being sent with a specific message in order to call the Bride. The message that those lily trumpets are sounding is: “Come out of her My people that you may not share in her plagues”. The night when the angels or messengers (that word in the Hebrew can mean ‘angel, messenger or pastor’) are inside Lot’s house; where they were pleading with and reasoning with Lot and urging him to make haste and to come out of Sodom, that was the Time of Transition. Lot was receiving the sweet smelling myrrh to transition him out of Sodom into a place of safety before the judgements of God fell.
I really do believe that there is a company that has been sent, that has not been much heard of up till now, but in this day is being sent to the Bride who is trapped and exhausted and harnessed in the religious system, to call her to come away and to run after the Bridegroom; to separate from Sodom. There is a release of myrrh in the messages that are being spoken by these messengers, in order to purify and teach the Bride the difference between the clean and the unclean again. Just like the sons of Zadok, who had been faithful to the Lord, were allowed to come near to the Lord and to teach the people the difference between the clean and the unclean and to judge in certain matters, whereas those who had not been faithful to the Lord, could not come near to Him and minister to Him.
So, it’s speaking also of a company of people that is being used by God, at this time, to transition the Bride through a ministry and a word of myrrh coming from the lips of the Bridegroom, through His Lily trumpet Messengers. These are the ones who have had the bundle of myrrh lying all night in their bosom, like it says in Song of Songs chapter 1: “My Beloved is a bundle of myrrh lying all night in my bosom”. The ones who have had that bundle of myrrh lying all night in their bosom already, in the previous season, have been found faithful and trustworthy in order to release the sweet smelling myrrh and to transition the Bride.

We see that John the Baptist, who operated in the spirit of Elijah, was also one who was sent to transition, to prepare the way of the Lord, to transition the people out of religion and into relationship. John the Baptist’s ministry was a transition bridge. His laid-down life was a bridge that people could walk over in order to “behold the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world” and, in a sense, these Messengers who have reached mature manhood, whose hair drops with the dew of the night; who have received the revelation of Christ from the hidden manna; those are the ones who are being sent to urge and call upon the Bride to arise and to come out of her, come out of the Babylonian Religious System and be separate, because we bear the vessels of the Lord. There must be no uncleanness and this Bride is weary! She’s weary, because she’s been labouring in the Religious System and she’s taken off her mantle, representing the gifting of God in her.

It’s interesting to see that when she goes out, in Song of Songs 5, into the street, she is veiled, as a betrothed woman would be in the street - and the keepers of the walls and the watchmen of that city strip her veil off her. In other words, what they’re basically saying, is she’s not set-apart and separated for Christ, her beloved Bridegroom, but she’s for common use!  Any man can take her, any man can flirt with her, she’s not set-apart and betrothed to the Bridegroom. Yet when they do this, all that it causes is words to spill out of her heart. Through her lips come words describing how wonderful her Beloved is. Her influence over those who are listening to her is profound, now that she is unveiled.

In another place where we see myrrh mentioned, where this Bride is in preparation, it says: “Until the day breaks and the shadows flee, I will get me to the mountain of myrrh and the hill of Frankincense”. During the night season, it’s the mountain of myrrh that is the place that we’re travelling on. The night season, the season of myrrh, is actually the time of crossing over or transitioning, out of the Church System, out of the Church Age and into the Kingdom Age, out of the kingdom of Saul and into the Kingdom of David and all the words that are released during this time by the true Messengers of God, are spurring the Bride on, to draw her out after her Beloved and out of the house, out of the Religious System, out of the place where she’s yoked in slavery, where she’s so weary from labouring in other people’s vineyards, but her own vineyard she hasn’t tended to.

The myrrh is released from those who are mature in Christ, the company who’ve had that bundle of myrrh in their bosom and they have a Transition Word to leave for the Bride. A word that they leave on the handles of the lock in order for her to use those words to unlock the door and to come out of her and be separate, because she is a vessel of the Lord. It causes the Bride to arise and to press on and to find Him whom her heart loves.

Can you hear His knock? Can you smell the sweet-smelling myrrh He has left for you on the handles of the lock? Those words will unlock that door that separates you from the next season in God. Those words will galvanise you into action if only you will lay hold of them and allow them to penetrate your every sense. They are words of transition. The words that seem to speak of death to self and loss, are the very words which will lead to your unveiling as part of the Bride of Christ. They will bring you into a season of running after Him and of gathering others who want to see the face of the One of whom you speak so eloquently. You have laboured in the vineyards of others but there is a harvest and a vineyard awaiting you, just beyond the door that hides His face from you. Will you not arise and pursue Him?
selah

Christine
freshoil@polka.co.za
http://freshoilreleases.bootpages.com,

Isa 55:1 Wait and listen, everyone who is thirsty! Come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your earnings for what does not satisfy? Hearken diligently to Me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.

Beauty Treatments for the Bride:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fdksu0y4k8diq6g/beauty%20treatments%20for%20the%20Bride%20for%20dropbox.pdf?dl=0
Daily Devotional:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pqqcgja9ebrv9ru/DBT%20for%20the%20Bride%20for%20dropbox.pdf?dl=0


Christine
freshoil@polka.co.za