Podcast: Download (17.1MB)
Subscribe: RSS
The Last Hour
Episode #187
With Martha Kilpatrick and hosted by John Enslow
(J) Well, Martha, we have a surprise for people, so I would like you to tell people what the surprise is.
(M) Well, it’s a surprise to me too. As we met last week, it seemed the Lord wanted to call for another conference. And so we spent a lot of time on it, and since then we’ve been like busy bees getting ready to announce it. And as we were praying I looked down at my Bible, and it was turned to 1 John, chapter two, verse eighteen, and it said, “Children, this is the last hour.” And it just pierced me, because I realized it was the last hour in the first century. And so, you know, you could say this is ‘the last hour’ at any point in the last twenty one hundred years. And it would be accurate, but it’s kind of… the Lord had been giving me some subjects. Now, let’s go back and talk about this whole year has been a year of the Lord laying me down in green pastures. And I have had to have so much help. And yet while I was so disabled, the group would tell me how much light was coming, how much revelation was coming in our meetings.
(J) Absolutely.
(M) Is that?
(J) Hmhmm, absolutely, there, there’s … The revelation and the light has, has not dimmed at all. It’s just been a season that the Lord’s been saying, ‘shhhh’ to you. And physically just kind of, just setting you down physically. But really the amount of revelation and light has just been, it’s been increasing, and it’s been wonderful. The last conference, you were very weak at the last conference. And you know, people don’t even know how weak you were, though when you got up, you know, people could tell you were weak, but they didn’t see what was behind the scenes how weak you really were. You’re nowhere near that anymore. But there’s just been a season of rest that God has put you in. And it’s kind of the seed going in the ground. But we are seeing green, and we’re seeing leaves.
(M) Are you?
(J) Yeah, yeah.
(M) Oh it’s good to know. I do… I am much better, but still at times weak. But the Lord … I think you said this morning to me, that He took me through a long wilderness, and then He put me in a rest, forced rest. And several people have said to me that this time where I have needed everything really, done for me, that it has caused us to come together as a group, as a church, and ah…
(J) As a Body, we have functioned as a Body.
(M) Yeah, you really have, and it’s been done with ease, with joy, with consistency, with patience, with endurance. In fact I said to Carole, who’s been providing the wonderful food, I said, “Ok, Carole, I think I can cook now,” and she said, “Oh no, (Martha laughs) I want to.”
(J) Yeah.
(M) Which is… which relieves the so-called invalid. But it has been a delightful time with the Lord. And I think that the last two C D’s of the month have summed up pretty much what He has shown me.
(J) “The Finished Life”, and “The Finished Gift”.
(M) And it’s a level of seeing the completeness of what Christ has done, that has greatly expanded for me,
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) and become sort of a stability of faith for me. But there are a lot of things He’s been showing me, and showing us as a group. And it’s really, it’s really been an amazing time. You could say… One of my scriptures for years has been… It’s Isaiah 45:3, “I will go before you and level the exalted places, I will break in pieces the doors of bronze, and cut through the bars of iron.” That’s the obstacles of life.
(J) Hmhmm, right.
(M) “And I will give you the treasures of darkness, and the hoard’s in secret places, that you may know that it is I the Lord, the God of Israel, who called you by name.” And that scripture’s been sort of mine for years. These days I’m sort of thinking of the darkness God puts you in as being extremely under His wing. We have baby chicks right now, and I’m thinking of that mother hen that, she so hides her babies under her wing that you can’t even tell they’re there. When they’re hatched we don’t know it.
(J) Right.
(M) Because she… And I feel like, though, He’s plumbed the depths of me, and the depths of all of us in the group really. What it has been, the darkness has been under His wing, in the shadow of His wing. And I was meditating on that a lot, being in the secret place of the Lord. So, anyway, though it’s been a lot of suffering, it’s been a sweet, restful time, and He has brought me to a rest, probably such as I’ve never known.
(J) As long as I’ve known you this is the greatest rest.
(M) So, He’s really given me treasures of darkness, and I think the others in the Body could tell me more about it than I see. But some of these things, some of these treasures of darkness we’re going to bring out of the ‘chest’, and share with people, so. And I’ve already, I’m already cooking up a skit, and hopefully more than one, because we had such fun, and I think other people did too.
(J) It was awesome, it was really, really it spoke tremendously.
(M) It wasn’t only fun then, you’re saying.
(J) Oh, absolutely not. (Martha laughs) It was, it was a visual parable. It was a visual epistle; it was a parable, you know?
(M) It was. And it seemed to have great impact not only on us, but on the people who were there. So we’re cooking up some fun things to reveal the Lord. It’s all about revealing Him. And so, it’s… I don’t think it’s… probably I’m not going to talk about prophecy and, and things that might happen and catastrophe’s and so forth. But it’s going to be, as I like it to be, sort of a consideration of His preparation for us. And no matter who you are, whether you lived in the second century, or the eighteenth century, it’s ‘the last hour’ is the same for all of us because we have one chance to live this life, and then we’ll give an account.
(J) Well, it’s not a fear-based thing, (Martha: yeah, yeah) and that’s what I like, it’s a joy thing, it’s an adventure thing. It’s a, yeah, it’s a warning, and there’s a deep consequence to it, and the weightiness of the responsibility, the revelation, and the accountability that you’ll have, yeah, that’s weighty. But the fact is that it’s not a… You never spin it with a fear-based thing, which I can’t stand. I hate that.
(M) I’m so glad to hear that. There is a fear of God that we need. There is a consideration of that accountability. But did you know, John, that there is more in the Bible about His second coming than His first, by far.
(J) That’s amazing.
(M) Isn’t that amazing? Did you know that before?
(J) No, I had no idea.
(M) It’s true, there’s enormous references to His second coming, and …
(J) There’s a difference between the fear of God, and taking the spoon and the pan and beating it in front of the sheep to scare them. And I don’t like whirling up the sheep to force them to soulishly move and make commitments that they cannot maintain, or do. But fear of God is a totally different thing than the fear of the soul, and the fear by whirling it up. You know what I mean?
(M) Well I think that, that’s a result…
(J) I’d say a result of ‘source’.
(M) Yeah.
(J) Where, where’s it coming from. If it’s coming from Christ, and it’s coming from His Life, and it’s coming from His Spirit, then it will, basically it will bring forth the revelation of Christ, it’ll bring forth a reverence for the Father, and that fear. But if it’s out of the soul…
(M) Well, Jennifer who’s, you know, deeply into the subject matter of the past two conferences, and as I’ve been sharing things with the group, she said, “The first two conferences were sober, sobering too, and serious.” And she said, “I just sense this conference is going to be different, that it’s going to be…” She used the word “exuberant”, and I said, “How did you know that Jennifer, because that is what is in my heart.” And she said, “I just feel that it is.” And so… There’s … this one is a celebration that it’s “The Last Hour”.
(J) Which is really cool, that that’s the position that we’re in.
(M) Yeah. Yes, it can be.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) And so we’re, we’re excited. You know, John, from the mid-eighties the Lord began to put on my heart His soon return. That’s been some twenty-five years now, and I can’t escape it, it increases. And of course the events that are going on in the world now speak of it so, so clearly. The anti-Christ spirit is growing. So I don’t know I’ve just been, had a zeal for this, for His return since, for twenty-five years. And that zeal is just increasing. And I know that He is preparing His children in ways that we probably don’t see, and some we do see.
(J) So, the conference name is just, “The Last Hour”, and it’s going to be in September, the end of September, September 24th through the 25th. We’re going to be doing that in Atlanta at the same place. And so, today we’re sending out the word. And we’re calling people to come, and we’re asking the Spirit to draw those that He wants to be at the conference. And we’re looking forward to seeing who He brings and how He’s going to manifest Himself, what He’s going to say, how He’s going to say it, because the last conference was so incredibly different, but so powerful. I mean it was just… There was a sacred, holy kind of reverence over it. And there was a body function in it. It was like we, we as an entire group of people that don’t even really know each other… A lot of people were coming from different parts of the country. A lot of people we did know, some of the people we didn’t even know, but there was a jelling of the people that came to the conference where I felt if anywhere you could say ‘in one accord’, that conference was ‘in one accord’. I didn’t feel like there was any discord at all.
(M) It was… it was amazing. I think Body life happened. And it happens when you, when you’re in the same place for that many days. And we’ve come to enjoy hosting the conferences ourselves.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) Because that means the, the people who come know the message. They are kindred spirits for the most part, yeah.
(J) And we can really attend to the needs, and address things that we can’t when we’re being taken in to, just to speak or something like that. This way we basically can… And do special things that we just do.
(M) Yeah, that’s true. So, we love doing this. We all get involved, and people who don’t live up here in the mountains with us, but live in other areas, come in and help, and… So we love to do it, and that’s a shepherd speaking there, John. You look after the sheep, and you get the other shepherds to look after the sheep. That’s a good way to put it. Yeah, we do. I will tell you one thing that I have seen. As the Lord laid me down in green pastures to restore my soul, my life was reduced to two things, love and faith. And I realized that having …being in a place of dependence, utter dependence and weakness, and often pain, it reduced me to the essentials. And it grew in me to present to the Body those two essentials, and how linked they are. And I’m not, certainly not finished with that message of it, so that’s why I put in the intro, “undying love and enduring faith”. The third aspect that I put in the announcement was “the living word”. Because I’ve come to see through experience that the scripture says, “Receive the word implanted which is able to save your soul.” And one of the weakness I see and have discovered in people who go round and round in confusion, and who never seem to have a stability, it’s the double-minded of James one, “let not those kind expect anything from the Lord.” But one of the reasons is not being steeped in the scriptures. So I’m going to be talking about that a good bit, how essential it is for your mind to be filled with the word of God, so that the Holy Spirit can speak to you in the word.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) And the Lord has brought some things, just to me, that are quite exciting about the scriptures, new aspects of seeing. So those are the three elements that I see right now. As I usually say, these are, you know, possibilities, not promises. So we’ll see what the Lord does in the next weeks, and how He reveals His message. Because I believe He called for this conference. I certainly would not have thought I was up to it. And just solicit, we solicit prayer (John: absolutely) of everyone who’s listening, for the whole thing, for my strength, to be able to do it. And I’m sure it’ll be there.
(J) Absolutely, it was there last time.
(M) Hmhmm. He’s ever, ever faithful. When He calls me to speak He gives me the message, He gives me the ability, and He gives me the power to do it, so.
(J) Hmhmm.
(M) So, I trust Him.
