HE HIGH CALL OF GOD
Understanding these truths will open up much of the Scriptures to us. As we study about Zion, the vision can grow brighter that there is a glorious calling available to each Christian who wholeheartedly prepares himself. Some Christians may be saved, and be merely content to escape hell. Others may start to gain an interest in gathering eternal heavenly rewards. But the Christian with an enlarged vision and a pure heart will want nothing short of God’s best. We will be gripped with the desire, like the Apostle Paul, to “press toward the goal for the prize of the high call of God in Christ Jesus,” Phil.3:14. This calling is available to every Christian who will dedicate themselves to fulfill all of God’s will, regardless of their background. The key is not where we have come from, but where we are spiritually going!
THE HIGHWAYS TO ZION
The Psalmist said, “How blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee; in whose heart are the highways to Zion! Passing through the valley of Baca [or, ‘weeping’], they make it a spring… They go from strength to strength, every one of them appears before God in Zion,” Psalm 84:5-7 NASV. This speaks to the New Testament Christian of how we need to have our hearts centered on obtaining the goal of standing before God at His throne in heaven. Through all the tears of our earthly pilgrimage, God can comfort, refresh, and lift us higher and higher. If our heart is fixed on obtaining an eternal inheritance at His throne, we can go from strength to strength and from glory to glory until we will appear before God at the heavenly Zion. As our Lord Jesus said, ‘To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne,” Rev.3:21.
Have you caught the vision that it is possible to sit with Christ on His throne for eternity to come? Are you pressing on toward the high call of God for your life? Do you have the highways to Zion built in your heart that will lead you on towards obtaining this goal? John the Baptist was sent with a ministry of repentance to build that highway in his generation. He was a voice crying in the wilderness, “Make straight…a highway,” Is.40:3-5; Mt.3:1-3. Isaiah chapter 35:8-10 also tells us more about that highway that would be built in the wilderness. There it is called the “Highway of Holiness” that would lead God’s people on to Zion.
THE VISION OF ZION
The Lord wants to plant a vision within the heart of each of His people. There are going to be great revivals throughout the world in these last days. The assemblies of Mount Zion, composed of every church that is pressing on in holiness towards the high call of God, will be covered with His glory, Is.4:3-6. The Lord will exalt His Church to great authority and glory, to help prepare the way for the Second Coming of Christ. After returning to judge the nations and bind Satan and his hosts, the Lord Jesus will then reign over the world from Mt. Zion in Jerusalem for one thousand years, Is.24:21-23; Rev.20:1-6. Moreover, in heaven the Lord sits on His throne in Zion, where He invites the overcomers to sit with Him on His throne and reign with Him in glory throughout eternity.
Do these truths stir your heart to run after God’s best? If so, let us join together to help build this vision within the Body of Christ. As the Psalmist said in Psalm 102:13-22,
“You will have mercy upon Zion; for the time to favor her, yes, the set time, has come… So the nations shall fear the name of the Lord, and all kings of the earth Your glory. For the Lord will build up Zion; He shall appear in His glory. He shall regard the prayer of the destitute, and shall not despise their prayer. This shall be written for the generation to come… To declare the name of the Lord in Zion, and His praise in Jerusalem, when the peoples are gathered together, and the kingdoms, to serve the Lord.”
by Rev. Norman Holmes