God will shake all things and Christ as the Desire of the nations will come

Christ is the desire of all the nations. Hag. 2:7 says, And I will shake all the nations, and the Desire of all the nations will come. God is continually shaking everything that can be shaken until Christ as the Desire of all the nations will come.

Without knowing it, every human being desires Christ. We all desire life, peace, light, holiness, righteousness, safety, and good, and we can never find these things. The reality of all the positive things in the universe is Christ Himself, and what we desire is just Christ.

When we as the church return from any captivity and rebuild the house of God, Christ as the desire of the nations will come!

On God’s side, He is shaking all things; on our side, we cooperate by being recovered from any captivity and returning to rebuild the house of God. The result is that Christ as the Desire of the nations will come! Come, Lord Jesus!

God Will Shake All Things, All the Nations

In Heb. 12:26-28 we see that we have received an unshakable kingdom. Everything else apart from God’s kingdom will be shaken by God.

God will shake all things that can be shaken – He will shake the heavens, the earth, and all the nations; only the Father’s house, God’s building, cannot be shaken! This shaking will open the way for Christ as the desire of the nations to come.

We may think we live in peace for now, but God is continually shaking the political situation, the culture, the economy, and even the military situation.

Though all things are shaken by God, we are in a city (Psa. 46) which cannot be shaken and where God is flowing as a river!

If we give ourselves to something shakable, it will be shaken and we also will be shaken with it!

It is honorable and very good to have a profession, but if you want to be immersed in pursuing after a career in the world, it will be shaken and you also will be shaken with it!

But if we give ourselves to the building of something that is unshakeable, the building of God, we will not be shaken!

Christ is the Desire of the Nations

Many people do not know Christ, and even many Christians don’t really know Him. But the Bible clearly reveals that Christ is the desire of all the nations.

What do people desire today? First of all, they desire life – they want to enjoy life, live without any sickness or problems, and even live forever. Christ is life (John 14:6), He came that we may have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10), and whoever believes into Him will not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

People desire light – they love light, they want to live in light, and they would like that there would be no darkness but just light, both inwardly and outwardly. Christ is the light of the world (John 8:12), and whoever believes into Him will not walk in darkness anymore.

All the nations desire peace: peace within, peace in our family, peace in our neighbourhood, peace in our city, peace in our country, peace among countries and races, and peace in the whole world. No matter how hard people try, peace cannot be brought in because only Christ is our peace, and He gives us peace not as the world tries to give us (see John 14:27). When we have Christ, He is patrolling around our heart guarding it from anything that disturbs the peace.

People desire goodness, and they want to both be good and do good, they want to meet and be around good people, and they want to see good things being done. Christ is good because He is God’s embodiment in all His riches. If we have Christ, we become good because Christ in us is good.

People desire righteousness and justice: they want to be right with themselves, right with God, and right with everyone else. People want to see righteousness in the world and justice being done. But there’s no way to have righteousness and justice until Christ as our righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30) is enthroned in justice in our being.

All the good things that people desire from within their being, Christ is. Christ is the desire of all the nations, even though they may not know it.

Christ is the Reality of All Human Virtues

Even though you can truly say that humanity today is degraded and corrupted, and as the Bible says, All the thoughts of these people are continually evil, people today still desire virtues. They want to love, to be joyful, to be good, to be kind, to be humble, to be patient, etc.

But even though we may have something within us desiring this, we cannot live out these virtues spontaneously and continually in our human life, because the reality of all the human virtues is Christ.

Christ is the reality of kindness, love, patience, humility, joy, and every other human virtue. God created us with the human virtues so that Christ may come in as the reality and fill our human virtues with His divine attributes to be expressed in full.

Our human virtues are like the glove: they look like a hand, but they lack the reality of a hand until Christ comes in as “the hand” to fill “the glove”.

Hallelujah, today we can receive Christ and enjoy Him to be the reality of all our human virtues, and spontaneously something wonderful will be lived out!

Christ’s Coming Depends on the Church Being Built Up

Since there are so many Christians in the world, why has the Lord not yet returned?

According to the Bible and especially according to the Minor Prophets, we see that the coming of Christ as the Desire of all the nations depends on the return of God’s people from their captivity in Babylon and the recovery of the building of God’s house.

Today more and more of God’s people need to return from any religious captivity in spiritual Babylon (Rev. 17) to the ground of oneness, so that they may recover the building up of God’s house.

It is time to build: let us return from any captivity as the remnant to build God’s house!

The Lord Jesus has promised in Matt 16:18, I will build My church! He will do it! He will recover the building up of the church as God’s house, and the proper church life will be recovered!

On His side, Christ is building up the church and He is recovering many of His believers who are in captivity in religion and formal Christianity.

On our side, for the sake of the Lord’s coming back, we need to give ourselves to build up the church by exercising the keys of David to bind and loose, open the doors of heaven and shut the gates of Hades!

The Lord has promised: He will recover the proper church life on earth and He will build His church! We just need to give ourselves to Him to come out of any captivity and build the house!

Lord Jesus, You are what we really desire. Come in and fill our human virtues with Your divine attributes. Lord, You are our life, and You are life. Lord, You are our peace, and You are our joy and love. Lord, You are the real patience, humility, kindness, and joy. May many of the people today find You as the Desire of the nations! Lord, we come to build! We give ourselves to You for the building! Build up the church! Build up the Father’s house so that You may return as the Desire of the nations!

References and Further Reading

• Sharing inspired from portions in, Life-study of Haggai – msg. 1 (and brother Ron’s sharing in the message), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of the Minor Prophets, week 10 (entitled, The Building of the House of Jehovah).
• Further reading: Haggain 2:1-23, especially v. 7 and note 1;
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Come, Desire of nations, come! / Fix in us Thy humble home: / Rise, the woman’s conqu’ring seed, / Bruise in us the serpent’s head; / Adam’s likeness now efface, / Stamp Thine image in its place: / Final Adam from above, / Reinstate us in Thy love.
  # Christ is our light, our food, our air; / He’s everything we’ll ever need. / Christ is our drink, our life, our way, / If in our being, He’d be freed.
  # Within those whom You’d call / Put such a restless caring / For building to give all — / These times are for preparing; / The gates of hell cannot prevail / Against the builded Church! / The hours are few, the builders too — / Lord, build, O build in us!
• Picture credit: taken and edited by a friend on Facebook, from the recent London Olympics.