The River of the Water of Life
The “river of the water of life” in heaven is a visible representation of the Holy Spirit providing life to everything there (Rev. 22:1).
The streams that come out from the inspiration of the river of the Holy Spirit are the various movements (such as denominations) of the people of God in Christ who together form His living church on earth.
The sword of the Spirit is the living Word of God concerning Christ Jesus as applied by the Holy Spirit (Eph. 6:17; Heb. 4:12; Rev. 19:13-15).
Oil is a type of the anointing with power that the Holy Spirit bestows upon believers so that Christ Jesus from heaven will be able to minister through them for the bringing in of His kingdom here on Earth (Exod. 30:25, 30; Acts 1:8; 2:33, 1 Cor. 4:20).
1. Even on Earth God grants to His faithful children “to drink of the river of Thy delights. For with Thou is the fountain of life” (Ps. 36:8-9). The Hebrew word for river means “a wadi or the channel of a watercourse that is dry except when it rains” (a symbol of the Spirit outpoured – Hos. 6:3), and then it becomes an overflowing river. This spiritual river is the powerful moving of the Holy Spirit supplying eternal life to and through those who obey Him (John 4:14; 7:38-39; Acts 5:32).
We are entering “the last days” (2 Tim 3:1; 2 Pet. 3:3) when the Holy Spirit will be outpoured in a mightier way than ever before (Joel 2:28-29) as the promised “latter rain” that will bring in a worldwide harvest (Joel 2:23-24). The Spirit will then move through the earth – as the river described in Ezekiel 47:1, 5, and 9 – to bring life wherever He flows.
2. These streams are not independent, for they not only drink from the one Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13-14), but they also add their particular contribution back into the flow of the Spirit in the one church (1 Cor. 12:7; Eph. 4:4, 16).
The coming descent of the Holy Spirit will be in such fullness of power that it will be necessary for these streams of God’s people to be bound together in “one heart and soul” (Acts 4:32). This unity in the Holy Spirit (Eph. 4:3, 1 Cor. 12:25-26) will be needed to utilize in purity all the gifts and graces from the Spirit so as to preserve His work from corruption or waste.
3. In the coming days we pray that the Lord Jesus will send forth His Word to the various churches as He did in the second and third chapters of Revelation. He depends upon those who overcome by walking above their flesh, the world, and the devil: saints who no longer live for anything but for Him (2 Cor. 5:14-15; Phil. 1:20-21; 2:21).
The ribbons in the vision represent those streams or bodies of believers who are pliable and willing to be rolled up by the Spirit to wait for His use (Hab. 2:3; Mic. 7:7). The spindles are long rods on which the spools may easily rotate as the ribbons are unwound and sewn together.
4. The heavenly city of God is “the Jerusalem above [which] is free; she is our mother” (Gal. 4:26; Heb. 11:16; 12:22). The earthly copy of that city is the church of the living God described in Psalm 46:4-5: “There is a river [the Spirit flowing freely] whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy dwelling places of the Most High. God is in the midst of her, she will not be moved.”
5. There is a vast supply of this oil that God has reserved for a fuller “salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet. 1:5; Rom. 8:18-19). It will come as a gusher, which is an oil well that spouts forth of itself without being pumped by man. The members of that unified, true church will dwell together as brethren, all of them having a share in the anointing oil that comes down from Jesus, who is their head (Ps. 133; 1 John 3:14). “Spindle Top” was one of the greatest oil gushers in recorded history.
