Bashan Ministries - A year of light

It is 2025

For this, my first message for the new year, I chose the theme of light to signify that we may be entering into an entire new era when the light of truth shines again. Something has changed and I believe that more changes are going to happen. It depends perhaps on our individual perceptions and expectations of course, but I for one am excited.
This is not one of those well-worn hype-me-up clichés—another “new year slogan” like “the year of this” or “the year of that” as many preaches give out. Many of them never eventuated in the past. Its’ hype, plain and simple.

I am speaking from personal observation, from what others are sharing with me and from what we believe is a direct word from God for us personally, but what He has said to us may also apply to you. We ask ourselves, as I recommend you do, to ascertain if our hopes and expectations stem from our own desires and imagination or come from the throne-room. We need to see things in a new light.

I have seen many well meaning people attempt to “do things for God” that He never asked them to do, with differing degrees of “success”. I suppose everyone of us has gone down dead end alleys before, but when we stand back and observe; sit still and listen and allow God to speak, a whole new world awaits us.

Change is upon us

Hanukkah and Christmas recently occurred at the same time in 2024.

This is a rare occasion and if memory serves meright, the last time they fell at the same time was in 1999. It makes me wnder if there is any significance. Perhaps.This present time is unique.

2024 was a dark year in many ways and I could share many examples, but light overcomes darkness. The Light of the world is shining and from the reports I have received, many of which are never shared by the media and religious folk, something seems to be simmering and coming to the boil as it does when cooking when we gather the ingredients, prepare them, put them together, turn the heat up, set the timer—and wait!

There is an expectancy many people have never had, or had like this before. This is true for my own ministry.

Some of my ministry dreams that the Lord planted inside me decades ago, with strict instructions to prepare myself and wait are suddenly starting to make sense. Back in 1992 for example, the Lord told me one Saturday afternoon to visit a church I knew .
I made arrangements to go there and one man drove me there in his Jaguar car.

As we turned into the parking lot, another car driven by another pastor I knew, came from the opposite direction.
He was driving a visiting preacher and his son from America and they were there for that one meeting only.
We said a brief hello to each other and I sat down intending to enjoy the meeting. The visitor took the platform, suddenly stopped and called me to the front and started to minister prophetically as a powerful anointing fell on me. What He said confirmed almost word for word with the Lord had already spoken about.

Part of the Lord’s word, confirmed by this stranger, was to wait...

The Lord told me to prepare myself for what was coming that had been revealed in vision form more than once.

The first time was back in the middle 1970’s when I was ministering with Kenneth Hagin.

We do not like waiting. This is why there are many failed churches and ministries today when people choose to do things that God never asked them to do. Conversely, there are people around who are doing precisely what the Lord has told them to do in His time-frame and in the manner He has ordained and achieving extraordinary results.

More people are going to be released like that in 2025. These people have had a word from God and have been in waiting mode, preparing themselves for a sudden release. It’s not easy to wait, especially when other people who should know better laugh at you, treat you with disdain and call you a misfit because you dare to be different, but that is the kind of treatment God’s real prophets often received. You may be one of them.

2025 shall most likely see many established churches and ministries cease to function.

That is not a critical judgmental statement, but truth, because of Gods timetable. A new season is commencing.

A new beginning

This is a photograph of the Jordan River and it looks nice, not like the desert we often think of. Joshua could have crossed over at that very spot and when he did pass over, it was in flood. Apparently the Jordan had double banks at the crossing point, so the crossing was just as much a miracle as the opening of the Red Sea.

When Israel left Egypt, it was the end of a whole lifetime for the people. Their entire past changed overnight. It was left behind and a brand new life lay ahead of them. They could have gone straight in and taken possession of their promised inheritance, but did not because of their unbelief. Only two people, Joshua and Caleb made it. Numbers are not the criteria. Quality is!

If God has promised something, I want it. Others might not, even though they may have seen the same things. Elisha knew that Elijah was going to leave and so did 50 other prophets, but zeisha was the only one who wanted thaty anointing.
Joshua and Caleb and everyone else saw what they were supposed to see. They all saw the same things—the potential as well as the opposition and difficulties, but only two men of faith and I mean real men of faith believed. They took God at His word, believed what He said and then acted upon it.

They had seen enough to realize that God is not a man that He should lie and that He is not a figment of man’s imagination.

They drank the water and tasted the produce of the land and the taste of those grapes lingered in their memory so much they decided, “God has promised us this place so We are going to get it”.

Finally, after all those years of waiting, after going through trials and testing, frustration and disappointment, Joshua and Caleb were about to receive that promise. A totally new life lay ahead, but in a precise order. The things that had to be done first started with a declaration from God.

Moses is dead

God told Joshua bluntly, Moses is dead. Joshua 1:2. God had prepared Moses for three totally different 40-year phases in his life.

He had completed his assignment and it was time to pass the baton onto someone else. This is a principle not fully understood in many churches in that a man can receive a legitimate call of God and build up a ministry or a church, but want to hang onto it as if it is his own personal property. It is not! His job could be simply be to prepare the land like a farmer does for a future harvest. Once he has done that, someone else could follow by sowing the seed and that person has then done his part. What follows next is the tending of the plants, watering them, fertilizing them, doing the weeding and waiting for a subsequent harvest. Finally, when the crop is ripe, someone else can come to do the actual harvesting, but it does not end there. Someone then has to take the harvest to market and sell it. This is what Paul spoke of in the first three chapters of 1 Corinthians. The church has t return to such principles.

2025 may well see changes whereby this actually starts to happen. I have often stated that many churches and ministries, some very large and well known, will cease to exist. Some have already gone and others will follow suit, because the time has come for them to stop. Some may refuse to comply with God and keep functioning, but not with His full blessing.

God’s command to Joshua was to get up and go, leave the past behind and enter into something new and different.

He told Joshua to cross over and the Hebrew word seen here is ʿā·ḇǎr that has too many meanings to list here, other than to say that it conveys much action and movement. God told Joshua to take possession of the Land that He promised Moses and it is the same land He promised Abraham and his seed forever. The borders of this land far exceed the borders of what we now call Israel.

The “Palestinians” did not enter into His equation. They have no part in this land.

God re-affirmed His covenant promise with an oath to give them this land. The Hebrew word is šā·ḇǎʿ and is a definite promise with certain sanctions if that promise is not kept. A derivative of that word is šě·ḇǎʿ that equates to the number 7.

This is a cardinal number with many meanings, especially speaking of spiritual perfection.

Joshua therefore had to meet such requirements and if God’s word remains the same, we too must meet such requirements.

To do that, God told him to meditate on His word and that means to mutter it, to ponder over it, to speak it and one meaning is to roar over it as a lion roars over its prey. It certainly is not “silent meditation”. By speaking it that way we are getting it down into our spirit, not our mind and we are “saying it back to God”.

Therefore when we “expect something” from God, He has to tell it to us first and we receive it, plant it in our hearts and minds and speak that word out so that it can then do what He sent it to do. That is what Isaiah 55:11 means.

Prepare yourselves

This is where most of us have been. We have had a word from God and taken it into our beings and done what we know to do in the waiting process. It is now time to prepare ourselves to receive it as my wife and I are currently doing. Joshua 1:10-11 states:

Y’hoshua instructed the officials of the people to go through the camp and order the people, “Prepare provisions, because in three days you will cross this Yarden to go in and take possession of the land Adonai your God is giving you.”

Everyone had to make their own preparations—not the pastors, the elders, the deacons or other leaders—everyone. This is a change process that has already started. 2025 may well see an escalation of this, but notice that in verse twelve, God said that the Reubenites, the Gadites and the half the tribe of Manasseh had to first help their brethren to possess their portions before returning to get theirs. Many ministries are being raised up today, who shall not build their own churches or ministries (yet?) but help others get started, so that we can all get there together. This is going to be a comparatively new kind of ministry thrust.

In chapter two, Joshua sent spies into the land. It is wise to do your homework first and Jesus spoke of that. Our own ministry has “spied out the land” and in so doing have seen where people stand, who are the real, who are pretenders, who are self-appointed, who have looked at the promise instead of the one who made the promise. Look past the tinsel and glitter, at the hype, at the externals and look at the lasting fruit and who receives the accolades. The size of a church or ministry is no real sign of authentication. Some may have started well, but in the subsequent success, have turned their attention to the externals. This year may well see a sifting of the of the wheat from the tares in the church, not of sheep from goats but sheep from sheep, of separating the five virgins from the five virgins and from the watchman who was the only one awake when the bridegroom arrived.

The Presence of God goes first

This is something that must be done and I believe will be made more evident this coming year. In my 56 years with the Lord, I have witnessed all kinds of things, some good, whilst others are best left unsaid. A common trait today is the way the Holy Spirit is treated, usually with utter disrespect. At the risk of going into abuse and excess, that happened, the church, including “Pentecostals” have all but told the Holy Spirit that He is no longer welcomed. It saddens me and it grieves Him and that’s the truth. Test them!

Compare many churches of today with the early church in the bible.

Joshua woke early in the morning in Joshua 3 and issued command that the priests had to carry the Ark of the Covenant in accord with the method God had given Moses. It had to be carried properly and go ahead of the people taking the presence of God with them.

They embarked on their journey and when the feet of the priests touched the water, the river opened up. It did not open up before they moved—it opened up when their feet hit the water. The priests stood there and allowed God’s presence to remain there as the people crossed over. Pastors, please start allowing God’s presence to manifest again. He will not permit anything untoward from happening and if you do that, God shall be magnified. You will see the God of the bible—the genuine God of the bible do what He wants to do and you will receive the benefits.

The Manna ceased

What happened next is what I believe shall really start happening in 2025. In Joshua 5, after the Red Sea had opened 40 years beforehand, they had been delivered from Egypt. They had crossed over the Jordan into the Promised Land and then God commanded Joshua to circumcise the men. That was a sign of the covenant between God and Abraham and represented the cutting off of the old flesh nature.
They were God’s covenant people, yet had gotten out of the practice of circumcision. In simple terms, they had become “worldly”.

Has the church become worldly? Has it allowed herself to be squeezed into the mould of the world? You be the judge of that. Personally, I believe that we have. We are destined to be the light of the world and shine in the darkness, but are we?

If we are not, change is indeed coming. God will roll away the reproach of the world system, just as He said in Joshua 5:9 and the people called the place where that happened, Gilgal. They then kept Passover and something different happened.

The people of Israel camped at Gilgal in the Jericho plain. There they celebrated the Passover on the evening of the fourteenth day of the month. On the day after the Passover, they ate some of the produce of the land, unleavened bread and roasted grain. The day after that, the manna stopped. The people of Israel never had manna again. That year they began to eat the crops that grew in Canaan.
Joshua 5:10-12

They had been eating manna for 40 years. It was Gods provision but habit forming. They had moved into a new era and the manna ceased. A new season had arrived and God’s provision for the old season ceased forever. This has to be the message for 2025.
Everything inside me believes that God is telling us that everything we did yesterday is gone, finished, over and that today is the start of a totally new and different life and ministry. That’s challenging.

2025

When we look at the number combinations in 2025, a pattern emerges. The number twenty represents expectancy. Anyone who does not expect, usually never receives. We see this principle often in scripture. On a personal note, we expect something and what we expect is founded on what the Lord has spoken about to us. We do not choose to do something and then ask God to bless it as many do, but ascertain the mind and will of the Lord according to what He has said to us and then act on that, nothing else.

He may not reveal all of His plan at once, but gradually unfolds it according to our capacity to receive it and act upon it, one step at a time. When we choose to pursue God’s plan, we can lay claim to the promise. I looked up the word expectation and was surprized how often it appears in scripture. One passage of a surprisingly large number is taken from Proverbs:

Don’t envy sinners, but follow the example of those who always fear God; for then you will have a future; what you hope for will not be cut off.

What is this expectation? The Hebrew word is tiq·wā that means hope, expectation, looking forward to, a confidence in regard to a good and beneficial future and there is another meaning that describes some kind of cord or tie, made up by weaving different strands of string or cloth into an ornamental item of clothing. If it is a belt, it holds up our pants. If it is a dress tie, it is a fashion statement.

As I looked at this, I felt as if the Lord said, I can hold everything up, keep everything together, cover and adorn you with finery.

If God has promised us something, that is what we hold onto. It is the foundation for our belief, so we can expect God’s promise to be fulfilled. Without such a foundation we drift from experience to experience, party to party, BBQ to BBQ , drink to drink and probably enjoy them at the time, but what next? What happens after the hangover is gone and you are alone?

Twenty-five is a square of the number 5 that speaks of the grace of God, so it seems as if His grace is going to concentrated, multiplied or expanded somehow. If numbers do have some form of significance, then we can expect a manifestation of His grace, perhaps a multiplied manifestation.

A pastor I know in America has been conducting miracle crusades during which thousands of people are born again and receiving miracles of healing etcetera. He reported that a vast hunger broke out across the land, almost totally ignored by the media.

Most churches dismissed the opportunity. It did not fit into their agenda. They had different ways of doing things. The attitude was to leave us alone and we shall continue doing our thing. Some pastors openly boycotted the meetings and forbade their members from going, but thousands drove past them to those meetings and had an encounter with the Lord.

The workers were extra bold on the streets when witnessing and reported that many people were very receptive, often waiting patiently to be prayed for and to receive the Lord on the streets. Imagine that in Detroit or Los Angeles.

Businesses were eager to put their posters in their windows and they found that it was easier to invite people to the meetings than ever before. He said that this harvest occurred because they were ready, having trained themselves for it and expected it.

He added that Americans are coming back to common sense, traditional values and faith, but asked how long would it last. He said that he expects double in 2025—double.

This seems to align with my understanding on the significance of the numbers previously mentioned—double grace.

Crossing our Jordan

Are we standing on the banks of a new experience, like Joshua? I believe that we may be. I am not saying anything like this year will be the year of the overflow, or some other catchphrase as others have done and on most occasions were like mere clouds without rain.

We can make a “faith declaration” based on our own desires, but want to continue living the same way, doing the same things and saying the same words etcetera. We must cross over and circumcise the old nature and habits.

God told Joshua to shut down operations and do something different. They had done all that God told them to do and were ready for anything and everything. They had partaken of the blessing and provision of the Lord and the manna had ceased.
They had cut off the flesh and had spied out the land and were ready to go.

Jericho was ahead of them and destined to fall, just as God said it would, but Joshua had not yet formulated God’s plan of attack.

As he stood there contemplating, he saw a man standing before him.
And it came to be, when Yehoshua was by Yeriḥo, that he lifted his eyes and looked and saw a Man standing opposite him with His sword drawn in His hand. And Yehoshua went to Him and said to Him, “Are You for us or for our adversaries?”
And He said, “No, for I have now come as Captain of the host of Adonai.” And Yehoshua fell on his face to the earth and did obeisance, and said to Him, “What is my Master saying to His servant?”
And the Captain of the host of Adonai said to Yehoshua, “Take your sandal off your foot, for the place where you stand is set-apart.” And Yehoshua did so. Joshua 5:13-15

This Man gave Joshua God’s plan and Joshua worshiped Him. What God intends to do is holy. It has to be respected and treasured.

In this passage, the word Man is capitalized. He is also mentioned as the Captain of the Lord’s host.

I believe that this was Jesus before His birth on earth. He is our Commander-in-chief today. He is the one who is building His Church. He is the one who we follow and in so doing, He shall give us the right strategy for this coming year.

I believe that we personally, that is my wife and me, have been given such a strategy and like Joshua, we have done all that we can to be ready for our next venture. 2024 for us is over. Whatever we achieved is done with. What mistakes we made are in the past and we have dealt with them already. We have stood on the banks of our own personal “River Jordan” and already eaten “new food”.

We have changed our diets because the Lord told us to do so and our health has improved. This seems to be a major problem with Christians. We cannot keep eating wrong foods because our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit. We care more for our cars than our bodies. I would not use the wrong fuel, do no maintenance, let the radiator run dry, not keep the engine oil topped up or never change the oil filter in my car, but the Lord has been revealing that many illnesses—in believers—are due to them doing that to their bodies.

That has been a big learning curve for us and I believe that it is part of God’s plan for His body, the Church.

We have shed old habits and circumcised the old life, doing all that we know to do according to the ministry plan and vision given to us and are standing on the other side of the Jordan, staring at our own Promised Land. We’re not in it yet, but are heading that way.

Giants are there. Opposition is there. Misunderstanding is there. The walls of Jericho are there—but we have a word from God that tells us 2025 will be our best year ever.

Donald Trump will soon be in office at the time of writing and I believe big changes will come—for the better. Despite what you may or may not think of him or what the media tries to tell you, do not discount him. He could be God’s man of the hour. He could be like the kings in the bible who helped Gods people. I suspect however that there shall be much opposition from the woke dark left and, sadly, a lack of any real support from many Christians. I shall give a report in due course.

Perhaps we will have a change in government in Australia soon and that also shall be a much needed and overdue change.

I wish you could see us now. If you could, you will see how committed and ready we are to finally take possession of our promise.

2025 may well be your greatest and best year of your lives, so I encourage you to do likewise. I close with a reminder of the reference to light. Allow the light of God’s truth to shine in your lives and be ready...

Robert