Copyright
CESAR CASTELLANOS D. © 2003 Published by G12 Editors / eISBN_ 978-958-5571-34-1 / All rights reserved. Total or partial reproduction of this book in any form – printed, electronic, audiovisual or otherwise – is prohibited without prior written permission from the publisher. Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations used in this book are from the New International Version 1984 Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Spanish version: LA REVELACIÓN DE LA CRUZ G12 Media: Edition_Manuela Castellanos_Doris Perla Mora G12 Editores_Sur América - Calle 22C # 31-01 Bogotá, Colombia - (571) 269 34 20. G12 Editors_USA - 15595 NW 15TH Avenue, Miami, FL 33169 Colombia 2021
Contents Introduction Chapter 1 e Revelation of the Cross Chapter 2 Seven words of Victory Chapter 3 e Importance of having an Encounter Chapter 4 ank you, God, for your Forgiveness Chapter 5 e Encounter gives us a new opportunity Chapter 6 Healing our Heart Chapter 7 Transforming the curse into a Blessing
Chapter 8 How to be free from the Curse Chapter 9
e Power of the Blessing
Chapter 10 Having victory over the Adversary Chapter 11 Let´s get to know the Holy Spirit Chapter 12 Establishing the Vision
Introduction Did you know that your life depends on an encounter? Some encounters are joyful; others are painful; but I am not writing to you about just any kind of emotional encounter. No, I am writing about the most glorious, most radical, most life-changing encounter you could ever have—an encounter with the revelation of the Cross of Jesus Christ. What do I mean by “the revelation of the Cross”? I mean something beyond the declaration of faith we make when we rst accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior. Receiving Him is crucial, indeed, but the revelation of the Cross goes even further. It means knowing and experiencing Jesus in His brokenness— which we can only experience by Divine revelation. We cannot truly perceive His blessings until we have been confronted with the reality of His cruci xion in all of its dimensions. I strongly encourage you to have a personal encounter with the Lord and to allow the Holy Spirit to give you a revelation of the Cross. For centuries, He has been transforming lives in radical ways and bringing people into intimate relationship with Himself. For example, when Jacob came face-to-face with the angel of the Lord he said, “I have seen God face to face, and my life is
preserved” (Genesis 32:30). e patriarch Job, who justi ed himself because he could not understand why his situation was so tragic said, when he came face to face with God, “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You. erefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:5-6). e prophet Isaiah was amazed when he saw the glory of the Lord and cried, “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (Isaiah 6:5). After being confronted by Nathan the prophet, King David humbled himself and confessed his sin, begging to be puri ed. He experienced a genuine brokenness saying, “ e sacri ces of God are a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart—these, O God, You will not despise” (Psalm 51:17). Anyone who desires to have an encounter with God can do so; He is always close to us, as close as the air we breathe. In his message to the Athenians, Paul declares, “He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His o spring’ ” (Acts 17:27- 28). And God Himself promised, through the prophet Jeremiah, “you will seek Me and nd Me, when you search for Me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13).
Chapter 1:
The Revelation of the Cross “And now this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.” (John 17:3) Several months ago, my wife Claudia, was with her group of twelve, teaching them that the revelation of the Cross is the only proper foundation for such a group. Using John 17:3, she asked the women to pray that the Lord would give each one of them a revelation of the Cross. Later, my wife prayed for herself, “God, give me the revelation of the Cross.” After this short prayer, she found herself in the most extraordinary experience of her entire life. God took her spirit and joined it to the Spirit of Jesus at the moment of His cruci xion. She was literally able to feel everything Jesus felt while He was hanging on the Cross. At the same time, her spiritual eyes were opened and she was able to see the spiritual darkness that covered the earth when Jesus was dying. Just as it did for Claudia, the Cross should become rhema—a living word—
in each of our hearts. To know Jesus is to experience the revelation of the Cross, to know the power of God through Jesus’ su ering when He purchased our redemption. Every believer’s goal should be to experience the Cross through faith, and to know even the agony He endured on our behalf. We must ask God to allow us to feel what Jesus felt, because if we are one with Him in His death, we will also be one with Him in His resurrection (Romans 6:5).
THE MIRACLE OF THE CROSS Experiencing the Cross through revelation is a miracle.
e Lord takes our
spirit directly to the moment of His most grueling agony and allows us to become one with Him. After undergoing this experience, you acquire the ability to lead others to receive the revelation of the Cross. ere, we learn that Jesus did not die in order to be admired as a martyr, to gain pity or sympathy, or to become famous. He did it for you and for me, taking the place of su ering and death that we deserved because of our sin. He took all of our weaknesses upon Himself on the Cross and forever canceled the debt we owed God. ose who understand the revelation of the Cross will feel that Jesus’ death is also our own death, which implies that we will also feel the pain He felt, and enables us to say, “I feel the same agony, pain and su ering I would feel as if I was the one being cruci ed.” When Claudia had the revelation of the Cross and was supernaturally transported to the place of the cruci xion, God removed a veil from her eyes and revealed Jesus’ su ering to her in a way similar to what He allowed David to experience when he saw it prophetically as written in Psalm 22.
Although Jesus’ su ering took place many years after David had died, the Holy Spirit took David’s spirit and transported it through time, allowing him to feel everything Jesus was going to feel centuries later. We see the pain, the anguish and the uncertainty that Jesus would endure while on the Cross re ected in every word of Psalm 22:1 and 2, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? Why are You so far from helping Me, and from the words of My groaning? O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear; and in the night season, and am not silent.” Claudia experienced what Jesus had su ered. As I wrote earlier, her spiritual eyes were opened and she was able to perceive the dark clouds that gathered over the earth when Jesus was dying (the Bible says that there was darkness from noon until three o’clock in the afternoon). Everything turned dark as He hung dying, and the black clouds were legions of demons descending upon Him.
e Son of God had already spoken about this dark hour, on the night
He was betrayed saying, “When I was with you daily in the temple, you did not try to seize Me. But this is your hour, and the power of darkness” (Luke 22:53). He could see the demons coming against Him with all their fury, like hungry lions roaring the words of destruction, trying to destroy His faith and defeat Him. Similarly, my wife also felt her bones cracking and her heart melting within her. Although she tried to call for help, she had no strength. All she could do was groan in anguish, and for three hours, she experienced that extreme agony. e demons came like dogs to torment her. She was completely unaware of her own body, because she was in the midst of a spiritual experience, but during the whole time, she felt so vulnerable and exposed—just as Jesus did upon the Cross. She experienced the most intense anguish when she heard the Lord pray,
“But You, O Lord, do not be far from Me; O My Strength, hasten to help Me! Deliver Me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dog. Save Me from the lion’s mouth and from the horns of the wild oxen!” (Psalm 22:1921). Jesus was expecting the Father to come quickly to His aid and set Him free, but Claudia saw the Father stand and turn His back on Jesus, leaving Him at the mercy of those ferocious demons. She then heard Jesus utter a loud cry of anguish, screaming, “My God, My God …” You may wonder why the Father didn’t seem to want to help His own Son. We must understand that Jesus relinquished all of His divine privileges in order to redeem the human race. On the Cross, He became the substitute for all who had ever and would ever rebel against God. He carried the sins of every person who had ever lived and would ever be born—and God cannot stand sin. When He turned His back on Jesus, He did so because He had seen His Son bearing all the sins of every person who would ever walk upon the face of the earth in all of time and history and He could not look upon it.
BEING BIRTHED INTO THE REVELATION OF THE CROSS Every believer should be birthed into the revelation of the Cross. If we participate in Jesus’ death, we shall also rejoice in His resurrection (Romans 6:5). And if we su er with Him, we shall also reign with Him (2 Timothy 2:11-12). It is our responsibility, as children of God, to go to the Cross daily, to receive divine revelation and inspiration. Paul understood this, which is why he said, “I die daily” (1 Corinthians 15:31). We should crucify our weak human nature every day so that the power of Jesus’ resurrection can ow through us.
is is what the prophet Zechariah referred to when he said, “And I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication; then they will look on Me whom they have pierced; they will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for Him as one grieves for a rstborn” (Zechariah 12:10). e closet earthly parallel to the revelation of what Jesus experienced and su ered on the Cross would be exactly as Zechariah portrayed it—when parents lose their only child and cannot be comforted. eir pain is so deep that, no matter how hard they try, they cannot stop crying.
JESUS TOOK THE CURSE FOR US rough the prophet Isaiah, God made known the spiritual condition of His people: Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth! For the Lord has spoken: I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against Me; e ox knows its owner and the donkey its master’s crib; but Israel does not know, My people do not consider.’ Alas, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who are corrupters!
ey have forsaken
the Lord, they have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel, they have turned away backward. Why should you be stricken again? You will revolt more and more. 1:2-5).
e whole head is sick, and the whole heart faints” (Isaiah
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