ARTICLE SYNOPSIS
“From Dry Places to Rivers of Life” presents an eschatological and historical-theological meditation on how God has been moving His people from spiritual barrenness toward a mature, glorious church that will reflect Christ’s fullness before His return. Drawing on John 7:38 and Ephesians 5:27, Mark Case argues that the Spirit is even now silently gathering, sanctifying, and unifying a remnant into small, God-planted fellowships that will display Christ’s glory as an end-time bride.
He surveys church history as a series of “seasons”: early New Testament vitality arrested by institutional captivity under Rome, a millennium of darkness, the breakthrough of the Reformation, and then new institutional constraints under Protestant scholasticism and state churches. Within each season, God preserves a remnant pressing beyond mere religious forms toward authentic koinonia and liberty in Christ. Case highlights evangelical and revival movements from Wesley and Whitefield through nineteenth- and twentieth-century evangelists and missionaries as evidence of God repeatedly reigniting the gospel flame, even when established churches resist or lag behind.
Yet alongside this, he sees a parallel rise of false teachers, institutional compromise, and “every wind of doctrine,” especially in modern Western Christianity, producing shallow, compromised “Americanized” religion and leaving many true believers restless and thirsty. He contends that God is presently “rooting out” man-made structures, allowing much of the visible church to collapse so that He can build again from the ground up, gathering discontented saints out of nominal systems into simpler, Spirit-and-truth communities that seek the “real Jesus” and the River of Life.
The piece looks ahead to a “short work in righteousness” in which God will rapidly mature His people into a “perfect man,” a truly glorious church marked by holiness, unity, spiritual gifts functioning in love, heightened opposition from the world, and unprecedented harvest. Saturated with Scripture citations and prophetic exhortation, Case writes as a watchman calling believers to awaken to the late hour, embrace deep personal and corporate sanctification, reject bondage to religious institutions and worldly compromise, and willingly participate in God’s final preparation of a spotless bride for Christ’s imminent coming.
From Dry Places to Rivers of Life
➤“He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38).
There is a fresh work of God’s Spirit in the air – unseen and unheard, but definitely real.
His silent Spirit-flow, like a river strong and sure, is about to both sanctify and unify His chosen people for His crowning end-time work – a truly mature bride made beautiful for His soon return (Eph. 4:11-16)!
In God’s divine providence, He has carefully guarded our steps so that now, at the edge of this side of eternity, we, who would otherwise be scattered and wandering still, should suddenly and surely be brought together and changed into His image!
And He will be glorified!
Yes! The scattered sheep of the New Covenant “sons of Levi” are about to be gathered into a million God-designed folds all over the world – and my heart cries, “Hallelujah!”
Divinely planted local church bodies will be rising all across the land! We seem small and only a few in number today, but we will soon realize that we are not a few, and we will become mighty in Spirit and Truth!
God is doing a shaking, sifting, and sorting with all those who call themselves by His name so that He may corral His remnant – finally! Hallelujah!
All the true members of His body, who allow Him to work through them by His grace, will be a part, and He will be glorified as we’ve never known on such a grand scale!
Let us rechart our course toward becoming a truly glorious church here!
The Enemy has long convinced us that the level of God’s glory available through us here is low. Scholars contend that we are still hopelessly restricted by sin and self, even though Jesus has broken the power of sin to rule over us and, at the same moment, he has bound us to His righteousness (Rom. 6:5-14). This is one way that the Enemy has stolen our faith and that God’s glory in and through us has been dimmed.
It is true that, as long as we are in the flesh and live in the world where the devil roams, we will battle the flesh, the world, and the devil. But to be in combat with them is not necessarily to lose the battle. Jesus said that He overcame the world, and we can too. Jesus overcame His flesh, and we can too. Jesus overcame the devil’s temptations, and we can too.
“For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ” (Rom. 5:17).
We must be serious and deliberate about growing in practical sanctification personally, moving away from any alignments with the spirit of this world. Also, we must be intentional about aligning with God’s word about the way we do “church.”
The characteristics of the glorious church that Paul speaks about are nothing more than what we’ve been equipped for and instructed to walk in already. Paul only says that God is going to bring it about in the end so that we are a bride worthy of our Groom. That is what we should endeavor to become even now!
Glory Through Israel Here
Who among us has not painfully waited for this very hour when He will finally introduce His “short work in righteousness” in the Church, even as He promised to do for Israel (Rom. 9:27-28).
Isaiah also cries out concerning Israel:
“Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea,
The remnant will be saved.
For He will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness,
Because the LORD will make a short work upon the earth.”
All creation suffers under the burdensome weight of sin. It is when the righteous rule that the people rejoice. The Apostle Paul wrote that “the whole earth groans and travails,” longing to be set free from the effects of the curse of sin, which will come through the righteous reign of Jesus Christ Himself, together with His righteous ones at His right hand (Prov. 29:2; II Tim. 2:12; Rev. 2:26-27; 3:21; 20:4, 6).
Knowing that righteousness causes freedom to ring and even angels to sing, are we not inspired to live a wholly sanctified life? When those with God’s imputed righteousness begin to live truly sanctified lives together here, surely all creation will shout for joy! Oh, for a glorious church!
“… that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now” (Rom. 8:21-22).
Glorified Through the Gentiles Here
Paul also wrote that the Gentiles heard “the unfathomable riches of Christ” through the gospel preached, so that as they believed the gospel and walked in His righteousness, all creation would take notice, even the principalities and powers in the heavens, all while we’re still here (Eph. 3:8-10).
“… so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places” (Eph. 3:10).
Glory as the End-Time Bride
Paul taught that, before that glorious day, Jesus will prepare His people to experience and show forth His glory, sanctified by His Word and His Spirit. He is preparing His bride!
“… that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless” (Eph. 5:27).
The writer of the book of Ecclesiastes penned:
“To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven” (Eccles. 3:1).
I believe the Spirit of the Lord has just begun to usher in a new season, when the last progression of the New Covenant church will make us to become “glorious.”
Church Seasons Plagued by Peril
God’s people have journeyed long and hard from the early church of Pentecostal power.
Her lack of knowledge and elementary spiritual understanding, amid great spiritual warfare within and without, left her seeing only a taste of what God purposed to do with her. But He will finish what He started!
“… being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6).
How sad it was that, as a babe, before the body of Christ could even blossom into childhood, she was snatched from her cradle by opportunists circling like wolves, taking every advantage of her naivety, capitalizing on her doubts and fears.
By the sixth century, their plotting schemes had whisked her into a spiritual dark-age dungeon where men began to form Christianity into a religion, manipulating multitudes to this very day!
First, under the harsh taskmaster of Roman Catholicism, she suffered much, with hardly the slightest hope of spiritual light or power for one thousand years! More than one billion people still endure suffering there today, and don’t even realize it!
Yet inside and outside that institution, God has always had a people.
Historians tell us that the Roman Catholic religion martyred some fifty million dissenters who dared to pursue His glory outside those unholy walls! Their faith proved that God’s grace was still at work.
He was being glorified still!
Then, suddenly, after one thousand years of self-appointed religious overlords, and into the bursting glow of the Great Reformation, God’s people took a giant leap forward, shouting for joy!
The good news of the gospel spread far and wide fast! That anyone, rich or poor, high or low, could be saved by God’s grace alone, through faith in Christ alone, was triumphant news that could not be quenched!
First, thousands, then tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands, and then millions of souls saw the light of the good news of Jesus Christ for the first time! That awakening led to the reshaping of Europe and eventually to the birth of the West, where freedom still rings loud and clear today! Hallelujah!
But within that newly discovered gospel framework, new-fangled forms of Christianity established new religious boundaries. The Enemy had not stopped fighting. He would twist the good news again, albeit through the truth. The fight for truth and glory continued.
