Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

I would like to share with you a powerful prophetic Word the Lord delivered to us here at Upper Room Christian World Center on the eve of the beginning of the New Year, 2011. This word was brought by Marilyn Scaduto, dean of Upper Room Bible Training Institute and a prophetess to the body of Christ. Sister Scaduto has been wonderfully used of the Lord to edify the body on many prior occasions, and has a burden for the continuing maturation and well being of the saints here at Upper Room. May the Lord powerfully bless and use you in this coming new year.

Bishop Anthony D’Onofrio

This is what the Lord is saying to this house: “2011 is the year of Heaven!”

Every thing that is against you, I will give you something else instead! A counter-act that’s for you! You will live in the ‘now’ side of time, rather than the side of time that says, ‘not yet---but it’s coming’.

I will awaken the utterance of prophetic creativity. In 2011, you will advance in creating the future, rather than waiting for the future! Every problem has a promise, every hardship has a blessing, and every curse has a prophetic antidote. I am calling this house to the front of the line to release a spirit of supernatural recovery. This is who you are! This is your destiny!

You will regain lost ground of 2010 and destroy enemy units. I am opposed, not only to what is against you, but to what is against anybody you meet, so you will turn their curse into a blessing, you will turn their pain into a healing. Your history is going to be adjusted from this point on, and your journey is going to be radically altered from this point on, and the name of this house shall be called, ‘blesser of nations!”

A new sense of belonging and connection for the stranger will be the order of 2011. I am now erasing the enemy’s discriminations against you---to chase you away from me. For you will find your place that was lost. Every power gunning for your fall shall fall flat and every disgrace assigned against you shall be disgraced---for the Lord will arise and let your story change! Every stronghold in your life, you will pull them down, and every witchcraft agenda shall die! The Spirit of the Lord says, “My church shall become pure terror and dread to the enemy.”

All those in your family line---no one is safe from this blessing! All those away from Me, all those who are not walking with me, all those who are causing you trouble and heartache: Ask Me for them! This is an outrageous season, and I’m going to teach you how to be outrageous.

I will withhold nothing that’s good from you. I will give it all to you. You can make a list---even for the people who are away from the Lord. You can stand in their place: even despite their rebellion, even despite their living where satan resides. Even their inflexible extreme positions do not scare Me, for this is a season of miracle after miracle after miracle---and every family is going to have this testimony.

For you will be a people that are not persuaded by the negative reports or facts of the satanic kingdom, but be ones moving forward by faith in My Word. Out of the dark tunnel and birth pangs of last year’s events, you will be my people, pushing forward, arising and shining---because I am your God. This coming year you will see me move greatly on your behalf! My Spirit is phasing out the old year, and blowing out the propagation and schemes of the enemy to deceive you from going in and living in the land of promise!

So many were derailed and un-rested by the ‘pictures’ and ‘falsehoods’ painted against Me---but I will demonstrate that I am God---far above and able to do all things! This is the new perspective: that we can do it because we see God as being a great God!

2011 is the year of Heaven!

2010 has been a year of listening to My voice and hearing Me speak. 2011 will be a wonderful year of harvest for the faith and patience of those who endured and held to my Word! But for the commitments we fell short on? A ‘committed God’ will give us a crop failure on the old field of thorns and thistles and give us a new start to sow once again! Instead of regret, Jesus will grace us with forgiveness and trade up beauty for ashes!

It’s gong to be the best of times for My people, for I will never repeat Myself. So let go of the shoreline, lengthen your tent pegs, push out from your controlled comfort seat---you are about to embark on the freshest year in God yet!

For Pastor Regan:

I called and formed you before you were known and I made you a risk taker! Even one that breaks ‘iron-bars of limitations’ that are known by many of My people! Each time you step out, I will cause a greater success than you knew before, and each step, you will step up to your new found potential!

Your successes will not look like what you imagined or what others have defined you to be---but you are an innovator that will introduce to this generation something new! Where others say, “You can’t do that. That doesn’t work. That doesn’t mix,” you will bust conventional ways and My Spirit will move through you to bring a great movement.

I will move you from place to place and you will begin your preparations and also discover by movement the true call that is on you. Finances will be released from this first step onward!

His life is coursing through the veins of His Church as she leaves the launching pad of 2010! This is the year of the church’s rising. This is the year of your rising. My plan for 2011 is being catapulted in motion with---a breakthrough anointing! And the purposes and mission of this house will hit her target….

I will cause a new focus to come, and with it, new words will come, and new insights and strategies. I will not fail you: the day of My get ready power will bring a sense of felt movement (the felt shift), and a move beyond the ‘stuck’ place, with fresh insights and action steps. My Church will step out of mediocrity and into the fullness of her calling and be brought back to her proper form!

The apostolic mantle of this house will gather the army and pull down the strongholds of the enemy. There are apostolic purposes that are now reaching a stabilized and readiness point! Mandates will be released in 2011! So get ready for a new thrust that will expel and accelerate these purposes! They will launch with great force, and they will not fail because of the opposing forces on the launch---but the mission of this house will hit its target!

And finally, the Spirit kept assuring me that the anointing, the deposits from lives, through their faithful sacrifices sown, have opened the eternal kingdom treasures, and they will only increase. What you did in covenant shall yield its harvest! The anointing of the sacrifices made is pulling out of heaven all earthly provisions. We’ll see the water level rising, and each month, we’ll put a new watermark on the building, a new watermark in our lives. We will have a new hallmark of anointing and power in this place. We’ll have a hallmark of heaven upon us.

2011 is the year of Heaven!

And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory. (I Tim 3:16, emphasis added)

Walk down the cobblestone streets of Bethlehem until you reach a starlit stable. Walk through its doors, and you will come face to face with the miracle of Christmas. You will find a virgin mother holding in her arms a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes. He is 100 percent God and 100 percent man. Though just a child, He is destined to die on a mission of mercy, and to reconcile a sin sick and perishing world to its Creator.

It was this little babe who stood on nothing and said, “Let there be light. (Gen 1:3)” It was this little babe who knelt down in the garden, took a handful of dirt, breathed the breath of life into it, and man became a living soul (Gen 2:7). It was this little babe who set a rainbow in the heavens and made a covenant with faithful Noah (Gen 9:13). It was this little babe who promised Abraham, “In thee shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. (Gen 28:14)” And it was this little babe who with a strong hand subdued Pharaoh and led the nation of Israel out of Egypt and into the promised land (Deut 4:37).

This is one of the most exciting truths in the Word of God, the mystery of the incarnation of the Christ. It is the genius of the Godhead. It is what scripture says many prophets and kings desired to see, but did not (Luke 10:24). It is the hidden wisdom of God wrapped up in a mystery, which none of the princes of this world knew, that God ordained before the world unto our glory (I Cor 2:7-8). It is the power of God and the wisdom of God (I Cor 1:24).

The word incarnation literally means embodiment (PERSON-ification) in flesh. It is the material MAN-ifestation of an entity or force whose original nature is immaterial. Christ required a body to manifest, and God chose human flesh for Him to be manifested in. As we read in Hebrews, “Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: (Heb 10:5, emphasis added)”

This truth is one of the most securely established and attested to of all truths in scripture. In fact, the bible goes so far as to identify any spirit that does not confess this particular truth as the spirit of the antichrist! We read in I John,

And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. (I John 4:3)

The man Christ Jesus was and is the full and complete expression of the Godhead in bodily form. As one modern translation reads, “For the full content of divine nature lives in Christ, in his humanity… (Col 2:9, Today’s English Version)” He was and is the last, most comprehensive, most articulate, and most perfect revelation of the Godhead to planet earth. There is no part of the Godhead that was not fully disclosed in Christ. Asked by Philip for a vision of the Father, Jesus replies, “…he that hath seen me hath seen the Father… (John 14:9)”

Great, great, great indeed is the mystery of godliness! The invisible God who could not be seen, the God who could only show Moses His hinder parts, the God who warned the Israelites not break through to gaze upon Him, lest they perish, the God who was enclosed within a tent and enshrouded behind a thick veil, is now out in the open for all to see! Fully revealed and fully exposed! Mystery of mysteries! Wonder of wonders! Glory of glories!

And here’s the best part---you and I have been made a part of this mystery! By the miracle of the new birth, He has taken up residence inside each one of us. This is why scripture calls Jesus the firstborn of many brethren (Rom 8:29). Yes, He is the fullness of the Godhead bodily, but He is also the Christ in us, the hope of glory (Col 1:27)! In light of this marvelous truth, the Church can be called the ongoing incarnation of Christ.

It was always God’s prophetic intention that man would carry the fullness of God to this earthly realm of the five senses. More fundamental than the fact that God created man for dominion is the fact that God created man with housing ability: the ability for a spirit to inhabit his life. The drawback is that Satan has temporarily thwarted God’s intention for man’s housing ability by possessing that space for his own insidious expression in the earth. Satan is a squatter on God’s property. He is trespassing.

Through the process of redemption, God solves this problem and again engages man in a whole new dynamic level of intimacy, and man’s potential for divine habitation is realized. God desires to dwell in man and make His home in the heart of man. This is a new thing, never seen before. As scripture says, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. (I Cor 2:9)” Now that man has been redeemed, and God’s intended purpose is a distinct possibility, man is invited to press into the realm that the incarnate Christ walked in, the Spirit without measure (John 3:34).

There is a manifestation of the revelation of God shining forth from those that rend their flesh and acknowledge this truth. This is why we read in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians,

For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. (II Cor 4:11)

I believe the time for a manifestation in flesh of the fullness of the Godhead bodily in a corporate body is now. The Church of the Second Day never had what is now available and accessible to the Third Day Church. The passionate prayer of Paul recorded in Ephesians 3:19, that we might be filled with all the fullness of God, is now becoming a tangible manifestation in our day. Paul was the signpost of the third day believer.

This corporate manifestation is vital, because when we speak forth His name as children of God, we call forth and summon all the fullness of the Godhead bodily to exert and bring to bear the full force of His power upon any specific situation we encounter. In this sense, calling upon the name of the Lord is like pulling the trigger of a loaded gun. The gun is loaded, but it’s the trigger that releases what’s inside. Like Jesus, the fullness dwells in us bodily, but if we don’t pull the trigger of the name and make prophetic declarations, we are powerless, though we are  holding a loaded gun. It’s time to pull the trigger and use the name!

This truth spells doom for the devil. When we realize that we are the ongoing incarnation of Christ, it’s payback time! When we realize that God is still manifesting Himself through human flesh, we’ll drag the devil to the woodshed and knock the snot out of him. This truth marks the end of Satanic harassment in the Church. I hope you understand we’re on shouting territory now!

Jesus was the first and preeminent flesh and blood temple to house the glory of God. Now we have received the same calling. We read in John 20:21, “Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you.” Can we respond confidently, as Christ did, “Lo, I come, in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God… (Psa 40:7-8)?” Who will press toward the high calling of Christ? Who will passionately endeavor to be an ongoing incarnation of the glory of God in fullness and without measure?

I pray that the Lord may bless and enlighten each of us this Christmas season, and that He may cause us to press ever deeper into the high calling He has called us to. God bless all of you!

It happened during a time of earnest prayer. I had just returned home from Bible School and was seeking the Lord for direction. As the Spirit of God began to breathe His prayer through me, I found myself crying out over and over again, “Abba Father”. As this heavenly cry grew in intensity within me, I was led to open my bible to the book of Galatians for spiritual illumination. It was as if the scripture just burst out of the pages of the book as I read it:

“But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. (Gal 4:4-7)”

What love and assurance filled my soul! What confidence was born in me as I realized my true identity with the Father! It was as if God had poured out a warm anointing oil on the top of my head that ran down to the soles of my feet. I was a son of God and this divine fact would be eternally emblazoned on my heart. This moment of divine revelation would be the turning point in my life and ministry. It was then that I entered into a deeper relationship with Christ and a greater dimension of power and effectiveness.

It was literally this revelation, made real to my heart, that thrust me into a new dynamic of ministry. My capacity for compassion seemed to take on greater proportions. I felt the throbbing burden for the lost in a dimension I hadn't known before. The gifts of the Spirit began pouring out of my life to meet the need of the broken and afflicted. As I realized my sonship position with the Father, insecurity and intimidation seemed to disappear instantly. God ordained me to something new and wonderful in Him. I left that prayer closet declaring, “I am God's son, God is my Father, and all of heaven's resource is available to me!”

Ephesians says we are to grow up into Him, our Head in all things. Like Sarah, the barren church will bring forth a promised child. Christianity is progressive in nature. We should be continually in the process of growth and development. According to Acts 1:8, the believer is in a process of becoming. Jesus Himself, according to Luke 2:40, 52 and Heb 5:8-9, grew in spiritual stature until He became strong in spirit.

We began to advance on the pathway to sonship when we received the baptism in the Holy Ghost. When you received your baptism, you actually received the Spirit of His Son. Scripture confirms this by declaring, “And because ye are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. (Gal 4:6-7)”

Our development is spiritual in nature and deals directly with our baptism in the Spirit. Paul understood that God was bringing the Church into full stature in Christ as sons. This potential of sonship is contained in the baptism of the Spirit.

Paul the apostle had a burning passion for the Church that was often revealed in his prayer life. Listen to the words of Paul, “My little children of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you.... (Gal.4:19)” The great intercession of the Apostle Paul was for the Church to realize its sonship position. Once the vision is made clear to us by the Spirit's revelation, this will also be the intercession of our day.

This apostolic intercession of sonship was then and should be today the Spirit's cry deep within the heart of the Church. Remember that the Spirit is a travailing Spirit¾and God is looking for men and women who will surrender their hearts to His indwelling intercessor. This sonship travail of the Spirit that was in the heart of Paul must continue in us until the full stature of Christ is reached by the people of God. As we read in the book of Romans, “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. (Rom 8:22)” A symphony of travail is now going up to the throne of God in anticipation of the manifestation of the sons of God.

In the epistle to the Ephesians, Paul gives us the fullest unfolding of God's promise of sonship to the Church, ”Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ: (Eph.4:13)”

The Church has a destination to reach. This age will not be completed until we cross the finish line and arrive at the goal of God's eternal purpose. Sonship is our manifest destiny in Christ and our highest attainment as believers. The dramatic truth to be understood is that this can only be fulfilled in a corporate sense (until we all come). No one can achieve this goal and objective alone or apart from the Church. We must reach our destination together as we are vitally united to our Head, Jesus Christ.

The Holy Spirit is impressing these truth upon the mind of the Church. The miracle of Christianity is that Jesus gave Himself to the believer, that He comes to anoint the believer’s spirit from heaven, that He comes to take possession of the believer’s heart and life, to live in him, move in him, act in him, speak in him, pray in him, and all the other activities of the Christian soul. Jesus took up residence within us. This resident reality of the inner life of Christ empowers us to live in sonship in this life. Sonship implies dominion and power over the enemy. The same divine authority that was vested in Jesus is vested in every believer's soul by Jesus. This is our right of sonship before the Father.

The marvel of true Christianity is found in the fact that a believing yet mortal human being is given the right and privilege to become a son of God with power and move into a new sonship status in his life just as Jesus did. Through the redemptive work of Christ, he is actually given the ability of God to do the works of Jesus and duplicate His ministry on the earth. The call of the Spirit is to tap into this divine potential of sonship and duplicate the lifestyle and ministry of Christ in the earth. The call of the Spirit is the call to sonship living.

With our new sonship status comes certain inalienable rights and privileges: answered prayer, for one. Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8). He came healing all that were oppressed of the devil (Acts 10:38). He did not use carnal weapons in destroying the works of the devil. He used a spiritual weapon. We are to duplicate His ministry in the earth, to carry on where Jesus left off, to minister in His stead. The many-membered body of Christ ought to be a carbon copy of Jesus in His three and one half years of ministry on the earth.

The ultimate and final purpose of Christ as Savior, Healer, Baptizer, and Lord is that every Christian shall be a reproduction of His own nature and likeness. The indwelling Christ is so daily revolutionizing our nature as to make us like Him in every facet of our lives. What is Jesus doing today? He is duplicating Himself. As we read in the book of Ephesians:

And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ: (Eph 4:11-13)

It is the mission of the Son of God to transform the soul of every believer into the likeness and character of Himself, and then present mankind to the Father Holy and acceptable in His sight (Col 1:22). The transforming grace of God within us is duplicating His nature, character, ability, compassion and attributes. We can joyfully exclaim, with John, “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: (I John 3:1)” Let us not fail to continually thank God for this great miracle of grace He has given us!

We stubbornly go on with business as usual in our churches while the contradiction between what should be and what is stares us in the face. Like the proverbial ostrich who buries his head in the sand, many pretend all is well and refuse to admit this problem really exists. Yet the price of our spiritual ignorance is mounting and is becoming far too great to be tolerated any longer.

Thank God, there is a remedy. We can get back on course, but to do so, the Body of Christ must apprehend a clear vision of God's intention for the Church. Unless we get back ‘in the know,’ we will never get back ‘into the flow’ of divine reality. A revelation of God's purpose directly from the Holy Spirit is required.

Isaiah the prophet underscores the magnitude of the challenge we face when he writes,  “For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what He hath prepared for him that waiteth for Him. (Isa 64:4 )” God has predestined a glorious future for mankind, but, according to this verse, a prevailing blindness afflicts him. From the very beginning of time, men have been simply unable to perceive God’s purposes.

The Church of Jesus Christ is not exempt from this condition. We, too, must contend with an inability to hear, see, and perceive the plans and purposes of God in the flesh. But Paul the apostle sounds a clarion call of hope when he declares, “But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. (1 Cor 2:10, emphasis added)” In a divine intervention of love, God assists His people and opens their understanding to see into His wonderful purposes and intentions for them.

Nowhere in the bible is that purpose more dramatically pronounced than in the book of Hebrews, where it is written; “For it became Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory... (Heb 2:10)” Our Christianity will invariably take on new meaning and rekindle a new excitement as the Father reveals His purpose in bringing many sons unto the glory of the first begotten Son. God's desire for a vast family of matured sons has always been the hidden mystery of His eternal purpose for mankind.

Nothing can be more exciting than to understand that at the moment of New Birth, we were supernaturally placed and positioned as His sons. At that miracle moment of regeneration, a divinely-imparted ability was implanted in our spirits to become fully matured sons of God. This is plainly set forth in the gospel of John, which declares, “But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name: (John 1:12)”

Here we discover the central theme of the New Testament and the objective of all God's redemptive action toward mankind: Power to become a son of God! This is a staggering but irrefutable fact out of the sacred pages of the word of God.

But what does it mean? We cannot afford to be obscure on this point. Simply stated, we, as believers, have actually inherited a glorious potential for a new and dynamic personality; a personality that is divine in nature and supernatural in origin.

Consider the fact that on a natural plane, personality is determined by a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Environment interacts with heredity and personality is born. Even so, in Christ, we as believers have inherited genetic and environmental conditions through the New Birth. We inherited the genes of our Father God (all things reproduce after their kind, Gen 1:11), and the environment of the Holy Ghost. As new creation men and women, God the Father passes on to us His Spiritual traits and divine identity. By this miracle of new birth, we are literally adopted into God's family and become His sons in the earth.

To clarify this most fundamental aspect of God's purpose to the Church, the Holy Spirit gave us the spiritual term ‘sonship’. Remember, the Holy Spirit's ministry is to reveal truth and show us “…the things that are freely given to us of God. (1 Cor 2:12)” So from time to time, the Holy Spirit will give us inspired terminology to encapsulate the  revelation of a present truth He purposes to unfold to his people.

That having been said, we would also be well served by a word of caution here: While it is true that God is calling His people into sonship status, we must be careful not to think that God is offering us His deity. God is not now deifying, nor will He ever deify man. This will never be His Purpose, through all the millennia of time and eternity. He alone is God, and I refute any erroneous theological position that suggests we are “little gods.”

Let us consider this important message of sonship by asking the question the psalmist David asked many years ago, “What is man that thou art mindful of Him? or the son of man that thou visitest him? (Psa 8:4)”

What is man indeed? He is simply the raw material that Father makes sons out of. If you have surrendered your life to Him, then you are a son of God in the making. As the first epistle of John declares, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is. (1 John 3:2)” You have a built in potential to be an exact duplicate of God's first and pattern Son, Jesus Christ.

If moving into sonship status is clearly God’s desire for all that call upon the name of the Lord, then reaching full potential as sons of God should be the primary goal of every believer. Paul considered the realization of this potential in his personal life as a prize to strive after and press into. He revealed this in his epistle to the Philippians, where he wrote, “I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. (Phil 3:14, emphasis added)” What was the prize Paul was pressing toward, but sonship?

He knew purpose generates action, and so a godly purpose generates godly action. Realizing God wanted to maximize his potential (while the devil wanted to minimize it), Paul surrendered every carnal pursuit and embraced God's grand purpose for his life.

Let us be followers of Paul, even as he was a follower of Christ (I Cor 11:1).  As the Lord opens our eyes to clearly see this glorious destiny He has planned for us, let us quickly renounce every other competing carnal pursuit in our lives and press for the mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus!