MARC BRISEBOIS CPC - Pastoral Representative

Marc Brisebois speaks with a prophetic & apostolic voice to this generation and has a passion to teach believers to know how to hear the voice of God for themselves and grow into Christ-likeness. Marc plays a major role in the Leadership of Spruce Grove Community Church, where he is building a “common unity” among the people and leaders to see them walk out their gifting through foundational teaching & practical ministry. Watchman on the Wall ministries, which was founded by Marc Brisebois, has operated in Canada since 1989. It is a proven ministry and has, over the years, developed a righteous standard for the Body of Christ. Articles by Marc Brisebois have been published all over the world, including Rick Joyner 's MorningStar Journal. Marc has been involved with the prophetic for many years and in Canada. Marc is part of the National Prophetic Council. Marc and his ministry are known and connected to most of the major prophetic ministries in Canada including Patricia King, Wesley & Stacey Campbell, and David Demian . Marc lives with his wife, Wendy and their five children in Spruce Grove, AB. Canada where they are in integral part of the Leadership Team of Spruce Grove Community Church.

As the world enters lawless times the calling of the Church will become increasingly distinct and vital.  At the same time God will use these periods to distinguish between those expressions of Christianity who perform the will of their Master and those that have become superfluous and meaningless.  Not meaningless in the sense that they provide no perceived benefit to their surrounding community, but meaningless in that they have ceased to function as an agency of the Kingdom of God.  When the salt has lost its savour what good is it?  According to Jesus it is destined for the garbage heap.  There is coming a divine favour and influence for those Churches who rise to their true calling.  Those Churches that have elected to remain spiritually significant are now being encoded with an ability to sustain and protect entire communities and regions.  They will become in effect the true salt and light, not in theory or theology, but in reality.

Righteous Foundations

For decades the western hemisphere has enjoyed the overflow of righteous foundations.  These foundations have provided for a period of relative tranquility.  Despite objections to the contrary, we have lived in a comparatively law abiding society.  However the effect of righteousness recedes when it is not infused and renewed with the life found in fresh revelation.  Old foundations, no matter how well constructed, will eventually decay.  With it will come the emergence of a fresh face of evil that will astound an unassuming public.  This is inevitable unless there is a relevant and effective expression of God in the local community.  In these times the maturity and disposition of the Church will be tested and tried.  If we really are the salt and light we are meant to be, the day will declare it.

The role of the Church as salt and light is not largely understood in these days.  It is perhaps better expressed in this Old Testament passage:

“Those from among you shall build the old waste places: you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; and you shall be called, The repairer of the Breach, The restorer of streets to dwell in”Isaiah 58:11-13.”

We, the Church, are called to do the following things: To build the old waste places, raise the old foundations, repair the breaches and restore streets to dwell in.  Like many of you reading this I grew up in communities where these things were somewhat present.  Our streets were safe and breaches in societal norms were uncommon.  That is, we lived in places where we were unafraid to let our children play outside and we could take a family stroll without concern for our wellbeing.  The streets are suitable and in some ways an extension of our homes; suitable to dwell in.

This atmosphere of safety exists when there is an adequate sense of common morality and widespread appreciation for each others pursuit of justice.  The net effect is a peaceful society where men and women prosper socially and economically.  When you are raised in such an atmosphere it is easy to forget how this came about.  In fact you might begin to believe that it was always there ­­- a product perhaps of a superior people.

This is exactly the kind of presumption we must avoid but it has been present and is increasing.  Over time we have come to believe this atmosphere of serenity to be the norm and furthermore that we and it are the same.  When we see news stories of genocide from across the globe we make ourselves believe it is because they are barbarians and we are not.  We err by imagining our relative calm to be the natural outworking of our pleasant dispositions and the default position of common sense and reasonable upbringing.  Such reasoning is profoundly faulty.  The truth is we inherited a spiritual blessing we did not work to obtain. 

We were born in a time when attitudes of civility and a commitment toward the common good were widely embraced.  Because we have known little else we assumed these traits are native to who we were as human beings.  But they are not!  Man’s default position is to place himself above everyone else no matter what the cost to others.  Three-quarters of the world’s population understand this fact and have grown up under the warlords and totalitarian dictators who daily impress this reality upon them. They have witnessed the devastating power of man’s relentless selfish pursuits.  The supposed norm of widespread public courtesy is acquired at great cost by visionary spiritual leaders.

Where does it begin?

What the Western Hemisphere has forgotten is that the blessing of a stable society and prosperity was made possible by invisible commodities foreign to man.  Righteous foundations were developed over generations by a people who were committed to memorizing, studying and living the Word of God.  It is not our stable political system that is responsible for our wellbeing, but our wellbeing that is responsible for our stable political system - where our wellbeing goes so does our political system.  Add to that our social and economics networks.  And in case you have not noticed, every single one of these has taken some major hits in the past few years.

The question we should be asking is where did the wellbeing come from?  Since we talk so much about dysfunctional families these days we should perhaps wonder when we abandoned the functional ones.  What is the reason men cannot stay loyal to their wives and vice versa?  Have the sexes become so radically different in the last 70 years.  I think not, but our wellbeing is evaporating as is our ability to withstand emotional strain, insult or even the mildest of rejection.  It used to be men could disagree without a great deal of consequence.  Now, fragile ego’s backed by knives and guns blaze into aggression without the slightest provocation.  It is weakness making a show of strength. 

The volatility we see in the streets a direct of a diminishing foundation of self-worth, which incidentally does not come from rehearsing mantra’s designed to elevate oneself.  A loser is not made a winner by the sound of his own voice.  Such miracles emerge only when one has heard the sound of an eternal voice.

Surely it should be becoming clear that previous generations possessed a moral strength of character that is diminishing.  It is not that those generations were without problems and weaknesses.  But where does the strength come from to endure years of war and the great depression?  You would think these circumstances might put pressure on families and that people would be tempted to cut and run.  Some did but the majority had the strength to stick it out.  Where does it come from?  Where can a generation get that kind of ability once again?

The fact is this kind of stability and emotional strength can only from God.  Previous generations have lived their lives seeking more of Him and this has been the outcome - millions of people acknowledging the truth down through the years, while doing their best to embrace, among other things, the Golden Rule of Scripture.  They built their lives around the solid rock of truth and, by extension, they became strong themselves.  Furthermore, the truth was so collectively embraced that it made its way into the fabric of community.  This is where and how righteous foundations are established.

Once a nation has righteous foundations it causes a passive awareness of what is ‘just and right’ to fill the very air.  People are then disposed and to a degree compelled to consider their fellow man.  There is a prevailing atmosphere over the sin impulse in man that restrains his selfish ambition.  When this atmosphere evaporates so does the stability it created.  The diminishing of this restraint is both a warning and an inevitable fruit of self-righteousness.

Modern Erosion

In the days that approach a clear demarcation will surface between Life and Death.  Today, we live in the wake of the righteousness of our forefathers, but the effect of their prayer and devotion will not endure forever.  Western society, with its stability and prosperity, exists because of ‘inertia of righteousness’ largely left over from previous generations.  Those cities and regions that do not renew the foundations or mend the breaches will see that ‘streets to dwell in’ are indeed illusive and rare.

When a society ceases to recognize the ‘source of good’, the effect of the good begins to recede.  This is not evil but a work of the mercy of God.  It is His goodness that we are not indefinitely left to the whims of our delusions.  He protects His glory and gives us wisdom by revealing that He alone is the source of Life and that everything not sustained by that Life decays.  And so by allowing righteous foundations to erode He clarifies what is born of man and what is born of God.  He demonstrates the foolishness of abandoning faith and the knowledge of God.  The pattern of this kind of erosion is cited in Romans 1:28 when Paul wrote “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting.” 

To best understand the meaning of this passage we have to look outside of our society.  Recently during a trip to Europe I witnessed a foretaste of this kind of erosion.  It came while we were in Brussels Belgium travelling with a wonderful African pastor from Holland.  We were gridlocked in traffic for many hours when in frustration he made a bold statement.  “This place is becoming too much like Africa, I hate it!”  The reason for his outbreak was the mayhem we witnessed on the street.  This city was not like one would expect in Europe but had begun to look like what he remembered from his youth.  Instead of order and a general acknowledgement of typical traffic laws, it was a quagmire of confusion.  It was ‘traffic anarchy’ where every man did what was right in his owns eyes.

All of the classic rules of the road were almost entirely ignored.  There was no sense of right of way, lanes or respect for order of any kind.  Rather, the most aggressive went first.  On one occasion as we travelled down a one lane street, an oncoming driver stopped, turned off his car and entered a local establishment.  He did not park or give any thought to the 8 to 10 vehicles behind him that suddenly had no way of getting by.  This kind of inconsiderate act is practically beyond comprehension.  Yet, somehow he was blind to any convention or propriety that would have him consider any need but his own. He either could care less about the convenience of other drivers or had become entirely blind to the world outside his own. 

Such is the reality of lawlessness when righteous foundations disappear.  It is then that we begin to realize that respect for the common good is not a natural default position of the human heart.  Presumption in the western world has led us to believe that we are morally superior.  Westerners, who benefit from an invisible spiritual heritage, assume attitudes responsible for order in society are inherent to our nature.  This is a pride God intends to take down.  The fact is we are on the precipice of a moral meltdown and this is our future if we cannot rebuild the ancient ruins.  These scenarios are literally a microcosm of what comes to a nation void of righteous foundations.  Bold brute force becomes the order of the day.

As it stands many who read this might already be saying it is already present.  They are right!  In certain neighbourhoods and districts in our modern North American cities the rule of law is giving way to a different kind of order built on fear, intimidation and raw brutality.  There is no respect for fair play or rational thought because the people who aim to govern have no righteous foundations in their lives.  This is the reason that Western Democracy cannot effectively prosper in certain parts of the earth.  Western democracy can only prevail where foundations exist.  A threshold of respect for the common good cannot be created by government, however when it is present, healthy democracy can survive.

The Call

Many of us have failed to realize the long-term effect that a Judeo Christian Heritage has on a people.  There is a mystical invisible hand working in nations whose God is truly the Lord.  It withholds the true nature of man by ruling over his base desires.  The days ahead will testify to this fact.  On the other hand, where Apostolic Centers of influence arise we will see the effect of righteousness on the people and the construct of society.  We are entering a time when the government of God will prevail in regions where the Church is actually being salt and light.  God will make a distinction between what is actually born of Him and what resembles something He made.  The first endures while the later comes to nothing.

It is to the glory of God that the strength of men fails.  The ends times are not about evil flourishing in the earth.  Rather, the Lord God intends to make a distinction between good and evil.  He will erase the confusion that currently exists between who is really responsible for the good that we see.  He is jealous to obtain the glory and the honour.  And so there is coming a shifting of influence toward righteousness.  As the heavens look on, they will be utterly astounded by the wisdom of God.  Where righteous foundations are being actively built and maintained we will see the blessing, but where man is left to his own devices, confusion and disorder will follow.  “Those from among you shall build the old waste places: you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; and you shall be called, The repairer of the Breach, The restorer of streets to dwell in”Isaiah 58:11-13.”