A Word from the Lord

We operate out of a desire to please others and give them what they want, not from a place that seeks the glory of God and serves only Him.  We pray from the soulish realm of ‘Walt Disney’ faith, where everything has a happy ending, and Christ is our Prince Charming not Lord and Savior.

Faith operates out of a place of extremity ~ when we reach the end of ourselves ~ then and only then will God come into our situation.  When there is no where else to turn, and no where else to go, then and only then, if people will turn unto Him, He will come in, but not until.

Jesus turns no one away.  But those who have built their houses upon sand, upon the earth, upon the soulish affinity with the things of this world and its ways are about to find out how great the ruin of those sandcastles they have built will be, for the flood is coming even now.

The world will be deceived by great and wonderful signs and wonders, but none will be unto the glory of God.  They will be the product of ‘positive thinking’, mind over matter focus and concentration that merely manipulates the probabilities of quantum physics.

Many of the people of God will be ensnared to the eternal peril of their soul, for this will lead them unto the unforgiveable sin, the ultimate blashphemy against the Holy Spirit, for they will believe a lie and attribute it to God, and reject the true ministry of the Holy Spirit.  The people of God will essentially do to the Holy Spirit what Israel did to Christ, and they will be without mercy, except they repent, for they have been given much, and not one thing lacked from their salvation other than their own desire for the truth.

Those whom God has prepared unto this hour are to stand fast in the Lord and in the power of His might.  They are to do nothing except it come from God Himself, for until the people come to the end of themselves, there can be no remedy, for it is the time of judgment upon the Gentile gods.

Judgment is coming upon Babylon; great and grievous darkness is about to enfold the world and it will come in the form of flatteries and persuasions unto peace, peace, when there is no peace with God.  The days of great tribulation are at hand.

The Lukewarm Church is about to go into the captivity that it has prepared for itself ~ the seven spirits even worse, for they have left the house empty of holiness and truth, have chosen to cleave to the vanities of this world and its ways rather than receive the truth that alone is able to save their souls.  They are about to reap the judgment due to the those who have been stones of stumbling, except they repent.  This is the purpose of this judgment.

Only those willing to receive the truth and acknowledge their errors will come out of this bed of death.  The message before us all is Repent, for the Day of the Lord is at hand; the day of vengeance upon all those who choose the lie over the truth and will not have Him to rule and reign over them.

More God? Then Less World!

The Church is crying out, ‘More God, more God, more God!’ and has not yet realized that it has been given as much of God as it is going to get. The real issue before the Church is not ‘More God’, but ‘less world!’. Strip away the world and it’s ways, and then you will find the ‘more God’ you are looking for.

You have been given your seed of faith, which is the indwelling life of Christ. It is up to you to nourish and grow it through the means and avenues that God has given – reading of the Word, obedience to do it, partaking of communion, judging yourself in the light of the Scriptures ~ better yet, asking the Lord to do it, for who can know their secret sins?

If you would know and experience a fuller sense of God in your life, and at work in your life, then follow the avenues which He has ordained and appointed for that life to be fed and nurtured in you. He must increase, which means that YOU must decrease! If you do not sense much of God, then it is because there is too much of you in the way.

Rather than running from pillar to post chasing manifestation after manifestation of ‘holy’ outpourings, rather than seeking touch after touch from God, soaking in the Spirit or doing ‘carpet time’, walk the walk of the cross. Mortify that self-life in you through the power of the Holy Spirit, and you will find that which you are looking for.

God dwells within those who have received His Christ. Nurture the life of Christ within, not with the junk food of this world, but with the living truths of Scripture. Start shutting out and shutting down the world and it’s ways in you. God gives His grace to the humble, and makes Himself known to those who will. Let these truths be your guide, and govern yourself accordingly.

The Number of the Beast

Great discussion is going forward and has gone on concerning the number of the beast.  With economic times as they are, and that on a global scale, the time has come to confront the issue and see it for what it really is.

Revelation 13:17 says:

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast:  for it is the number of a man, and his number is six hundred threescore and six (or 666).

The key words of this scripture are the number of a man.  Most people have understood this and have tried to determine through all manner of means whose name could add up to 666 or represent 666 in some way.  We need to look at this another way, in the light of the full counsel of Scripture.

Anyone who has read concerning The Gap Theory understands that this present earth is the remains of the first earth that suffered a cataclysmic judgment of God, wherein all light and life was extinguished.  It takes place between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2.

Carbon is formed through the inefficient or incomplete combustion of something burnable.  In essence, the source of the fire goes out and it continues to smolder, creating carbon.  This would very accurately picture what happened to this earth during the first judgment of God.

In Genesis 2:7 we are told that Adam was made from the dust of the ground.  That ground was the ground of the first creation that endured the judgment of God wherein life and light was extinguished, creating carbon.  Biology has declared that man is a carbon based lifeform.  His metabolic cycle is based on something called the carbon cycle.  We date the artifacts of our history through some process called carbon dating.  Carbon is an essential component of what man is.

We are told that the number of the beast is the number of a man and that number is 666.  Here is the number of the beast.  The atomic weight of carbon, the primary component of which man is made of is 6.  That translates to:

The number of the beast is fallen man, a man wherein the light of life has not been rekindled in Jesus Christ.  Before all Christendom sighs a huge sigh of relief, there is more.

There have been many arguments concerning the King James Bible as the bible of choice.  I for one believe that any bible that has suffered as many persecutions as did the Christ it reveals is used of God and is God’s choice.  Be that as it may, Strong’s concordance is based upon the KJV bible and there is an amazing fact here which I refuse to accept as mere coincidence.

The number that Strongs has assigned to the Hebrew word translated as righteousness is:

Man without the gift of righteousness abides as the number of the beast.  Man with the gift of righteousness is the man that is safe.  Note here as a warning that we are speaking of the gift of righteousness.  The gift is not the same as being called righteous.  THAT is what your salvation is all about, and what it means when Peter says to make your calling and election sure.  That is what it means to have the day star arise in your heart.  That is what it means to have an abundance of grace AND the gift of righteousness spoken of in Romans 5:17.

Jeremiah 31:27 says:

Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man, and with the seed of beast.

The seed of beast will be those who call upon the name of Jesus, but not in truth.  These will be those who will fall away in times of persecution or pressure to the ways of this world and the seductions of the enemy, the ones who did not make it through the thorns and briers of the cares and issues of the world to become the fruitful ground of God.  These are those who will lead the great apostasy away from God, for they will be the ones who will pervert the grace of God unto all manner of lasciviousness, the ones spoken of in Jude, in 2 Timothy, in 2 Peter, and throughout the Scriptures.

The verse in Jeremiah of God sowing the seed of man and the seed of beast to the house of Israel and Judah is followed by the great promise of the new covenant that God will make with us, the covenant of which Jesus Christ is the surety for, in Jeremiah 31:33:

But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be My people.

Note that this promise, this new covenant that we hold to in Christ declares that He will write His laws in our heart and in our minds.  He does this through Christ Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit, the gift of righteousness.  The gift is not the same as the baptism.  The baptism is to bring forth the day star in your heart, according to John 14:23:

If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love Him and WE will come unto him, and make OUR abode with him.

That means that the ministry of the Holy Spirit is to bring us to the light of the laws and commandments of God that we might judge ourselves, repent and be cleansed of unrighteousness, that His righteousness might be fulfilled in us.

But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ.  Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ jesus my Lord; for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, THAT I MAY WIN CHRIST.

If Paul, the greatest of the apostles, the one whose letters comprise the greater bulk of the new testament, the one who helped establish the Church of Jesus Christ in this world understood that he had to WIN Christ, and that he might ATTAIN unto the resurrection from the dead, I think Christendom as a whole ought to radically reassess what it is preaching as salvation and the grace of God.

The stated ministry of the Holy Spirit according to Jesus Christ was to convince the world, that means the flesh, the carnal nature of your life, of sin, of righteousness and of judgment to come.

We have reduced the glory of the Holy Spirit to ’soaking’, falling out in the Spirit, signs, wonders and miracles, healing and prosperity, and in the process rebuking every effort He makes to bring us to the light of the truth, calling it the work of Satan.  Therein lies the great blasphemy and the unforgiveable sin against the Holy Spirit.

It is written that the beast will come in with many great signs and wonders.  All Christendom is held in a bondage of fear of calling any sign or wonder a work of Satan.  This is not what the blasphemy is all about.  Jesus did not judge anyone who would not receive a miracle from Him.  He didn’t go about offering them in the first place.  Those who sought Him found what the sought Him for.

The great blasphemy is to call the ministry of the Holy Spirit the work of Satan.  We do this every time we ‘rebuke’ the enemy who seeks to remind us of unconfessed sin, or wrongful judgments against others, for all of these things are transgressions against love along with a host of other sins we commit daily.

Church, there had better be a mighty shaking of the earth from the thud of saints falling to the ground on their knees with contrition for their unconfessed sins if you hope to preserve yourself through the coming tribulation that is even now upon us.

Those who will not repent will find their candlestick removed [Rev. 2:5].  Those who defile their garments stand in jeopardy of having their name blotted out of the Lambs book of life [Rev. 3:5].  Those who cling fast to their fears, and their idolatries, their lies and their adulteries will be refused access to the tree of life, and will abide on the other side of the gates of the holy city of God [Rev. 22:14-15]  These are only a few of the coming judgments upon a gainsaying and rebellious people who will not forsake their own ways but will paint them as the ways of God instead.  Humanism in the name of Jesus is not the grace of God nor the ministry of the Holy Spirit!

The grace of God was given to us for a purpose.  It was not to realize our own purposes in God, but God’s purposes in us.  The only thing that will avail with God is a new creature, and your baptism of the Holy Spirit will avail you nothing if you do not use the grace that you have been given to mortify the lusts, appetites and deeds of the flesh unto the end of becoming a new creation. [Romans 8:13-14].

Those who will not be chastised, those who rebuke the Holy Spirit as the enemy, those who turn to the ways of this world with its antidepressants, and escapisms will perish, for by these things they show themselves to be without chastisement, meaning they will not be rebuked, and these are not the sons of God [Heb. 12:6-8].

If Paul can warn us to not receive the grace of God in vain, then it is entirely possible to do so.  If Peter warns us to make our calling and election sure, then it is something that needs to done.  If you have the least doubt concerning your salvation, instead of spending all your time and effort trying to convince yourself of it, get before God and find out why you do not have the assurance of it.  You are saved by faith, not persuasion.

If you are being dragged around, find out why! If you are being attacked, find out why!  If you are not overcoming, find out why.

We are called to perfect holiness in the fear of the Lord.  If you have any agenda other than this, you’d better get before God while you still have time and opportunity, for as it is popularly spoken of in business offices:

It is difficult to keep your eyes on the objective of draining the swamp when you are up to your butt in alligators.

The days of tribulation are here, and it’s purpose is to purify and refine you.  If you will not be purified and refined, you will be burnt.  The process is the same for all.  You decide if you will become gold or merely burnt toast.

According To Thy Faith

The day will come to each and every one of you where you will have to decide whether you will continue to simply live your life in Christ, enjoying the promises and the fellowship of the saints and generally living life as a good Christian, or whether you will let Christ live His life in you and become Christ-like.

To become Christ-like is to step into the great purposes of God, and let Him bring them to pass through you.  Many are being taken away with this ‘purpose driven life’ approach to their faith.  Many are attempting to realize the purpose that God has for their life.

What is not understood is that the great purpose of your life is to become a vessel fit for God’s great purposes.  You will never see or know God’s great purposes until you are willing to let go of your own and therein lies the contradiction of flesh and Spirit.

If you bear a sense of destiny about you, a sense of knowing that there is a great purpose for your life in God, then also know that it will come at a price, for God will not share His glory with another.

That price is the willingness to go through the fires of His refining as He cleanses and purges you of everything that is not of Him.  It is a time of great affliction, for in order to strip you of all that is not of Him, He must bring you to see it and acknowledge it as such, for He will never forcibly remove them from you.

That battle is an intense one, for the only thing that Satan fears is the ones who step into the great purposes of God.  The rest he can pervert to serve his own purposes which are simply to have them fail of God’s and become stones of stumbling to those who would.

It is written in Zechariah 13:8-9:

And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the LORD, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein.  And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried:  they shall call on My name, and I will hear them:  I will say, It is My people: and they shall say, The LORD is My God.

Seek the Lord with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul and all your strength, that you might be accounted worthy to suffer for His name, and for the fulfilling of His great purposes in this creation, for great is the glory of those who overcome, as He overcame.

Witchcraft in the Name of Jesus

When we think of witchcraft, we tend to picture black clad people speaking spells over candles and other miscellaneous items, whether the intent be for good or for ill. God’s definition of witchcraft is not so colorful.

Anything that compels someone to do something against their will is witchcraft. Anything that exercises some form of manipulation and control to obtain an object or objective through another individual is witchcraft.  TGhjis is the essence of witchcraft.  It seeks to obtain its desires or objectives separate or apart from submitting itself to God’s will, wisdom and providence.

Standing in the place of playing divine providence in the life of another is just another form of witchcraft praying.  Let me give you an example.

I sat in on a prayer meeting at a small fellowship. One person asked the pastor to pray for an individual that had left this particular fellowship and the city to seek his prospects elsewhere. They told the pastor that they really felt that this person needed to come back. The pastor agreed and so they prayed that this person would come back to the city and that this person would come back to this particular fellowship where they belonged. This is witchcraft praying. There was absolutely no recognition or acknowledgement that God may have had a plan or a purpose for this individuals life that they knew nothing of.

Here is another example. I was at another fellowship that was involved in the G12 or Government of 12 program. Part of the program consisted of each member of the fellowship praying for three people in the community. This particular fellowship prayed individually for the people on their list every day as well as corporately  every Sunday. Their prayers consisted of taking authority over all devils that stood between them and the truth, praying against all their yokes and bonds such as drugs or alcohol and the like, and many more prayers of the same nature.

Most of the people being prayed for had no idea what was going on. It was also interesting to note that most of the bondages noted for the people being prayed for happened to be those of witchcraft. It was the result of the witchcraft praying of this fellowship.  This particular fellowship had been praying for this town in a similar fashion for a number of years such as the town itself gained a reputation for being a graveyard.

Understand that God is not the only one that answers prayer, nor is He the only one that can move you to pray. Most people are praying out their own wants, needs and desires for another persons life. These types of prayers can destroy a person’s walk with God.

Every area of unrighteousness in your life that is not confessed and repented of before God so that it can be cleansed by the blood of Christ is an area of your life that can be exploited by the enemy. This was the issue behind Jesus’ prayer for Simon Peter before he denied Christ three times.

Jesus prayer was not that Peter would be delivered from the temptation, but that his faith would hold, and once he was converted, that he would strengthen his brethren.  Jesus prayer inthe garden of Gethsemane was not that God would take His own out of the world, but that He would keep them from the evil.

We are all sifted by Satan, by God’s permission. I went through a year long siege of witchcraft praying that would have destroyed my life in I hadn’t fallen before the Lord in tears begging Him for someone to pray for me. He gave me a name to call, and when they started praying for me, I actually ‘saw’ this black oppressive spirit lift off of my mind and I was free. After it went the Lord showed me how it had gained access to my life, and when I repented and cleansed my ay before Him in the light of the truth that He had shown me, I was utterly delivered and have never had the problem since.

The times are here right now when the Church no longer knows how to pray. It is so filled with its own will and its own ways that even those things done in the name of the furtherance of the gospel have been reduced to nothing but witchcraft, and all that is witchcraft can be reduced to the issues of manipulation and control.

If your own prayers, even if they be for your own life are rooted in efforts to manipulate or control your own life or circumstances, you are also working witchcraft.  You do not need to make God’s promises or blessings materialize in your life.  When you walk in obedience to God and are willing, you will eat the good of the land.  Your prayers need to be unto the end that you can see the light, that you may have light to give and to speak before others.

There is going to be a time of great apostasy within the church. It will be when those who came into the church through the witchcraft prayers of others fall away, for they had no heart for righteousness or the truth in the first place. Those who participated in such wrongful praying will also fall away, for those who lead into captivity will also go into captivity. They built their own prison through their own self-willed prayers.

God does not force anyone to come to Him. He draws with cords of love. He draws a soul to want to come to Him. How He does it, only He knows, but He is able to make a rebellious enemy a devoted servant, and it isn’t through the witchcraft prayers of His children. One who comes to God according to His  drawing will be one who will endure the storms, tests and trials of their faith. One who comes to God through the witchcraft of another will never stand, for they have no heart or will of their own to stand.

The great influx of people that are coming into the Church at the present time and in the days to come will not be coming in due to any great desire or hunger for God or for righteousness or for truth. God will use these to punish, chastise and bring to destruction the Church that has persisted in walking in its own ways and after its own desires, using His gifts and graces for their own ends, desires and purposes.

Study the prayers of Paul the Apostle. He prayed for God’s mercy upon His people. He prayed that we would see the light. He prayed that we would be strengthened to receive the truths. He prayed for many things for the good of the Church, but no where is it recorded that he prayed for the unsaved.

Prayer will never, repeat, never replace the preaching of the Gospel. When the truth is restored to the Gospel, and faith restored to that which we preach, and the people overcome their fears and their doubts to preach, then the harvest will come in. But know this, it will not come in through prayer, for it was never purposed to come in through prayer, but to be strengthened and edified and upheld through prayer.

Get prayer back to the purpose for which it was given that the Church may stand strong. Let the Church cleanse its ways and rise up in the glory that was appointed and ordained for her, so that there is something that God can bring His harvest into.