The Negative Spiritual Power of Mixture Part One : Leaven

As the Holy Spirit guides us through life again, this time "seeing only God", we can be sure He is showing His Light on many of the things we were just taking for granted.

One of the things we didnt see
Living in the land of "just-me", of a supposed independent self,  us as entirely self-empowered beings, we were entirely caught up in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, that is , in a Land of opposites that we had to gingerly pick our way through.

How Great is that Darkness
Jesus said if the very light that we have been living by, turns out to actually have been Darkness all along, then how great, clever and manipulative this same Darkness has been. And this is ofcourse what we are beginning to say louder and louder. This whole process of picking our way between opposites as an activity is actually none other than the root of  "the speculations and thoughts raised up against the knowledge of Christ" that we are now tearing down.
This manner of living was the school master to lead us to Christ : the Law, but once we meet Him and connect with Him we get caught up with His actual Life.




Our lives were a good deal more complicated than black and white, good and bad. We could be doing good as an outer act, but from the dodgiest of motives inside.


Mixture is a Power
But this is all a preamble to say that as fast as the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil has  been set up to "contain" people until such time as they find the Real One, the devil gets to tamper , particularly with the now established Tree of Good.  So the Good we are working with, actually isnt.

Manna
We don't live from the "bread", the leavened dough, of man's Tree of Good and Evil knowledge.
But by "every Word that proceeds out of the mouth of God".
Either in direct format where we hear  "Go out of Egypt" then we go, but all the while celebrating this Word with unleavened bread.....
OR...
The Bread itself is coming out of heaven as did manna.

But what both pictures are, are unleavened. They are pure. They have not been through man's left-brain sorting system, his filtration system, whereby only the bare bones of the chicken remain, and the MEAT, the POWER, the enabling POWER, the GRACE SUBSTANCE , the GOD SUBSTANCE, has been removed.

Leaven exercise
Here's two exercises for you to establish my meaning. One historic, one more recent.

• Acts 2

Acts 2:21 :And everyone who calls
   on the name of the Lord will be saved.
Acts 2:39 :The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”

This was just ten days after the disciples had watched Jesus go up into heaven. Notice Jesus never said "Wait for ten days". He never relayed to them ....and on the day of Pentecost, you will receive the Holy Spirit in power. As far as they knew, they could have still been waiting.

So this explosive sermon of Peter's came out of his own personal restoration on the Gallilee shore. It came out of the disciples subsequent experiences seeing and learning from Jesus AFTER His resurrection. And finally it came out of his most recent experience of obeying the Lord to wait "AS ONE" for the Holy Spirit to come as promised, though they were never given a firm date....but as the crowds who had come for the annual Feast of Pentecost mingled, and the Holy Spirit had come upon the disciples, Peter was under an incredible thunderous anointing as he spoke these words. It was less of a sermon and more of a prophecy. This was Jesus-Peter addressing the new thing in the earth that had properly been born that day...

THE NEW COVENANT  ECCLESIA   CHURCH OF GOD  ON EARTH.

Nowadays, this would be a name tag on a black church outside Birmingham UK.

So now you too are a witness to verses 21 and 39 as spoken under Holy Spirit anointing. So what on earth is happening here in Joppa in Acts 10 :15 "What God has cleansed no more consider unholy."
In other words, once the immediate anointing had lifted from speaking the words Acts2 :21 and 39, Peter had slipped back into default leaven thinking.  What was the default leaven thinking?  That salvation was all about Jews.

• Ern Baxter at Kansas City Shepherd's Conference 1975 - Address Final meeting: Thy Kingdom Come.  

To hear this message all you have to do is click the message on the lefthand side panel of this blog. It is from here that we can get a good idea of what St Peter sounded like on the Day of Pentecost. I spoke with Ern on the phone in 1984 while he was staying in Dunstable with Stanley Jebb, asking his permission to use some of this message as a dramatic presentation in Emsworth. I asked him to confirm his own statement in Dales Bible week that for part of that address, Ern's feet weren't even on the ground. All the 5000 leaders present had already taken off their shoes because the worship was on another level that day in the stadium.

Now, if you are not familiar with these type of churches, visit a church that came into being on the back of the 1970's Bible Weeks. There are many throughout the world. Now compare say, how Terry Virgo of Clarendon Church Brighton is now, compared with this very message which launched these type of churches.
Much of the outer form of the doctrine is still vaguely similar, but the inner substance of God Himself, His Presence, His actual Living Word doctrine, has lifted off these churches. They are little more than a shell. Human leaven, which is actually the doctrine of demons, has long retrenched itself in the meetings and the structures.

What Ern was conveying was a living version where a Living Christ rules and reigns over His church, supernaturally raising up supernatural giftings and ministries, apostles ,prophets, pastors and teachers, together with supernatural evangelists, to build His Church. I can even now get that same whiff of excitement in the 70s magazines as we learned that apostles and prophets still existed in our day and age.

This is the present day reality induced by human leaven.
Terry Virgo thinks an apostle heads up the show.
That one apostle forms a whole load of churches, which are like Baptist churches with Baptism in the Spirit.(How do I know? because Terry came to our Renewed baptist Church in Old Town Amersham, and unlike Graham Pulkingham, who spoke much 3rd level truth and was never invited back, Terry Virgo was welcomed back with open arms.)
That he then is the responsible elder over all the  self-proliferating network.
That teachings, or the "outer forms of teachings"  can be fed through an organisation about
baptism in water
baptism in the Spirit
tithing
running meetings with a worship group followed by a Baptist sermon
home groups constructed on computers according to geographical areas
people out and about "doing witnessing"
evangelistic events  to which others are brought to hear about "these outer forms" of what people think salvation is
surrounded and buttressed by prayer meetings of various types, which are only populated by the few, because they mostly take the form of lists, and people out loud giving God extremely good reasons why their various good ideas and initiatives should surely twist the arm of God, and He be behoved to bless their endeavours.
In amongst all this, the prophetic, and the heartfelt, and further revelation gets emasculated and controlled, and firmly "submitted" under the thumb of the spiritual leaven of  "those with more experience".

BUT as Acts 10 shows, this form of "spiritual checking" fails right here......thinking according to Old leaven Patterns, the tradition of men. And Peter wasn't including in his thinking the very purpose of God: to bring in the FULNESS of the Gentiles.