God has
pressed me the last few weeks with a topic that clearly fits next in the Kingdom
of God series, but one also that must move me out of my comfort zones. This is a
topic I have kept "on my shelf" for a while, but God has pressed me to draw that
topic off the shelf and bring it into the present revelation of Christ.
For one, I
have knocked up against an issue of contention among some, and for another, good
people have asked me specifically for clarification on these issues. I prefer to
write in answer to a genuine question to one individual person more than writing
from a "need" to "correct" what I see as blindness. Thus I include those
questions in these letters. (It will take three letters, at least.)
"I have heard so much
opposing information in regards to the practice of deliverance from demons. The
Bible does not go into near as much detail and process as I see being promoted
by certain ministries. On the other hand some say that it is impossible for God
and the devil to co-habitate in a believer. My question is does a believer have
to go through decades (maybe this is extreme) of casting demons out of them to
finally walk out their destiny and clean up their past? Is it really just a
matter of what people are willing to believe? What do you know of this?"
Jim
And again: "I know this is
an important question for today as many are coming into a new revelation of
grace. I have discussed this with many people who find this a murky area and
are seeking clarity. I have been asking for clarity. Since you will address
your answer to my question specifically for the purpose of sharing it abroad I
would like to add a couple curious things I have witnessed.
"1. I have seen during the
course of 'ministry' a person who I considered to be a believer speak in a
strange way as if it was another person. 2. I have seen during corporate worship
a person begin to scream and flail about. My impression was that it was a known
believer.
"I understand that these could have been demonic entities. Or perhaps the people only thought they were believers or acted like they were. But I am also aware that the power of suggestion and belief is tremendous. Someone could act in accordance with programming. Is this not how hypnotists operate?" Jim
Thank
you, Jim, these are important and critical questions, even more so as we seek
God to fulfill the Father's will in the earth in all the fulfillment of the
Covenant and the deliverance of this earth and all mankind from this age of
human folly and all the horrors it has brought.
We do
not flail the air blindly, but neither do we sit in the passive unbelief that
says, "Well God will just take care of everything." We are sons; we are
responsible agents with God, He in us and we in Him. God will do nothing apart
from us; we can do nothing apart from Him. Yet the whole saying of "apart" has
become for us irrelevant and non-existent. In all things we know the One who is
always filling us full and flowing out of us to heal and set free.
Let's
begin with some pretty clear and graphic Scriptures.
And when He had called His twelve disciples to Him, He gave
them power over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all kinds
of sickness and all kinds of disease . . . Heal the sick, cleanse
the lepers, raise the dead, cast out
demons. Freely you have received, freely give. Matthew 10:1 & 8
So the
demons begged Him, saying, "If You cast us
out, permit us to go away into the herd of swine." Matthew
8:31
But if I
cast out demons by the Spirit of God,
surely the kingdom of God has come upon you. Matthew 12:28
And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will
cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues . . . Mark
16:16
I am a
holistic thinker, that is, I must understand things from the whole to the parts.
If I cannot see the whole, then I do not know what to do with the parts. Thus I
must always begin with the larger picture before coming down into
specifics.
We
MUST begin with this absolute certainty. We are BLIND, and we cannot see. We are
IGNORANT, and we do not know. Specifically, even though we are half spirit and
half of our being lives and walks in heaven all the time, yet, because of the
mercy of God, we remain utterly blind to the realms of spirit.
Thus,
when most Christians describe or think about "heaven," they think only in terms
of what God says about the age to come, or things that are symbolic of Christ
and the church. Heaven, as it is right now, is NOT in the age to come. The age
to come has not started; it is "to come." Heaven is as much in the present age
as earth is; those Christians who are in heaven only are certainly not in the
age to come. The age to come begins with a marked and significant event, the
first resurrection.
You
see, when you eliminate Jerome's "eternal" from the New Testament and replace it
with the word used by Jesus and the apostles, "aeon," or "an age," or, "a period
of time," in all places where it is found, then the understanding of many things
must change to fit the same understanding of those things held by the early
church.
Heaven
right now is as blighted as earth, only more so. God has no intention of saving
heaven as it is. He intends fully to create a new heaven at the same time that
He creates a new earth, thus destroying the old by swallowing it up into the
new. That new heaven and that new earth begins with us as a seed, but grows out
from us to include all the works of God's hands, each in its time.
People can say, "Well, that's not true," all they
want, but what they cannot do is prevent some foolish little saint who takes God
at His word as if it is true, from blowing their unbelief right out of the water
with reality.
There
are three truths of absolute reality that are essential for us to know in all
fullness. Gale force winds are blowing in the heavens right now like never
before; we must be anchored in reality as it is to hold against the storm. I
will list those things here and then go more into depth on each.
1.
Heaven and earth are utterly connected. There is nothing physical that does not
come out of spirit powers in the heavens. And there is nothing in the heavens
that does not have its direct and immediate counterpart in the earth. It is not
a matter of here is one and there is another. Rather, sustaining life (or death)
force comes out of this or that spiritual reality in the heavens and gives
immediate and constant shape to its counterpart in the physical and on the
earth.
2. ALL
reality in God, every word that comes out of His mouth, passes through three
specific steps BEFORE it is known visibly, outwardly, and permanently. God shows
us these three specific steps in every possible way in the Bible and in nature.
The primary metaphor God uses, however, is the conception, the gestation, and
the birthing. Everything God speaks begins as a seed. It is planted in the
darkness, in the womb, where it grows inside of faith. Then, when it is fully
formed, it is birthed into full reality.
3. We
are NOT "getting saved." We are sons of God sent into the earth by our Father in
just the same way He sent Jesus and for the same purposes. ALL of our thoughts
are about how we in God and God in us in all fullness are accomplishing our
shared purposes together upon this earth, bringing SALVATION to the entire
creation. We continually think about how the river of life from the throne of
God, our hearts, MUST flow out of us in specific and tangible ways to set the
captives free and to deliver ALL creation, both heaven and earth, from the
bondage of corruption. As the elect of God, we ourselves are not "connected" to
things in the heavens, either good/godly or evil/demonic, but rather, we come
out of the Father's heart separate from the heavens. Our direct connection with
God is a shared heart of daring boldness. Our spirit lives utterly in the Holy
Spirit and thus walks through heaven only from there.
You
can see that, if these three things be truth, then the human mind and
experience, blind to and ignorant of these three realities, must be just like
the six blind men from Hindustan, grabbing onto this and that without a clue of
what anything is about.
Now,
you say, "Many are coming into a new revelation of grace." This is beyond
wonderful, and if all anyone sees is the glorious wonder of God's grace and
love, they are absolutely and forever blessed. It is not necessary for most to
see the purpose of all things. Their time will come. I do not say that
condescendingly and I abhor any spirit of "elitism." God has dealt with that
thing ferociously in me. Rather, it is for their sakes, beloved and precious to
Jesus, that we give ourselves to the calling of God upon our lives.
Yet many
teachers of grace and love and Christ-our-life place a period after what they
say. It is never a wise thing to put a period on God. God doesn't do well with
periods; there's something in Him that finds it necessary to blow periods away.
No one has the power to stop God from doing what He says through those who honor
Him by believing what He says. People can say, "Well, that's not true," all they
want, but what they cannot do is prevent some foolish little saint who takes God
at His word as if it is true, from blowing their unbelief right out of the water
with reality.
Everything
is about purpose; everything is about what God wants out of this whole thing
called creation. And we know what He wants because He tells us: many sons, just
like Jesus, walking together as one body, revealing God to all creation as He
really is.
And
how does God obtain these many sons just like Jesus, walking together as one
body, revealing God to all creation forever?
That's
easy; He tells us. Two things. First is the atonement of Jesus, from the prayer
that birthed the Kingdom, John 17, to Jesus' sitting down at the right hand of
the Father upon the throne of God, and WE IN HIM. Second is that God has placed
us, we who are seated right now upon the throne of God, into and under a total
mess and then He says, "Hey, let's clean this mess up, you and Me
together."
For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the
revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not
willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation
itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious
liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and
labors with birth pangs together until now. Romans 8:19-22
Now,
over the last few weeks, God has brought me in contact with a teaching that says
there is no personal Satan, nor any demons. That is, no angel ever was given
freedom by God, and no angel ever took that freedom to go his own way. Maybe
they don't think there are angels, either, nor any Spirit reality. This idea
assumes that "sin" is nothing other than a way of mental thinking, reserved
entirely to the human brain. Think positive and "sin" vanishes. This is
"Christian Science" from 150 years ago in modern form.
I know
that God wanted me to be aware of this teaching; I also know that it is 100% a
waste of time to address it. Worse than that, any attempt to address this
teaching, point by point, would do nothing other than divert our spirits away
from the purpose and intentions of God. That I will not do.
Thus I
will simply state my understanding and go on in the purposes of my Father. Those
who wish to follow that other teaching may certainly do so. I do not go with
them.
All
humans are persons; all animals are persons. That is, each one is an individual
with his or her own will, mind, and emotions. It is the same in the heavens. I
suspect that there are as many species of angels as there are species of
animals. All are personal. Even the rocks sing God's praise and the trees clap
their hands!
God is
love MEANS that all created beings are free of Him; it means that He highly
regards and respects the integrity of each individual one. God has as much
respect for Satan today as He did for Lucifer in the beginning.
God is
light MEANS that God always tells the truth to every created being, "You are
free of Me; I will not force you in any way."
But
God also HATES evil actions that bring pain and suffering into the lives of
others. God's hatred is always carried inside His love, but it is as real as
God.
There
is no such thing as "evil." "Evil" does not exist as something in
itself.
The
will is the first part of person. Thus, "Not My will, but Thine be done," MUST
BE the first step of the atonement.
Sin
begins as the decision of a moral being to steal what belongs to another for
some perceived self-gain. Yet the sin shows itself only as the ACTION of
theft.
Now, I
am a person. As a person, separate from the atonement of Christ (which I am not,
but let's assume for understanding's sake), I am free of God. I, by my will, my
thinking, and my feeling, I am free from God. But God gave me, as a human, two
bodies. (Animals get only one body, a physical body, and angels get only one
body, a spiritual body.) If I wish to do, I can do only through one or the other
of those two bodies. (Actually, our two bodies always work together, that is,
the body without the spirit is dead, and the spirit without the body is simply a
disembodied spirit, having lost its other vital part, though it continues alive
in the heavens for a temporary season.) I can do through my physical body in
order to operate in the earth, and I can do through my spiritual body in order
to operate in the heavens.
Both
bodies are God's property, not mine, as Paul said in 1 Cor. 6. In order to steal
from my neighbor, I must first steal one or the other of those two bodies from
God in order to commit my acts of wickedness.
All
sin is theft. All sin begins with theft from God and then proceeds outwardly to
steal what rightly belongs to another, whether life or property or
integrity.
All
sin is a moral act. Sin is NOT a mental state. James makes it clear that sin
begins in the human as a mental temptation. "Every man is drawn away by his own
lusts and enticed." Jesus was tempted in all ways just like us, that is, Jesus
was drawn away by his own lusts and enticed. But that temptation does not become
"sin" until the act. Thus Jesus, though tempted as thoroughly as we are, never
acted out from that temptation.
- We
ourselves do not live in sin. We live in the atonement; we live in Christ who
does not know sin. -
More
than that, all sin begins in the heavens first. I'm not speaking just of the
temptation, but of the act of sin itself. Every individual act of sin in the
earth begins first in the heavens.
If a
man rapes a little girl, that horrific act of theft, robbing her of everything
holy and pure in body and in soul, began first in the heavens and proceeds
entirely through a continual direct connection with the heavens. That act of sin
operates entirely by a spirit of disobedience. That spirit is a morally
responsible person, fully aware of his own wickedness, and taking full pleasure
in the horror and distress inside the little girl. I say this graphically
because it is graphic. Now, if the man had refused the temptation, that spirit
would not have moved through his sin. But the moment he gave himself to the
temptation, he was now only an agent of the demon.
And you
He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked
according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of
the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also
we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the
desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just
as the others. Ephesians 2:1-3
Yes,
the desires are in the flesh and in the mind, desires created by God and holy,
but turned now to perversion and theft, wanting to steal from others what is
offered to us freely by God. This is not a "mental state," but comes entirely
out of spirit powers in the
heavens.
Fallen
man has no identity in himself (there is never a "self"). Everything he or she
is proceeds out from the spirit of disobedience. However, there is NO
"universal" spirit of darkness; rather, there is a hierarchy consisting of
billions of individual spirits tied together by fear and lust. A "cosmic mind"
or "force" other than the Holy Spirit, does not exist.
Whenever
I read through those who claim that "sin" is only a mental view of the mind and
the lower "parts of God" and that our only goal is to switch over to the "right
way of thinking" and thus be positive and happy, my spirit, irrespective of my
mind, cries to me, "Unclean, unclean."
All
the "Christ, Christ" and "Love, love" thrown in speaks nothing to me. I lived in
Christian community for eighteen years. Those who shout, "Love, love" the
loudest in the public arena very often show themselves to be the most viciously
"not love" and "not Christ" in the pinch. In community you learn that the real
is quiet and deep and that public exclamation is, so very often, not real at
all.
Whenever
something is spiritually unclean, words are not the method of counteracting it,
rather, the demonstration of the Spirit and power.
(Now,
I am answering your question in this way because Christ is always personal, thus
I must speak personally. Listing doctrinal points cannot ever be Christ. The
only way my answer could be Christ is if it is, fully, personal. Yet my
expression of the personal always comes out of what God actually says, a
contention that you must prove out for yourself by both Word and Spirit, for
Christ is also fully personal in you.)
I find
a huge limitation in so many who teach on all these things including grace and
"Christ as us." They do not know the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, and they do not
speak in tongues.
God
has set aside the outer court at this time. Those who know God only by their
minds, no matter what they "say," or how much they "believe," cannot be part of
this pin-point work of "Gideon's 300," as I shared at the end of "The Matrix of
the World." That is not a problem; their time will come. But the hour is too
critical to speak to that realm; their only hope is in the birthing.
The
word is the conception. Nothing can grow in the womb except it begins as the
word God speaks. Yet the conception, by itself, cannot be anything. Thus people
see that "word-only" just doesn't do it. Then, for some stupid reason I cannot
comprehend, their conclusion is to throw out the Bible!
Without
the Word, there is NO Holy Spirit, though there are plenty of other spirits
eager to take His place, fully capable of "feeling" very loving and spiritual,
fully capable of speaking "Christ."
The
purpose of conception is gestation. And the purpose of gestation is the
BIRTHING!!
Gestation
is all about Pentecost and the gifts and ministries of the Holy
Spirit.
Let me
explain the critical importance of the gifts and ministries of the Holy Spirit,
including and especially speaking in tongues, that is, praying in the Spirit.
Those who choose not to know God in the gestation CANNOT know Him in the
Birthing.
The
pattern of God's word is so very clear. Those who wander from the path do so
only because they do not measure all things by the patterns.
The Promised
Land was filled with giants and open, savage, warfare. The heavens are dark,
blighted, and filled with powers hostile to God. Yet you and I are created by
God with re-created spirits to live and walk in those same heavens. God abandons
no part of His creation to hostility and darkness ever, the idea is absurd. Our
spirit, living fully in the heavens right now, exists fully. Yet God has not
opened our eyes to see, not yet - BECAUSE He is kind! (God's method always is
to birth the new; the old is "destroyed" as it is swallowed up in the new.)
What female
egg, infused with the male sperm or not, can survive on its own outside the
womb? No word spoken by God can survive except it pass first through gestation
and the birthing.
Everything
is about the birthing. If an egg passes out of the womb without gestation, we
call that a miscarriage. Early miscarriages cause momentary sorrow, but are soon
forgotten. All those who refuse gestation, because they imagine all they need is
"the word," cannot be birthed. God never does anything "to" us apart from our
permission; He respects us too much ever to do that. None of this "locks them
out," all things are in their time, each one in his appointed season.
My spirit is
blind to the heavens in which it (I) fully lives. The majority of Christians are
100% ignorant of the heavens in which they live. God has given us a specific
means by which our spirits are to grow step-by-step into a full knowing of all
heavenly reality.
Speaking in
tongues (praying and singing in the Spirit) over many years both in spiritual
warfare and in the groaning and travail of the Spirit in seeking to know the
living God serves a MOST Necessary purpose. It enlarges our spirit to know the
heavens in which we live and the power and demonstration of the Spirit. Praying
and singing in the Spirit is not the only thing that accomplishes this purpose,
thought it is one of the most powerful tools God has given us. Faith, prophecy,
true praise and worship in the Spirit, miracles, spiritual warfare, all the
other gifts and anointings of the Holy Spirit serve the same purpose when we
move in them according to God's heart.
I have never
understood people who say they don't need what the Holy Spirit offers! My mind
just goes blank when they say such things; I do not know what they say.
Let me give
a clear example. Many people who rejoice in Christ-our-life have latched onto
the phrase, "God all in all." They use that phrase to assume, against the clear
teaching and pattern of the entire Bible, that it's all over with. End of story.
God is now, fully, all in all. Thus, they find it necessary to eliminate the
entire teaching of "battle" from the entire fabric of the Bible, Old Testament
and New.
God says,
"God all in all" two times in the New Testament, both through Paul. In one
instance it is present tense; in the other it is clearly future, limited
entirely to a state of reality that comes ONLY after all creation is brought
into submission to the Lord Jesus Christ.
The writer
of Hebrews says, "We do NOT NOW see all things under His feet."
Because we
hold to the patterns of God's word, these two forms of "God all in all" make
perfect sense to us. Everything God speaks begins as a seed. Everything found in
the final form is found fully inside the seed. But the seed must "fall into the
ground and die," that is, the egg must pass through the gestation inside the
womb before what God really means is birthed into the full reality of all
creation. Thus we call those things that "be not" as though they are.
Pentecost,
the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Place, the gifts and operations of the
Holy Spirit, ARE the gestation. But especially the altar of incense, which is
ONLY an experience over time directly with the Holy Spirit.
You cannot
get from the outer court to the Holiest of All without passing through the Holy
Place. You cannot get from conception to birthing without passing through
gestation.
You cannot
get from being born again to standing upon the earth as the manifestation of the
sons of God setting all creation free without Christ being formed in you, that
forming is the direct work of the Holy Spirit through particular things.
The Holy
Spirit is a Person who works specific things in us only through our will. We
receive in our lives all the purposes of the Holy Spirit only if we ask, as
Jesus said, with earnestness and sincerity of heart, never letting go until we
know ALL that God says.
The whole
point of everything is found at the junction of the Word God speaks, a woman in
travail, and the face of the serpent. (Revelation 12:1-5)
The birthing
is everything. Without the birthing, the conception, as glorious as it is,
fails. Without the birthing, the gestation, as wondrous as it is, fails.
The first
thing we see in the birthing is the face of the serpent. We have a job to do,
God in us and we in God, and we come out of the womb running.
Thy
people are ready and willing and able in the day of Thy power. (My
paraphrase)
Do you see,
Jim, how understanding the purpose and patterns of God makes everything fit.
Everything makes sense when we allow all that God speaks to be birthed inside of
us.
Only now can
we come to the next important question.
Why demons?
Why on earth would God have a creation filled with nasty things called demons?
Why on earth would God place us under the horrific vanity of a life of continual
assault by demons?
That's easy.
God tells us why.
HOPE!!
I have the
integrity to honor God with the conviction that He knows what He is doing and
this place we find ourselves in IS the only way for God to have what He
wants.
(I am also
convinced that evil exists entirely because God is love and truth, that is, God
never binds any created being and God always tells them they are free. Thus the
only way God could ever have a creation is to win it all back through the love
of Jesus, one person at a time.)
I honor God
with the firm conviction that He alone is just and right in ALL things and that
every present difficulty is carried fully and only inside His love.
Yet God is
also just and He does not have the right to strip justice away from those who
have suffered the theft of any part of what is theirs by another. I believe that
inside the Blood, inside the forgiveness of God, there still MUST BE a full and
total restitution of all things stolen in the darkness. But that is another
topic.
God HOPES
that out of this mess will come a company of sons, walking together as one, with
Him and each other, setting all creation free.
In that
HOPE, God sent His Word into the darkness. God fully expects that Word to come
back to Him having birthed itself in and as the many.
I see three
essential things inside the gestation in the womb of the church.
1.
Interaction with God through the gifts and ministries of the Holy Spirit inside
our interaction with other believers in Jesus.
2.
Interaction with God through spiritual warfare, through the demonstration of the
Spirit in power, through groanings of the Spirit, through victory over spiritual
powers of darkness, together with other believers in Jesus.
3.
Interaction with God through all the circumstances of life He appoints for us,
the wonderful and the difficult, the ups and the downs, placing ourselves and
all that we are and go through utterly inside of Jesus inside of the Father,
particularly in our interaction with other believers in Jesus.
By
themselves the gifts of the Spirit, spiritual warfare, and the processes of life
by which the altar of incense takes us all apart are, in themselves, of little
value. What makes them of value is our interaction with God in faith through
those things with our eyes focused on the birthing, carrying fully in our hearts
all those who belong to Jesus - in the womb of the church.
"He
teaches my fingers to fight and my hands to make war." David
"For our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in
power, and in the Holy Spirit - And my speech and my preaching were not
with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of
power." Paul
"To him who overcomes, I will grant to sit with Me in My throne,
just as I overcame and sat down with My Father in His throne."
Jesus
Casting out demons was a normal and natural part of Jesus' ministry
and of the ministry of the apostles. It is a normal and natural part of our
lives and ministry.
Whole legions of modern scientific experts and Bible textual experts
can all trot out to explain just exactly why all that just ain't so. The
hilarious thing is that all that it takes is one simple-hearted saint who just
takes God at His word, walking together with Him, to shame all the experts with
the simple demonstration of power. In fact, that's exactly what we are called to
do.
I have
reached the end of eight pages without answering any of your specific questions,
Jim. I intend to answer them, but I can see that it will take two more articles.
First, "In the Womb of the Church," in which I will share my own experience in
these things. Then, "Set the Captives Free," in which I will answer your
questions with specifics as I presently understand them.
The whole point of everything is
found at the junction of the Word God speaks,
a woman in travail, and the face
of the serpent.
People may
not understand what is meant by these words and by the symbols of John's vision,
but I will say them again and again until their spirits open and they see and
know the power of God's reality and the cry of their hearts becomes only, "Holy,
holy, holy."
No comments:
Post a Comment