Does That Scare You?

Post 314

Does that last Post scare you deeply on several points? It should. Suddenly we come face to face with what it really means to be filled with the Holy Ghost and we find ourselves, in our comfortable well-adjusted faith, to be standing far short in naked unbelief. And on a parallel line it makes us afraid to have our familiar comfort-zone of “what is, and is not of God” jerked out from under our feet to find ourselves no longer standing on "the safe side of the fence" boldly poking our sword of the spirit though the slats into the darkness, but rather standing in the center of the field with hordes of evil all around us intent on our destruction (I Samuel 14:14). Then in the confusion of fresh doubts and new uncertainty we also come face to face with the reality of the awesome and terrifying power that God has placed in our little hands. Scared? You bet! And the average Christian will instantly cast down that responsibility as unwanted and undesirable, saying; “I don’t want to be judge!”
But do you not know that we shall judge angels? (I Corinthians 6:2), so how much more the things that relate to this life now? (I Corinthians 6:3). Can you not see the absolute necessity that we be indeed filled with the Holy Spirit, in a way and to a degree that you have been hitherto happily beguiled out of, as you walk safely submissive among the enemy without a useful sword (I Samuel 13:19-22, Matthew 10:34) but rather a very dull letter-opener hidden under your bushel? (Ephesians 6:17+Matthew 5:15).

So what is the consequence of not being filled with the Spirit of God to do the righteous judgment (Hebrews 4:12-13)? Just look around. The Holy-Spiritless judgments of the earth has become a tumbling of anarchy and bloodshed contending with oppression and tyranny. Judgment is being perverted on all sides, Truth is falling in the open streets, Justice has begun to silently retreat in the chaos, and Integrity-- i.e. doing the right thing-- is not allowed… even declared so by the Christians! (Isaiah 59:12-15).
You don’t believe that these passages speak of you; a Bible Believing Christian? Then how would you judge the case that Peter judged if it was in your church today?

“But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land? Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God. And Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the ghost: and great fear came on all them that heard these things” Acts 5:3-5.

Are you going with the whole; “Peter was an Apostle” bit? How long will you refuse to understand that, as sons of God, you are priests and kings, and the rule is in your hands? (Exodus 19:6, Revelation 1:5-6, [contemplate why Jesus is a prince of kings while humanity are kings: John 5:27]).
So, are you then going with; “Peter didn’t know that that would happen”? Perhaps… the first time, but he sure knew it the second time!:

“And it was about the space of three hours after, when his wife, not knowing what was done, came in. And Peter answered unto her, Tell me whether ye sold the land for so much? And she said, Yea, for so much. Then Peter said unto her, How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord? behold, the feet of them which have buried thy husband are at the door, and shall carry thee out. Then fell she down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost: and the young men came in, and found her dead, and, carrying her forth, buried her by her husband” Acts 5:7-10.

So again I ask; How would you judge the same events if they happened in your own church today? (or in your Christian national Government?). I am fully persuaded that nearly all Christians today would respond in mercy, urging to repentance, and extend forgiveness in the name of Jesus Christ. What would cause you to respond as you would?
My argument here is not whether you would or would not judge as Peter did, but why you would make your particular judgment. Because whether we pass “guilty” or “innocent” or “not voting” we all make our judgments by our responses, and the judgment we pass is held up, not just on the earth, but in heaven itself! (Matthew 16:19) …and our judgments are then ours to evaluate by the results as we learn by trial-and-error rather than by obedience to God. This is the eating of the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil (*1).

Oh, How we are failing our jobs since we have become afraid of the Holy Spirit to that degree, because we have been deceived into thinking that anything of that degree of supernatural must be of Hell. “God just doesn’t work like that today.”
Maybe so, But WHY?

“And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief” Matthew 13:58.

So I ask you, seriously, We know that God did those supernatural things in the NT-days of Acts as recorded in scripture, and by those same scriptures, in Acts, we know that God will again do those things in the end times (Acts 2:17-21), and we believe by the signs that we are in the last days (II Timothy 3:1-5, II Peter 3:3-4, I John 2:18, etc.), but we are somehow safely excluded from expecting those things in our lifetime? That doesn’t make any sense! Rather, it’s just a case of unbelief, as Jesus told his Matthew 14:28-31 “water-walking apostles-in-training” was the cause:

“Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could not we cast him out? And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief…” Matthew 17:19-20a, (as opposed to the Canaanite woman of Matthew 15:28 who had no training).

“But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him” Hebrews 11:6, (as opposed to the Roman of Matthew 8:7-10 whose faith marveled even Jesus).

O dear Christian, do not be content to be an unnecessary Job! In Christ Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit,-- (exclusive of any rare Job-like purposes)-- we now have the power of God to actually make a defense against the works of the destroyer, if we would but use it!

“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” James 4:7.

“Concerning the works of men, by the word of thy lips I have kept me from the paths of the destroyer” Psalm 17:4.

But we have failed to maintain that powerful word in our heart (Psalm 119:11), and so, while we might quote them faithlessly as the hopeful theory of a belief that really isn’t ours,

“The lion is come up from his thicket, and the destroyer of the Gentiles is on his way; he is gone forth from his place to make thy land desolate; and thy cities shall be laid waste, without an inhabitant. For this gird you with sackcloth, lament and howl: for the fierce anger of the LORD is not turned back from us” Jeremiah 4:7-8.

This concept is speaking socially, collectively, NATIONALLY. Yes, I know this is a prophecy of Israel (v.1), but as Christians in a once Christian nation that received their same blessings, how does this prophecy not apply to us if we fail in the same way they failed?

“And I will prepare destroyers against thee, every one with his weapons: and they shall cut down thy choice cedars, and cast them into the fire. And many nations shall pass by this city, and they shall say every man to his neighbour, Wherefore hath the LORD done thus unto this great city? Then they shall answer, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD their God, and worshipped other gods, and served them” Jeremiah 22:7-9.

“Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation. At least not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, and a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of non-believers…” - Mr. Obama 2008 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmC3IevZiik),
And again in Turkey 2009 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIVd7YT0oWA).

This is not a matter of our belief in God, but what we do with that belief, in faith! If we believe that the Holy Spirit in us is for nothing more than to help us have a good attitude in our suffering as a result of such wicked men in power, what power is that over the very real spirits sent to destroy us while we go down smiling? Do you even have a clue as to who the HOLY SPIRIT is?! He is the very heart of God himself! Do you not understand that with the Spirit of God dwelling within us, WE are the heart of God in the flesh, much as Jesus is the body of God in the flesh? Does a Godly heart have nothing but love? “God is love.” That’s all I ever hear from squishy Christians of unconditional tolerance, which in application is just another word for surrender. Yes, God is Love. But God is also Jealousy! (Exodus 20:5, Deuteronomy 29:20), God is Passion! (Deuteronomy 29:23,28, Song of Solomon 8:6), God is FIRE! (Deuteronomy 4:24, Revelation 1:14,2:18,19:12).
What kind of love does not defend its children from evil? (Nahum 1:2-7). What kind of love tolerates the wickedness that has too long filled our churches and run our Governments of this once great Christian nation, and is even now finishing that destruction while we smile enduringly because we have the faith of Job? THIS IS NOT A JOB ISSUE TODAY! It’s an issue of disobedience, because we continually refuse to make righteous judgments as we sit in the judicial seat that God himself placed us in, intentionally with his Heart, under the blood of Christ! Why have we done this? Because we have abandoned belief that a Christian must be filled with the Holy Spirit of God who would empower us to do the righteous judgment, that by impossibility, we refuse to do righteously without it! (*2).

Who is the Mysterious, Great Whore of Babylon? It is the whorish Christian Church intimate also with the world, that has necessarily abandoned the Holy Spirit of God in favor of a squishy kind of unconditional tolerance in the name of love, whose only archenemy is those that stand against such a “noble purpose” of Global Peace.
Is that you? Are you a Simonised Christian with such a big heart that it covers even the wicked?

“…Shouldest thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate the LORD? therefore is wrath upon thee from before the LORD” II Chronicles 19:2 (read chapter 18 for the context).
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“But, if this “necessary supernatural” proposition is to be believed, then how are we to distinguish the supernatural of God from that of the Devil who wants to destroy us by deception?”
Well, that’s an entirely different topic isn’t it? and here is where I distance myself from the present all-encompassing hard-line view of John MacArthur, (which I expect to see tempered over time with deeper understanding). After all, in spite of the rejected Strange Fire of Aaron’s sons, the priests where in fact required to perpetually offer correct fire to God (Exodus 30:7-9+ Leviticus 16:12-13). The great fear and confusion today among earnest Christians is the large volume of seemingly worthy men making “fire” offerings to God and having no man of God standing in the gap able to make the righteous judgment of “is it strange or not?” (Numbers 16:16-33) and so they simply reject all fire rather than obey God:

“That ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean;” Leviticus 10:10.

Abandoning the supernatural fire because it might be strange is simply surrender in fear. Wisdom says search out the distinction and stand in the gap (Ezekiel 22:30) (*3).
We need the fire!
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(*1) This is the eating of the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil; it always tastes soooo good, but soon causes great sorrow of life (Genesis 2:17) as we are driven from the garden of sanctuary by natural result, just as the OT Jews were driven from the Promised Land and Americans are now being driven from their NT Paradise due to the faithless desire to experimentally taste the fruit for ourselves. Well, How does the fruit taste now? Sweet at first but then bitter as it sets like a stone in your belly? Yep, that’s it, learn it well!

“And the voice which I heard from heaven spake unto me again, and said, Go and take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel which standeth upon the sea and upon the earth. And I went unto the angel, and said unto him, Give me the little book. And he said unto me, Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make they belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey… and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter. And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings” Revelation 10:8-11. (See also Ezekiel 2:9-3:3+14).

I submit that the open little book that both Ezekiel and John were told to eat is the available documented history of humanity’s long experimentation with that Genesis 2:9 fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which is why he had to take it instead of the angel giving it to him. If we read the book of the resulting history, both past and future, rather than each generation tasting the forbidden fruit for themselves, we can learn, by the hard earned wisdom of others, to avoid the great bitterness, just as God commanded at the very beginning to do without the suffering of bitter experience. (Jeremiah 3:13-15). But that very sweet taste at the beginning is the lusty bait on the hook that we can’t seem to refuse, though it always ends in ruin, time and time again.
That sweetness today is the promise of Global Democracy that is burning down entire nations all over the world. Enjoy that great pleasure while it lasts, and great it will be, but the long bellyache of food poisoning that is coming will quickly overpower the fleeting pleasure enjoyed, as did the seven years of great famine that drove the Hebrews to Egypt’s desirable pleasantries… and into 400 years of bitter slavery a short time after.

(*2) Refusing to judge righteous judgment:
As the condition of our physical world is merely a reflection of the spiritual in the same condition, allow me to make a point: Last summer I was seated on a trial jury, not because I was first selected but because of the many before me that refused to even try to cast a righteous judgment and so were unseated in the selection process. The attorneys on both sides of the case tried hard to get each of them to agree to simply judge the case according to the law as the judge provided it, but time and again they replied that even if the facts made it very clear that the law had been broken, they could not cast a “guilty” verdict because they would feel judgmental and cruel.
While the foundation is often based on “God is love,” this is now a nation of “good and honest citizens” who refuse to obey God, to their own national destruction.

“Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment” John 7:24.

It takes the Holy Spirit within us, exercised by practice that enables trust in applying the word, to be able to see with God's wisdom and make the right call that is neither unduly permissive nor unjustly punishing. Judgment and fire are commanded, this is about the kind.

(*3) Distinctions:
One of the primary distinctions that identifies the Holy Spirit is that he never glorifies himself. Any supernatural event that presents itself as of God, will, if it is true, not glamorize or magnify the miracle or the Holy Spirit, but instead glorify the Son of God (John 7:18, 16:13-14).
Other such distinctions are to be likewise searched out in scripture.
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