The Troubler of Israel

I was in the shower this morning, kind of running over current events in my mind when I recalled an event from almost 23 years ago. I am not entirely sure I have not mentioned it in these pages before, but since I recalled it, you get to recall it too.

The family had moved to Santa Maria, but my job transfer had not come through so I was still in the San Fernando valley during the week. The workdays went from 8:00 AM until 7:00 PM or thereabouts much of the time. Probably the last thing I wanted to do on Wednesday evenings was go to a church service. I am really not sure why I went that night. It was probably a divine appointment, at least it turned out to be. There ended up being about five people in the service after the children and their teachers had gone to do whatever it is children do at such times. The pastor suggested we each take some time to pray individually and then come back together for a time of corporate prayer. I guess five people is some kind of corporate.

The Holy Spirit was in the back of the church waiting for me. I had almost found a place to get on my knees and pray when I clearly heard the question, "Is that you, you troubler of Israel?" I started to laugh. I immediately recognized the reference to 1 Kings 18:17. In case you are not familiar with it, that is the greeting King Ahab gave Elijah when the prophet returned from a camping trip. Elijah's response was that he was not the one troubling Israel, but rather it was Ahab's family who had brought God's judgement upon the nation.

We were doing a good work in a local church in Santa Maria. We were leading a Sunday school class and home group meeting. We were seeing people, healed and set free. I made a couple mistakes in teaching at those meetings. I actually said the Bible teaches that elders are men. That got me a correction in front of the Sunday school class. Then I pointed out to a group of men the pastor would only choose men to be elders who agreed with him. Silly me, I thought that was a no-brainer. When I was a pastor I certainly would not have considered appointing an elder who I thought disagreed with me in any significant area of doctrine or church leadership. (I know it is hard to believe it is as simple and straightforward as it sounds here, but there are people who can verify what I am saying.)

Obviously I could not be allowed to continue ministering in that church or even attend there with such heinous, abberant doctrine. I was invited, not so politely, to leave the church. We had four children ages ten and under. I was not going to expose them to a church fight. So we left. To bring the story full circle, we were invited to come back to the church years later and declined believing the same spirit was still there. At the time we did not realize it was a manifestation of the religious spirit in that church.

It was in the interim time, while the church council was trying to decide what to do with me, that I attended that midweek service in the San Fernando valley. You may not even be able to imagine what a relief it was, 1) to really understand, with certainty and clarity, that I was not the problem, and 2) to have the Holy Spirit joke with me about it. I needed that laugh.

I seem to be in a similar situation as I write this. There are a few essential differences this time. I am over the fear of man. I know there is nothing any man can do to me that can nullify the grace of God in my life. (Thanks for hammering on that Pastor Craig Hamlin.) I recognize the battle this time for what it is--and who it is. It is not about any man or group of men. It is about a foul, evil, religious spirit that has the Santa Maria valley in it's clutches and is fighting to not let go. My kids are grown and gone. I do not have to protect them from any attacks that might come. I am a little bit angry this spirit has stolen so much of my life and whatever ministry would have been done in that time. I am not going to take it anymore. More than that, I am not going to lose. I refuse to lose. There are a few other people catching this vision. Praise God! That is why I am telling this story, maybe for the second time. I am really not sure. I could have looked that up, but then you might have missed something important had this post not been written. I wonder if that makes any sense? See you soon. God bless.

I could not resist. I went back to see if I had mentioned this before. I had, but only a mention in part three of The Workings of a Religious Spirit. If you are interested: http://thechurchinsantamariaca.blogspot.com/2009/06/workings-of-religious-spirit-part-3.html

Where Are The 7,000

Yes, of course, I am aware it is not strictly appropriate in English prose to use a question as a title. The next post is also going to have a question as a title. Deal with it. We are looking for some people. It is starting to get interesting now. The Lord has given us a couple of His weapons to start the battle. You will notice within the next week or so these posts becoming more specific as to how we are going to fight this battle rather than containing so much general information and teaching. We are not saying there will not be some of that, but the emphasis will be more on how we engage the battle.

Jesus battled the devil throughout the approximately three and a half years of His ministry. At one point, He asked the disciples who they thought He was. Peter gave him the correct answer when he said, "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God." (Matthew 16:16) Jesus commended him for that answer and told Peter, "And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." (Matthew 16:18) We are not going to do a teaching on that verse at this time. The reason for that quotation is to point out the gates guarding the entrance to Hades, the domain of the devil will not prove sufficient to keep The Church from breaking through them to, "... release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." (Hebrews 2:15) Well shoot, I know some of you are missing the point because you have never had any real teaching on this verse either.

Now I am in a quandary. I cannot possibly teach those verses and keep this post from becoming unwieldy. I received a comment just last night at dinner about the individual posts being too long. I am already thinking on that. Now, I have not even gotten into what I want to say here and, oh well, what to do? Someone remind me that you do not understand exactly what these verses are saying and we will deal with them at another time. Maybe, going forward, we will devote one or two posts a week to just Bible teaching and the others to pursuing the battle.

What we are really trying to do with this post is to find the answer to the question, "Where are the 7,000 men who have never bowed their knees to Baal? We are not talking about literally 7,000 men--and we would be including women since we are living in a dispensation of common grace. The number is relatively unimportant. What is important is that we have the perfect number, as determined by God, to fight this battle. In the days of Elijah, in Israel, that number was 7,000. Today, in the battle for the Santa Maria, it may be 7,000, or 700, or only 7. We do not know. We are pretty sure there are already more than 7. There are almost that many reading the posts we print out at the mission. That reminds me, if anyone knows how to post this blog to a larger audience please explain it to me in English. That is yet another thing on the list. I know it can be done. I read the instructions, but it does not seem to be working.

As we recall the story from 1 Kings 19, Elijah had just embarrassed King Ahab with the whole fire from heaven episode. He then led the slaughter of all Ahab's false prophets. Then he ran for his life. He was hiding in a cave. God showed up and ruined the whole pity party. They had a heart to heart. Elijah was whining about being the only person in Israel who stood for God. If we are being honest, some of us have felt that way on our worst days. Okay, I will go first. I was there immediately before God called me to this battle. I sat in my pastor's office and cried because I was very disappointed and could not see what God was doing. I felt hopeless. God told Elijah, "Yet I have reserved seven thousand in Israel, all whose knees have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him." (1 Kings 19:18

Baal, in it's essence is the god of power. Keeping in mind our understanding of spirit, soul, and body, we understand Baal is no god at all, but rather a demonic spirit posing as a god. Although a spirit, he does his work in the souls of men, blinding them to the spiritual realm wherever possible. More on that in a future post.

Baal was already in the land of Canaan when Abraham led God's people there. Offerings, including children, were often sacrificed to Baal. He was revered as the god who controlled nature and therefore caused the rain to come and water the land. Without rain, there were no crops and famine ensued. Ahab's embarrassment by Elijah was multiplied because it came at the end of a years long drought. That drought ended when Elijah prayed and God sent a heavy rain. This was Elijah becoming more than a conqueror (Romans 8:37). First he called down fire from heaven to win the battle with the prophets then called down the rain to show God's power was greater than that of Baal.

God told Elijah there were yet 7,000 men in Israel who had not worshipped Baal. They were the people who had been faithful to God regardless of what had come against them. They were the ones who were qualified to fight God's battles. Their qualifications were not that they were necessarily the most competent or experienced in battle. They came because they knew who their leader was. In their case it was the God of Israel. Now, Jesus leads the battle. The sole qualification for fighting in this battle is to have one's sins washed away by the blood of the lamb.

As I said in the previous post, so far three men have said they are with me. They will follow me through the gates of hades. At least they say they will. I did not ask them. They volunteered. I am sure they will. I know there are others. In this case it does not really matter if we know now, or if we ever know who is fighting alongside us. What matters is that Jesus is leading the charge and in the end we will see the victory. We have been flailing at the darkness for over twenty years already. Finally a crack of light has shown us the real battle. Now we are out to pursue it until the light overcomes the darkness. God bless.

The Workings of a Religious Spirit, Part 3

I just realized I do not really want to deal with this whole list in any kind of detail. I guess I can do that. After all, it is my blog. Well, ok so it is really Jesus' blog, but I am writing it. At this point I believe I have His permission to hit some of the high points and leave some of the others undone for the time being.

"having a form of godliness, but denying its power." (vs. 5) A form of godliness means what we see only looks like godliness. It is not true godliness. What does godliness look like anyway? Is it men in suits with white shirts and ties and women in long dresses with tresses to match? Oh gosh, I hope not. I do have a few white shirts, but they are leftovers from the brokerage business, not the religion business. Maybe it is a church service where everyone gets a little crazy in praise, moves around, (kind of like dancing) and gets really LOUD? I certainly would not say the people so attired or so inspired are not godly, but the New Testament is replete with references to the fact that our godliness comes from within. Adam and Eve were clothed in light before the fall. That light came from the inside and shone outward just as a bird's feathers or an animal's fur comes from the inside and grows outward. When we depend on external factors to determine godliness, we are instead meeting the definition of religion.

There is no power in religion. We have already talked about this. Religion is a set of rules made by man. There are two different words translated power in the New Testament. I will spare you the Greek writing and even the transliterations. The first word is probably what comes to mind when we think of the word power. It is the ability to accomplish something. That can range anywhere from the power of a tornado to tear up everything in its path to our ability to pick up a straight pin we see laying on the floor. The other word for power is better translated authority. It is the God-given, and usually man delegated, authority to accomplish a purpose. One of the best scriptural examples (and a personal favorite) of how the two concepts work together actually comes from the Old Testament. Elijah challenges the prophets of Baal to a duel of sorts on mount Carmel. As you recall the story recorded in 1 Kings 18:16-39, Elijah challenged King Ahab to call all his prophets (Yes, his prophets.) together on Mount Carmel. Ahab practiced a form of godliness sans the power. You can read the story. The point is Elijah had the authority to call down fire from heaven, but God provided the power and sent the lightening. I have to add a personal note here. Verse 17 of this account records Ahab asking Elijah, "Is that you, you troubler of Israel?" The Holy Spirit asked me that question when I first encountered the religious spirit in the Santa Maria Valley over 20 years ago. I do not know if you have ever shared a laugh with the Holy Spirit, but we definitely chuckled over that one, or maybe I chuckled and he just smiled.

We gave a couple examples of what a form of godliness looks like earlier. We have not discussed what denying its power means. We must understand that no Christian (we hope) actually expresses a denial of God's power. In fact, various groups such as many Presbyterians and most Southern Baptists accord virtually all power to God to accomplish anything. What is more often done, and even this is done ignorantly, is to omit the power of God. Whole groups of evangelical Christians have doctrinally removed the Holy Spirit from doing much of anything in these last days. The problem with this position is really very simple, or at least it seems so to me. Jesus said, "...you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to me..." (Acts 1:8) We can easily see the power to be witnesses comes with the Holy Spirit. This is the ability to be witnesses. Did they not already have the ability to be witnesses? They were, after all, witnesses of the things Jesus said and did. A witness testifies, tells what he knows. That is the easy part. The difficult part is who the witness is telling. In this case, the disciples would be witnessing to virtually everyone, but always more or less under the watchful eye of the Pharisees and Saducees, the religious powers that be at the time. There is always a twofold problem in telling someone who has authority in an area anything. First, one needs to be certain of the facts. Secondly, one must have the courage to actually challenge the authorities. The disciples had the facts. They were witnesses, but the Holy Spirit gave them the courage, the ability, to confront the error of the religious leaders. The error, we know, was not so much theological as that they were being influenced by a religious spirit. The whole purpose of our exercise here is to demonstrate the underlying reason for the error. It is not about deciding who is right and who is wrong. God knows, and we know, any of us can be wrong at any given time. I sincerely doubt there is anyone who is wrong about everything or right about everything. A religious spirit will not allow a person outside it's closed circle to be right if that person disagrees with the group inside the circle. Likewise, the people inside the circle are always right whenever they disagree with people outside the circle. I once left a local church after just a few weeks when I realized I could never be right if I disagreed with the pastor. I am sorry, but I believe I am right sometimes. I am going to assume that since you are reading this, you agree.

How did we get here from there? We were discussing the power source, if you will, the Holy Spirit. There are some powerless people, church fellowships, and whole denominations because they do not understand the present working of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said it was good for him to go away because the Holy Spirit could not come until he left. (John 16:7) This is a shockingly simple revelation that many people have either overlooked or simply never thought much about. Each person of the Godhead has his own time for ministry on the earth. In those times, or dispensations (not talking dispensational theology here) we see only one of the persons of the Godhead doing the main work on earth. God the Father worked until Jesus began his ministry. Jesus worked for a brief period of time as a man and when he left, he sent the Holy Spirit to continue his work until he comes back again. Do not let that be so simple it confounds you.

Most of us have seen the bumper sticker that reads, "Know Jesus Know Peace, No Jesus No Peace". It is a clever concept and certainly true. However, it is equally true to say, "Have Holy Spirit Have Power, No Holy Spirit No Power." We are, after all, spiritual beings clothed in flesh. Flesh has its own limitations and no source of real power without the Holy Spirit. There are many more people attempting to minister for God in their own power, the power of the soul (mind, emotions and will) than we would like to believe. Many more of us frequently lapse back into our minds when we miss what the Holy Spirit is trying to communicate to us through our spirits. How much farther ahead we would be were we to not do anything at all until we knew what the Holy Spirit is telling us.