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 1

We have already noted we can learn much about the workings of a religious spirit by observing how they reacted to the ministry of Jesus and we have looked at a couple examples. There are many other things Jesus said that demonstrated he knew the religious leaders of his time were being influenced by religious spirits. We will deal with them in a later posting. It is interesting that the New Testament is full of the manifestations of religious spirits, but if one has never dealt with a religious spirit, they appear to be generic warnings of things to beware of or avoid all together. Some of these we will look at in a little more detail as Paul spent a considerable amount of precious space in the Pastoral Epistles dealing with religious spirits. He did not identify them as such by name, but the manifestations are unmistakable to the discerning spirit.

Perhaps a small warning is in order as we move through this list. Everyone will find they have been influenced by a religious spirit to a larger or smaller degree. It is inevitable that when a spirit controls a geographical region, virtually everyone who spends any amount of time in that area will be affected either directly or indirectly. When you see yourself in any of the examples to follow the appropriate response would not be to become angry with his writer (remember, we do not fight flesh and blood). The appropriate response would be to immediately confess and repent. Confession places the actions we have done in ignorant agreement with the spirit to be placed under the blood of Jesus. They are literally blotted out by the blood and become as though they had never happened. Step two would be to repent--turn away from any agreement with the spirit to never revisit those actions.

I Timothy 4 and 2 Timothy 3 read like listings of the manifestations of a religious spirit. Let us look at the two lists and then break them down separately to see how the religious spirit manifests. They depart from the faith and give heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons (4:1). They speak lies in hypocrisy and their consciences are seared (vs. 2). These pairs of manifestations go together as we will explain directly. In his second letter to Timothy, chapter 3, Paul continues his list. They will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy (vs. 2) unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good (vs 3) lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God (vs 4) having a form of godliness, but denying its power (vs 5). Paul then takes a break from his listing to tell Timothy how to deal with this spirit before continuing. He says to preach the word and to be ready all the time to convince, rebuke, and exhort with patience and teaching (4:2). The list continues, they will not endure sound doctrine, but will find their own teachers to tell them what they want to hear (vs. 3) because they turn away from the truth (vs. 4). As you can see, portions of this list are duplicated so we will not need to deal with every one of them individually.

They depart from the faith. This is not an apostasy from Christianity per se, but rather a departure from the true faith, or what we call orthodox Christianity. Perhaps at this point we should ask, "Who determines what is orthodox Christian doctrine?" The answer is very simple and taken directly from scripture. It is the genuine faith. Paul encourages Timothy to stir it up (2 Timothy 1:6). It is resident in every born again believer. It has been passed down from generation to generation, from person to person, teacher to student, parent to child always overseen by God himself. Ok, but how do we know we have this genuine faith and not an adulterated version perpetuated by a religious spirit? Jesus promised, "...when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth..." (John 16:13). Why then are some deceived and some not? Everyone is deceived to a greater or lesser extent. However, when one is aware of that possibility and acknowledges it, the Holy Spirit will move him or her out of the darkness and into the light.

A person opens himself to deception, "...when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed." (James 1:14) When our desires are first for God and his kingdom righteousness we are less likely to be deceived at all and our stay in deception will be greatly shortened. To say it another way, we become deceived when we operate in our soul (mind, emotions and will). The antidote is to live in the spirit. The soul, whether redeemed or not, is the devil's playground until it comes into submission to the spirit. So why do people and even church leaders, find it so difficult to do that? Everyone finds it difficult because it is contrary to the sin nature we are all born with and we have precious few examples nowadays of anyone doing it right. Church leaders have a double dip deception dilemma in that the demons of hell work overtime to distract and neutralize them from their main task which, as we know is, "...the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry..." (Ephesians 4:12)

Head's up. This is important. Church leaders are far and away more likely to be seduced by a religious spirit because it takes the slightest detour into the soul to set up the deception. The instant a church leader begins to think he or she is accomplishing anything of value because of his or her education, experience, intellect or general, intrinsic ability--never mind the fact they actually have an acknowledged position in the church--WHOOSH! (That's the sound of that person being sucked into the vortex of deception.)

We certainly did not get far into the list of the workings of the religious spirit in this installment. Watch for Part 2 soon. God bless, and pray for your pastor, teacher, or other minister.