Month: April 2018

In a digression, I need to offend some sensibilities. I have avoided the term “Christianity.”
Here is why. I am the butcher, and this is a sacred cow of the church.
In the institutional church, there is a plethora of people who make sayings about Christianity.
“Christianity offers a different way of life.”
“Christianity is the only valid religion.”
“Christianity works.”
“Christianity is true.”
“Christianity saves you.”
“Christianity offers a set of principles.”
“Christianity is the truth.”
“Christianity is the only way to G-d.”
Wrong.
It is not CHRISTIANITY that saves you. If is not being called a CHRISTIAN that saves you. The religion that we have called Christianity does not do anything as an institution in order to provide anything of distinction.
The man Christ Jesus is the one that saves you. He provides the Principles, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Christianity itself does not offer the principles. Christ does. The Bible is where these principles are written and expounded upon.
Christ is who saves you.
Christ is true.
Christ Himself is the way to G-d.
Christ is the G-d/Man who provides Freedom and liberation and the place of sonship with the Father, and the place of freedom.
Christianity itself did not die on the cross for you. Jesus did.
We have a generation of believers who hear this tripe about Christianity preached from the pulpit. And they have a relationship with Christianity and taught relationship with Christianity. And so many believers have a relationship with Christianity because that is safe and controllable. But they don’t have a relationship with Christ, because “of course he is not safe.”
The Lion of Judah isn’t safe.
And we are being faced with a choice. Do you want the relationship with Christianity, or with Christ.
I do not classify myself as a Christian.
I follow Christ. I do not follow an institution.
And there are many of my friends, who are Jews and non-Jews that likewise do not call themselves Christians, but they follow Christ.
Calling yourself a Christian does not mean we follow Christ or have a living and breathing relationship with the man who gave us the Principles.
I follow a G-d/Man. I do not follow an institution.
There is only one thing I believe in. Jesus.
I do not believe in faith or Christianity.
I do not put my faith into a concept.
I put my faith into Him. The Man.
I do not put my faith into an ideology or an institution.
I put my faith and trust in my Husband who saved me, and my Father who interacts with me. And my Holy Spirit who counsels and Exhorts me.
Again, it’s not about Christianity, so spare me your preaching of the validity of Christianity.
And please, for the LOVE of G-d who dwells in Divine Council, preach to me the G-d/Man.

DISCLAIMER: What follows is a pretty rough history. No swearing is present. Rather, this is a testimony of near-destruction, grace, breaking, and release. It’s not pretty, but it is authentic.
I am very grateful for the restoration of the last few years.
And one moral of this story is that we can abuse the earned authority G-d gives us to damage other people.  We call the varipus manifestations of this behavior by the unsavory term “Charismatic Witchcraft”, “Witchcraft Prayer”, and when a pattern of abuse by those in leadership develops, Christian Ritual Abuse (CRA).
 
ONE SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT THAT FITS THIS TESTIMONY
Saul was anointed. G-d would have established Saul’s dynasty (just as He would have Jeraboam ben-Nebat’s dynasty). But Saul rejected G-d’s commands (1 Samuel 15:26) and as a result, G-d took the man He had anointed, and utterly stripped him of his birthright to rule and reign over Israel.
G-d will allow leaders to abuse for a season specifically because He is giving them space to repent. But at some point He will step in and put a stop to it. Earned authority can be used for really good things or really stupid things. And in the case of my ex-pastor and his wife, they expended their earned authority going after us and sending spiritual entities after us.
 
THE HISTORY
I had moved to a small community in order to go to college in 1998. My grandmother’s connections with the college’s Political Science Department founder (a man who served in the 1976 Electoral College) were partly to blame for this transition. Ultimately, though, you and I both know Who was responsible for allowing that shift.
Because of my GPA, I was accepted on the condition that I complete and satisfactorily pass a summer schedule. That summer, I learned a whole lot about myself, especially that, even though I had freedom to engage in all sorts of foolish behavior, I had an internal system that would not allow me to participate in that, even though I was 2 hours away from home.
It is strange to me that so many people who leave for college melt down into the party scene when they go to college, and somehow I never engaged in that.
It was during that summer when I broke up with a girl who was an atheist. And I only broke up with her because my Head Dorm Resident, who was a Catholic, said I was living in sin, unequally yoked, and had to either choose compromise, or choose to break it off. Yeah, people that say Catholics cannot be saved…well, I don’t have a whole lot to say about that topic.
Rather, instead of waning in my church commitments, I maintained them. I got involved with a couple campus ministries, including the Catholic ministry, mostly due to my Head Resident’s influence, which was G-d ordained, and helped me to develop one very critical relationship with a precious sister whose relationship with the Holy Spirit deepened because the L-rd used me in her life. We were the only two that graduated the same year from our college’s English Department.
Following that first summer, I moved into another dorm with the man who has come to set the benchmark for Prophets in my life. He was responsible for being the catalyst that introduced me to the fullness of the Holy Spirit (not by winning me over with arguments, but by praying for me behind my back for 7 months) and introducing me to inner healing, deliverance (he was delivered from a spirit of epilepsy when he was 7, and the story was really wild), and spiritual warfare.
The following year, my Sophomore year, I got involved with an A/G church in town, and that was my introduction from Methodism and Catholicism to Pentecostalism. That church, the pastor, and his wife introduced me to dancing and flagging during worship, in addition to the ministry of the manifestation gifts in worship. This is where I met Ed Silvoso, Gary Kellner, and a number of others movers and shakers in the Classical Pentecostal movement. The pastor and his wife, both from Trenton, New Jersey, were people that I grew really close to, and it became a spiritual parents/spiritual son relationship.
By the time we were Seniors, my friend had learned from the L-rd that he was to start a prayer group on campus that was designed to see the entirety of the campus delivered from all the major principalities. And from roughly September to December, we spent three months effectively cleaning up the campus. G-d met us, told us what to do, and we did it. No fancy coverings, no permissions from anyone. We just did it. The enemy left in response to the authority we earned in the preceding three years and the power we were given; the work we had done in the preceding years leading up to this season developed a great deal of earned authority made it much easier. So, this thing called earned authority is real, and it works. When you clean up your garbage and allow the L-rd to move you where He wants, then you accrue authority.
Following this, because my pastor and his wife were the other people who were vested with leading the move for unity in the city, and they both thought strategically with respect to the warfare in the city, my friend requested a meeting with them in good faith as a way of sharing information and partnering with them strategically.
That is where it turned ugly…
Instead of wanting a partnership, this pastor, an Exhorter, and his wife, a Prophet, wanted my friend to submit this group to his authority and covering.
My friend gave the pastor his word that he would pray about that request and that he would get back with him..
This is precisely what he did, which happened over Christmas Break that year.
That was December 2001.
While my friend had gone home for break, the L-rd told “you are not submitting a THING to his authority.”
I stayed back in the city while he was gone for break, and one of those two Sundays when was in church following that meeting, I heard the pastor make a comment from the pulpit that there was “a group of kids on the college campus squirting at principalities with water pistols.”
When I first heard it, I didn’t think he could be possibly be referring to us. But then when my friend came back from Christmas break in January, he went to meet with my pastor and tell him what he had heard from the L-rd, he was not even allowed to have a face-to-face meeting with my pastor. He had his wife meet my friend and say that there was nothing that needed to be said between them, and no point in their meeting. It was a complete shift in the tone of the conversation from being one of an olive branch, to one of submission, to one of adversity.
And then, just before we graduated, I got into my very first car accident during Pentecost, and two months later, my car was totalled in a freak accident. After we graduated, he and his fianceé married that summer a few weeks later, and the first 13 to 15 years of their marriage was financial, emotional, and spiritual hell.
 
THE NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES
As for me, I moved away to go to grad school in accordance with my design. And during this time period the following things happened to me in no particular order:

1. I could not find any sort of meaningful employment within my design for the same time period (13 to 15 years) or when I found employment, something would happen to devour that was outside of my control.
2. I totalled or lost 8 cars to undetected rust in the process.
3. I married in 2005, fathered two sons, was moved by my wife in direct violation of Father’s instructions, was arrested, banned from seeing my sons for nine months, my wife committed adultery, my reputation at my church was devoured, and that marriage ended in divorce. During that season, she accused me of having Asperger’s, ADHD, DID, and a host of other psychological conditions, and contended that medication was the solution, when the real problem was that I had no social network at all, because EVEN that was completely devoured at all points, unless I behaved in just the right way, and even then, it was hit-or-miss.
4. The fruit of every single negative personality trait, quirk, or social mistake was compounded 15-fold and treated as evidence that I was desperate, crazy, untrustworthy, unstable, or otherwise not worth time spent.
5. The fruit of every single positive action that I sowed was radically minimized or devoured.
6. Even though I was a seminary graduate, I was not allowed to so much as teach Sunday School at my home church.
7. An inheritance was devoured
8. My license with the Assemblies of G-d was completely worthless from the time I had gained it because I was not able to secure any sort of ministry at all, or when I was, it was devoured. My licensure with them ended in dismissal.
9. My wife was warned not to marry me for some of the reasons mentioned above.
10. Pastors, except for one man, his son, and one other woman to a man/woman gave me a WIDE berth, and virtually no opportunites to minister.

This series that lasted between 13-15 years did not let up until we exposed an Antichrist Network that had chased us down because a sentence had been leveled against us.
 
WHAT WE FOUND OUT AT THE ROOT
And we traced the root of this network being released on us back to the events of 2001-2002, and back to this couple, my spiritual parents. We recognized that practicing witches had infiltrated the circle of intercessors at this church, and my ex-pastor’s wife had allowed them in and their earned authority and her earned authority combined to assault us, and especially me because I was counted in the spirit realm as her spiritual son.
What manifested was what we call a spiritual sentence that was invoked by my pastor’s wife primarily, using her earned authority that should have been used to bless and release instead to sentence, curse, and control.
 
WHAT IS A SENTENCE
A sentence is a sort of legal document that is a judicial in narure and handed down with its own set of consequences, terms, length of adjudication and nature of sentencing. In my case, no jobs, no success in ministry, no success inoving toward my calling, and nothing backing my specific niches of blessing, and complete destruction in the areas where I have an unfair advantage. Also, a blunting of every advantage I have ever had and an increase in liqbilities.
In this case of me, this sentence was handed down by at least two major spirits: Antichrist and Apollyon.
 
AFTER BREAKING THROUGH
On the day that we started to break through, she and he became my ex-pastors.
That was the hardest decision I ever had to make in terms of responding to a church decision. I had to cut off all ties with that church, forgive, and cease communications completely. Further, I broke every trauma bond to time and land that were related to that season and that plot of land called DeLand, Florida.
 
AH, YES, ABOUT THAT ANTICHRIST NETWORK…
So I mentioned this thing called an Antichrist Network a couple of times, and some of y’all are probably wondering what that is right now.
Basically, in our seasons of adversity from DeLand, FL, we had ticked off the ruling spirit over the city, which happened to be an Antichrist Spirit. That spirit connected with a network of other spirits in other cities, in advance of our arrival, due to my ex-pastor’s wife’s authority merged with the coven in the local spiritualist camp’s authority, in order to activate a network that followed and tracked us to every city we each went to.
Once we dismantled that network, we gained a considerable amount of freedom.
Also, during this season, my friend was told, by Father, that this church was “not a church”. And further, He told my friend to stretch out his hand in the direction of that church and proclaim “not a church”.
Within a week of this event (which had taken place without my knowledge), I dreamed that the lampstand of the church had been put out. I had called my friend and told him this, and he replied by telling me what the L-rd had told him and told him to do.
 
AND SOME RESTITUTION…
During this whole ordeal, I was in a near-monthly state of shock that someone that was a spirit-filled believer could engage in this sort of garbage.
And, I had kept my nose clean and my heart completely free of accusations and offense toward them. If you rn anything about me as you grow in friendship with me, it is I am simply have an unfair advantage and strong suit when it comes to loyalty.
In the case of my ex-pastor and this wife, I did not retaliate against them one time.
However, it really shocked me when I was working in my warehouse job, not thinking about much of anything in Western Massachusetts during the graveyard shift and I heard the L-rd say to me, “do you want Renee’s birthright?”
I replied, “what?”. I was standing by the box compactor.
Renee is my ex-pastor’s wife.
“L-rd,” I asked, “are You sure You want to give me this!?”
“Yes,” He replied.
The implication was that Renee had sufficiently engaged in a pattern of sinful behavior sufficiently serious to warrant the L-rd had stripped her of her birthright.
And because I did not lift a finger to defend myself from those attacks, and walked the line of loyalty, I evidently could be entrusted with the authority and the reality that came with her birthright.
I am digging through what all was entailed in her birthright, but so far, I know there is a major component tied up in my words.
 
THE EXCEPTIONS TO THE NEGATIVE PATTERN
In the last 15 years, the only exceptions to this rule were:

1. March 19, 2016: the day I met Arthur Burk, and….he said he “liked the fact that you are not shy and inhibited. I’ve enjoyed you all morning, so let it rip.” How long had it been since someone had told me that? 16 years. How someone under so much assault can be told that…it was like seeing the newborn baby all those years ago and not being afraid of that baby.
2. My conversations with Sandy Landry via e-mail in which she intentionally poured…for months into me, which turned into years, which grew into a more mature interaction, which led me to embrace Father as Father.
3. And even when I could not embrace Father as Father, somehow, during this difficult season, He used me to speak life to my wife, Pam, and introduce her to Father as Father.
4. Adam Esbenshade’s choice to befriend me during this very difficult season and his desire to chase something deeper with me.

 
PINCHING MYSELF
This is part of the reason why, when I am told about the impact I have had in someone’s life, and when DID/SRA survivors say the trust me, and people see the pastoral mantle on me, and when I hear so much abundant positive feedback, that…it just leaves me wondering….flabberghasted…speechless…in awe…if this is really the way things are and if this is going to stick.
 
THE LARGER CONTEXT AND OTHER FACETS THAT LIBERATED ME
But the sentence and the Antichrist Networks were only part of the problem.
When that sentence was broken…
When I released the Exhorter portion of my spirit…
And when the Mantle of Invisibility was shredded at the Breach of Conception seminar on September 30, 2017 in Spartanburg, South Carolina by the Father…
So much light and glittery oil of G-d’s anointing was released and flooded into me that people started gravitating toward me, trusting me, allowing me to minister to them, work with them, connect, and build relationship with them. Those of you who are reading this post are the evidence of that breaking.
It was like catching up to a large place where I was supposed to be. There was a relational sweet spot that emerged.
And I was able to move forward into my birthright and design, and as a result of soberly walking a tight line of not slandering my authorities, I was more deeply blessed with a secondary birthright in order to be a blessing and further see the church redeemed.
And, I am really honored that each of you that trusts me with some aspect of your story does that.

Jeremiah Johnson is an elder at a local church in Lakeland, Florida and a regular itinerant minister with whom I have had the privilege of connecting on Facebook.
While he and I have disagreed on a few topics, the way he prioritizes his wife and children is rare among those who clasically minister the gospel, and speaks volumes about who he is as a person of character. He has my respect, period.
Further, the way in which he demonstrates his real heart for the things of G-d, the local church, and our generation has few equals among my generation.
To the following that he recently posted I csn only add vociferous agreement:

THE RISE OF SANCTIFIED MILLENNIAL INTERCOURSE
There is a growing number of Christian millennials (18-35 yrs old) that I continue to meet across the USA as I travel and minister who believe and are being encouraged by older people that their “burning with lust” problem will be solved by getting married as soon as possible. In other words, they want to have sanctified intercourse without actually having sanctified motives and desires for one another. They just want to have sex “blessed by God” without even taking the time to get to know one another, discuss past histories, family life etc. This has caused an epidemic of millennial marriages to not last very long at all.
Let me be clear Christian millennials : If the only reason why you are getting married is for the sex or because you just can’t wait, you are not in love, you have self-control issues that need to be dealt with! Getting in bed with someone is not going to deliver someone from pornography addiction or insecurity that causes someone to throw themselves and body at anyone that takes notice.
We need Christian millennials in America who are actually going to give themselves to LONG engagements where intercourse is completely off the table and now it’s time to actually get to know one another for who you truly are. It’s time to ask the hard questions. This is what real love is!
We also need Christian leaders who will refuse to marry Christian millennials unless they have gone through at least 6-8 weeks of hardcore premarital counseling and real issues can be put on the table and worked through.
There is a sexual revolution coming to Christian millennials in America and it’s this: Keep it in your pants, get delivered from lust and pornography, have a long engagement with NO INTERCOURSE, receive some solid premarital counseling, and then enjoy an incredible LONG-LASTING
marriage!
From a concerned pastor and traveling minister,
Jeremiah Johnson

Let me just say that, if you are using a test to determine a Redemptive Gift, and if you are saying that you have more than one based on test results, and that is your only data source for determining your gift, then you are doing it wrong.
I have some friends who attend a particular church where the Redemptive Gifts are being studied via a particular book and in conjunction with a particular test.
And they are told “circle the three highest numbers and the largest in your primary gift, the second largest is your secondary gift, and so on”.
Gang, this (solely the accrual of data, checking off boxes, numbering 1-5, and tallying scores) is not the way to discover your gifts, nor do you have more than one as your redemptive gift.  Each of us has one, and only one Gift of the 7 listed in Romans 12:6-8.
Your spirit knows what Redemptive Gift you are.  And so many times we are leaving behind the knowledge of our spirits in order to embrace the data that we can accrue and quantify with our minds.
We think the one has to come at the expense of the other.  This is not the way it has to be.  Nor does the data from our soul trump the data that should be streaming from our spirit.
I will get into a deeper understanding of the reasoning behind this at a later date, but suffice it for the moment three realities:
1) We have a spirit breathed into us by G-d (and i won’t get into this “you are a spirit and you have a soul” nonsense here because we HAVE both a spirit and we HAVE a soul and we are a living being that IS a combination of the three: spirit, soul, and body).
2) We have a soul, as well, and this soul is just as important in its unique way to our spirit.  Neither spirit nor soul is an add-on, and neither spirit nor soul is the sum of who we are.
3) In our spirits are all seven Redemptive Gifts, each packaged with a portion of our spirit.  The strongest one, the gift that gives you the biggest ROI (short for Return On Investment) is your Redemptive Gift, and the one that manifests in the expression of your soul (your mind, will, and emotions).
Using a test to ascertain your Redemptive Gift is using information that is not spiritually attained.  And yet, we are designed to be spiritual creatures that use more than just information that is naturally attained.  The knowledge of our Redemptive Gift, if we don’t see sufficient natural data to confirm our gift, comes through our spirit.  Our spirit knows which gets the greatest ROI.  And it should be that we get this information primarily through our spirit, and confirmed by the data we get through our souls.
If, however, we are stubborn and bullheaded and think we have more than one RG, then an excellent and likely explanation for that is wounding of the portion of our spirit that carried our presenting Redemptive Gift.  In the case of wounding of our the dominant RG portion with greatest ROI, one of the other six portions has picked up the slack left by the void of the wounded portion of our spirit.
That said, let’s jump from and abandon this nonsense that says we have more than one RG. Givers play in non-blacks-and-whites, and Prophets have to bring everything to closure, for example.
But saying you have this gift or these gifts because a test told you so is silly, even if you took the same test and got the same results, especially when we have so much more data available to us, AND if we will listen.
The greatest natural clue we have as to our RG is our design.  But it will take some time to unpack.
I know some people that took a test, say they are a Prophet/Servant/Exhorter and have never confronted another soul a day in their life. Servant does not coexist woth Prophet in the same body. Servants have so many marks that are so not Prophet and vice-versa that it makes no sense to conjoin the two.
So, really, let’s get off this kick that says we are two or more things when we really are not.  And let’s invest the sweat equity to ascertain our gift.
/rant

Well-fenced, and well-languaged, Jeremy Crenshaw has suffered much for what he is gifted to do, even though it has cost him professionally.
This is one Teacher that makes me honored to call friend.
He writes:

Not too long ago I heard one biblical scholar critique another. He suggested that the scholar in question was more confessional. The suggestion was that, even though this scholar is considered to be one of the giants in his field, the scholar was some how less academic because he was biased towards the Bible, Christianity, and the Church. My thought then and now is “what the heck are we doing then?” I felt led by the Spirit to attain higher education, to get my Ph.D., as a way of serving my Lord to the best of my ability. Being “confessional” should be everything for the biblical scholar. I certainly did not get into this for the fame and fortune! I could have went and got a doctorate in engineering or medicine if I wanted that. What have I endured all of the trials and pain of this journey for, if not to use it to proclaim the truth to the best of my ability? Education is worthless if it causes me to doubt and be cynical about the Lord, his word, and his people. This is the same reason that I reject modern “academic” notions in certain circles that say “everything should be on the table for discussion” because it is academics. No! No! No! I might add that this is the same reason that I have rejected certain “principals” of certain church groups when they argue for things that clearly are not scriptural. This has, in fact, cost me dearly on a professional level. Yet, I say let his word be truth and everyone else a liar. So, excuse me if I sound “confessional,” but my allegiance to my Lord is much more important to me than methodological skepticism guised in the cover of academic rigor. I started this, and I continue to do this because I really do believe. In fact, the more that I have learned the more that I have been strengthened in that belief. At the end of the age, I will gladly stand with the scholars being critiqued by arrogant systems of this world and be told “well done my good and faithful servant.” It is much better than the alternative.

#manifesto

Thank you Sonia Brownless, for provoking this post.

Okay, so the Fractal of 4 is the pattern of 4 that we see in nature amd in life.
I wonder if we also see it in Scripture as well.
A fractal is little more than a pattern that repeats itself.
And the members of the Fractal of 4 are as follows:
1. Father
2. Son
3. Holy Spirit
4. The Kingdom of G-d
One of the easiest ways to illustrate the Fractal of 4 is with the human heart.
The Right Atrium parallels the work of the Father, which is the first chamber that receives the blood that is capable of sustaining life and funnels that life into the Right Ventricle, which in turn pushes the blood to the lungs to receive oxygen, as the Son pushes us to places where we can breathe freely and receive the life-giving air we need to function and take Dominion.
Life flows from the Father accordingly and Dominion flows from the Son who pushes us into the place where we can receive from the Holy Spirit.
From the Lungs, the blood returns to the heart, and, specifically, the Left Atrium which is the launching pad for this now well-oxygenated blood to get sent into all the body.
In the same way, we are also given the life-giving breath of the Holy Spirit and then thrust into all the world to hand them the same life of the L-rd. This place of extending the Kingdom is a distinct honor given to those who heed the Spirit’s call.