I would like to note that I struggled with where to categorize this post, but then I realized I have been on a track of dealing with aspects that blind us, which is a device of the Mesmerizing Spirit.
Also, while it’s true that Revelation and Denial affect the Exhorter more, all of us, regardless of gifts, may struggle with it. For example, Mercies like myself have some issues with this because we tend to be so ethereal, heavenly-minded, head-in-the-clouds.
“Earth to David. Are you checking in with the mother ship?”
The Problem
The root of Denial gives rise to the stronghold of non-Reality that pollutes the strong suit of the Exhorter: Revelation.
Just as English Ivy and Wisteria run amok can bring down a mighty oak or a landslide can choke the flow of a strong river, so also denial initiates a sequence of events that can choke the life flow of a robust existence.
Treating a partial perspective as the whole perspective will kill our ability to hear the voice of G-d. It can also affect our ability to hear our own spirit, which may be shouting warnings to us.
This is true no matter the arena.
The Change of Direction
If we want the light and the river of insight to flow over our lives in force…
If we want to new ideas to alight on us with fluency…
Then it remains incumbent upon us to demand to know the ways in which the partial perspective we each have fits into the whole.
Many who hear the voice of G-d never make the leap from their dream or vision to how it fits as part of a larger picture that they never considered.
The Assignment
Here we follow the G-d of the Hunt. Our mission is to look for missing pieces that will help fill out our perspective. In so doing, we must be willing willing to receive both the comfort/encouragement/consolation and the exhortation/reproof/correction. This may require us to work with others.
Helping Others Speak Even When You Have An Answer
Something that may help us to work at stewarding our words better is this: Put on humility and connect with others to find out what they are hearing from the L-rd as well.
Be willing to admit that, friend, that even though the L-rd has shown you something, someone alongside of you who is less experienced with the things of G-d might need you to listen rather than speak, so you can help them along in their journey to maturity.
The immature may tell you something you have heard one million times before. However, they might also need a more mature man or woman of G-d to encourage them as they journey. Plus, with fresh eyes, they might surprise you with something you have not considered.
To be sure, It is possible to wear humility as a garment and keep an open mind that you do not have the whole perspective.
You are part of a body with many members. This means that you will need to seek out those who have the other pieces of the puzzle. That means you will need to form relationships with other people, like it or not.
When you remove something that has metastisized at an alarming rate, what instrument do you use? Answer: a scalpel. Or a sword. That depends on the context.
Likewise, when you are in Denial about a result and the truth, and the stronghold is allowed to gather strength, that stronghold rooted in denying or hiding from reality creates an oppression. This oppression, left unchecked, will result in the Fourth Head of Leviathan, which we will discuss in the post on that head.
In order to survive and then thrive, you MUST tear down that stronghold, or fall under its weight. In order to tear down that stronghold effectively, you must deal with the root of Denial.
Denial. We heard it when Bob Jones said Bill Clinton had a mantle of humility. We heard about it when people suggested on one side that the morality of the President has little to do with whether or not he or she can govern. “We are not electing a pastor but a President.” We got to the point with Clinton when he said “he didn’t mean it as adultery”. We suspend judgment when it is our people, but heap it when it is the other party or group.
And meanwhile, Joe Biden is grasping for legitimacy because we allowed the President’s office to get that raucously defiled. This creation of the Office of the President-Elect, complete with Presidential Blue backdrop is a Denial-laced grab for legitimacy, because he has not been sworn in.
And many of us appear not to give a damn nor bother to pray for the toll this passed-around nonsense is taking on the marriages and families of those in positions of influence and public service.
So, Donald Trump can be the wrecking ball all you want until the cows come home.
Bill Clinton can be humble all Bob Jones claims.
Bush 43 can be the one who wants to “restore dignity to the Oval Office” while he commits us to an open-ended battle campaign with zero end in sight.
Clinton can give us surpluses until we are blue in the face…
Both Republicans and Democrats can spend us into oblivion with impugnity…
And we can pass around lists that say Republican are for limited government…
Even though Trump and Bush 43 asked for stimulus packages totaling in the billions of dollars….
However, it will not mean a thing as long as we are single-sided in our attacks and corrections and rebukes.
We still have not come out of our Denial yet, church. Neither have our government officials. And I am not convinced they want to.
The problem, indeed, is that SHIELD is a nothing more than a front for HYDRA. Those of you who have never seen the MCU movie “Captain America: Winter Solider” may not know what I mean by this. So, here are the pertinent movie clips.
And we are conserving and liberating nothing, except for the cancer that is present. Our responsibility is not to let one party or group play us off one another. In ANY arena, political or otherwise.
Spiritually speaking, this Denial and “my-partial-perspective-is-the-whole-picture” mindset is what allows things to grow without our knowledge or consent: In government, in the private sector, in the church and in the academy (looking at you, Liberty University sex scandal).
The Mesmerizing Spirit and this partial-as-whole perspective create a defilement of our times, our seasons, and our capacity to accurately discern the rhythm of times, seasons, and our moving forward in a horizontal manner with the constellation of our relationships in the surround.
When you are vested in the success of a political party come hell or high water, regardless of the actual truth, you have crossed the line into Denial.
When you are vested in the protection of a church’s reputation regardless of who was harmed by the abuse (Mars Hill, Hillsong, the Southern Baptist Convention’s mishandling of Beth Moore who called them out on their sex abuse culture), then your attitude is part of the problem.
When Denial strikes, prophets go hazy with their sight, planes fall from the sky because of imprecise engineering, and whole movements in the church go batty because they lose their focus. I am looking at the German Lutheran church for starters, where Martin Luther, the Exhorter, wanted a number of reforms, but moved to embrace anti-semitism and wasted the latter portion of his life combatting and slandering the Jewish people.
This problem of Denial and non-reality can affect anybody regardless of their gift, but it is particuarly and disproportionately damaging to the Exhorter.
Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, FDR, Ben Franklin, Walt Disney, the Assemblies of G-d, the Apostle Paul, Moses, Solomon, the state of California, Hollywood. All have had seasons where they were massively wide of the mark while being effective in other areas, and for some of them, that distraction and non-reality cost them their birthright.
And yes, when you are a President that says “I alone can do this,” then there might be an issue embodied in that mindset.
Or you are a king who, for the sake of political peace, you marry many foreign women…..
Or you are a daughter of a pagan king and are sold as a commodity to cement your father’s political relations (Jezebel), and you swear you are never going to let another person control your destiny or aspirations….
Or if you are a skilled animator who pressures everyone around you to the point where you think that because you are Walt Disney, no one of your staff will unionize….
This diorama of reality is not about one specific set of pot shots against one person. It is about helping to illustrate the worst of what happens when we embrace non-reality.
Defining Reality
Reality is the latest manifestation of the Fourth Principle. before that, it was referred to as the Principle of Sowing and Reaping, and, before that, the Principle of Pain and Suffering.
By reality, I mean embracing WHAT IS as the L-rd sees it. He sees more fully than we do. So, right off the bat, we are talking about recognizing that we see only part of the picture, or, as one Exhorter put it:
…we know in part, and we prophesy in part
Paul to the believers in Corinth.
Gang, reality means embracing the L-rd’s agenda and applying our part for what it is, into the whole, and refusing to see our portion as the whole situation. Broadly speaking, we regularly see less than the L-rd, for some reason….
So, our responsibility is to ever look to the L-rd for direction and input as we progress into our journey.
We seek His agenda and what of His agenda He has placed within us.
Some Implications of Reality
Our responsibility in hunting for His agenda (Reality) is to refuse the popular phrases or excuses of the Charismatic Movement such as:
” I do not have the time to. research this/seek for that/therefore give me the finished product, because I came expecting….”
“I do not have time to process these raw materials. G-d will send me somoeone who will provide the finished product.”
“I do not have time to do this work or that assignment or that thing over there or this thing over here.”
It is one thing for us to ask for help when we really need it, but to engage in every situation by waltzing in with a bang and a flourish and expecting others to give to you finished products from their resources with zero understanding of the cost to them, or the sequence of Giving and Receiving is something entirely different.
There is an entitlement mindset pervasive in the body of Christ that loves to claim divine intervention for Every. Single. Situation where our poor planning or lack of resources is a factor.
Uttering Praise the L-rd and G-d Came Through when He actually came through is not a problem.
However, when we poorly plan and poorly execute and someone comes in and bails us out and we refuse to thank them for fixing our problem in our blindness, and we refuse to make course corrections or adjustments so we do not have the same problem in the future, then we have a larger root problem, and are not far from walking in non-reality.
We simply have to walk this cause-and-effect thing we call Reality more cleanly. If we are chronically late, for example, then we need to figure out why we are late and fix the problem.
We must intentionally sow good seed in order to reap a good crop.
Now, I am not beating up people who have a wound or some trauma or some junk where G-d is working in a long-term process with them to bring them to a better place. Each of us has some issues and stuff and none of us has arrived at the place of sheer perfection. If you are actively attempting to work at bettering your situation, that is one thing.
But it is entirely a different thing when sloth is part of the equation, and you are allowing life happen to you. The spirit of passivity does not belong to the highly effective son or daugher in the Kingdom; they happen to situations.
You must, in walking in Reality, know the difference between pawning your situations off on others, asking for help if you are stuck, and working at the areas you know something about and have means to fix.
It is critically important for each of us to have a goal in mind and, pending our relentless consultation with the L-rd about those plans, move toward the goal that should result in us possessing our birthright.
And in engaging Reality, we must all learn how to….
Embrace the Right Level and Kind of Pain
Indiscriminate pain avoidance is not the domain of those who wish for Reality. Rather, our responsibility is embracing the right kind and level of pain.
Your Pain….Productive Or Not…You Decide…
You have a score of choices with respect to what you do with your pain. And there are two types of pain….productive or unproductive.
Grossly put, unproductive pain is pain that comes into your life situation from which you fail to derive any lesson of any sort. You do not connect with the L-rd in this pain, and as a result, the adversity brings little to know growth.
Productive pain, on the other hand, is pain from which the L-rd is able to instruct you.
Most pain starts out as unproductive. It is the lesson that makes the difference in whether or not the pain moves from the Unproductive category to the Productive category.
For example, years ago, my father abandoned me and my parents divorced. For a long time I could only feel the sting and the heartache of my father’s absence, and this was compounded by the fact that he died a few years back.
What helped transform this pain from unproductive to productive was me helping others who had lost fathers to abandonment or alcohol or death, and blessing them. Taking care of my sons and my daughter.
Sometimes, walking in the blessings that come from walking in reality means embracing others who need when you are in a place of lack and stepping into places to bless and encourage in areas where you have received little to no human encouragement.
We have a perfect Father, and we lack no father, even if our eathly fathers abandoned us. Given we have a perfect and loving Father, what do we lack in terms of tools, affection, and depth of capacity to love and father others?
Nothing.
Reality dictates that we lack nothing with which to father. Not wisdom or resources. Not heart or spirit. Not emotions. Not understanding, knowledge, or wisdom. And certainly not a sense of justice or the capacity for a heart oozing with compassion. Because our G-d could related to our frailties, we also can relate to the weakness of others, and the lack in others.
Because He received from Our Father, we also can receive and then give to others who lack.
Provided we are wiling to move beyond slavery and into the embrace of our Father and give that embrace to others.
We love, because he first loved us. We have freely received SO MUCH, and so we are able to give even in areas where we have lacked.
This is reality that comes from the Father of Lights who has given us his son. How much will He not also give us all things.
Translation: G-d gave us everything He had in the embodiment of His Son. What’s a little bit of stuff? Especially when we are sent to be life-giving to others.
Having done a couple of videos on the subject of the Mesmerzing Spirit, what follows is how I understand the Mesmerizing Spirit. So, read on, and feel free to add, change, adjust and do what helps you to flesh out what I have put down here.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MESMERIZING SPIRIT (MS):
The MS is a pickpocket; it wants to distract you from something in order to rob your perceptions of another, keeping those perceptions from attaining a place of wholeness, and causing your to believe you are percieving the whole when you are perceiving only a part. It can be 10% or 50% or 98%, but something is missing.
The MS is not a character assassain on its own, but it sets the stage for character assassinations to take place. It lays that groundwork by stealing from the full compliment of our perceptions and our discernment (the two can be different), and in turn, stealing from the full package of reality.
I have seen the MS work in tandem with the 5th Head of Leviathan, which prevents people from hearing and perceving accurately, and in the context of human relationships, it prevents people from hearing our heart and seeing that accurately. With the 5th Head operating in our lives, words get twisted and and ANYTHING to do with sound can get misaligned. While this can extend to malfunctioning technology and we love to hear, I really want to draw your attention to the most general way of thinking about sound. Don’t get locked into merely thinking about sound in a narrow band, or just thinking about technology alone. Rather, expand your perception to think about all forms of sound (emanating from single sources) and communication (interaction of sounds between multiple sources); conversation; music; the sound of creation, birds, fish, leaves, trees, wind, oceans, the deeps of the mountains, the earth, the sun, stars, wheat growing in a field, ants, lions, snakes, wolves, dogs, cats; hearing the L-rd’s voice, the voices of other people, the voice of the enemy, the voice of your spirit, and the voice of your soul; and responding in kind to each of these, including those who do not speak our native language (human/animal, human/plant, plant/animal, weather/plant, weather/animal, water/plant, etc.). In general, how well and how accurately do we hear, and how well do we steward those things we hear and with which we interact? When words and sounds get twisted by the 5th head, the MS comes in and brings people’s focus onto a part and deceives them into thinking them that they are looking at the whole.
Remember the old statement that “perception is reality”? Well, if you are looking for evidence of reality in your perceptions of a person or a situation after the MS has come through, then prepare yourself, because if your perception is not accurately grounded in the fullness of reality as G-d sees it, then perception will not come even remotely close to refleting reality, much less being reality, once this spirit has done its dirty work. Further, as a general rule, perception is never an accurate reflection of reality in our culture precisely because perception too often operates in the absence of either real Spirit-driven discernment or the Fruit of the Spirit. We need both to accurately see and percieve others, and the MS wars relentlessly against both discernment and the Fruit.
The MS robs a portion from the whole of our perspective.
On the one hand, we might end up focusing on a really good package and miss out on some serious flaws because we bought the deception that that flaw did not exist. The MS can cover for a flaw or set of flaws and make us see the person or entity in question as only all-good.
On the other hand, we might focus only on the bad in a person, but because there is something golden in their character that the MS dirtied up, soiled, or covered over, we cannot see it. The MS can cover over a massively good set of qualities and cause us only to see the negative and a person or entity as all-bad.
We call this a theft of honor based on reality or non-reality.
The objective of an MS is to control where you look and at what you look.
Because of the ability of the MS to blind people, we understand the MS to be a perversion of the Holy Spirit. As per my previous post, my review on Life, Dominion, and Honor, it is the Holy Spirit Who is primarily concerned with bringging us Honor. Given the MS is a perversion of the Holy Spirit, we infer that the MS is concerned with destroying honor by destroying the complete perspective of who a person or what a situation is in the eyes of others. For the teaching, which is free, and worth every minute, go here.
WARRING AGAINST THE MS
So, how do we get rid of this nonsense?
We must repent for allowing our attention to be absorbed by only the bad or only of the good in our own lives.
We must repent for reviling the people, organizations, and other entities that we have reviled based on an inaccurate perception of their image and actions.
We must repent of how we have coached G-d in how he delivers us and our friends. These prayers for deliverance may be based on inaccurate perception.
The phrase, “Perception Is Reality”, as it is commonly applied, absent discernment, and in the presence of only a superficial, natural perception, is an abomniable lie from the pit of hell. The way we commonly utilize and apply this phrase as a maxim, rooted in only our five senses, causes us to scoff and keeps us from actual discernment. Instead of discernment, we so frequently settle for our senses. Let me repeat that; instead of discernment, we frequently settle for the data that comes through our five senses. As a result, we think the firstborn son of Jesse is the anointed of the L-rd. Consequently, we refuse to even begin a search for the heart/mind of a matter. G-d looks on the heart/mind, the core of a matter. When we settle for the natural data as our way of determining truth rather than the more difficult work of hunting for the heart and mind of a matter, we open the door for the stronghold of the Cult of Comfort; in the typical naturalistic way of dealing with things, we reach places where we are happy and content to judge people based on their appearance or the height of their stature (1 Samuel 16:7). And we never dig more deeply for what the L-rd is doing in a matter. Superficial perception leads to superficial judgment (decision). Therefore, we need to reject and repent of believing the lie that perception is any indicator of reality, and we need to actually take the time to observe reality. For lack of a stronger analogy, vaccinate yourself with a healthy dose of discernment. It is through discernment that you prove what is G-d’s will that is good, acceptable, and perfect.
Get to know which forms of discernment are yours, and cultivate those. There are certain gifts of which I am convinced, that are the domain of each and every believer, despite how some would read 1 Corinthians 12 and 14. Prophesying, speaking in tongues as the Spirit gives the utterance, and discernment are three which fit this description.
We then must ask Him to align our perception with reality as He sees it, rather than passively accepting whatever comes through our senses as a marker for reality, we need to put on the fullness of discernment that Yeshua died for us to possess. So, get rid of this phrase of sloth, and actually hunt for reality.
We must repent for shelving the Fruit of the Spirit, and for substituting suspicion for discernment.
We must repent for reeling off all of the “yes, buts”, all of the excuses why we cannot or should not do something, or why someone or something is only good or only bad. If you cannot see and name at least some of the flaws in a good person, or the see and name at least one or two redeeming qualities in a bad person, then there is a high risk you are already under the influence of a mesmerizing spirit. Every perfectly-behaved person or situation has some foolishness or flaws, and every clown or bad situation has something in them that can be seen in a redemptive light and used for a redemptive purpose, if we will just hunt for it.
We must ask G-d to shine His light on WHATEVER HE WANTS TO SHINE HIS LIGHT! WARNING: this simple prayer is DANGEROUS!
While asking G-d to shine His light, we must actively REFUSE the temptation to coach Him on what to expose (Hello, people yelling about the negative of the Democrat Party without calling out the negative in your own camps. People praying, “Yes, G-d, expose the lies that the Democrats/Demoncrats/Libtards/Democraps are engaging in.”, are calling for curses in alignment with their own biases.). If G-d wants to expose the things we want exposed, then fine, but if He wants to expose what is uncomfortable for us, or things that we do not expect Him to expose, then we need to be ready for that.
When we pray, “shine Your light whereever you want to shine it and keep it there until we see what You want us to see and fix what You want us to fix.”, we are in reality signing and handing a blank check over to G-d to start exposing the junk that He wants to expose. If we are going to live dangerously, we need to embrace this manner of lifestyle. Sign the check, and hand it over to the L-rd without qualifications.
We must allow G-d to expose whatever He wants to expose in us and in others. Even if it hurts, even if we don’t want it, we need to give Him His fathering liberty to handle, shift, adjust, align, reframe, and refocus us on the actual problem instead of our ideas of what we think is the problem. He is a good Father and everything He does in us and through us is with an eye to our good and benefit. He is in this for our benefit, not our desctruction. The one who destroys us is not willingly serving the interests of our King.
Once we have begun to align our focus with the truth of a matter, which is a process, we need to ask Him to begin the process of cleansing out the garbage that has infested us, inclusive of us making a confession where we have misjudged others, misappropriated principles, applied partial truth to render full judgments and sentencings, and ask Him to cleanse, cleanse, cleanse this junk out of us.
Following the season of cleansing, we ask the Father of Lights to lead us in the direction of proper stewardship of our relationships with people and situations. Stewardship of interaction, of our cultivation of the Fruit of the Spirit, of our human interactions, is critical. As an aside, we really need a neatening up of our relationships. Unless you have a friend that you are sure can handle sarcasm and a relational interaction marked by joking and humor, it might be wise to minimize sarcasm or fast sarcasm for a season in case that has damaged your interactions with others. When something offends someone, if there is a genuine reason for them to be offended, stop hiding behind the excuse “I was only joking.” Rather, apologize for being or behaving like a jerk, no merely coming across as a jerk. And do not say “I am sorry you feel that way”. That is a cop-out, and it places the blame on their feelings rather than your actions. You apologize for BEHAVING in a dumb fashion. Do not embrace a position of selective responsibility. Take some ownership of some things that may not be your fault. Doing so may help you cultivate some authority to speak into the life of another when you might not otherwise get the permission to do so. And the MS HATES when we embrace Responsibility and become our brother’s keeper, especially when we think they might not deserve it.
Further, we need to ask Him to give us right perceptions. We ask Him to give us an internal world and an external world that match, and a capacity to not just interact with others in an external sense, but also an internal sense.
And for our texts here, because it seems that the MS is present in Scripture, let us consider not just the bad of the kings of Israel and Judah, but also the good of the kings of Israel and Judah.
MESMERIZED HERMENEUTICS
First, consider that Manasseh, who wickedly reigned for most of his life, REPENTED near the end of his life, and for all of his idolatry and wickedness, actually ended his life in obedience. Yes, I know some are going to say “but 55 years and defiling the temple and the legacy of Ahab, and the iniquity of the people!”, and there is a place for that, but consider the also the later obedience of Manasseh.
The L-RD spoke to Manasseh and to his people, but they paid no attention.
Therefore the L-RD brought upon them the commanders of the army of the king of Assyria, who captured Manasseh with hooks and bound him with chains of bronze and brought him to Babylon.
And when he was in distress, he entreated the favor of the L-RD his G-d and humbled himself greatly before the G-d of his fathers.
He prayed to Him, and G-d was moved by his entreaty and heard his plea and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew (yada-Genesis 3:1, Proverbs 3:6) that the L-RD was G-d.
Afterward he built an outer wall for the city of David west of Gihon, in the valley, and for the entrance into the Fish Gate, and carried it around Ophel, and raised it to a very great height. He also put commanders of the army in all the fortified cities in Judah.
And he took away the foreign godsandthe idol from the house of the LORD, and all the altars that he had built on the mountain of the house of the LORD and in Jerusalem, and he threw them outside of the city.
He also restored the altar of the LORD and offered on it sacrifices of peace offerings and of thanksgiving, and he commanded Judah to serve the LORD, the God of Israel.
-2 Chronicles 33:10–16-
And, yes, go ahead and quote verse 17, about how Judah did not hear him but continued in sin, and that iniquity on their part was Manasseh’s fault. You would be correct. I will concede that point.
But, when you respond with that argument, please do so in full light of the fact that Manasseh repented, and the L-rd HEARD the voice of this king who repented. And understand that it is quite possible that Manasseh could be dwelling in eternity with the L-rd and with Josiah, and if he did so, there are a great many people to whom he would have repented for sinning against. Do not EVER leave out that Manasseh repented. Doing so is the work of the Mesmerizing Spirit. Do not read the Bible with the Mesmerizing Spirit; do not engage with a mesmerized hermeneutic.
Second, consider that Josiah disobeyed, doing what the L-rd did not explicitly tell him to do, and went out to fight Pharaoh Neco.
But he sent envoys to him, saying, “What have we to do with each other, king of Judah? I am not coming against you this day, but against the house with which I am at war. And G-d has commanded me to hurry. Cease opposing G-d, who is with me, lest he destroy you.”
Nevertheless, Josiah did not turn away from him, but disguised himself in order to fight with him. He did not listen to the words of Neco from the mouth of G-d, but came to fight in the plain of Megiddo.
And the archers shot King Josiah. And the king said to his servants, “Take me away, for I am badly wounded.”
So his servants took him out of the chariot and carried him in his second chariot and brought him to Jerusalem. And he died and was buried in the tombs of his fathers. All Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah.”
2 Chronicles 35:21–24
And Josiah’s pride, refusal to listen, and thinking he was the L-rd’s anointed caused him a premature death at the hands of the Egyptians, in a story that eeirly resembles the death of our third example: Ahab.
THE MESMERIZING SPIRIT SEEN IN THE ACCOUNT OF AHAB’S DEATH
And all the prophets prophesied so and said, “Go up to Ramoth-gilead and triumph; the L-RD will give it into the hand of the king.”
And the messenger who went to summon Micaiah said to him, “Behold, the words of the prophets with one accord are favorable to the king. Let your word be like the word of one of them, and speak favorably.”
But Micaiah said, “As the L-RD lives, what the L-RD says to me, that I will speak.”
And when he had come to the king, the king said to him, “Micaiah, shall we go to Ramoth-gilead to battle, or shall we refrain?” And he answered him, “Go up and triumph; the L-RD will give it into the hand of the king.”
But the king said to him, “How many times shall I make you swear that you speak to me nothing but the truth in the name of the L-RD?”
And he said, “I saw all Israel scattered on the mountains, as sheep that have no shepherd. And the L-RD said, ‘These have no master; let each return to his home in peace.’”
And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “Did I not tell you that he would not prophesy good concerning me, but evil?”
And Micaiah said, “Therefore hear the word of the L-RD: I saw the L-RD sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing beside him on his right hand and on his left; and the L-RD said, ‘Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’
And one said one thing, and another said another.
Then a spirit came forward and stood before the L-RD, saying, ‘I will entice him.’
And the L-RD said to him, ‘By what means?’ And he said, ‘I will go out, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’
And he said, ‘You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do so.’
Now therefore behold, the L-RD has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the L-RD has declared disaster for you.
1 Kings 22:13–23
It is my viewpoint that the lying spirit in 1 Kings 22 could be considered a form of the MS, for the following reasons.
It drew Ahab’s attention away from the danger that awaited him.
It drowned out the word of the L-rd in the mouth of a proven prophet.
And, Ahab did not feel completely safe with the counsel of his prophets, given he disguised himself (1 Kings 22:30).
Specifically, in this case, the spirit in question filled the mouths of prophets with lies, and there was ONE prophet who spoke for the L-rd.
Gee, that doesn’t sound like any context we know about today, does it? We have no risk of trouble with the MS given we are under the new covenant, do we?
Ummmm……yeah…
In the multitude of counselors, there can be safety and wisdom, but when you have the risk of a lying spirit or mesmerizing spirit infesting your prophets, and if only one person is speaking for the L-rd, then you want the counsel of the one full of trustworth who has nothing to gain from counseling you.
And before people get going on that “mouth-of-two-or-three-witnessess-get-confirmation” concept, let us note the context for that phrase; confirmation of words was for legal cases involving accusations. So, before using that scripture as the basis for requiring two or three confirmations for anything you do, recognize and weigh EVERYTHING. Sometimes, the L-rd may humor you and give you a group of counselors who will be able to speak positively toward a matter. But there may be times when you have to go alone, as did Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Zechariah, Amos, or others. I am not saying put yourself off in a silo, but what I am saying is do not assume you can depend on the luxury of two or three witnesses before you obey in a matter. Sometimes, Dad is going to say “go naked and barefoot” and no-one is going to stand beside you, Redemptive Gift of Teacher.
Sometimes, you are going to have to strike out alone and, instead of being a Pioneer who settles a place, you will have to be a Trailblazer and strike out a new path where NO ONE has gone before you.
PIONEERS VS. TRAILBLAZERS
In our obsession in this season in the Charismatic Movement with Pioneers, we have fallen prey to a MS. Specifically, we have been duped into believing that Pioneers come first in a matter; they have not. What we have been mesmerized out of is a recognition of Trailblazers, which precede Pioneers.
Pioneers come into a community that is not yet, and they establish it. They lay the groudwork and foundations for the new settlement. And Pioneers are well and good, and they can go into barely-charted territory. However, what precedes a Pioneer is a Trailblazer. Trailblazers go into completely uncharted territory, and cut new paths through the territory that were not thought possible, and make the path crossable for those who would follow to establish outposts on the frontier.
Furthermore, most of the time, Trailblazers are not celebrated by the majority of the community.
“For those of you who are initiators, the probability of your being celebrated for your design is slim. You may go to your grave without validation and affirmation from mankind. So you are responsible for doing maintenance on your own identity. And I would encourage you to look at Scripture. Jonathan was one who was an initiator; another is the apostle Paul. Both of them were high-action figures. Another one was Peter. And Peter and Paul and Johnathan messed up along the way. They initiated a bit too much and a bit the wrong way, and, yet, none of them derailed G-d; He was bigger than their occasional messiness. And G-d leveraged the beginners, the initiators, the starters to change the world. And yet many of the initiators get damned, or stoned, or marginalized, and then 200 years later we build a monument to them and call them a hero. And you have to choose to do your own emotional maintenance and to go through life being who G-d made you to be, validating the fact that you may not be appreciated here on earth until 200 years after you are gone, but choose whether you are going to be who G-d made you to be, or who the culture tells you you are supposed to be.”
Arthur Burk, “When Your Call Is Blocked.”, Disc 2, Cut 3, Timestamp 12:45-14:14
DEALING WITH THE MS IN CULTURE: ONE EXAMPLE
Think of the Wright Brothers, and not just the Wright Brothers, but the many who preceded them in expounding the principles of aviation but did not draw the attention of the culture. The work of those who formed the conception and birth of modern aviation was a war against the MS in the culture. They were not celebrated for building the new transmission that was fixed-wing flight. And it took them years to receive any sort of recognition.
The Wright Brothers, specifically, upon their return from the Outer Banks of North Carolina to Dayton, expected a celebration upon their return, and sent a telegram to their father asking him to inform the press
However, the Dayton Journal refused to publish the story, saying the flights were too short to be important. Meanwhile, against the brothers’ wishes, a telegraph operator leaked their message to a Virginia newspaper, which concocted a highly inaccurate news article that was reprinted the next day in several newspapers elsewhere, including Dayton.
The Wrights issued their own factual statement to the press in January.
From Wikipedia article “The Wright Brothers”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers
Note: the Wrights wanted a factual statement, they did not like inaccurate reports; this is typical Prophet/Teacher attitude. Wilbur and Orville measured everything meticulously. And without embellishing anything, their later work was filled with a “come and see” mentality. This work demonstrates an explicit absence of, and resistence toward, the MS.
THE LESSON
In the culture of Christianity, when people whom you see as prophetic voices are not hearing correctly for whatever reason, whether they miss the boat, or are mesmerized, or are responding soulishly, or whatever the case you need to be able to acknowledge your own legitimacy, recognize your own validity, and do maintainence on your own legitimacy before the L-rd.
The bottom line is this: if you focus only on part of the whole, or if you allow your attention to be drawn to part at the expence of the whole, then you can become blinded. But if you ask the Father to shine His light whereever He wants to shine it, and allow Him to show you whatever He wants to show you and the WHOLE of what He wants to show you, then be prepared for a wild ride, and be ready to shift from places where you are to places where He wants you to be.
It is not fun to deal with the MS, but it is exceptionally kingdom-building and rewarding to take care of it.
Be blessed, gang, and feel free to comment below if I have missed something. If I have, I will be happy to add above.
