Dying to Self

The Coming Charismatic Civil War

Standard

On Wednesday, Lee Grady of Charisma magazine posted “Can We Avoid a Charismatic Civil War?” I would ask that those of you who have some stake in the charismatic movement read it. Just follow the link in the title.

I’ll wait.

Done? Okay. Here’s what I have to say.

A Gray casualty of the Civil WarWhile I share Grady’s powerless feeling as I watch the errors compound in large swaths of the charismatic movement, regardless of what anyone thinks of Rick Joyner’s prophetic powers, it always had to lead to this confrontation. You get on a road that forks, at some point you have to decide which way to go. Sadly, one side chose experiences, ecstasies, armies, dominion, and the age-old whisperings in the Garden while the other chose Jesus.

The answer to Grady’s question is a simple no. No, we can’t avoid a civil war within the charismatic movement because one side chose truth while the other chose error. One side chose the Bible while the other chose untested prophetic revelation. One side was satisfied with Jesus alone while the other wanted more.

You can’t make those two sides fit together. They practically define mutual exclusivity.

Here’s a simple question: “What portion of the gold in the old temple contained impurities? Answer: None of it. The gold in the temple, the gold God took great pains to describe, was pure gold.

If God went to such pains to ensure that an item as simple as a gold cup used in His Old Testament temple was free of all alloyed taint, how much impurity will He tolerate in the teachings and preachings delivered by the New Testament temples of His Holy Spirit?

And that’s all you have to know here. We may see through a glass darkly, but that doesn’t mean we tolerate impurities and pretend they aren’t there. Yet how much doctrinal foolishness must pass in some sectors of the charismatic movement before it draws God’s wrathful fire?

Just a glance at the fully ripened fruit on the Blue side of Rick Joyner’s vision should be enough to disqualify that army entirely. Please, just open your eyes. Even a little.

It had to come down to this.

Rick Joyner prophesies a great end times revival as the Blue army advances under a banner of dreams, visions, miracles, and prophetic words. He sees The Blues triumphing over the more “intellectual, but less spiritual” Grays, redefining Christianity, for the better, in the process.

Here’s what the Bible sees:

Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming. The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.
—2 Thessalonians 2:3-15

“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. “So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house, and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak. And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in those days! Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath. For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be. And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short. Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand.
—Matthew 24:9-25

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
—2 Timothy 4:3-4

Now I ask you, does this support Joyner’s Blue army prophecy in any way? Even the slightest?

Well, perhaps it does—by exposing it!

I could get into Latter Day Rain, Joel’s Army, The Manifest Sons of God, The New Breed, Lakeland, Toronto, Brownsville, Pensacola, the Kansas City Prophets, and a million other Blue army buzzwords, but the time is short. Honestly, it’s very, very short.

Read enough about this civil war “prophecy” and you’ll even have some saying it will come down to bloodshed. With Blue proponents claiming that some Blues will be immortal this side of heaven, I guess it’s clear whose blood will be shed.

It’s time for the civil war. It had to happen. No one asked for it, but here it is.

If you’re a charismatic who believes that we need to test the marching orders and practices of the Blue army and are grieved by the blatant doctrinal fallacies and outright myths erupting like sores on some sectors of the charismatic movement, understand this: You are the new enemy. You are the Gray.

Maranatha.

Compromise

Standard

Making dinner this evening, I opened up my favorite olive oil spread and realized that it was now whipped.

At some point, a group locked away in a corporate office park somewhere, figured consumers would love the new, improved, more spreadable spread. They’d worked hard to perfect this latest incarnation of the product, and were proud of the results.

Here’s how I saw their triumph: same size container, now with just more air.

Do I truly believe that the manufacturers of what used to be my favorite spread slaved night and day to better the product that I now held in my hand? That engineers worked feverishly to improve the silky smoothness? That marketing convened panel after panel to test all their hard work?

Nope.

Here’s what the fly on the wall of some mucky-muck’s office heard:

Mucky-Muck: “Rodney, we’ve got PPP.”

Rodney: “Yeah, ‘price point pressure.’ Engineering’s on it.”

Mucky-Muck: “The usual?”

Rodney: “They blow some nitrogen in and we’re golden, boss.”

Mucky-Muck: “Make it so, Number One.”

And thus is born yet another compromise.

Now you can contend I’m just a spoiled American consumer griping about non-dairy spreads. You’d be right, of course. No points for stating the obvious.

But in a much deeper way, I’m not upset about the spread. I’m upset about what it says about us.

Somewhere, the people behind the air-laden spread are going home to their wives and kids having never once considered that they sold a little piece of their soul that afternoon. Now repeat that same tiny moral death a million times over in America today. Little concessions to the lowest common denominator, to the cheap, to the compromise.

What’s truly sad is that not a person reading this today is immune. Not me and not you. We all get mired in the “Oh well, no one will notice” shtick until we don’t feel the twinge of guilt anymore. It’s all in a day’s work, and the day’s work counts more than anything else, right? Keep your nose clean, even if no one’s ever is.

I think these concessions are what’s wrong with our country.

Somewhere, someplace, sometime, it stopped being about principles. It stopped being about a God outside of us.It's your choice and mine Instead, it became the little deaths each of us suffers when we compromise on things that are dear to the heart of God. Those little deaths that no longer hurt because repetition numbed the sting.

A person doesn’t get a hard heart overnight. Yes, the raw materials for one lurk within all of us. No, a hard heart comes from compromising day in and day out on those tiny decisions that eaither bring us nearer to God or separate us from Him.

I honestly believe that people used to be more thoughtful when faced with compromise. I’m not necessarily saying that the compromise never occurred, only that we today think so little on matters of importance. In many ways our past compromise renders us incapable of even understanding what is important and what is inconsequential. The trite and lightweight takes precedent over considering what might destroy a future generation.

“The shareholders are hungry for a better quarter next quarter. If it means we burn the building down to make our numbers, then let’s do it.” Such a CEO would not last long in a rational world, but I suspect ours instead waits with baited breath from said CEO and his “I Did It My Way!” book, I Burned Down the Company and Made Everyone a Mint. Just don’t read the final chapter wherein the same CEO asks, “Hey, where did my yak bladder leather chair go?”

Are we operating like this in the Church? In what ways? And how do we stop the compromise when compromise is what we have become?

Because we can’t keep pumping air into the spread because one day someone’s going to open the container and find nothing but air.

When the Devils Know Your Name

Standard

Any military commander worth his salad will tell you the key to battle is to neutralize threats. Whether  by outright attack, supply line disruption, or distracting threats so they turn their attention elsewhere, systematically taking out each threatening unit wins the war.

Last time I checked, we Christians were at war. Do we realize how ardently the Devil and his minions hate us? To them, we are the enemy as much as they are ours. Just as we have been given weapons of war to wage battle against the chthonic, so the legions of hell marshal their power against us. And their tactic is the classic one: neutralize threats.

Here’s the worst thing that anyone can say about you or me as Christians: “You’re no threat to the Devil.”

Sadly, I believe that large swaths of the American Church are just that. The Enemy distracts us with consumerism, entertainment, fads (even church-related ones), and an all-consuming loathing for anything that even remotely borders on boring. We know the entire storyline behind Lost, can name every contestant on the last American Idol, can’t wait to plop down a small fortune on the next iteration of Xbox or Playstation, spend more on movie theater tickets or DVDs than we drop in the offering plate, and generally run willy-nilly after umpteen thousand things that neutralize our threat on the grand cosmic battlefield. Warring in prayerWithout even breaking a sulfurous sweat, the dark principalities and powers have rendered millions of American Christians fat, lazy, double-minded, and utterly worthless for battle.

But not everyone.

In writing this, I realize that some of the most encouraging words we can give to a fellow believer may be difficult to receive. They may be true in the utmost and a genuine balm to the soul, but that doesn’t make them any less hard.

This post is an encouragement to those who are still a threat, but it’s a realistic encouragement, words of hope that may sound like words of despair at first, but only to those who lack perseverance.

Some of us still threaten hell. Here’s an easy check to tell if we do: We’re being opposed by the Enemy at every turn.

If our lives are peaches and cream most of the time, if we’re poster children for the American Dream, then we’re not a threat. The demonic doesn’t take us seriously, because if it did we’d be feeling and seeing the attacks.

Two Scriptures:

Then some of the itinerant Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, “I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.” Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this. But the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?” And the man in whom was the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.
—Acts 19:13-16

Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.
—2 Corinthians 11:23-28

When you’re a threat to the devils, they know your name. They knew Paul’s. He later regales us in 2nd Corinthians 11 with a staggering list of ways in which those evil forces dealt with his threat to their hellish mission.

Now who here volunteers to share the trials of Paul?

It’s a hard word of encouragement, isn’t it?

I can tell you that the closer you are to the heart of the Lord in the work you’re doing for the Kingdom, the more brutal the battle. Things will go wrong that you never expected because the Enemy wants nothing more than to neutralize your threat.

In the grand cosmic battle, evil attempts to take out the Christians it knows by name by attacking what is dearest to them: their families. The Enemy loves to go after children and spouses. It’s the hellfire way to napalm the biggest threats.

With children, the Enemy hurts physically or emotionally. Debilitating sickness or injury in a child will often be all it takes to remove a Christian parent who is a genuine threat. Death of a child, too. As a child gets older, rebellion works just as well. Nothing breaks a parent more than to watch a child go down in flames.

With spouses, the Enemy’s first line of attack is dissension. Turning a spouse against the person who is a threat wounds deeply, often because the spouse has been the only source of consistent support outside of the Lord. The height of wounding would be discovering a spouse’s affair. Fray that most precious bond and many threats to hell will wilt. The Enemy will also resort to physically or mentally wounding a spouse if the marriage is a strong one that would not ordinarily succumb to dissension.

Lastly, the Enemy will assault the threat directly. I believe this is often the last resort because indirect threats can be more effective. The most common lines of attack come against the threat’s livelihood, reputation, and/or physical and emotional health. The Enemy may also try to kill the most powerful Christians simply to curtail that threat’s continued assaults.

We see these attacks playing out in the life of Job. This righteous man buried his children, witnessed his livelihood stolen, had his wife turn against him (“Curse God and die!”), and suffered gruesome physical torment. The unmarried Paul, lacking any indirect chinks in his armor, instead weathered relentless assaults against his person and reputation.

If you are not in obvious sin and are being attacked on every side, the devils know your name. Many of the attacks I outlined above may be your daily bread. You are well acquainted with grief.

Don’t even consider giving up. Instead, I tell you, rejoice! For the devils know your name! That means more than you can imagine in a world where most people receive little more than a “Who are you?” brush-off from the forces of hell.

You see, the Devil has a list. Akin to the FBI’s, it’s filled with the names of his Most Wanted. And it’s no coincidence that the names on the Devil’s list are also found in the Lamb’s Book of Life.