SNAKE IN THE GRASS

SNAKE IN THE GRASS

                Bonnie and I were involved in the Charismatic movement for about 20 years and we felt quite comfortable there. The worship was inspiring, the sermons uplifting and there was a sense of awe and holiness and understanding that was wonderful. So before I tell you what now troubles me, I might remind you that most, if not nearly all of the grand worship songs that people now universally sing have come out of that movement.  The songs that you sing in expressing love to and worship of the Lord most likely came out of the Charismatic movement and especially those songs written in the 80s and early 90s. “I Stand in Awe of You, Majesty, As the Deer… you name it.

                But in time disturbing trends began to come to our attention. So called prophets began circulating among the churches prophesying over people and as they did, the Lord began to show me in my spirit that these were not operating in the Holy Spirit, but in the realm of the psychic. It sort of shocked me that these people were being indiscriminately embraced as true prophets.

                But that was only the tip of the ice berg, for then certain prophets came into the flock that brought in New Age spirits and Hindu spirits and in places people began rolling and gyrating and shaking and laughing uncontrollably and even barking like dogs. All of this blasphemous activity was being embraced as Holy Spirit revival. The music changed, deep Bible study went out the window and Bible prophecy became anathema. A hunger for the deep things of God was replaced by indiscriminate seeking after signs and wonders.

                 The church growth model morphed into the seeker friendly model and then into the Emergent Church movement where most of the fundamentals of the true Gospel are being replaced New Age sort of channeling and soaking rooms… all of it loosely shadowing Biblical truth, but operating by a different spirit.

                In my book, all of these movements are preparing unknowing people to wonder after the Beast. They have somehow lost their discernment of spirits… their discernment of truth, their discernment of true prophecy and so on. They are embracing a false grace while at the same time distancing themselves from repentance, the cross, the blood of Jesus, holy living and obedience. They are turning away from fundamental, bible based, born again, Spirit filled truth.

                I believe in the gift of tongues and as 1 Cor. 14:2 says: “For one who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God; for no one understands, but in his spirit he speaks mysteries.” And if you add to that 1 Cor. 14:18, Paul said, “ I thank God I speak in tongues more than you all, however, in the church I desire to speak five words with my mind that I may instruct others also, rather than ten thousand words in a tongue.   So contrary to what some teach, the gift of tongues is largely an unknown tongue that either needs to be interpreted, or the speaker must shut up and let those who prophesy speak.

                But the fact that Paul spoke in tongues more than any of them tells me that what he wrote in his epistles was his interpretation of tongues which he spoke in private worship.

                All of that being said: If we stop studying God’s Word… if we stop obeying His Commandments and we step away from His prophetic agenda, we will soon unknowingly invite a different spirit into our churches.

                The Bible warns us that in the last days Satan will appear as an angel of light and that He will imitate Christ. So we picture Him sitting in a white robe and blessing people like Jesus did, but it is more subtle than that. Instead, he is imitating the Holy Spirit and he is guiding people away from a study of Bible prophecy and he is dumbing them down spiritually so that they can no longer discern spirits and he is replacing the gifts of the Holy Spirit with imitations. He is now performing miracles through the church that are not coming from God.

                Sadly, in response to this danger, many just do away with the gifts of the Spirit altogether and that too is as Satan would have it. Just as false prophecies cause many to shy away from prophecy altogether, so false spiritual gifts cause many to avoid the true spiritual gifts as well and so the church loses its power to bring in the final harvest.

                What we really need is a relationship with the Word of God that immediately causes red flags to pop up when His Word is deviated from and we need a personal relationship with the Holy Spirit so that red flags immediately pop up when a false spirit seeks to insert itself.

                Discernment of spirits is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and it is because people have drifted from a fundamental belief in the Bible that they are allowing every spirit and every wind of doctrine to flood into the body of Christ today.

                “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; and this is the spirit of antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming and now it is already in the world. You are from God little children and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.” 1 John 4:1-4.

                Along with the influx of false spirits into the church today, there are those that are beginning to pick away at the divine nature of Christ. There are those who teach that as a mere man He had to be born again and to receive the Holy Spirit just as we do, while others teach that we will become as gods in our own right. It is absolutely essential to believe the Bible, both the Old and the New Covenants just as one is built upon the other.

                Now, there is a fine line here between who Christ is and who we are becoming in Christ.  Paul says in Ephesians 4:13 “… until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.”

                We know that our goal in this life is to become like Christ. He is our model of the perfect man, He is the first fruits of a harvest yet to come… and we know that we will be like Him when He comes. All of these bold statements in the Bible immediately take us higher than the highest human thought can reach. But Jesus is God. He came down and took on our form in order to rescue us. We will forever be the recipients of His gifts and His grace. He will forever be the Source and we the receivers. He will forever be the Creator and we the created. Today some false prophets are telling people that we will become as gods, thus mimicking Satan’s lie in the garden. We need to understand the difference.

                God’s Word, accompanied by His Holy Spirit is designed to guide us safely through the jungles of Satan’s illusions and delusions. “We don’t need to live in fear… but we do need to live by the Spirit and by the Word, for if we deviate, we will be putting ourselves on Satan’s turf. So, we must be diligent in our pursuit of the truth and in our relationship with Yeshua.

                “This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him. Therefore I ask you not to lose heart at my tribulations on your behalf for they are your glory. For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man; so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

                We don’t have to be afraid, but we do need to pray for discernment of spirits. Satan has two ways of getting his job done. One way is to sneak his spirits into our churches like snakes in the grass. The other is to scare us off so that we refuse to operate in the Spirit of Christ at all, thus becoming powerless. Either way, Satan wins.

                Friends, we need to pray like never before for the true power of God to bring in the final harvest and the spiritual wisdom to know the difference. Huge numbers of God’s true remnant people are in the Charismatic movement. They too see what is going on and they are refusing to go along with these fringe movements. And I suspect that in the end persecution will do its job of bringing forth His Remnant people.

                But don’t sit back and satisfy yourself that you are safe simply because you don’t operate in the Spirit at all… for God is going to be calling His people out of dead churches as well and He is going to hold them accountable for what they failed to do because they refused to live by His Spirit. It’s time to pray for the real thing.

                Yes, there is a snake in the grass but Jesus said: “Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon the serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall injure you. Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven.” Luke 10:19, 20.