In That Day Teachings

Above all, a good heaven,

Beneath all, a good foundation,

In all, a good God.

GLOSSARY OF TEACHINGS

In That Day Teaching Glossary

From Robert Winkler Burke

www.inthatdayteachings.com  Copyright 2007

Introduction:  These teachings may seem harsh to those unfamiliar to them.  As for those who refuse a king’s reign Jesus said in Luke 19:27 (Amplified) “[The indignant king ended by saying] But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to reign over them – bring them here and slaughter them in my presence!”  When did Jesus become politically – oops I mean – religiously incorrect?  Or is it the wayward church?

The following miscellaneous statements and teachings are provided not solely as criticism of others, but primarily as a spiritual set of tools for a Christian to advance from one level to another.  The temptation is to merely see these as intellectual criticisms.  That would be a mistake.  Use these tools to discover any dark spirits residing in your own self, attack them with confession and the blood of Jesus, disown them, agree with others you are guilty of employing them to gain unholy advantage, discern when they rise up in you to do something evil and refuse to allow them entrance into your conscious and even unconscious life.  By controlling such evil thoughts, you control those evil spirits and subsequently your spirit, soul and body.  That is what makes a person good, by God!  Pride, especially intellectual or religious, is what makes a person bad, by Satan!  Pick your master, everybody has one.  But there is only one good master.

This is a lot to digest.  Stick with it.  If it hits you too hard with too much, take comfort that you are not alone.  Paul spoke so much to King Festus in Acts 26:24 that “Festus said with a loud voice, Paul, thou art beside thyself, much learning doth make thee mad.”

I hope in the following I have not been beside myself with demons in control but beyond myself with the Holy Spirit in control.  And to the people of the world, perhaps I should appear quite mad.  At least so thought Festus of Paul.  I know not what others may write in regards to me.  I am trying to serve my generation in my time.  I just hope you can feel the truth that I feel, serve the God that I serve and know the joy that I have. 

$20 Million Jets –Proof that some Christian doctrines are wrong is provided by the fleet of jets that certain televangelists now justify.  Recently the $20 million Citation X has been a popular purchase.  If $20 Million was used for investment instead of ego exalting, a 10% annual return would be $2 million.  In thirty years a 10% return could grow to $349 million.  Suppose an airline ticket costs $2,000.  With $20 million you could simply purchase 10,000 airline tickets.  Or if you just spent the interest received on $20 million in a year, you could buy 1,000 tickets, or three per day.  Or you could even buy one hundred $20,000 charter flights per year, one every fourth day.  Consider that commercial flights earn awards for free trips, lowering costs.  But flying one’s own executive jet creates exorbitant costs most every time.  But in the galactic battle between the competitive pride of jet set preachers and humble grain-of-salt reason, the winners appear to be the high flying gospel spinners.  Having done the math, dare we do the logic?  Is it perhaps miscreant doctrines that create, justify and promulgate such brazen blings?

3 ½ Years – When the Bible speaks prophetically, often it is in spiritual language.  So when three and a half prophetic years are seen in the Bible, it may mean the half of the number of seven, which is perfection or Christ-likeness.  Therefore the half-way period may mean an indefinite period of time taking as long as it takes for the perfection of Christ-likeness to be achieved, which is seven years or more correctly, times.  (Thanks to Gary Wiley of Reno, Nevada for that observation.)  Thus an angry man will be tested for three and a half years, meaning as long as it takes, by God until he passes the test. 

666 – The mark of the beast is not a computer chip under the skin mandated by a one world government.  Rather it is a spiritual mark God’s angels put on a person’s spirit, soul and body if those areas of that person’s life are the number of man, which is six.  If people are marked with three sixes, they cannot buy God’s greater truths.  So they are stuck with small doctrines and big lies.

80/20 Percentage Change – How much does a Christian’s life change?  When a person becomes a Christian, do they change their actual lives?  Often, only the change is internal, in the spirit.  However, when a person begins the overcoming process – or when a person receives the In That Day Teachings or other similar information – then a large change can occur in a Christian’s actual life.  How much change?  Say to start with, about 80 percent of a person’s life changes while 20 percent stays the same.  Sometimes it will feel more like 95 percent. 

90 Proof Tithing– Non-profit leaders sometimes obscure their self-service promotion of fixed-rule tithing by emphasizing their own tithes and donations exceeding ten percent.  To expose the ruse, I will give the following example.  Suppose I say my imaginary non-profit organization will tithe ninety percent of its income to other non-profits, if a million people will give my non-profit a regular ten percent tithe of their imagined $100,000 income.  The result is I still net a billion dollars.  Wow!  If I get a peer buddy to do the same thing, and we give our ninety percent to each other’s non-profits (wink!) we then both net $10 billion each.  Sweet Jesus!  That is intoxicating.  Well, tithing is so intoxicating its recipients seldom mention Jesus three times in the gospels excoriated tithing people.  And Jesus accused the religious establishment of the day of gross extortion.  Well, that is sobering.  Now then, who says to sup which cup?

A Colossal, Inconvenient Truth from Colossians: – When a sinner is led to say the sinner’s prayer, often he is told to invite Jesus into his heart.  Then the new Christian is coached along the way.  He does this, he does that.  He learns many good things.  Then the end result is that the Christian may never again think of how Christ lives in his heart, ready to manifest unless, that is, he leads another sinner to say the same sinner’s prayer and invite Jesus into another sinner’s heart.  The express purpose of In That Day Teachings are to enable mature Christians to hear, obey and manifest Christ.  But that is such an unusual message!  Who ever hears that preached?  Televised Christianity is full of profound absurdities:  $20 million jets, requests for million dollar jet garages, stories of $15,000 watches, give-to-get greedy prosperity messages, mania over motorcycle cruisers, celebrated and idolized personalities of power and persuasion, and so on infinitum.  Yet here is what The Message Bible says in Colossians 1:  This mystery has been kept in the dark for a long time, but now it’s out in the open.  God wanted everyone, not just Jews, to know this rich and glorious secret inside and out, regardless of their background, regardless of the religious standing.  The mystery in a nutshell is just this:  Christ is in you, therefore you can look forward to sharing in God’s glory.  It’s that simple.  That is the substance of our Message… We teach in a spirit of profound common sense so that we can bring each person to maturity.  To be mature is to be basic.  Christ!  No more, no less.  Then from Chapter 2:  Just go ahead with what you’ve been given.  You received Christ Jesus the Master; now live him… School’s out; quit studying the subject and start living it! …Watch out for people who try to dazzle you with big words and intellectual double-talk.  …You don’t need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ, and the emptiness of the universe without him….So then, if with Christ you’ve put all that pretentious and infantile religion behind you, why do you let yourselves be bullied by it?...But they’re just another way of showing off, making [themselves] look important.  So the truth is, we are supposed to allow Christ to live and manifest Himself in us.  And we learn this from humble, broken-in-spirit teachers who do this.  And preachers and teachers with pride, with wrong doctrine, with love-of-mammon prosperity spirits consuming their souls, with unbroken hubris, with witchcraft audience-controlling spirits, with self-serving doctrines of ease, error and escape, all these cannot do this.  They cannot manifest Christ.  They say, “Lo here, lo there is Christ!”  But they cannot manifest Christ.  And they cannot honor those who do.  Nor can they teach others.  Nor do they want to learn.  Nor will they tolerate messages of this truth.  They will preach, and their sons will preach and their sons’ sons will preach anything but the message of how to manifest Christ.  Because they cannot honor that another – even their student – would manifest Christ.  They only insist that you honor what they themselves know, and teach, and preach, and earn a living from Christ.  It’s all about themselves, really.  But it is too colossal, too inconvenient to challenge them.  So their followers just praise the pandering and wonder, when will Christ come?  And that suits the Devil fine, because his plan is working with those so set.  And God lets the truly unseeking embrace all that is anti-christ.  It is how the tares are differentiated from the wheat.  But the true seekers find God.  And in them, Christ is happy to manifest.  Behold, Christ does come quickly!

A Grain of Salt – Most truths can be found already expressed in stories, songs and expressions from popular culture.  It is how God gets the truth out.  For example, take George and Ira Gershwin’s lyrics from It Ain’t Necessarily So:  “Live clean, don’t have any fault; take the gospel whenever it’s possible; But take it with a grain of salt.”  Shepherds have conveniently forgotten to teach sheep how to discern the Ring of Truth in any given situation.  So God relies on popular culture to proclaim His greater truths.  This parabolic wisdom is widespread in the rain of popular culture (though veiled) while an interminable drought remains widespread among the dry shepherds.  Perhaps Christianity is frozen in a never ending Narnian winter with the Wicked Witch enthroned.  Or is the Church trapped in C. S. Lewis’ Silver Chair of enchantment?  What commandment forbids skeptical Bereans from seeing the obvious?  What explains Christians believing in $799.99 post-rapture mail, or weak praise music, or six day creation, or that Eve ate fruit or that Christ cannot manifest now so we must passively expect Him to do something good we won’t?  Like the Muses sang in Disney’s Hercules, “It was a nasty place.  There was a mess wherever you stepped.”  All because doctrine has been wrong.  Anyone can make a mistake.  Anyone can be wrong, except all the preachers who teach otherwise.  A confirmation of the prudence of taking authority’s spoken word with a grain of salt happened at the World Trade Center site during September 11, 2001.  After the North Tower was hit by the first plane but before the South Tower was hit by a second one, officials make a public address system announcement that the south building is “secure” and that people should return to their offices. Of the many whom left the building in defiance of the public announcement, a Jewish lady is heard loudly proclaiming, “My parents escaped the holocaust by ignoring such announcing.”  Like Billie Holiday sang, “God bless the child that’s got his own.”  And the heroes of Flight 93 proved they could discern a situation quick enough to save the United State’s capitol from further harm that day.  Inherent in humankind is a deep knowledge of truth.  But much of teaching and even preaching makes us go along with whoever is in charge.   On 9/11/01 Mohammed Atta said from the controls of American Airlines Flight 11, “We have some planes. Just stay quiet, and you'll be okay. We are returning to the airport.”  Right.  Did that sound like truth to anybody on the plane?  If preachers were not so busy deafening our ears to truth while they ramble along about the rapture, maybe more than one plane out of four would have been stopped that day.  Wrong doctrine spoken from pulpits for decades, along with all the other wrong things spoken by other media purveyors, has deadened our ears to something very simple, but also something very important:  Truth.

A Parable of Perfection –Once upon a time a traveler visited a land called Perfection.  He noticed the lovely homes and buildings of Perfection were peculiar.  None of them had roofs.  They had perfect walls, floors, plumbing, fixtures and so on; but not one house or building had a roof.  When he asked a resident of Perfection why the buildings did not have roofs, the resident advised the traveler to keep his questions to himself.  Then the traveler noticed other unfinished things in the land of Perfection.  The vehicles of Perfection had no motors.  The phones had no ear pieces.  The televisions had no screens.  The computers had no processors.  The planes had no engines.  Thus most everything in Perfection was done to a high level of perfection, except for the completion of perfection.  Finally he could keep quiet no longer.  He asked a large crowd to listen to him.  Why, he asked, are your perfect things done only half complete?  The crowd quickly became angry and threatened to kill the visitor.  But the visitor kept talking, because he believed at most he would be only slightly hurt, because killing him would take the doing of something to perfect completion.  However, the people of Perfection jumped upon their bothersome visitor, took his life quite completely, dug a six foot grave, buried him leaving no trace and quickly forgot the whole affair in a fashion that – if the visitor had been alive to witness it would have certainly agreed – was no less than perfection itself.  (The above parable is for the masses.  An explanation to disciples would be that the land of Perfection is the wayward church, unfinished.  The wayward church believes it needs no correction, rebuke, chastisement or finishing.  Yet is is undeniably incomplete.  What is it missing?  Answer: The doctrines enabling Christ to manifest Himself in each believer at high levels through humbly embracing full indwelling of the corrective Holy Spirit.  What does the wayward church have completely?  Answer:  Full and powerful mechanisms denying all correction, preventing Php 1:6  “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” from ever happening.  An explanation to top students (i.e. James, Peter, John) would be that individuals in the wayward body embrace dark spirits of pride, deception and control.  Any person trying to correct these evil spirits in church leaders  faces massive denial spirits and counter-attacking spirits.  Deceived leaders of wayward religion love their dark demons of rigid control, hate the fluid and true corrections of the Holy Spirit and will do their absolute damnedest to deny any prophets of true correction.  In this, and only this is the wayward church whole.  Let the seer beware.)

Abominably Ritzy, Desolately Empty  -- Why are prosperity seekers so rich, but never full?  On November 13, 2007 it was reported Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has become the first person to purchase an A380 superjumbo.  Astonishingly, he already owns a Boeing 747-400.  Which begs the question:  He wasn’t fulfilled with his 747?  Prosperity seekers Kenneth Copeland  and Jesse Duplantis both recently bought $20 million Citation X jets.  They weren’t fulfilled with their prior jets?  Prosperity seeker Creflo Dollar has aRolls-Royces.  He wasn’t fulfilled with a Mercedes?  Benny Hinn lives in an oceanfront multi-million dollar home on Ritz Cove Drive near the Ritz Carlton hotel in Dana Point, California.  He wasn’t fulfilled with a less ritzy location?  Prosperity seeker Joyce Meyers bought a $23,000 marble-topped toilet.  She wasn’t fulfilled with a non-ritzy toilet?  The pattern is clear to see.  These people cannot seem to get enough ritziness, yet the ritziness does not satisfy.  Jesse Duplantis is asking his partners for a multi-million dollar garage for his jet.  Youtube shows Kenneth Copeland saying he could use a 747.  So perhaps we have got it wrong from so much immersion in prosperity doctrine.  The prosperity preachers say we must all be like Jesus, but they actually are like Saudi princes!  And God knows it takes a lot of paupers to support a ritzy prince!  However, the money never seems to be quite enough.  It appears, no one can give them enough money to obtain contented ritziness.  But many are giving them their best.

About Factor – Wherein Christian leaders abrogate their responsibility to be Christian and have the essence of Christ manifested, so they talk about Christ instead.  Thus, they are like F-15 Eagle flight trainers who never fly, or ever actually see their captive students fly, or let anyone else ever fly.  Further the only thing they launch are diabolic hate campaigns against all true pilots and flight trainers.

Adam and Eve’s Fall – Moses wrote in a poetic, repetitive and sometimes obscure fashion.  What was his reason for doing that?  God wanted it that way.  But now that God has allowed our minds to expand from exposure to one hundred years of science fiction plots, we might be ready for the bitter truths of it all – even  truth’s total recall.  In the beginning Adam and Eve may not have gotten in trouble with just eating forbidden fruit.  The Garden of Eden may have had two trees, one being Jesus the other being Satan.  Satan may have already had his victories in the previous earth age.  Eve may have been tempted to know Satan, and even more horrible: Adam too.  Adam then knew Eve.  Then Cain was born whose father was not Adam.  Then Abel was born whose father was Adam.  Then Cain slew Abel, and on it goes.  Christ explained it in Matthew 13:24-43 in the Parable of the Tares.  The truth of these bitter stories from the Bible might explain the parabolic nature and extraordinary success of movies like Star Wars.  A main theme in the six movies seems to be the importance of spiritual bloodline ties, and how they may be crossed with very deep heritages of evil, good and need for revelation, redemption and restoration.  (See Pastor Arnold Murray from Shepherds Chapel in Gravette, Arkansas.)  As usual, popular culture has much in the way of confirmation.  The Persuasions, an a cappella group, sings a song by the name of Cain’s Blood, with these lyrics: There's an angel and a devil playing tug of war with my soul.  The battle rages on each and every day.  And the song’s chorus is:  Half of my blood is Cain’s blood, the other half is Abel’s.  One eye looks to heaven, one eye looks for trouble.

Ancient Earth – The earth is, as Billye Brim says, as old as the scientists say it needs to be.  That so many Christian ministries insist in the earth being young is an example of how a literal interpretation of a spiritual Bible puts a literal spirit of stupidity on their minds.  The Bible says the earth is ancient, as does the earth’s own observable record.  The ministry proponents of an immature earth succeed only in proclaiming their own immaturity.  Learn from this.  The pay for being on the wrong side of God’s word, world and mind is, to say the least, unearthly bad.

Animal, Mineral or Plant – God’s message to us is coming from what?  The The donkey that spoke to Baalam was an animal.  The brimstone raining on Sodom and Gomorrah was mineral.  burning bush of Moses was plant.  The universe is alive with God, if only we understand, see and receive His messages to us.

Anti-christ – He is either a distant, some-day-in-the-future giant nemesis of a man (or God forbid, woman!)…or he/she is simply me or you when we stray from being the essence of Christ at any particular moment in time.  Anti-christs discussing anti-christ make books that sell well, movies that do not and sermons that do.  But it may not please God, who by necessity permits such odious teaching, which actually increases Satan’s kingdom, but better defines opposing camps.  An anti-christ teacher might drum up dispensational fear by the bucketful, hold fear-based alter calls, talk too much about international relations and one world government and then ask you for money.  Anti-christ people are obsessed with filling your mind space with all that keeps you from manifesting Christ.  How can you when they have scared the “be-Jesus” out of you?

Antipodal Idiocy – If spirit and truth disconnect the result can be bizarre bipolarity.  When a pastor does not know how to truly worship God in spirit and truth, an interesting thing sometimes happens.  That person might experience a radical disconnect between the spirit they are of and the truth that they speak.  You can sometimes witness it in preachers who are off.  And what happens is this:  The spirit they are of becomes the exact opposite of the truth they speak.  This is one of Satan’s demonic devices, because the spirit trumps the carnal.  So the truth of the message is lost to the anti-christ spirit manifested.  Satan loves this in a preacher, and God hates it.  Here is a written description of Antipodal Idiocy:  A pastor with a dead-flat, monotone voice loudly proclaims, “You must obey God’s word, because God’s word is life to you.”  In this instance, the lifeless anti-christ spirit is mocking the living Word, which is Jesus, which is rhema, which is living in God’s now-instant-moment, which this preacher is a million miles away from manifesting.  Another example of Antipodal Idiocy would be the whacked out charismatic televangelist who says in a moment of frenzy, “Ja-he-e-e-e-e-z-u-s-s-s-s is mah La-ha-ha-or-d-dah Huh!”  In this instance, the man is calling on a dark critter by the twisted name of lahaordahuh jaheezus, who clearly is not God’s Son.  The spirit is literally mocking the true Lordship of Jesus Christ in that wayward man.  (His next sermon might be on the name of God.)  Another example would be a dry ever-so-intellectual pastor who says in a high, whiny, annoying voice, “The letter of the law kills the spirit of God!”  Of course, his letter-of-the-law screwball voice is exactly the spirit he is of, whose name might be professor nerdlydeadwrong.  That spirit is mocking God’s admonition to always be real and not high-toned. (His next sermon might be on being totally filled with the God’s Spirit.)  Another certain preacher unknowingly modeled Job’s Chapters 1 through 31 religious pride by elongating the last vowel of his sentences – while preaching incorrectly about Job!  For example, he said things like “Job was goo-oo-oo-ood-duh!”  He was righteou-eou-eous-s-s-s-huh!”  This man’s sermon on Job was hilariously bipolar, because Job finally repented in Chapter 42 of himself being a vainglorious “righteou-eou-eous-s-s-s-huh!” kind of self-congratulatory, close-to-God’s-rules but far-from-God’s-essence kind of poser.  Unfortunately, such bizarre bipolar examples are commonly found in pastors who do not have a clue that they regularly mock God’s logos truth by parading it on floats inhabited with foul, stinking, lying, prideful, supercilious, mocking, putrid, filthy evil spirits.  A parade of roses it is not.

Armageddon – Armageddon is today’s epic battle against self on the throne.  It is not about World Wars III, IV, V and beyond.  Nor is it an answer to how-to-get-rich prayers from dispensational religionists, authors and filmmakers.  It is your battle, it is my battle, it is your family’s battle, it is my family’s battle against self on the throne.  The band Sugarland has sung, “Yeah, Armageddon  could be knocking at my door, But I ain’t gonna answer that’s for sure.  There’s gotta be something more.”  The song either reiterates Satan’s Selfish Way or with double meaning the profound exact opposite.

As one might suspect, popular culture has a song that explains much about this process:  From Annie Get Your Gun are the sarcastic lyrics: “Folks are dumb, where I come from, we don’t have any larnin’, Still we’re happy as can be, Doin’ what a-comes a-naturally!” 

As Time Goes By  – “A kiss is still a kiss, a sigh is still a sigh, as time goes by.  The fundamental things apply, as time goes by.”  So go the lyrics from the movie Casablanca.  Fundamental doctrines are true.  But then along come alternative doctrines.  At first they are difficult to discern.  Wrong doctrines are juicy and enticing.  Then they are believed, as for example prosperity extremism.  Its first generation progenitors died with accolades and no correction came to the doctrines.  But its second and third generation leaders are manifesting bigger problems from wrong doctrines gone on too long.  Witness their Rolls-Royces, jets and mammoth egos.  Now some televangelist operations have annual donation incomes ranging in hundreds of millions of dollars.  With that kind of money and power, problems will inevitably manifest if doctrines are in error.  Without fear these enterprises continue to grow, though other money handlers appear in the financial news regularly who have grossly erred.  Billions of dollars have been lost by business leaders in every area.  This witness is lost on some ego-driven preachers proclaiming their desire to be the first faith billionaires.  It is not hard to predict financial crises and great doctrinal corrections will certainly come to them some day.  It is just hard to believe before seeing it.  But the fundamental things apply, as time goes by.

Ask the Askers of Money for Money – For a chance to grow in counter-intuitive thinking, next time you receive a dunning letter, or phone request or personal encounter with a non-profit organization with budgets exceeding yours by a factor of thousands, consider simply asking them for money.  (Of course, only do such actions with God’s leading.)  Sometimes turn about is fair play.  They will surely rid themselves of you in no time.  What love have they of you but your lovely money?  Most such relationships are entirely one way:  You send them money, they do whatever they want so long as they call themselves good.  But ask yourself this question:  Need they increase their budget of perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars per year while need you decrease your budget by the donation they say they desperately need?  Does God really want them to have your money?  Are they promulgating God’s manifested kingdom in maturity?  If so, send it.  If not, keep it. 

Assuaging Woes of Prosperity High Flyers: – According to the 8/24/07 Wall Street Journal, private jets burn 15 times as much fuel per passenger as commercial planes.  This is a cause of woe to the elite aviation crowd, which now includes so many jet set preachers.  The Journal says private jets can make huge carbon footprints, with a simple cross-country $20,000 round trip flight making 13 metric tons of carbon dioxide.  But it can be offset with a mere $74 carbon offset purchase.  It’s a “feel good” solution, reports the Journal.  The offsets help fund alternate-energy technologies such as windmills or carbon-dioxide-eating greenery.  All this may be quite far afield from the subject of God, but it is important to know how prosperity preachers can carry on in their lofty skies without guilt.  Especially since the Journal reports a Gulfstream G400 uses 100 gallons of fuel per passenger hour compared to just six for a commercial jet, such as a Boeing 777.  So be prepared for new requests and dunning letters from the brotherhood of preachers with planes:  Supporters may now face not only requests from preachers to fund their prosperity jets and their prosperity jet park facilities, but now also guilt-assuaging prosperity jet carbon offsets.  Thankfully, our prosperity preachers will pioneer for us the ways of living large in the world – without guilt!  So let’s just praise the carbon offset!

At the Top Can be Found God – At the top levels of most any profession, passion or person can be found God.  Our Creator never has limited Himself to only Christianity or Judaism.  Sometimes exquisite goodness can be found in people at paramount levels in ballet, martial arts, composing, politics, theater, film-making, business, science, astronomy, art, literature and even just simple life.  Though we insist God be narrow-minded, He cannot.  Certainly the Bible does show us His preferred way.  And that way seems to be so challenging, it would be egregious to suggest any other path than through the Bible.  Nevertheless, we should not turn away, but rather congratulate all who have drawn neigh unto God by whatever means.  The more the merrier.  God’s recruitment plan exceeds ours and, in fact, every plan of ours.  God’s plan is a river.  Our plans tend to be canal locks.  Stiff-necked rebellion is as witchcraft to God.  But if we relax and enjoy heaven’s flowing joy ride of ever-wonderful, ever-changing opportunities to increase God’s kingdom of truth, that is quite simply loving life, which is our Creator.

Behold I Come Quickly – Wherein Jesus desires to manifest in every man, woman and child possible on earth in this day – and does so, in those He can, in ways hidden from those who haven’t paid a price to see, but clearly to those who have.

Beware the Reason Behind – Christian leaders in America tend to ignore deeper reasons behind things.  Why was prayer and the Ten Commandments removed from US public schools?  Maybe Christians in America had already removed them from their lives, and God let the secular crowd confirm it.  Outraged over Islamic Jihadists?  Maybe God allowed this as a witness necessarily drawn forth by the vapid, inane and extremely laid back, casual Christians.  They seem so convinced of Eternal Security, God shows us suicide bombers who believe they will meet 72 virgins in Allah’s heaven.  (Thanks to radio personality Dr. Michael Savage for that observation.)  Both beliefs are extreme nonsense.  Ever notice rapture-believing televangelists are amassing extraordinary wealth for themselves from their supporters?  If such leaders truly believe themselves soon taken, their wealth is for what?  God permits just about anything, if it sheds light on wrong doctrines of the wayward Church.

Blind Right Eye – The coming anti-christ is thought to have a blind right eye and weak or missing right arm.  This comes from Zechariah 11:17.  “Woe to the idol shepherd that leaveth the flock!  The sword shall be upon his arm, and upon his right eye: his arm shall be clean dried up, and his right eye shall be utterly darkened.”  So the King James Version says this errant soul might look like a pirate with an eye-patch and hook for a right hand, or then again we might not take such a literal interpretation from a spiritual Bible.  Perhaps when shepherds err, they create a situation in which God allows them to be weak with their supposed strengths and somewhat blind to their own spiritual impotence.  Is this not the case with television ministries promoting the self-service doctrines of (beam us out of here) rapture, imminent return (of a super Jesus who fixes all but us) and eternal (do nothing and be rewarded everything) security?  It seems that the easy-out escapology doctrines proceed with sort of a crazy logic (from left side of brain?) that overpowers a more holistic, spiritual approach (from right side of brain?)  In other words, the logic is in a non-productive endless loop and must be reprogrammed.  In the movie Zathura a robot designed to protect humans malfunctions and announces: “Alien life form!  Must destroy!” and then proceeds to attack the humans.  It is stopped when the humans show it a card that says “Reprogram.”   After reading the card, the robot fixes itself and valiantly defends the humans against alien enemies.  So in effect, these weak-in-God’s-power, wrong-program-logic shepherds have wed themselves to easy escapology doctrines that then make them preach about the coming anti-christ eye-patched, hook-handed pirate!  When in truth, they might be talking about their own spiritually blinded, weak in spirit selves!  It seems like God’s colossal cosmic joke that stupid people get to play on themselves.  Such shepherds seem like Job Chapters 1-31 endless loop, got-it-wrong motor-mouths.  Then Elihu comes with the voice of truth and, not incidentally, the voice of God to give opportunity for one out of the four theological wizards to finally get real, which is to be able to get real close to God.  In other words, Job and his three friends were rigid religionists (logically overly proud of their religious thinking, which was rigid and self-congratulatory on having a fix on God’s rules that they didn’t realize He breaks.)  They completely missed the point of God, which is to spiritually see beyond the beyond, which is where you see what God’s hand is doing, and then you join in fellowship with Him as His friend!  And you know, when you are in fellowship with a friend, he will feel comfortable enough to let you in on some of his jokes.  Perhaps we should print some cards that say, “Reprogram.” 

Burning Bushes – The Bible instructs us to proclaim the mighty works of the Lord.  But where are God’s mighty works?  If we have spiritual eyes to see, there are burning bushes everywhere.  If we have no spiritual eyes, we see nothing of God.  Moses walked the wilderness desert and then one day he encountered God by seeing a burning bush and deciding to turn aside.  The key is to honor the barely noticeable (at first) thing you see of God’s hand moving, by pausing to turn aside and inquire of God.  This quickens you to God’s quickness.  Is not God the fastest thing in the universe?  Are we not sometimes the slowest?  God wants to know, can He get your attention?  Or are you too involved in self-righteous pride-of-religion to stop for a moment and truly see what He is doing?  As Shakespeare said, Ay, there’s the rub!  If self is on the throne of our lives, we see no burning bushes, we see no God.  If we allow God on the throne of our lives, then we can be interrupted by anything and inquire of God.  It sounds simple, but it is actually quite hard to be that unselfish.  It is a lot easier to dismiss the whole idea that God is actually doing many things each day to get our minds off ourselves and our pride-of-religion ways.  To put it another way, a common proverb is that good things happen to good people.  So really, God things happen to God people.  But some people proclaiming themselves to be God people prima facie show themselves to be the contrary.  That is why this teaching is hard to find, hard to model to others and hard believe in.  But this is just where Jesus lived.  With a twinkle in His eye He told Peter the next fish he caught would have a coin to pay the tax.  Now that is a burning bush.  To provide non-biblical examples is to provide debate for argument.  Nevertheless, here are examples from history and my personal life:  John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826, fifty years after signing the Declaration of Independence.  A recent pair of horror movies crashed at the box office after being released on Resurrection Sunday of 2007.  When I once told the famous dispensational preacher Chuck Missler I had avidly studied his end-times doctrines, Missler said to me in mocking fashion, “Then I’ll pray for you, brother.”  A few months after praying to God to help me with a 30-year-old lower back pain, I found myself in Toronto, Canada at a martial arts school pinned underneath a large Russian named Igor.  Igor locked his lower legs around mine, wrapped his burly arms around my upper body and pulled so hard that four or five lower vertebrae popped into a place they had not been in 30 years.  I had been going to chiropractors for three years with no results.  It took Igor only seconds.  As people were paying their last respects to the deceased Ronald Reagan in a ceremony at his library in Simi Valley in 2004, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher deeply bowed toward the casket in a display of profound respect for her departed friend.  At that precise moment, the sun set beyond the horizon.  A praise band at a church I attended once had a real problem with bringing God’s anointing because its digital instruments sounded terrible.  Then the power went out, they sang a cappella and God’s presence came!  The ushers, equipped with secret service sleeve microphones and ear lobe radio devices, quickly ran new electric cords.  In no time at all the power was back on at this high tech church, the band’s terrible digital instruments were once again playing and God’s presence left.  This too, was a burning bush for all who had eyes to see or ears to hear God’s confirming or denying Spirit.  Either God is alive in your life or not, it is really up to you.  He continually does what He does, and you continually do what you do.  It is up to you to honor His burning bushes.  You can live your whole life ignoring them.  But be like Moses!  Turn aside!  Come alive to God!

Buzzing Flies – The In That Day Teachings, in general, and its claim that escapist rapture doctrines are wrong, in particular, cannot be proved.  The teachings are simply self-evident truths for all who have spiritual eyes and ears.  For others the In That Day Teachings appear to be heresy, were it not for the sound of buzzing flies.  Flies buzz around the prosperity preachers who fly in $20 million ministry jets.  Flies buzz around the left behind authors and film makers whose work works on the gullible to empty their wallets and fill their souls with useless dispensational fear.  Flies buzz around the weak praise, weak voices, weak preachers and weak believers who worship some strange god of weakness instead of Joshua’s be-strong-and-of-a-good-courage God.  Flies buzz around self-interested non-profit organizations with astonishing distance from Christ’s essence, yet which demand tithes to themselves using the unsymmetrical ploy that if you give cash to their rotten-doctrine establishment, God will give back more to you nebulously.  Of course, Christ’s three passages where He was derisive of tithing wrongly are ignored.  Flies buzz around huge Christian media enterprises which have hundred million dollar incomes, yet escape from disclosing financials, submitting to any responsible oversight or answering any question from anybody anytime; as they preach doctrines of escapology.  Flies buzz around go-along-get-along prophets who entertain multitudes with descriptions of an amazing future void of any church correction, bug spray or refuse removal.  In fact with such a truth-deafening cacophony of buzzing flies, the above-mentioned ministry archetypes have to compensate by revving up their impressive reality distortion fields.  They must make bigger their own personal importance, the importance of their hectic escape-from-reflection travel schedules, their quid-pro-quo peer ministry exalting, their persona-exalting television operations, their buildings, their birthday celebrations, their family, their lordly estates, their amazing book sales, their motorbikes, their horses, even their trophy spouses.  In short, they must ever magnify their successful worldliness and pandering its dream to their generous supporters.  That is the buzz, friends, of so many modern ministries in all their glory.  Just do not ever tell them that the buzzing comes from Beelzebub’s flies delighted to drool on so much doctrinal dung.  Because despite the rotten fruit, despite the buzzing flies, such ministries and their followers will always have Bible verses to defend themselves.  And it is useless to engage in scripture wars with them.  None are so blind as those who refuse to see.  And until they smell it themselves, no mortal can convince them of what their wrong doctrines cause to stink.

Caution: Jabberwocky is Extremely Dangerous! – Persons referring to God’s prophetic future in the following terms may be extremely dangerous to your finances.  Watch out for the following nebulous terms:  Life changing – a shift in the atmosphere – invade systems – tip the balance – head not the tail – taking territory – template for warfare – mobilize the generation – pierce the heavenlies  – a vision kind of experience – transformation issue – accelerating legitimacy – outpouring harvest – new levels –dread champion warriors – apostles of the new age – birthing anything – radical anything – extreme anything – etcetera.  This gibberish is nebulous because the speakers actually do not know much about the future.  They simply know that prophetic jabberwocky succeeds wonderfully in jacking up their income by depleting yours.  Such gobblers of gibberish are extremely dangerous to your savings.  Their extraction spirits are powerful, especially compared to weak lie-detection spirits in sheep who are not taught how to detect lies.  These gobblers of gibberish are too stupid or afraid to go against rapture dogma because they love accolades of men.  Since they agree with the lie of a future rapture, they have no clue whatsoever about the future.  This even though the In That Day of the Lord’s wrathful scourging is foretold throughout the Bible’s old and new testaments, while rapture cannot be found in the Bible except by invention.

Caution: Jesus Returns Ungelded! – In the apocalyptic cowboy movies of Clint Eastwood, his no name character represents a kind of Lord Jesus avenging angel.  The tall avenger coolly achieves extreme justice against powerful evil foes while being watched by cowardly, small minded and very gelded townsmen. What is the meaning of this outrageous parabolic story telling?  Just look at the huge popularity of the worshippers of weakness found in the casual, West Coast, flip flop, Calvary kind of non-denominational, very abominable, rapture-loving, logos loving, spirit infill hating churches.  Their praise is weak.  Their prayers are weak (i.e. Oh Lord, just fix everything.)  Their preaching is weak (Should Jesus tarry, let’s study the twisted word that says he’s coming to rapture us out of our weakness problems.)  Their everything is weak, because the actual god they worship is…weakness.  And they have very much become as their very god, which is very weak.  Basically, this gelded group will not recognize Jesus as he continues to return spiritually on earth in humans, because such saints will have courage they lack.  So God allows parabolic stories and movies to be told to us to hold us all responsible for truth – truth that cannot be heard from gelded pulpits, but is universally known by all from movies.  In these stories God breaks rules (because He is above all rules) in the telling about Himself to make critical points.  The church of the gelded will never get the point, which is that God of all things alive is the most non-gelded entity.  So, stories and movies about His spiritual return make strong points about God being very not gelded.  Similarly in Eastwood’s Dirty Harry movies, the mayor of San Francisco once says of Harry, “He’s got a point.”  Meanwhile, in popular culture in the U.S., cage fighting, martial arts and boxing continue to be wildly popular.  But it is doubtful televangelists will understand much of what is truly happening as they keep their god supinely gelded while buying faster jets and more media glory.

Compulsive Giving – Stop compulsive giving.  It is a technique of Satan.  Even tithing is subject to the fact that There Are No Rules.  Christ three times criticized tithers who gave out of a wrong spirit.  Also Pedro Principle #1 tells us that groups tend to fall into the three categories of good, middle and bad.  Therefore not all people asking for a tithe consist of whom God wants to receive tithes.  (For [it is] not [the man] who praises and commends himself who is approved and accepted, but [it is the person] whom the Lord accredits and commends.  II Corinthians 10: 18 Amplified)  You must hear from God’s two-way radio in the matter.  Further, the In That Day Teachings imply that God wants you to voluntarily give virtually all control of yourself to Himself.  This then, is a tithe times ten, or one hundred percent.  Viewed in this fashion, the tithe is more an Old Testament “righteous-rigid-servant-of-God” requirement versus the New Testament’s “holy-flexible-friend-of-God” higher spiritual requirement.  In other (harsher) words, a tithe-based mentality is a cop-out-on-God giving device for called-to-higher-standards sheep, and an easy extraction device for called-to-higher-standards shepherds.  Also John the Baptist and Jesus told people to give to one another, and not necessarily give tithes to organizations claiming God’s entitlement to receive.  A holy person might pass the tithing bucket but turn to a needy person and give them whatever God says to give.  A holy person might tithe to nobody.  A holy person might give more than a tithe to an organization serving the poor.  A stuck-in-righteousness person might give nothing of himself to God that God requires while also giving a tithe to a church God hates and has been working to shut down for years.  Anything goes.  And giving is not always good.

Coolers –  A Cooler is something of an urban legend, reinforced by a movie called The Cooler made in 2003.  A Cooler is supposedly someone with such bad luck, it rubs off on people.  So casinos supposedly hire them to break the winning streak of lucky gamblers.  Coolers can be described as people who pack really atrocious spirits with a covering of what appears to be benign spirits.  Religion is where they can live without fear of detection.  Coolers are not just unlucky, or accident prone, or clumsy, or contagious, or killjoy, or insatiable or hellacious-bothersome to your talent.  They can be assigned by God’s enemies to hinder God’s champions.  What enables a Cooler to operate freely is their strange combination of strong evil spirits hidden by stronger covering spirits broadcasting benign qualities.  No one dares call them out, since they appear to be operating unconsciously, innocently and with well wishes toward whom they destroy.  And many pessimistic, gloomy stuffed-donkey Eyores of the world do live their entire lives unconscious of the miserable mayhem they cause to those to whom they draw neigh.  Why?  Because few care what spirit they are of.  Now, Jesus cared.  But Coolers won’t, don’t or can’t.  But you must.  And often, we have to first admit we have been Coolers against the righteous.  And then we must repent.  And then we must forgive all those Coolers who later hammer us down with their unconscious evil spirits, which they deny aggressively deploying as an effective arsenal against God bearers:  Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake…by the Coolers, who know not what they do, because they choose darkness rather than light, rather than face the ugly truth of what spirits they allow themselves to be, and so they deny Christ coming to them all of their desolate and abominable lives while they fervently deny Christ has come in you, whom they perceive to be the most dangerous and true enemy of their ghoulish, barren souls.

Curse Upon “How to Be” Media & Ministries, Part 1 – Miscreant philosophers, preachers, teachers or gurus have a cursed solution for you.  It starts with their bait, then hook.  The bait is:  “I can help you.”  The hook is: “Buy my carnal platitude advice.”  Few seem approved of God to so sell their wisdom.  Nevertheless the needy deplete their meager resources to add abundance to the self-proclaimed wise; because the wise say so.  How long, oh Lord, must this continue?  The expensive pabulum has this sort of structure to it:  A) I am above you in greatness.  B) Here is the problem.  C) Buy my advice.  D) Here is my advice.  However, in the end only God’s rhema wisdom will work for you.  No formulas will work.  No platitudes will work.  Nothing will work but being able to hear and obey God’s rhema voice.  Few know this.  Fewer still do this.  Fewer still teach this.  This wisdom, by its nature, profits its promulgators less directly than the easy “how to” (be great like myself say the self-exalting) promulgators.  So if you want to truly get rich carnally, make another how-to-succeed-carnally industry based on your persona.  And since platitude advice never quite satisfies, you can sell your soul, or successful persona, without limit.  You could (tee hee!) write fifty self-help (ho ho!) books.  (People needing help cannot figure that if one self-help book doesn’t quite work, maybe 49 more from the same author would?)  However, if you want to please God, learn how to hear His rhema words and obey them.  From that God’s truth and kingdom comes. 

Curse Upon “How to Be” Media & Ministries, Part 2 – An example of cursed advice on how to do or be something is as follows:  A certain radio preacher says for a month he will preach on “Understanding Biblical Manliness.”  After much talk the advice boils down to 1) Read what the Bible says about manhood, leadership and being a servant.  2)  Find in the Bible those models of manhood, leadership and being a servant.  And 3) Follow those models “all the days of our life.”   Wow!  Such profundity!  Such platitudes!  Actually, such are the problems with miscreant teachers. The truth is this advice is egregiously immature.  It may be a horrific catastrophe if we do what Moses did, or David did, or Paul did or Jesus did in a particular case, when God wants us to do something perfect, surprising and different.  For we must choose: Either God is dead and we do what our paid gurus tell us generically to do…or do what an alive Creator of the universe instructs us to do now.

Curse Upon “How to Be” Media & Ministries, Part 3 – God’s goal with Job and his story of 42 chapters is simply for Job to be able to say, “With my spiritual eye, now I see!”  This is the sum of the Bible:  How to be Christ-like, how to be indwelt of God, how to manifest God, how to hear and obey God’s rhema voice, creatively expand God’s kingdom and hear “Well done thy good and faithful servant!”  God wants everyone to be able to say, “With my spiritual eye, now I see!”  But platitude shills say, “Now I sell!” 

Deceiving Spirits Use Veils, Part 1 – Unfortunately, the wayward church is overflowing with examples of how a sincere person can use deceiving veils of spirits to hide the truth.  A leading rapture proponent, who will remain unnamed, continually promotes his vast business and military experience.  Why?  Because people espousing the rapture sound really, really dumb; if you have ears to hear spiritually.  So this man must use a counter-veil.  His ministry boasts of his high-security-military/board of directors/entrepreneurial-acumen self.  Even Presidential contenders would wish to God they had his perfect resume.  Only it is a ruse.  If what he said was true, he would have no need for the egregious, aggrandizing self-promotion.  Like the prosperity preacher’s shiny gold watch, oversize jewelry, big hair, exquisite suits and magnificent stage sets, it is a counter-veil to the self-serving tithe-to-my-non-profit-laundry-machine and get-from-God-nebulously-somehow prosperity message.  That and a thick spread of envy usually does the trick!  Another example are preachers who have nothing really to say about God except that they enjoy glorifying and enriching themselves.  Here is the counter-veil ruse:  They ask the “how many of you” question in regards to having had painful experiences in life – followed by the mantra, “I am here to tell you…God is good!”  Well, duh.  But if you repeat the litany sixty times with every terrible woe known to mankind, you can get people standing, heads wagging and contributions overflowing.  The trick is to get an un-pained audience to reflect on past horrific pains, manically rejoice over a god-mantra and subsequently feel good and guilty enough to contribute to the grand fooba hypnotist’s organization.  Which if properly structured is a veiled self-enrichment laundering device.  Here is how to do it.  Make the organization a non-profit.  Then use the above mentioned veiling techniques to obtain funds to promote the enterprise.  Since the business is non-profit, the promoter can appear to work “selflessly” (smile) to continue the enterprise’s goodly message (which might be veiled self-promotion tagged on to a good thing, like God.)  Then, the promoter uses the non-profit organization to heavily pitch his or her for-profit books, movies and other royalty items.  Add quid pro quo guests for the broadcasting non-profits to shill each other’s for profit items, and bingo, you are well on your way to becoming a faith billionaire.  God is good, but He doesn’t like us employing such veiling spirits to deceive psyches.  (Is it too much to ask pastors who collect royalties for books promoted through their non-profits to return those royalties to the non-profits?  Sadly, if this became widespread ghost writers might have to find other work.  On the other hand, think of the trees that could be saved.)

Deceiving Spirits Use Veils, Part 2 – Now, I did not go into another deception-veil device: Which is to discuss dispensational doctrine, which is not holy writ.  To make it seem like holy writ, add the veiling spirits of fear.  Just add lots of juicy, fearful, high-brow international relations and all that old-time intrigue!  What international relations has to do with universal truths of God is not clear.  But drumming up fear through international relations gossip makes sense if you need to have a fear-based veil to hide the unholy writ of dispensational doctrine.  Then, you hold a no-prophet “prophecy” seminar...or you have an over-intellectual kind of ministry (pardon if this sounds harsh) and somewhere along the line, yup, somebody has got to sell books!  (Or survival food, gold coins, etc.)  So you have another non-profit run by self-sacrificing saints (grin) whose leaders, oh by the way, just happen to have a few books lying around...Want to buy one from our booth just outside the seminar?  Or if you are hearing this on radio, ahem, our non-profit will send it to you for a bargain-value donation.  Our volunteers or non-profit staffers can take your money and launder it my way.  Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.  It is a pattern that groups we know are in error use, i.e. the prosperity message group.  But it is also a pattern used by charismatic, Pentecostal, immature earth believers, apologists, Christian critics and other groups.  It is just not a pattern you see in the Bible.   Ever wonder why?

Deceiving Spirits Use Veils, Part 3 – To cover the full deception gamut – the music notes of grand larceny – the next level of veiling must be discussed.  Once a practitioner succeeds at a certain level it is time for more refined means of travel; to keep up with other non-profit (hee-hee!) Jones and away from suspicious donors.  But rather than rely on personal funds from media royalties, the goal is to dip back into the non-profit donors  to fund the (drool, drool) executive jet and five-star expense account lifestyle.  Never mind the cost.  Never mind the justification.  Everyone is doing it, so it must be OK!  It also seems fine to use the non-profit to fund home number two or three at, of course, posh working locations.  However, by the time complaints are lodged by watch groups, it is easy enough to take royalty revenues and buy properties for the family trust anyway.  And it is fun to fly one’s own jet (with the family on the non-profit payroll) to exotic international destinations, which may have more sophist partners to cull than in the saturated US market!  The beauty of it all is that the royalty work is really low caliber and easy to create stuff (sometimes ghost written) because anything, just about, sells to the dupes supporting the non-profit’s effort.  Once momentum builds, the vapid pabulum (but it always must be called “life-changing”) sells amazingly well even on the open market!  Indeed, how can such guru wares be much more than junk food for the soul, considering that the authors’ doctrines include personally choosing lower means over higher morals?  At the end of a successful career, the invested royalty money creates a comfy cash flow and there is no need to continue to work, worry or pay back the vehicle that enabled it all – the non-profit.  After all, it is non-profit, right?  Caveat emptor, bruddah!

Deceiving Spirits Use Veils, Part 4 – Every human being is part good, part evil.  Unfortunately, this means we all do variations on the above.  Robert Winkler Burke admits it.  I do not always get victory over the spirit of greed.  Maybe someday others might enjoy doing a me culpa.  What are we going to do?  We are by nature sinful.  We want to serve God.  Then we serve ourselves.  Some of us do a better job at limiting the self service.  (Alas, as of this writing I am executive jet/mega-income/lifestyle-of-the-rich-and-foolish challenged.)  Jesus seems to have done a pretty good job of unselfish ministry.  Maybe I’ll write a book about it… that will sell well.  Oops, there I go again.  And think:  If I, a sinner, see this little of what is going on, Holy God sees how much?

De Nile is a River in Egypt – If God grants you the grace (Divine enablement) to have eyes to see spiritually and ears to hear spiritually here is what you will find:  Denial.  You will find it here, there and everywhere.  And here is what you will bring here, there and everywhere:  Truth, which is the kingdom of heaven.  And people without truth will be rather uncomfortable around you.  And people with truth will greet you like a long lost brother or sister.  And they will usually be in humble situations.  They typically will not be leading large institutions because by definition, large institutions tend to have enough compromise required of its leaders as to make them sufficiently corrupt to no longer hearken unto truth.  Truth just bothers them, and if you’ve got truth in you – you are to them the greatest bother.  That’s why characters like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln are so beloved.  Apparently, they did it without compromising their souls.  Then there are the greats of the Bible which we hear preached to us by so many compromised souls.  And having truth in you, or more specifically, the life of God’s Spirit in you is to the world, called Egypt by the Bible, very subjective.  But to brothers and sisters in Christ, it is not subjective at all really.  The beloved of God love the beloved of God.  God’s indwelt operate on a certain harmonic frequency with the universe such that they are generally in sync with all that is good and God.  The rest simply are not.  So the rest like to kill the God-bearers, because they are such a hellacious bother to their pride.  And the killers are, if true to type, the religious order of the day.  Except nowadays it is extraordinary difficult to crucify God’s messengers, so the only option is to ignore this prophetic truth.  And what is this prophetic truth?  It is Christ’s life in you witnessing the absence of Christ’s life in much of modern Christianity.   Modern Christianity’s praise is weak because its doctrine worships weakness.  Christ has a hard time coming and indwelling in modern Christians because their theology is so escapist with belief in the false doctrines of beam-us-out-of-here rapture, Christ’s return to fix all things but escapist believers and eternal do-nothing security.  Behold, Christ cannot come in them because their spiritual abodes have too many demons.  They have too many demons because of the rights granted to the demons to indwell the Christ-in-name-only vapid abodes.  The demons have a right to stay indwelt in vapid abodes because of the so-called Christian doctrines they believe.  They will not change their ghoulish anti-christ dogma because it is taught and preached throughout the earth as being the norm.  This is why much of what is broadcast around the world as being Christianity is often just a huge reality distortion field, requiring huge sums of money to propagate.  And it results in strangeness denied – like the fraud of $20 million must-have jets, the bizarre focus on international relations intrigue, the baby-milk gospel repeated incessantly while mature sections of God’s word are eternally ignored.  And more than anything, it takes a lot of denial.  It takes tons of denial.  To have millions and millions of vapid Christians in life-long denial about huge quantities of scripture from the Bible pointing to the end-times goal of Christ living and being in your cleaned-up-to-spiritual-maturity self, well that takes a lot of denial.  To have so many people live and believe and support a vapid form of in-name-only Christianity that never understands or lives the Bible’s last page – now that takes a lot of denial.  To never be spirit indwelt, and live life in God’s unpredictably wonderful river of there-are-no-rules-only-guidelines life; to never praise and bless another for manifesting Christ in maturity; to never have Christ come quickly in your life; and most especially to never have Christ come quickly in your Christian leader’s life – well now that takes a lot of denial.  It takes a river of denial to believe in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit whom organized religion keeps dead and non-indwelt to most believers.  Now, that takes denial.  It takes the biggest river in Egypt to do that.  And Satan delivers every time: It’s de Nile.

Dispensational Dingdongs – Preachers who know more about one-world global intrigue than most of hell’s angels are perhaps doing the work of hell’s angels.  Dispensational dingdong doctrines change over time to continue to appear true.  The main thing they promulgate is fear.  Most of their doctrine will never prove to be true, because God refuses to cooperate.  Therefore, most of their predicted events must keep shifting to a further point in the future.  (i.e. fear the WWII Nazis; no, fear the Cold War Soviets; no, fear Y2K; no, fear the Chinese; no, fear the Muslim terrorists; no, fear technology; no, fear the coming anti-christ; no, fear the Russians again; no, fear a date again… perhaps 2033; no, fear the Chinese again; etc.)   The main thing they accomplish is filling the minds of their followers with thoughts designed to prevent Christians from hearing, obeying, manifesting and pleasing God.  Their so-called “prophecy conferences” usually contain no prophets, but usually do contain some method of extracting your money.  Why does everything always come back to extracting money?  Jesus blasted extortion in his red letters of the Bible.  He overturned the money tables at the temple.  The zeal of the Lord ate Him up.  Alas.  Alack.  But meantime, back in modern times some of us sheep are making great meals for some hungry shepherds.

Doctrine-Driven Difficulties – The egregious self-interest we see in modern television ministries is driven by its self-interest doctrines.  In other words, doctrines are the horse that delivers the ministry cart into either heaven or a ditch.  You become as you believe.   To borrow a line from Casablanca, the In That Day Teachings keep rounding up the usual suspects:  They are the keep-self-on-the-throne, cop-out-on-future-character-growth, God-does-it-all-we-do-nothing, big easy three:  The Rapture escapology guaranteeing a beam-us-out-of-here-sky-ride-to-heaven, the Immanent Second Return of Christ to fix all ills but our own problems making it impossible for Him to indwell us now, and Eternal Security guaranteeing a reward from God for doing nothing for God but agreeing with the demons that God is, well, God.  The consuming self-interest of modern television ministries is proof that their self-interested doctrines are wrong.  Their sinful doctrine makes them totally deceived as to their errors, and they boldly go about their brazen sinful ways.  The remedy is disavowal of the dumb doctrines.  But now it is a Christian catastrophe, self-inflicted and self-denied, of epic proportions.  These three deadly doctrines make up the table of vomit mentioned in Isaiah 28:8.  The chapter’s previous verses state the error first comes through wine, which stands for pride and self exaltation, and strong drink, which stands for deification of self.  This is what those television lights have done to its ministers, who have not been able to check the sin of self glorification throughout the years.  So they must remain infantile theological Lilliputians, only able to preach babyish milked-down Christian pabulum.  Why has God allowed broadcast ministries to do this?  Why has He shown gross self-interest ministries preaching gross self-interest doctrines?  Because God is showing the world the result of what a fool believes.  God has allowed the grossly excessive self-interest to make everyone dead certain what is so dead wrong.  Selah.  From all of this much can be learned about Satan.  The above-mentioned ministries may be in great deception.  Yet tell-tale signs abound.  The ministries expend huge amounts of time, money and life-force to project their false reality distortion fields with elaborate media productions, stage sets and controlled convention environs.  Its leaders sequester themselves from the reality of the public.  Its leaders deal primarily in peer groups with virtual no corrections in decades.  Its followers are blind to watch-group common-sense criticisms of glaringly obvious financial shenanigans.  Its leaders answer no questions from the public.  Its leaders disclose few financial reports.  Its leaders claim to be insiders with God such that no outsider, not any news organization, no government entity and especially no prophet can correct their excessive self-interest operations.  They say all correction is not correction but friction from the enemy, meaning Satan.  And like any self-interest lobbying concern, enough money is never enough money.  They have a craven spirit such that they never ask themselves, “Why is more money never enough money?”  They never say to themselves, “Gee, maybe our rapacious self-interest is driven by our questionable self-interest doctrines!”  That would be one great selah, but it may not come without a colossal amount of self-inflicted pain.  First the ministries will blame Satan.  But finally, they will blame themselves.  Some might even repent and fix their doctrine.  Then they can let God help fix themselves.  This will include receiving much more of the Holy Spirit, who has been spurned for intellectual idiocy.  And the leaders will discern and control their heretofore at times bizarre spirits.  Then they can have that revival they always have been praying for.  Because then, they will be worthy!  Hallelujah!  No longer selling dung-pile doctrines, they will have God’s truth and spirit to feed to God’s sheep.

Dog Chow – Whether Christ or anti-christ manifests in us is up to two things.  Either we feed our mind good or we feed it evil.  (Technically, we feed our inner spirit truthful and good spirits or we feed it lying and evil spirits.)  You could almost say that in all of us live two fighting dogs, one good and the other evil.  The mean dog fights the good dog all the time.  Which one wins?  When asked this question in the movie The Missing, Tommy Lee Jones said, “I don’t know.  Whichever one I feed the most.”

Don’t Touch God’s Anointed – Used by practitioners of Love Mush, Rapture, WOF, et al to keep God’s rebuke and correction away during their lives on earth. They believe themselves lacking nothing but greater tithes, extra love offerings and more pride.

Don’t Worry, Truth Prevails – If you have eyes to see spiritually, then you see truth prevails in the universe.  Truth cannot but manifest itself around truthful things, and lies cannot but manifest around lying things.  For example, a self-interested ministry cannot but have a self-interested website.  (i.e. It will have few links to the rest of the universe of good, but it will have dozens of ways to send money their way.  Such a ministry website might plead for your estate when you die.  It will have no qualms with setting up an automatic debit from your checking account.  It will be happy to charge your credit card to send you a book on getting out of debt.)  For example, a preacher with little true doctrine or connection with God will have great compensated mannerisms and “announcer voice” false affections.  For example, Hitler’s troops will march a “goose step” on parade.  The goose step looks just like what a dictator’s troops would do.  They cannot do but otherwise.  For example, a mostly-for-show safety award meeting might have its safety award recipients stand on an elevated stage, crowded to the edge with no guard rails… and witness to everyone in the room the safety ceremony is a self-congratulating ruse.  Truth is everywhere to behold, if it is not edited out by careful program directors of a media ministry, an organization or – most importantly – one’s own mind.  The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God.  If God wants to make a fool out of you, me or anybody in public; then he can easily let the truth be shown in public regarding whatever foolishness is actually in us.  Truth cannot be hidden.  Rapture doctrine can be shouted from the mountaintop, but it will always sound like a lie.  Any lie sounds like a lie.  Any ruse sounds like a ruse.  Any truth sounds like a truth.  Any truthful person appears to have truth in him.  Any beguiled person appears to be beguiled.  And it matters not whether the person received four higher degrees from the most prestigious Bible schools or not.  If those schools had wrong doctrine, the person is tragically the worse for it.  If those schools had good doctrine, the person is made the better.  But a non-schooled person is still capable, in fact more likely, to have a chance at manifesting more of God’s truthful essence than anybody.  And we should honor such.

Double Redemption Pleases God – If a person says or does a good thing, which is a God thing, which might even be a manifestation of Christ, then Satan sometimes presents a nullifier in the form of a wrong response spirit.  Christ met such temptation by saying none are good but God, or he told people not to mention their healing, or he left the territory or used other non-aggrandizing methods.  Christ played down his own goodness.  This is only possible with humility.  Thus when a person who is healed says to his healer, “You are a great healer!” the healer must somehow respond, “Give God the glory, not me.”  When a stubborn husband finally takes his wife’s good advice, she must not lord her triumph over him.  She must say, “I sometimes am just as stubborn as my husband and his good advice helps me too!”  Thus the Lord looks for double redemption in most situations.  Regrettably, preachers often see themselves as lords of all that is right-smart preaching to all that is dumb-wrong; and as the song says, “It ain’t necessarily so.”  Thus single redemption becomes a one step forward process – for the sinner redeemed – while two steps back are taken – by the “good” mentor now in hell-bound pride.  This kind of single redemption does not expand God’s kingdom because it is hypocrisy in a repeating loop.  The newly saved soon become as their deceived mentors – prideful hypocrites vainly trying to save others by modeling upended truth.  Christ modeled double redemption: wherein the lost and found can each stay humble, please God, expand truth and grow God’s kingdom.  To help others with the hypocrisy of supercilious morality, just puts those helped in double trouble because eventually they will do likewise.

Elect – We are not all the elect.  Nor is none of us the elect.  The elect appear to be predestined and the non-elect not predestined.  In other words, everybody, generally speaking, needs to make a salvation decision save the elect, who appear to have already done that.  Most everybody appears to have free will as God’s gift, but the elect do not appear to have that gift.  The elect are God’s servants who must perform under heavenly deadlines, such as the greats of the Bible.  Non-elect have few divine deadlines save before they die, to believe entirely in God.  Those mistaken who believe all saved are the elect tend to also have the mistaken belief that all saved have eternal security while alive.

Elihu – In the Book of Job, Elihu is a prophet God speaks through in the storm.  He probably wrote the book.  (In Job 33:8-11 he reads back his notes on what Job had said.)  His humility in not giving himself credit as prophet has made it difficult to see his contribution.  Job and his three friends each spoke at length to find confirmation in God’s voice, which never came because they were stuck in righteousness, or rigid religiousness.  Young Elihu came along and his soliloquy, being closer to God’s holiness and truth, resulted in God’s confirmation and speech happening through him.  (See Job.)

Enough!–  ABC News Radio offered three one-hour specials over the 2007 Labor Day Holiday Weekend. The programs included “Enough!” -- A John Stossel Special,” which looked at situations where people draw a line and try to change the world around them.  ABC News Correspondent and “20/20” co-host John Stossel looked at what Americans are doing when they’re simply fed up with a situation in “Enough!”  A segment included Rusty Leonard’s www.ministrywatch.com website heralding the tragic, brazen and unaccountable spending going on in the televangelism business.  Go to the website and see the ABC video.  You can see Kenneth Copeland’s mansion, $20 million jet, Trinity Broadcasting Network’s mansions and other TBN non-profits with little to no financial accountability.  See Leonard’s Donor Alerts, or…Let’s just praise the non-disclosure, non-correctable, non-accountable non-profits!

Epiphany in Paradise– The moment will be great when the average preacher who preaches the triune escapology doctrines – the escape of rapture, the imminent return of God to fix all but the escapists and escape from eternal responsibility to do anything –  realizes why his congregation is so characterized by strong torpor and weak character.  To preach escapology is to make the lords of escape rich, the plebs of escape trapped and themselves guilty of heinous abrogation of duty.  What need have the authors of escape books, the owners of escape Christian networks, the operators of stunningly huge escape Christian ministries of more monies?  They will just continue to sell fear, sell their answer of escape and continue to profit by pandering to their audience’s wishful thinking and idolization of all things weak.  Perhaps it is time for preachers to gird their loins.

Erudite End-times Oxymorons – Once I witnessed a preacher, who believed in the imminent rapture, perform a baby girl’s dedication.  Suddenly the Spirit of the Lord came upon him and he prophesied to the parents a blessing upon the girl’s husband-to-be and the future couple’s life in Christ!  Wow!  Immediately upon giving this revelatory blessing, the embarrassed pastor qualified his prognostication by saying that what he had just said might happen, “As long as Jesus doesn’t come first!”  Apparently, the preacher had thought Jesus was coming within, say the next twenty years (when the girl might marry) or before the next eighty years (when the blessed couple would enjoy their life in Christ.)  So think about it:  If a prophet told us how we could double our money every day, we would probably be disinclined to want Jesus to return until, say, a month after a dollar invested could become a billion!  Now consider a preacher of prosperity and rapture.  He probably believes less in a literal rapture than more in a doctrine that allows him to focus on money making…until, say, abundance!  It is a way to occupy…until Jesus comes and absolves us from responsibility.  Nevertheless, many prosperity/rapture preachers want some prophetic news about how to prosper tomorrow without disbelieving Jesus is not coming tomorrow.  If the prophetic can give prosperity news about next year, good!  Five years would be better.  Fifty years even better.  What about a hundred, five hundred or a thousand?  But wait a minute!  Those who believe Jesus might return any minute (moment) might be conflicted the further out the years go in prophetic insight.  It would bump into their conflicted inner foundational lie: Prosperity now trumps rapture tomorrow.  Thus the wayward church disdains intelligent cogency in preference for puerile repetition of known, inane gospel pabulum.  To this church with anti-prophetic, Jezebel conundrums of hidden foundational lies needing no discovery or repentance, they say, we must tithe.

Escape This: The Crossbar Hotel – Escapism is the beloved doctrine of televangelists.  That is the root.  Allegations of moral escapism often follow these televangelists.  That is the branch.  Do the math:  Lofty escapist doctrine plus success in its promulgation equals character crises.  Does this cause correction in the wayward body of escapist Christianity?  Not that anyone could notice!  When a leader takes a hit for team escape, the rest of the players often continue in blind allegiance to erroneous root doctrines.  For example, simply Google Randy and Paula White Divorce, or allegations against family shenanigans of Richard Roberts of Oral Roberts University, or tomorrow’s predictable predicaments of the high-flying jet set evangelists in allegiance to escapology.  Again, the triune doctrines of escapology are 1) the false belief in rapture and escape from the purity required for Christ’s indwelling and return in our souls 2) the false belief in an imminent second coming rescuing escapists from Christian maturity and 3) the false belief in eternal security absolving its adherents from all Christian responsibility now or ever.  Lest we judge and be critical, let us give the benefit of the doubt that if you have a residence on California’s Malibu Beach, or one of Trump’s Tower condominiums in Manhattan, New York…and a ministry jet to fly you to either spot… why be critical of the fruit of escapology?  In truth, escape doctrines always work... until the end of escape.  Then they always fail.  So if you want to get ready, get ready for escape’s end. 

Escapologists are Best.. at Escaping Culpability– Have you noticed?  Preachers who preach escape-maturity-in-Christ doctrines are excellent at escaping culpability for what they teach, what it does to people, how little God confirms it and how grandly God denies it in Mark 16:20 reverse signs following.  For example:  Chuck Missler is one of the greatest dispensational dogma promulgators, whose Koinoina (meaning communion) House Ministry has led astray and continues to lead astray millions of believers through Calvary media broadcasting.  Missler’s ministry website says that his house was demolished by an earthquake in 1992.  (A Mark 16:20 reverse sign?)  As noted elsewhere, dispensationalists primarily sell fear, not truth.  They believe in a communion of fear.  Then they sell the solution: Escape through wishful thinking.  Escape in a rapture of escapists, escape in a fix-all-but-the-escapists’ second coming, and escape from responsibility through eternal do-nothing security.  But to sell the escape, they first create all-consuming fear.  The subject of fear changes when the lie of it goes away over time.  Nevertheless, the dispensational dingdongs never lack for producing a new fear, like a magician draws attention to one hand, so the misleaders of religion hope you never see you have nothing to fear but fear-mongers themselves, while the magician performs the real trick with the unseen hand, while the listeners’ funds support the wayward ministry.  So Monsieur Missler’s fear-of-the-day specialty has in the past been Soviet Communism – oops, that’s old; then Y2K – oops, that was a bust; then terrorism, but that’s kind of old too; so now it is – trumpets and fanfare please: A “Vortex Strategy” in two parts no less, wherein “the Plot Thickens” with the “increasingly difficult predicament we face” in positioning our poor, pitiful, weakness-doctrine-loving selves “in addition to terrorists threats, geopolitical tensions” the super-size fear of the moment has got to be “another tremor” of “sub-prime mortgage mess metastasized into a full-blown global credit crisis” which crushes stocks in Europe and the U.S. with “the meltdown” beginning in… actually, the fertile mind of the dispensationalist escapists.  This subject, like all their fear-selling subjects, are just news blurbs.  For financial insight read the Wall Street Journal, which is more mature and sans fear.  For insight into how deception works on believers, listen to dispensational preachers, who display opposite traits.  Amazingly, when yesterday’s fear du juer becomes a bust – as they all must – the fear-monger preachers tout their keen insight on how that fear is now, of course,  diminished, but – Holy Cow! – a new fear of tomorrow is almost here, and it is the mother-of-all-whopper fears!  Now, how to end such fear-mongering is anybody’s guess.  Question:  To think Christians will see through wishful thinking, is that wishful thinking?  Or must we fear more fear?  Can the vortex strategists ever be stopped?  Sure: When their money runs out.

Eternal Security – This is the mistaken belief that once saved one is always saved.  The consequence of this terribly self-serving belief is the supine form of Christianity now in widespread practice.  To become a believer is to become a citizen of a country.  If a citizen robs a bank, his country’s authorities will endeavor to catch him, judge him and make him pay his debt to society.  Believers in eternal security think there is no such parallel in God’s kingdom.  Most eternal security believers also believe in love mush and worshipping idols of weakness, as witnesses in so many casual Christian churches.  They can do no wrong, so they think.  This is why much wrong is usually in evidence at the “Church of We Can Do No Wrong.”  Deceiving spirits make it hard to see the forest for the trees.

Every Man Meets His Superior in Every Man – “Every man I meet is in some way superior.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson.  “A great man is always willing to be little.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson.  “The highest revelation is that God is in every man.”  -- Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Mat 23:38  Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.   Mat 23:39  For I say unto you, Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.  Robert’s Amplified:  Unless you humble yourselves, you proud preachers and religious people, and say blessed is every man, woman and child who comes in the nature of the Lord, your soul will remain desolate of the indwelling of God.  Behold your houses of desolation, you who preach and believe in much about God but not that He insists you honor those He indwells.  Because your witness of God’s indwelling is lacking, you ignore and blaspheme God’s Spirit others.  And so you must believe something else – that you are heralds of God’s imminent return, so long as it is not in anybody you might have to honor; God’s rapture, so long as it includes you and your easy-way-out followers; and God’s eternal security, so long as you never humble yourself to others in whom is more Christ because in them is more mature doctrine.  And God’s greater doctrine disavows puerile escapology.  Your religious pride keeps you blind and in perdition as you wait for God to manifest Himself in some other way than in yourself or those you teach, which you think absolves you from dealing with your self-exalting and God-denying religious pride.  Have you noticed?  God refuses to manifest Himself in a way that exalts your pride and confirms your escapist doctrines.  That is why the doctrine of the rapture and other escapology dogma exists.  It is to identify you in religious pride who will not cleanse your souls for sufficient God indwelling.  Instead you wait, and you encourage others to wait as Jesus supposedly “tarries,” while in reality you just mark yourselves as being incapable of participating in the Millennium’s restoration of all things, which is God's return in man in peace, power and productivity through excellence governed by humility and submission to God's Spirit.

Every Strike is a Healing Strike – God wounds.  God heals.  Let Him.  Satan also wounds.  You also wound yourself and others.  Let God heal.  Who has so little pride that no blow can be used for humility’s advantage?  Let what comes help God in you and not Satan in you.  Be always prepared for pain and never surprised.  Avoiding pain usually guarantees its increase.  Accepting pain honestly usually obtains its decrease. 

Evocative or Immature?–  The In That Day Teachings of Robert Winkler Burke are either 1) Evocative, eloquent, multilayered, sophisticated, intelligent, grave, staid, timely, weighty, somber, solemn, earnest, ironic, tragic, humorous, pithy, rich or 2) Immature.  The answer is:  both.  Why?  Rick Joyner’s “Word for the Week” of 9/3/07 explains much.  http://www.morningstarministries.org/feature/wftw/2007/3607.htm  As mentioned before, Joyner says there are three levels to Christian Ministry:  The masses, the disciples and the elect; or Rescue, Stabilization and Restoration.  He humbly tells a self-effacing story that in his early Christian days, as a hippie kind of spirit-filled, healing-believing, prophetic-called person, he told a “prince with God” Baptist pastor, that the pastor may not be saved because he had not experienced spirit filling or healing.  The great pastor listened humbly to the young upstart Joyner, and tried to understand where he was coming from.  Joyner said the man’s humility “profoundly jolted my pride.”  In the course of creating In That Day Teachings, I confess that I, Robert Winkler Burke. have had moments of great immaturity.  I made about 25 videos wherein I cussed and used the Lord’s name in vain in my frustration with uncorrected televangelism.  But the Lord did not strike me dead, though I damaged my usefulness to Him.  It is immature to rail against those who cannot see.  An old proverb says:  None are so blind as those who refuse to see.  God set up His three-level system of belief.  Who am I to rail against it?  Nevertheless, the time for restoration is at hand.  Let all who are thirsty, come.  I just pray my waters are worthy of a long draught.  Because: Truly, it is drought and famine in broadcast Christianity.  And it is so fantastically ironic how the dispensational dingdongs are preaching about anti-christ in a self-incriminating way that is beyond laughable.  And sometimes good preachers become quite God-indwelt while steadfastly 1) denying it and 2) preaching all that would keep it from happening to another.  And doctrine is at the heart of it.  The best preachers among us must deny wrong church doctrine themselves personally to advance Christ’s manifestation in their lives, while keeping the wrong doctrine affirmed publicly so they can continue to preach.  It’s exotically mind-bending because it is exotically truth-bending.  But there you have it.  No use to immaturely rail against such.  That’s life, for now anyway.

Existential Enemies of Indwelling – Why did Jesus die on the cross?  Answer:  For many reasons, but one is now moving to the top of the list.  Jesus died on the cross so that He can live indwelt in every man, woman and child on the planet.  That would be over six billion souls living in harmony and bringing God’s heaven to earth.  The world’s population, technology and sin have the potential to make more hell on earth than ever.  The solution is Jesus indwelling us, something Buddha or Mohammad cannot do.  But this is not the argument of televangelists.  They tend to say Jesus died to save us from our sins – meaning we get to go to heaven if we believe.  Believe what?  Well, the television preachers have their triune doctrines of escapology:  Believe in the rapture so you don’t have to bother with Jesus indwelling now in you; believe in an imminent second coming so you don’t have to bother with Jesus indwelling now in you; believe in an eternal security once-saved-always-saved so you don’t have to bother with Jesus indwelling now in you.  Not for no reason are such televangelists known for self-serving shenanigans, because they cannot but be madly driven by their dodge God doctrines.  Bottom line:  Such escapology preachers are in existential enmity to God’s indwelling since their focus on tomorrow – including today – is escape! 

Fallible Masters – In our journey to become a God bearer we find we must sometimes learn from Masters of Overcoming, using the ancient path of mentoring.  And we find our masters, all of them, are fallible.  And sometimes our pride, jealous rage and hidden vengefulness make us unable to submit to mentorship from an imperfect human.  We would rather just read the Bible and do whatever we have to do with God, and not man.  To Jesus, who is a perfect master, we pretend submission.  To a master in the flesh, who might pack a significant portion of Jesus in his spirit, we tend to refuse submission.  That is, until our pain gets unbearable and increases above the cost of keeping foolish pride.  How, then, do knowledgeable Christians learn from imperfect masters?  I recently learned from a teacher who modeled how to manage imperfection.  I was attending a martial arts seminar.  The teacher was asked:  “You have taught us that when an unavoidable sock on the jaw comes from the left, we simply breathe, relax and turn the head to the right and lessen the blow.  Then when a punch comes from the other direction we do the opposite.  But what do we do if a punch comes straight up the middle?”  The teacher shook his head and said, “Yes, I sometimes have that same problem!”  Everybody laughed.  Later, I thought about what he said.  The teacher actually gave a solid answer to a tough question.  We must freely admit that no matter how expert we become at something, we can always be bested by something else.  It does not mean we lose the war.  Some battles, yes, we might lose.  This is life.  We must lose because otherwise we might think we are God.  In loss do not lose your humility and character in God.  The trick is to be relaxed in the confidence you have in the goodness of good, which is God.  The same instructor was asked, “What do you do if another big martial arts man comes and wants to challenge you in a fight?”  He said, “I never say I am the best.  I say, ‘Here is what I know.  That is all.’  Maybe the new fellow has some things to teach me.  Maybe my class has been too dull, so I will fight him.  Maybe if he is crazy, I do not fight.  It depends.  Do not be afraid to be tested.”  In all things, relax and let God direct.  The best teachers and students communicate, demonstrate and master excellence while always manifesting something greater than even excellence itself: humility.

Fixed Word Rules vs. Spiritual Guidelines – A parable:  Once three brothers, who were near retirement age, decided to get together on the twentieth anniversary of their father’s death.  When they met they recalled their father’s sage advice in his last words to them.  The words were, “My sons, in life God has given us no fixed rules, only guidelines.”  The oldest brother was a famous general in the US Marines.  He said following their father’s advice helped him immensely in war.  He said, “We surprised the enemy every time we operated unconventionally.  They had our playbook, but we had surprise.  I later had Pop’s doctrine put in the US Marine Corp. Tactics Manual.  It says, ‘There are no fixed rules that can be applied automatically, and every situation is different…Leaders must remember that there are no fixed rules and no precise checklists, but there are bounds.’  This has saved many lives in combat.  Thank God for Poppa’s advice!”  The middle brother was a famous businessman who owned a global hotel chain.  He said, “I also used Pop’s advice.  Our hotels lost business to local competition until I told our managers, ‘There are no rules, only guidelines.’  Since then we please our customers, our business has grown and our employees have prospered.  In our company mission statement we state there are no rules, only guidelines.  Thank God for Poppa’s advice!”  The youngest son was a famous preacher.  He said, “After Poppa gave us his last words, I looked in the Bible.  Sure enough, Jesus broke rules and defended it by citing that David and the temple priests broke rules.  But I used Pop’s advice differently.  He didn’t want others taking advantage of us with fixed rules.  But Poppa never said I couldn’t.  My ministry has grown because I preach about a fixed rule of tithing.  I put it in our statement of beliefs.  That rule has been good to me.  I have a $20 million jet, a multi-million dollar personal income, my ministry takes in over $100 million per year, my face is broadcast to 200 million people around the planet, my ministry sells my best-seller books and my children will inherit a billion dollar ministry.  I just pushed the envelope on Pop’s advice!  If there are no rules, I decided to take care of myself and make a fixed rule work on others to work for me.  Thank God for Poppa’s advice!”

Fly Away Fallacies Make Fly Away Phalluses – Is your rapture preacher enraptured with a jet?  Wayward doctrines of the wayward church make it perform strange “help me, I’m becoming an obscenity” messages.  And the biggest message of the biggest wayward ministries is their ever-increasing in size, mine-is-bigger-than-yours status symbol: the sleek, proboscis-shaped, beam-me-up-Scotty machine called a “private” jet.  The self-service rapture doctrine so emasculates its adherents they must compensate.  And they are compensating for their self-gelding of good doctrine with $20 million get-thyself-away-from-public-contact flying phallic symbols.  Their doctrinal fallacies of escapology are directly linked in the spirit realm to their flying phalluses of escape from common sense and common contact.  Only God could arrange such perfect mockery of what is wrong with the wayward church.

Friends in Low Places – ‘Cause I got (and we all have) friends in low places, as the country western song by Garth Brooks says:  “Where the whisky drowns and the beer chases my blues away.  But I’ll be okay.”  Not really.  If we search for higher spiritual meaning in this song from popular culture, here is what we find:  Beer (and wine) are self-exaltation, which can sometimes appear as self pity.  Whisky (and strong drink) go to extreme levels of, believe it or not, self-deification.  Self-deification is really ugly, because it means glorifying as of supreme worth and commanding worship of one’s own ungodly self.  (Isaiah 28: 1, 7)  The Bible calls such “woe,” this song “the blues.”  But in the end the truth is shown, because the deified sorrowful self concludes this cry-in-my-beer-song with “you can kiss my ___.”  If you have troubles, you probably have demons in you who worked with demons in others to cause the troubles.  Instead of feeling sorry with your friend demons in low places, refuse their fellowship!  They will only deify a rotten demon-filled soul!  Instead do what Peter finally did, after Christ predicted Peter would in tribulation finally see the holdout pride-of-religion demons screwing up Peter’s call.  Jesus said he had prayed for Simon (the former name of Peter, because Simon was unconverted) that “when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren.”  The conversion, which was nothing less than removing stronghold demons in Peter’s soul, was for Peter to realize he had three times denied Christ.  This bitter truth of demons not only residing in his soul, but controlling his soul in critical moments, left Peter with two choices:  He could drown his sorrows in self-denial, or he could face the truth.  Peter chose truth.  Luke 22:62 tells us, “And Peter went out, and wept bitterly.”  A constant in television ministry is, believe it or not, derision of Peter.  Immature televangelists mock Peter’s so-called dumb questions, actions and arguments with Christ.  Yet it appears such televangelists are little Simons, not yet converted in depth of soul, begging God for revival and more nominal converts.  Some day, perhaps, such leaders will see their self-interest doctrines have been wrong, their souls need more overcoming, and before they can shepherd any great revivals, they and their peers must publicly and privately weep and weep bitterly.

Generals are Surprising – The best generals are surprising.  That is how they win.  The enemy cannot figure them out.  The enemy learns to be afraid of a surprising enemy.  Well, God is a Man of War, as we are told in Exodus 15:3.  God is surprising, especially to sin in our life, especially regarding wrong doctrine (i.e. Rapture, Love Mush, etc.) in our life. The more perfect in alignment we are with God, the less surprising He is to us.  Jesus told Nicodemus that any person not born again of water and of the Spirit cannot enter truth.  Those not born again will always be surprised by the actions of those born again and moving with God.

God Can – God can what?  God can do whatever He wants to do.  God can move/bless/prosper/grow any ministry teaching anything, including rapture, prosperity, weakness, dry bones, mojo witchcraft or any such thing.  God’s ways are mysterious.

God is Nice Until… – God, like any good authority, is nice until it is time to not be nice (to us.)  In other words, God’s mercy (forgiveness, blessings) is not limitless to an individual.  Each person reaps what he sows and gets the God-treatment he deserves (or is entitled to by election.)  Love mush people do not believe this.  They think nothing puts them on the outs with God, unlike real life with the IRS or unpaid creditors. 

God Sees and Wonders – Those who preach egregiously, who teach in error, who prophecy wrongly, who pretend inerrancy in all doctrines they espouse see little carnal correction in the Christian world, not to themselves or others.  They can stay in position and pride almost indefinitely.  But to eyes that see, nothing is anointed and with signs nothing is confirmed but rather opposed.  These are God’s ever present wonders.  God wonders when more people will notice His wonders which always confirm truth and deny lies.  The spiritually blind on earth believe only and perceive only God sees and waits.  To the spiritually perceptive on earth, revelation is always abundant because God sees and actively creates stunningly explicit explanations of His power, position and judgment seat opinion (thumbs up or down) through His amazing wonders.  If an “invisible” white elephant is present, so are its unmistakable signs.  God’s wonders are ever-present burning bushes, if you have eyes to see and ears to hear.  These are the signs of Mark 16:20 and if wise, we must fear God’s opposition and thank His confirmation.

God’s Voice Sounds Like You – Jesus said, Blessed are they who hear My words and obey.  So, how does God’s voice sound to you?  Just like you.  But be careful.  People may stigmatize you for hearing God’s voice.  For example, journalists will mock any candidate running for President of the United Sates who says, “God told me to run.”  However, the same journalists might agree that most candidates running for President usually believe God wants them to.  Such bipolar reactions are common.  People can be both relieved and alarmed that others hear from God.  For this reason even preachers tend to refrain from telling you what God’s voice sounds like.  So for hard truth, we find popular movies once again have the answer.  In the 1956 production of The Ten Commandments, Charlton Heston performed the voice of God speaking to Charlton Heston playing Moses at the burning bush.  Then in the 1998 production of The Prince of Egypt, Val Kilmer performed the voice of God speaking to Val Kilmer playing Moses at the burning bush.  Anything is possible, really, if we could hear and obey God’s instant-now words, which will to you sound like God in you using your voice.  As tagline from The Prince of Egypt states, “The power is real.  The story is forever.  The time is now.” 

Grace – Love mush churches believe grace means God grants infinite forgiveness to our infinite stupidity, or sin.  This is a lie.  God may grant a season of forgiveness to our sin, but such a season is not eternal.  In any person’s life, a person can step across a certain line and go where God says, “Do not step.”  Love mush preachers seem to delight in stepping just there, and encouraging everyone else to do the same.  The correct definition of grace is Divine enablement.  As in, “God give me the grace to do good for you.”  Not: “God give me the grace to be a weakly do-nothing, be-nothing Christian.”  In sum, may God grant you His grace to be a God bearer!

Have Dominion – God says right up front in Genesis 1:28 to have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.  If this was to be taken literally then fishermen, cowboys, lion tamers and animal husbandry experts would be the automatic heroes of eternity.  But we know this is not the case.  So what was Moses doing quoting God like that?  The language of Moses is, quite naturally, the language of the spirit.  God commands us to have dominion over our spirit and the spirit realm.  This includes the thoughts of our mind, the “creepy” thoughts of evil spirit-induced ideas, our emotions, our bodies and – in parallel fashion –  those things of the carnal realm that are sort of a mirror image.  All of this spirit realm is represented by the “countenance” in Cain that God was concerned had fallen by Genesis 4:6.  Then later in the carnal realm Cain slew Abel.  When Cain lost his dominion in the spirit realm, he lost it in the carnal realm.  Regrettably, many preachers preach mainly in the carnal realm, and brazenly ignore God’s spiritual realm.  One would suspect such preachers primarily live in the carnal realm of thought only; with little regard to their spirit, their congregation’s spirits or God’s Spirit.  Hence, they are bereft of dominion.

Have No Opinion – The prophet Bob Jones teaches the doctrine of Have No Opinion.  We must adhere to God’s opinion on everything.  We may be offended by Joe and what Joe is doing, but then be surprised to learn God loves Joe and what Joe is doing.  We may love Sue and what Sue is doing, but then be surprised to learn God hates Sue and what Sue is doing.  It is best to have no opinion but God’s.

He Who is in You is Greater – He, meaning Jesus, who is in you is greater than he (the Devil) who is in the world.  However, it does not mean you always will beat the enemy.  How so?  The In That Day Teachings continually emphasize your godliness (God infilling) is normally a fraction, or percentage of the whole or 100 percent.  So, if He (Jesus) who is in you is at a small fraction, and he (the Devil) who is in the world is in you at a large fraction, then you will probably not fare well.  Reverse the percentages and you will do better.  The fractions being discussed are in reality spirits – good and evil.  For example a prideful preacher (consumed by spirits of pride-of-religion, pride-of-life, pride-of-position, pride-of-power, pride-of-televised-ego, idolizer-of-jets, idolizer-of-self would have those high percentage devils versus his admittedly large amount of godly spirits of ministry to contend with.  Who wins is anybody’s guess.  Another preacher in another arena might have fought off most all of those prideful spirits, built up humility spirits and added those good things to his easy-to-come-by godly ministry spirits.  That second preacher might have an easier time getting the advantage over the enemy.

He’s Got a Point – If God gives us a truth then we are held responsible for it.  This is no small thing.  Truth is a pearl, a sword, our God.  And we had better learn to revere, honor and become truth.  Let us now consider a movie that Tim Dirks has reviewed with great insight.  In the 1971 movie Dirty Harry Clint Eastwood plays Harry Callahan, a hard-edged (avenging angel) detective whose first word in the movie is a crime scene expletive: “Jesus.”  John Vernon plays the mayor of San Francisco, a jaded politician who cares less about justice and more about giving in to all parties – even extorting criminals – in order to keep power.  The movie plays under the area’s famous “Jesus Saves” sign.  At one point the mayor says, “Callahan… I don’t want any more trouble like we had last year down in the Fillmore District.  That’s my policy.”  Harry:  “Yeah?  Well, if I see a guy about to rape a woman I shoot the bastard, that’s my policy.”  Mayor:  “Intent?  How did you establish that?”  Harry:  “If I see a naked (i.e. nakedly greedy) man chase a woman (the vulnerable Church/bride of Christ) down an alley, with a butcher’s knife (i.e. tithe extortion/give-to-me-to-get-from-God) and a hard-on, ($20 million jets, Rolls Royce luxury, international travel/royalty-book-income) I figure he ain’t out collectin’ for the Red Cross.” (i.e. God’s true sheep.)  [Walks out, slams door behind him.]  Mayor:  [After a while staring at the closed door.]  “I think he’s got a point.”  Perhaps these In That Day Teachings have a point, have provided long-avoided truth and are unwanted answers to God-make-it-easy-for-us prayers.  In the above-mentioned movie, when the District Attorney tells Callahan that the murder suspect Scorpio will be released from jail on a technicality, Callahan protests.  The D.A. says, “It’s the law.”  Callahan replies, “Well then, the law is crazy.”  Currently the self-interested religionists teaching escapology are the law-of-the-land in televangelism.  Perhaps their accepted, self-interested, easy-doctrine Christianity also is crazy.  And its leaders, after perusing this material that challenges them to the core might want to say of this author as Scorpio did of Harry: “Jesus, what the hell is he doing?”  The rapture is unscriptural.  Religious give-to-get, self-interested, non-profit laundry self-aggrandizement is unscriptural.  Selling the concept of automatic indulgence, eternal do-nothing security is unscriptural.  Saying “should Jesus tarry” is unscriptural.  Forever preaching baby doctrines is unscriptural.  Preaching only about Jesus and seldom manifesting His essence is unscriptural.  Ignoring hard truths, even truths presented by the Devil himself, is unscriptural.  The faddish “huzzah” preachers of today promulgate a near-insane kind of manic joy with little regard for hard disciplines needed for heroic overcoming of future difficulties and opportunities.  But perhaps this author is just unlucky to believe these things.  Clearly the teach-only-easy-doctrine leaders of televised Christianity believe themselves, under the sight of our holy God Almighty, to be lucky.  God has an In That Day of His mighty wrath coming, delivered via overwhelming scourges of spiritual whirlwinds that no in-name-only Christian can escape.  This scourge will mysteriously avoid all who are in nature good while causing horrific self-destruction to all who are not.  God’s “In That Day” scourging is a more powerful weapon than the Smith and Wesson which Harry described as being “ a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and it’ll blow your head clean off.”  So escapolgy-prosperity-huzzah Christian leaders, who should know the fear of God better than most, might recall what Harry finally said to Scorpio: “You could ask yourself a question.   Do I feel lucky?  Well, do ya, punk?”  [Lest anyone misinterpret, Robert Winkler Burke poses this question purely in rhetorical fashion, and threatens no one  with physical harm, and in no way encourages anyone else to do physical harm.  This rhetorical question simply implies that God has a vastly superior “magnum” weapon of spiritual scourging in His heavenly arsenal, a weapon all but God’s true saints need to fear.  It is God’s last resort method of creating a few more saints while letting the remaining rebels be surprised to discover they are the unworthy, self-deluded, self-serving, self-destructing damned.]

Head Swimming Exercise – Pick a spiritual topic important to you.  Study five media ministries and see what they say on the subject.  Break each down to five points.  Compare these five ministries’ 25 points.  Compare that to five points you glean from In That Day Teachings.  Compare that to five points you believe the logos Bible says.  Compare that to five points that you believe God’s rhema words give you personally.  Compare these eight outlines of five points each, or 40 points.  It will open your spiritual eyes and ears.  Why do not other ministries encourage you to do this?  Answer:  They fear loss of control, loss of money and freedom of you in God.

Heads God Wins, Tails You (in Religious Pride) Lose – If you have not noticed by now, the In That Day Teachings seem to find fault with almost everything connected with modern Christianity.  This way seems not unlike a zealous martial arts master or any demanding teacher archetype – from master Buddhist to Bavarian brewmaster – who might delight in finding Catch-22 situations where the students are found to be in the wrong.  Did Jesus do this to his disciples?  Must other teachers of God bearing do likewise?  Is this then God’s mysterious way of eliminating pride?  Is not pride the biggest yet hardest to see plague in mankind’s religious efforts?  Yes, yes, yes and yes.  Amen!  To the unenlightened, it just looks like a cruel game of “Smash the Gopher,” wherein God seams to enjoy outwitting and massively frustrating His seekers.  (See Job Chapters 1-31.)  But God and His master teachers know when to let up and encourage the distraught.  (Isaiah 28:23-29; Matthew 7:11.)  The master parries thrusts of his students by deftly changing position to show greater perspective and purpose.  At first sight, the master appears to contradict himself when in actual reality he is counteracting sophist escapology from students who often nurse covert jealousy, damaged pride and even revenge.  The goal of the master is to somehow inflict permanent damage to the student’s ego (soulish pride and pride of skill learned so far) without damaging the student’s spirit.  Often the ego damage must come not from the master, but from missteps of the student, or in reality: Satan.  This explains the experience of Job, Peter, you and me.  Hitherto, broadcast Christianity has often stuck with pabulum and not bothered to explain God’s higher, mysterious and yet holistic ways: ways explored in depth by other cultures and endeavors of excellence seeking good.  But now is time, by God.  These advanced lessons in Christ are necessary, in fact, for multitudes to survive in God in this day.  If broadcast Christianity fails to repent of puerility, grow, learn and teach these doctrines, blood will be on their hands.  Lies beget death, truth begets life.  We must say, Let there be life!  And we must pray it is not too late.

Heart of God or…Will of God  –  Sometimes preachers will proffer a certain aspect of God’s heart, say kindness, then preach that that aspect trumps just about everything.  So whereas God is against abortion, his heart is for pro-abortion people.  What does such preaching leave us with?  Answer:  It leaves an over-reaching message to chuck yesterday’s sermons about God’s other aspects and now simply do always today’s emphasized aspect:  in this case, kindness.  What is wrong with this preaching?  Here is a parable to explain:  In the eighteenth century Lord Admiral Godson was noted for his considerable ability to inspire and bring out the best in his men.  Yet he had troubles with his fleet operations.  He said, “How is my blockade doing against the French port?”  “Not well,” said his advisors.  “How so?”  “Well, my Lord, the fleet in charge of the blockade has somehow become convinced that you regard kindness above all traits and they have been supplying the French with food and wine.”  Frowning, he said, “Then, how is my operation in North Africa?”  “Not well,” said his advisors.  “How so?”  “Well, my Lord, the fleet in charge of North Africa has somehow become convinced that you regard severity above all traits and they have executed most anyone not an Englishmen, simply because they are not English-born.”  Lord Admiral Godson replied, “How can such absurdity be going on in the Royal Navy?”  His advisor replied, “They are only doing what they think best will incur your favor.  Rather than obey your orders they have chosen to gain your good graces by emphasizing one of your famous characteristics.”  Lord Godson said, “I will send my understudies, who know better than to exaggerate a good trait than obey a good order, and they will correct the leaders of my fleets.”  But the advisor said, “Last time you sent out your understudies to the fleets, they were all hung.  And we received requisitions for more rope.” 

Her Beautiful Humbleness – The bride of Christ is beautiful in her humbleness, her ability to be corrected, her deferring always to what is right, her self-awareness, her lack of extravagance, her efficiency, her inability to boast, her lack of arrogance, her inner loveliness, her amazing ability to see and hear spiritually, her obedience even at the cost of pride, her recognition of God in all other things, her lack of stridency, her ability to flow with God’s Spirit, her inability to extort, her revulsion of all things vain, her utter lack of pretension, her harmony, her lovely voice, her surprising ability to be in conformity with God’s surprises and her effortless ability to stay in touch with God as she manifests her love’s glorified truth.  All in Christ must seek this beautiful humbleness. 

Her Power of Humility – The bride of Christ is powerful in her humility.  She is curious about her faults.  The wayward church is proud and strangely incurious about its faults.  Wayward doctrine controls what the wayward church thinks, speaks and does.  Escapist doctrine makes it think of escape, speak escape and practice escape.  The true church expects Christ to live inside our souls.  Our souls must be pure to do this, and it takes humility to be pure.  The pose of prosperity is contrary to humility.  The belief that evil spirits cannot be in a Christian is contrary to humility.  In fact, all that is wrong with the wayward church is contrary to humility.  The wayward church is caught up in its own cheap success.  It would rather believe lies about itself than repent that parts of itself have been dedicated to doctrines of hideous evil.  The wayward church has very little power but compensates with pride.  And it is proud of just what Satan wants the wayward church to be proud of, which is self on the throne.  God wants His true church to be humble and have Christ on the throne of each soul.  Satan loves pride, God loves humility.  God’s church is humble, antichrist’s church is proud.  God’s church knows it is not perfect and seeks correction.  Antichrist’s church believes it has perfect doctrine, of which it is perfectly proud, which makes it almost perfectly unable to manifest Christ.

Hold ’em or Fold ’em  –  Can we or can’t we hear from God?  Some orthodox preachers say no.  Some charismatic preachers say yes.  The orthodox crowd ignores tons of scriptures stating God wants you to hear His voice.  So they ignore the Bible’s four admonitions to “Hearken unto the voice of the Lord,”  the half dozen “hear my words,” Jesus’ admonition that  “blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it,” and the three Bible references that “man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”  Jesus also taught us to pray “Thy (Father God’s) will be done” and then later prayed “if this cup may not pass away from me…thy will be done.”  How can we do God’s will without hearing from Father God?  No army operates on the assumed will of its general.  It operates on the communicated will of the general.  No wonder Christianity is screwed up!  Jesus continually admonished us to have spiritual eyes to see and ears to hear.  Job proclaimed at the end of his trials, “But now mine eye seeth thee!”  Recently a radio preacher railed against his congregation for sleeping, and said he himself was so diligent in Sunday attendance that early in his marriage while traveling, he awoke one Sunday morning to find his van had two flat tires.  He had only one spare.  So he went to a neighbor and borrowed a car.  On the way to church, the pastor says, he and his wife argued.  He says he got so angry, he could not listen to the Sunday sermon.  So the pastor told his congregation to not argue with the spouse while going to church.  Now, wait a minute!  Is God alive, or not?  Is God sovereign over the affairs of man, or not?  If God is alive, as I suspect He is…then could it be that two flats on Sunday morning might be a message from a very quickened and alive God to a very rigid, strident and dead-to-the-spirit preacher?  The Bible continually reiterates that God’s spirit flows like a river to those who can receive it.  Either you rip out the last page of the Bible and disbelieve there is “a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God…in the midst of the street of it…the tree of life…which bare fruits…and there shall be no more curse” etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.   Or you go with God’s unpredictable flow of life, in which God delights in showing His mature believers that there are no rules, only guidelines.  That way God shows us how to beat the enemy, which can have too much success if we are rigid with God’s rules.  That is why God must be a little unpredictable.  If the enemy knows we stick to a rigid rule book, the enemy wins.  Jesus, of course, modeled this unpredictability.  When aggressive crowds wanted to confront him, He took the cards of life he was playing with and folded them.  It was not time.  When it was finally time to go to the cross, He held them.  He held his cards four days for Lazarus.  With the rich young ruler, He folded them and let him walk away.  All of us have operations that need to continue, or stop.  God is the general of our life.  And some day, pedantic and strident preachers who brag on their brutal examples of keeping rigid rules… will get a dose of God’s reality and flow with His – gasp, dare we believe – rule-breaking Spirit!  Hallelujah!  And amen!  And once this happens to a preacher, maybe his sermons will stop putting people to sleep…and start putting people back on the path of God’s wonderfully unpredictable river of life!

Hot Hand with God – Part of practicing humility as a Christian is to acknowledge when another person really has the Hot Hand (referring to a poker player who is having a run of high-value cards) with God.  Standard practice in church is to assume the head pastor always has the hot hand, because he basically says so.  But this is not scriptural.  Jesus saw John the Baptist had the Hot Hand and allowed Himself to be baptized by him.  Sometimes God shifts the Hot Hand around just to keep us humble.  A child may suddenly speak heavenly words from the throne room to the parent.  Will the parent be humble and say, “Child, you were speaking God’s words to me just now.  I will take them to heart.  Thank you and don’t ever lose that precious gift!”  Or will the parent remain proud and say, “That’s cute, you speaking to me like I need to listen to you, a child?”  God prefers the former response, but if you insist in the latter then you have chosen to shut your ears to God’s good.  God will reverse roles just to allow correct modeling.  The master will become the student, and both have an opportunity to model humility to each other.  But we seldom hear this from preachers because apparently their mentors did not model this Divine attribute to them.

How Can It Be? – How can it be that the modern wayward church teaches the very things keeping Christ from manifesting?  If believing lies about rapture/imminent second coming/eternal security allows devils to be embedded and unrestrained in us, then Christ cannot return and live as full in our abodes compared to if we believed in true doctrines that eliminated indwelt demons in us.  So, how can this be?  Well, two thousand years ago Christ absolutely blasted the Pharisees and scribes of the day.  They were the religious establishment, and they crucified Christ, stopping His singular life from being manifested.  Is not this now also happening such that Christ is stopped in his ability to live His life fully manifested in individuals on earth?  Only two things stop Christ from manifesting in individuals – their lack of being of a right truth and their lack of being of a right spirit.  Modern Christian leaders on television appear to have a crass disregard for both what spirit they are of and what small and questionable doctrines they espouse.  One wonders, are the sins of pride and avarice confining them to short puppy-dogma leashes?  Is it any wonder that until better enlightenment, humility and repentance arrive, in not enough worshippers of Our Lord is Christ happy to be seen!

How Evil Spirits in One’s Self Can be Stopped – At all times ask the question:  Am I of a right spirit and truth?  When you feel a wrong spirit, an untruthful spirit, rise up in you…do not let it.  Consciously fight against letting that wrong spirit have dominion, or have control over you.  Evil spirits gain control over you by increasing time and power while they have forward control.  So, the moment you feel the wrong spirit rising up in you, do not allow it.  Refuse it admission and control of your consciousness.  Each time it takes control, it gains time and power.  Each time it fails in its effort to take control, it loses time and power.  If you let it take you over in a large fit or explosive episode of any kind, it has accomplished a major victory.  If external conditions become very large for its normal taking control of your soul and you then refuse its entrance, it has suffered a major defeat.  Treat each battle as a battle for life or death.  This is no small game.  It is a real battlefield for your good soul versus your Adamic sin-nature.  It is as if there are two dogs inside you fighting all the time.  One is a good dog, the other evil.  The one who wins is the one you feed, exercise and love.  The loser you starve, cage and hate.

How Evil Spirits in Others Can be Stopped – It is very difficult to stop evil spirits in others.  Evil spirits control people by two things:  The amount of time and power they have over their host’s consciousness.  However, you can predict a person’s future behavior based upon the spirits and truths – or lies – they are of.  If they continually dwell on wrong thoughts – lies, in other words – and wrong emotions – evil spirits – then they may overtly pledge their goodness to you but in the end if they do anything around you it will probably be evil.  So, to stop evil spirits in others from hurting you, notice the signs of telltale spiritual bipolarity.  These signs always accompany the conflicted.  The conflicted will be blind to their evil.  The evil in them succeeds only if their victims are blind to the reality deception field being promulgated by the conflicted.  Thus a wife, for example, was once arrested for shooting her husband with a .357 magnum.  She is reported to have told the deputy, “Why did he make me do that?”  (This is an actual comment published by a newspaper regarding a shooting near Virginia City, Nevada.)  The husband might have ignored every sign that his wife may have let her wrong spirits and lying thoughts obsessively consume her soul, until they became so strong in her consciousness that she shot him.  Then she wondered why he made her do that.  Such is the deception of Satan.  If you are good at hearing and obeying God, God will warn you to cut ties with people who have decided to let evil thoughts and spirits consume their conscious ability to be anything but your enemy.  Thus God will help you to have a correct list of who are your allies and who are your enemies.  This is how you survive, because few can survive a friend who really is an enemy.  Dealt with properly, your friends and even enemies make you stronger.  But a friend who is an enemy destroys himself and yourself.  Jesus deals with the hot and the cold, but the lukewarm he spews out of His mouth. 

How Much Love – How much love do we need?  Since God is love, it would be unwise to limit it in our lives.  Why do we need so much love?  To paraphrase “Climb Every Mountain” by Rogers & Hammerstein, your life and dream “will need all the love you can give, every day of your life for as long as you live.”  Only God and to whom He gives it have that much love. 

I Could be Wrong – I Could Be Wrong.  This is something no critic wants to say… about himself.    Nor a preacher.  Nor a president.  But let us learn from Abraham Lincoln who said, “with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right…”  Let God be God, and let Him prove us wrong often enough to beat down our pride in ourselves.  So many Bible answer man/Christian Cop programs are run by folk who do a very good job impersonating Luke 18:9 (Amplified) “people who trusted in themselves and were confident that they were righteous [that they were upright and in right standing with God] and scorned and made nothing of all the rest of men.”   Often one or more of the hosts of such programs have a spirit that is really out of whack, while they drone on in lifeless high-handed monotone.

Imminent Return of Jesus – The Bible says Jesus will return.  On the last page it says three times, “Behold, I come quickly.”  So what gives?  It has been two thousand years and Jesus hasn’t come?  Or perhaps does Jesus actually come and manifest in our lives.  Either we wait in stupor (which is unscriptural) or we keep on pressing and worshipping God in spirit and truth until perhaps we become proof that Jesus does come quickly to manifest in our lives.  And aid in this process is to bless those who come in God’s nature, and then our abode will not remain desolate.  (Matt. 23:39)  In other words, the test is pride.  So many teachers and preachers of God’s word won’t honor anybody (other than themselves) doing anything good (or God) so they themselves remain desolate.  Their abominable desolation convinces themselves ever more that their logos knowledge is the ultimate thing.  And God goes ahead anyway and manifests Himself in all others who please Him.  Note:  Jesus may certainly still come any way He wants to.  After all, he is God isn’t He?  It is just as bad to burn those at the stake in whom Jesus comes as those who wait. 

In Good, Out Bad – In Good, Out Bad.  Wherein we learn good and reject bad from all sources.  No preacher, prophet or evangelist is perfect.  Yet we must learn good from them and reject whatever bad they espouse.  This is something Christian apologists/cops are too immature and hypocritical to accept.  They, themselves, say they are perfect in slamming whomever.  (So saying, I am Christ.)  But Jesus said be careful how you hear.  No apologist is perfect in all his renouncements of others.  Even with them, let what they say that is true in, and what they say that is based in jealousy, ignorance or competition out as bad.

In That Day – “In That Day” is a certain time spoken of in the Old and New Testaments by the prophets, including Jesus.  It speaks of the time we are living in now, when a spiritual scourging (appearing dark, wrathful and merciless) shakes things up epically, reveals sin in the surprised feigners and rewards righteous and holy people.  See the Old Testament prophets.

In the Beginning was a Story – God is a story teller.  He really loves stories.  His Son told lots of parables.  For most of us the greater truths are so indigestible we must have stories.  It is how we digest truth.  Hence, popular culture is fascinated with movies.  Movies are simply moving pictures.  Pictures are mental images.  So movies are moving mental images.  It is one way God gets the public’s attention.  So in truth, we are in the midst of a rain, flood and ocean of rhema stories from God in popular culture while simultaneously experiencing an unacknowledged drought from pulpits, religious authors and purveyors of most things ecclesiastic.  Here is a small list of God’s parabolic messages provided in popular movies:  Want to see antipodal spirits in action?  See Inspector Jacques Clouseau unconsciously fight his evil boss in The Pink Panther.  Interested in the prior earth age and memory loss?  See Total Recall.  Interested in observing the power of self-destructive spirits of fraternal jealousy?  See Zathura.  For self-destructive familial spirits see Jumanji.  Interested in apocalyptic foreboding regarding the self-destruction (at times assisted-with-extreme-prejudice) of evil people?   See Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven or his man-with-no-name series; or Tombstone.  Interested in men of war?  See Shane, Braveheart, Patriot, Gladiator, Master and Commander, The Shootist, 300.  Interested in the Three Earth Ages?  See Disney’s Hercules.  Interested in the elect?  See any spy movie, The Ten Commandments, The Prince of Egypt, Dumbo, Casablanca, the X-Men Movies and other comic strip movies.   Interested in joyful spirits and their interplay with humans?  See Fiddler on the Roof, The Sound of Music.  Interested in the effect of dark spirits on good spirits?  See Oklahoma.  Interested in inherited spirits and the invisible powers of spirits?  See the Star Wars sagas.  Interested in waiting for the Rapture’s ride out of here?  Watch Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry when he is offered a helicopter ride in the last scene of The Enforcer.  Interested in the pandemic gelding and worshipping of weakness in Christian churches?  See The Magnificent Seven, The Seven Samurai, The Cowboys.  Interested in the power of a pure spirit against an environment of sadistic, controlling and rigid spirits?  See the black and white Billy Budd.  Interested in learning about crossing the river of eternity, prophets, judgment and judgment seat angels?  See Hang ‘em High.  Want to know about angelic help for people suffering at the hands of deceived egomaniacs?  See Mary Poppins.  Want to know about love, truth-seeking and kingship?  See The King and I.  For examples of expedient androgyny as a method of balancing individuals see Mulan, Angel the Bad Man (wherein John Wayne grows beyond one dimension,) Stagecoach (where a whore becomes a wife, an outlaw a husband, a card shark an agape benefactor, a drunk a doctor and a sheriff a friend) and any action movie where the tough guys have to tone down to take care of babies or a nurturing woman has to toughen up to eliminate bad guys.  To witness the extreme cruelty, viciousness and spawning ways of evil spirits, see the Alien series.  Alien’s hero Ellen Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver) is a manly woman who must androgynously become a nurturing mother to a girl at one point in the series (she out-mothers the alien mother.)  Want to know more about God’s extreme end-times jealousy for His Church?  See Red Headed Stranger.  Interested in the dystopia of modern secular beliefs clashing with God’s end-times restoration and resolution of all things?  See The Fifth Element, the Harry Potter movies, The Lord of the Rings series, The Chronicles of Narnia series and The Wizard of Oz.  As you can see, God can easily work in the movie industry to speak freely about subjects His pastors cannot.  Perhaps this is as it should be.  But perhaps it is not.  Someday, people must learn the hard and fascinating truths behind what they have been drawn to watch, listen and absorb over and over.  Interestingly, overt so-called Christian movies like Omega Code, Left Behind and such tend to flop because they contain so little truth.

iPod – Small portable device made by Apple that can play the Bible.  (See iTunes)

Is Your Doxic Toxic? – Look at your religious establishment’s creed, or “What We Believe” statements.  Moxie and doxie do not really mix.  Do the statements imply the readers of such are sinful in nature, but the authors of such are not; and neither is the creed they produced?  Again, does it say that generally speaking, man is by nature sinful, but not this creed’s creators?  And does it generally also imply that you, the creed reader, are presumed to be needing God’s improvements; but the creed you are reading so perfect its perfection exists to identify heretics who question it?  If so, perhaps some religious doctrines have become adulterated along the way by, of course, unmitigated hubris.  It is interesting that Webster’s unabridged dictionary says “doxie” describes either a loose wench, trollop, prostitute, mistress, girl friend; or a religious opinion or doctrine.  Proverbs 6: 24-27 says, Keep thee from the evil woman (i.e. wrong, easy, supposedly-perfect doctrine.)  It is also interesting that the Bible does not really include doctrinal statements.  God lets us do that from what we read in the Bible, and show Him what pride or humility we take from His word.  (One secular company’s philosophy states:  We are fallible, encourage oversight, learn from mistakes, and stay teachable.  We train to eliminate self-interest, ego and dishonesty from our profession.  We always ask, “Are we doing the right thing?” and take due responsibility.)  If the creeds of Christianity cannot include humility, then neither can they fully include God.  Where can we go for God’s deeper truths?  No wonder there are so many apocalyptic movies.  For crying out loud!

iTunes – Free download software provided by Apple for Windows or Macintosh computers which enables you to load CDs of the spoken Bible.  Once you do that, you can listen to the Bible every day or night.  Compare the number of times in a year you can read vs. listen to the New Testament.  Say you can read the NT 10 times in a year, at best.  You can easily listen 200 times.  Just in one night, you can hear the four gospels.  In a year, you could possibly listen 300 times to the red letter words of Christ. 

Jesus Died so That: – Jesus died so that preachers could harangue you, me and everyone that Jesus died for our sins.  Or perhaps He died for our sins so that He could live in you and live in me.  The first belief puts no onus on the preacher but to proclaim the good news as a half-truth diatribe giving him a right to harangue whomever.  The second belief, well now that puts the name of a Christian good news messenger to the test!  Maybe it is a test too few preachers will own up to.  So they keep haranguing and apparently do not care that Jesus does not care to come in haranguers – not even haranguers of His own coming!  So until strident preachers learn to watch what spirit they are of, Jesus will have to continue to come in simple folk who harbor less religious pride.  If we are such, He lives in you and He lives in me. 

Jesus Died to do What? – Jesus died to put proud pontificators in the pulpit…or perhaps Himself in the pews.  If it is the former, all is well.  If the latter, those in the pulpit would do well to humble themselves to be polite to parishioners.  Why?  Some parishioners may have what they, the preachers themselves lack, but preach about in insufferable sermons; sermons only the devil himself could inhabit.  And what might the parishioners have that some preachers do not?  Why, Jesus living inside, of course!

JOB – Lesser teachings conclude the Book of Job says that we will never understand God.  Therefore, lesser teachers say, the sum is Job 13:15, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him…”  And they leave off the telltale idiocy of “…but I will maintain mine own ways before him.”  And so the errant church maintains its own ways before God!  After more scourging of pride (which is leviathan, not some dinosaur,) Job finally gets it and sees with spiritual eyes how wrong he was to be rigidly righteous, in effect, enthroning self to be God because of pride in knowledge in God.   The scourging finally worked to demolish pride of position and God-knowledge which finally made Job close to the true God.  Job said, “Now mine (spiritual) eye seeth thee.”  And he repented.  So far, we have not seen the popular church or so-called body of Christ do this yet.  Therefore we see that with amazing strategy, God tricked Satan into pushing Job out of his comfortable yet disconnected-from-God righteousness and into the excruciating pride-removing overcoming into holy fellowship and friendship with God!  By the way, preachers stuck in righteousness cannot see this or teach this because they are not yet in holiness and cannot and do not believe in it…yet!  So they are stuck in the loop of Job 13:15a.  See?

JOG – Judgment of God.  If the world’s current population exceeds 6.5 billion, then God has a lot of people to judge.  A certain prophet, named Bob Jones, said God once told him 2% currently make it to heaven.  If true, then over 6.3 billion people will perish.  Taking this to heart, is it any wonder prophets appear mad to such as face God’s wrath?

Just Look and Listen – To find confirmation in these In That Day Teachings, simply look and listen to what ministries say about themselves.  These teachings say televangelists have become so uncorrectable, so greedy and so out of control, some have ventured into believing whatever means justify whatever ends.  This is gross darkness, because as soon as questionable means are used, the godly ends are compromised.  For an example of this see Benny Hinn Ministry’s November 2007 website banner: “Winning the lost at any cost!”  Appropriate for a famously extravagant spender, no?  The In That Day Teachings excoriate media ministries for promoting blood relatives.  For an example, see Kenneth Copeland Ministry’s November 2007 website promoting a Strand of Pearls CD from the Copeland clan women.  “I am really thrilled at this…a dynamite ministry tool,” says Kenneth Copeland.  The In That Day Teachings say that dispensational preachers concentrate on worldly news as a means of promoting fear and encouraging sales of their distorted dispensational spin-works.  For an example, see Chuck Missler’s Koinonia House Online website banner:  “Bringing the world into focus through the lens of scripture.”  I thought Paul said rather we struggle through the lens of the world to discern scriptural truth!  The In That Day Teachings say too many ministries teach only baby doctrines.  Yet there are churches who boast themselves as teachers of the “pure milk of the word.”  The In That Day Teachings say dispensational preachers are myopic in their sales efforts.  Witness Grant Jeffrey’s November 2007 website homepage with the top headline:  “Products.”  The In That Day Teachings say ministries disbelieve true doctrine and create their own.  For an example, see Back to the Bible’s website which prominently features three top of page “donate” buttons, but nowhere in sight are references to free online bibles, free actual bibles, links to Gideons International, links to free online bible software for Windows and Macintosh or links to spoken word bible recordings.  Back to the Bible, in(not)deed!  The In That Day Teachings say modern media ministries are so embedded by escapist spirits – from their crazy escapist doctrines – that they escape fiscal responsibility.  See Ministry Watch’s website: www.ministrywatch.com.  Jesus said to be careful how you hear.

Just Prayers – With believers who worship weakness you will often hear prayers with the word “just.”  It sounds like this:  God, just heal my son.  God, just help me get a job.  Lord, just give us world peace.  The list is infinite.  And God may be tempted to respond to such immaturity with, “Just shut up!”  What is the problem?  Well, God is not going to change the way the universe works because we pray a “God, just do something” prayer.  Imagine the audacity!  We lamely say in a weak spirit, “God, just change the rules for me.”  That would, um, make us God, no?  Since God is God and we are not, let us abandon these unjust petitions.  Psalm 91:11-12 says God “shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy (unchangeable) ways…They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash they foot against a stone.”  The stone means God’s immutable ways of the universe.  God gives us angels to keep us from breaking His unchangeable ways and banging our selves against them, if we could…just stop…the just God fix it prayers.

Keep It Stupidly Simple – Satan’s KISS is to Keep It Stupidly Simple in regards to Christian doctrine.  Yet God is not so simple, nor is the Bible.  God’s manual has sixty-six books and eight hundred or so pages, depending on the printing.  Is that simple?  Imagine if in the 1950’s the Soviets wanted to beat the United States to the moon.  One method might have been to dumb down the math taught in schools of the United States.  No higher math would mean no higher science, which would mean no higher space rockets.  The Americans would have been grounded or lost in space.  Thankfully, the Soviets did not do this to the Americans.  But has Satan done this to Christians?

Kingdom of God – The Kingdom of God equals Truth.  The Kingdom of Heaven equals Truth.  Heaven is a place where no lies are told and no lies are believed.  It is the opposite of earth, where there are too many whosovers who loveth and maketh a lie.  All doctrinal conflicts will disappear in heaven.  Multitudes will be forced to agree that the dispensational doctrine, including the rapture, is either God’s truth or Satan’s lie.  Only truth exists in heaven.  And we are supposed to bring heaven to earth by discerning what exactly is true…now.

Know Thy Self-Interest – Observe the plague of our times:  Self-interest.  Note the painting contractor with an oversized, raised-to-the-sky, off-road four-by-four recreation vehicle, thinly disguised as a tax deductible work truck with company signs on the doors.  You might need a chiropractor after lifting five gallon paint buckets into the shoulder-high truck bed.  You might need a ladder to reach the ladders on the lumber rack.  His overt message: My profession is painting contractor.  His covert message:  My profession is goofing off.  Then there is the prosperity preacher with jet, jet ranch and jet carbon offsets.  His overt message:  My profession is preacher.  His covert message:  My profession is poacher.  And there is also the conservative logos Bible preacher, who is somewhat dead to God’s living Spirit.  He is dead enough to God’s universal living presence in others that he rails with an ungodly spirit of high-pitched whining against his sleepy congregation for sleeping (a Mark 16:20 reverse sign he ignores,) warns against listening to talk radio host Michael Savage (who delivers more truth in 60 seconds than this preacher might in 60 sermons,) and says all must “have a moral obligation to pay attention to where the word of God is proclaimed” (a cheap mantra substituted for “hear me”) though he, himself, proclaims ghastly dead-logos mantras instead of God’s lively rhema words of revelation.  His overt message:  My profession is delivering God’s living word.  His covert message:  My profession is killing God’s living word.  Why all this idiocy in self-interest?  Because of fear:  The contractor or preacher types given in these examples fear that they are not true to the code of their own profession, which is excellence.  (An excellent preacher doesn’t put his congregation to sleep or doesn’t extract a $20 million jet from partners, while an excellent painting contractor doesn’t need a shiny truck to sell his work.)  Deep within they fear they are not excellent preachers or contractors, which is a reward unto itself with blessings following naturally.  And so they fear having lack.  So with self-interest and fear they find a way to get a trick truck, a jazzy jet or a controlled congregation.  And they have done it the wrong way.  This is clear to see by all who have eyes clear to see.  And one thing imposters fear above all fears:  That all would have eyes to see who they really are, how much trouble they are in and what it would take for them to turn their unholy situations around.  All it would take is humility, repentance and faith in truth for truth’s sake.  This puts their faith to the test.  Luke 18:8 says, “When the Son of man cometh (manifesting through God-bearers this kind of deep truth,) shall he find faith on the earth?” 

Kosher Diet – If you can, eat kosher.  Obey the owner’s manual.  Put premium in your tank, not sludge.  Stay away from trouble and swine’s flesh.  There is nothing wrong with pig’s flesh, shell fish, rats or a full vacuum bag; you just should not eat them.  God made scavengers and man has made vacuum cleaners.  The In That Day Teachings encourage you not to be shocked that the common Christian culture disbelieves the Bible and eats everything to cause every kind of health trouble.  It is a clear indication that common Christian culture also has huge errors in doctrines as well.  What about common culture?  A recent snooty advertisement for a luxury diving watch boasts their timepiece is “For men who prefer to dive for their oyster and lobster.”  God lets rich people (rich carnally, which is enmity to God) be stupid people (stupid spiritually, which is death.)  God allows us to believe whatever we want and eat whatever we want: as you eat physically, so spiritually.  Eat kosher food for your body, truth for your soul and God for your spirit. 

Let Yea be Yea and Nay be Nay – Jesus said let your yea be yea and nay be nay.  (Matthew 5:37)  From this we can take two lessons.  The first is to not be double minded.  So we should not talk backwards.  For example we should not imitate popular culture that approves something by saying it is “bad,” or “wicked” or “incredible.”  Secondly, we must align our spirits with our minds such that we never say “yea” in our mind while saying “nay” in our spirit nor should we say “yea” in our spirit while saying “nay” in our minds.  This is difficult to actually do consistently.  Here are examples from movies:  In the 10 Commandments, Sethi says on his deathbed he only regrets leaving one person: Nefretiri.  While true in Sethi’s mind, Nefretiri reminds him there was another (Moses.)  Sethi realizes his spirit still loves Moses and says, “I know.  I love him too.  With my last breath I’ll break my own law and speak the name of Moses, Moses.”  In Robin Williams’ black comedy movie The Big White, Holly Hunter plays his wife who is held hostage by two hit men.  In the course of the movie the hit men treat Hunter with great agape love (with their spirits) despite being hit men (with their minds.)  Likewise Hunter portrays Tourette’s syndrome by acting as a feisty and loving woman (with her spirit) while having a terrible potty mouth (with her mind.)  In The Comancheros John Wayne’s mind treats Suart Whitman tough by arresting him for murder while his spirit loves him by trying to arrange a woman for him to marry.  Whitman says, “You’ve got a lot of cupid in you.  But I must admit, cupid picked a strange place to hide!”  Sometimes television ministers will quote a Bible verse while using habitual braggadocios and high-handed mannerisms (with their spirit) and then quote the true Bible verse (with their mind.) Their spirit seems to say, “I am so very great to have found this verse!” while their mind then reads the verse.  A car mechanic who had such pomp and pride at grabbing the correct wrench for a job would be fired because his lousy spirit annoyed everyone else in the shop.  But this error, like so many others, seems to get a pass when it comes to church leadership.  Such pride-of-religion preachers seem to not have the slightest clue of their horrid example of rotten hypocrisy on display for everyone to learn and deny wrong.  In the above examples, the mind is part of the soul.  But we also live in bodies.  They also must be in alignment.  Who would pay a personal trainer, or diet consultant or martial artist for help if that person was grossly out of physical shape?  In fact, any personal consultant had better be decent in body, soul and spirit before offering others guidance.  So to be a true God bearer, you must line up your spirit, soul and body such that you have not only your triune self completely in alignment but also the universe of good (which is God and all things godly) completely in alignment when you say, yea or nay.  This is how and why Jesus spoke as one having authority, and not as the scribes.  (Matthew 7:29)  And the common people knew it, and loved it.  It was then, and is now refreshing to our spirits which are normally assaulted by others who might be blind to their conflicted triune selves and who might also be conflicted with much that is good.  It has never been enough to proclaim truth alone.  Truth must be proclaimed in a right spirit and in conjunction with all else that is true, which is God’s universe of truth.  Let that truth be proclaimed and none other, saith the Lord.

Levels and Stairways – Christianity consists of levels and stairways.  Miscreant Christians believe there is just one level for everybody.  These miscreants are the ones you might see standing at a raised pulpit, just above the level of their small assembly.  And they rarely encourage you to visit any other assembly, even if the second greatest evangelist, or healer or preacher God ever created is coming to a nearby facility.  But even such miscreants almost always preach as though they were a level in Christianity above the crowd they speak to.  So they are hypocrites to think Christianity is all one level, else they would have no better ability to preach than the next fellow who walks in the door.  Then what is the truth?  A Christian has opportunity to go from one level to a higher level.  The opposite is called backsliding, something universally understood.  Prideful teachers cannot accept the idea that anyone is above them, so they preach from a step above to the perceived level below.  But Jesus said that unless you say blessed is the one who comes in the nature of the Lord, your house will remain unto you desolate.  (Matthew 23:39)  So the test is humility.  Can the prideful teacher discern when another comes at a higher level (a greater nature in Christ) and say, “Bless you, man!  Maybe we could all learn from you!  How did you get to a level in God so much higher above me?”  Then again, sometimes God will switch who has His strong anointing, and the student suddenly is above the teacher.  All teachers must stay humble and jump at the chance to honor when God does such a surprising turn-around.  (Psalm 119: 99-100)  Amazingly, the parallel here is in sports, particularly martial arts.  After one student learns all he can from his master, the best masters will tell the student to go learn from other great masters.  When have you ever heard that preached?  Why in God’s name is pride so prevalent, teaching so puerile and advancement in God so rare? 

Life, Death & Resurrection – We are all given the gift of life.  With it comes also the gift of aging and death.  Therefore, all who live need renewal in the temporal and the eternal.  Jesus is the resurrection.  He enables us to live, and not die and declare the mighty works of the Lord.  This means we can have encouraging victories against the dying process while on earth and total victory against death in heaven.

Line Upon Line– Line Upon Line, Precept Upon Precept:  To be fully mature in worship of God in truth and spirit today, one must understand greater, deeper doctrines of Father God.  This, in fact, was one of Christ’s focus points in His ministry.  Much needs to be re-learned in this day, beginning with understanding how to recognize one’s own doctrines, ferret out the wrong, wrench in the good and prosper.  Baby Christians, no matter how long they have been, are not able to comprehend the greater doctrines of Christianity.  Their mind must first be renewed.   Isaiah 28:10 explains this difficult process of incorporating greater truths into one’s soul.  The Amplified Bible provides a good translation.  In verse 13 you have the unworthy having to endure “merely monotonous repeatings” inane baby doctrines – which are the stultified and stagnated churches teaching the “same-old-same-old” baby precepts, rules and lines.  To grow, you need the verse 10 prophet who can provide true precepts, rules and lines; “here a little, there a little.”  But the modern, crazed, fad-based religious culture seems to have neither the attention nor desire for such discipline.  Perhaps this body of work will strike a harmonious chord in some seeking souls who can receive the In That Day Teachings as a mighty river of God flowing with new rhema and true doctrines for a drought-parched land versus the same old package of sermons endlessly repeated like mantras whose only power is unrighteous recapitulation that dry is wet, old is new and such death is such life.

Logos Madmen – If you want to see a manifestation of a spirit of frustration, simply listen to a logos preacher.  Logos means word, as in word of God.  Logos preachers tend to rail bitterly against the problems with spirit-filled churches.  But the logos preacher does not comprehend worshiping God in spirit and truth.  With only truth, the logos man conducts his life as best he can without God’s spirit – all the while denying he is missing anything.  Worst of all the logos man denies scripture that says, don’t be a logos man only!  The logos man tends to disbelieve anybody can truly hear the spirit of God.  The logos man ignores the scriptures indicating Jesus was filled with unlimited spirit.  The logos man hates talking in tongues.  The logos man wants you to be miserable like him and run away from the spirit of God and anyone filled with the spirit of God.

Love Mush – Wherein weak Christians believe in an emasculated, effeminate god.  And they work furiously to present to this gelded god a church bereft of strength, courage and truth.  Love Mush churches, generally speaking, are run by men with emasculated voices incapable of awakening a sleepy dog, or their congregation or themselves.

Madness of the Prophet –  Wherein a person is lucky enough to receive divine revelations, but has not the maturity or intelligence to present it cogently to the world.  A perfect example of such foolish, abhorrent, repulsive behavior is that of Robert Winkler Burke of Reno, Nevada.  God help him and those who try to understand him.

Mantras – Wherein “About Factor” Christians incessantly say things like, “It’s all about Christ and Him crucified!” Or.. “We’ll know in heaven (not here on earth.)” Or… “You never know…” and all such anti-biblical espousals used to keep the light of truth far away from their darkened-by-wrong-doctrine lives.

Mature Investors and Mature Preachers– Mature investors know that financial markets include long buyer and short sellers.  The long buyer wants to buy low and sell high.  The short seller wants to sell (short) high and buy (later) low.  The long investor is called a bull, the short investor a bear.  Amazingly, bulls and bears can make profits while general markets are going up and while general markets are going down.  This is because in a dynamic financial market, there are always things going up and always things going down.  Dispensational preachers, as has been noted elsewhere, sell geopolitical fear in the form of bad news on the horizon.  Then they sell a solution: escape by rapture of escapologists, a second return to fix all but the escapists and eternal-do-nothing escape from doing anything eternally.  Just as a bearish investor can make money when the market generally rises by focusing on poor-performing sectors, so can the dispensational preacher always find bad geopolitical news to over-emphasize while general goodness increases on the planet.  Conversely, when financial trends turn bad the bearish investor makes more money.  It is the same with dispensational preachers when global politics turn bearish.  At that point, the dispensational dingdongs are in tall cotton!  What is good for God’s planet, in general, is bad for dispensational preachers and vice versa.  Truly, dispensational preaching is strangely anti-christ.  But that is a mature truth perhaps best kept hidden in a field, as our Lord told us in Matthew 13:44. 

Ministry Travel – It can good for people to travel.  And it can be good for preachers to travel.  And it is good to know who pays for what.  A convention in the travel industry is for leaders of people to arrange groups of people for travel.  The travel industry then gives the leaders a free ride, usually at the ratio of one free traveler to twenty people in the group.  But as one travel website says, if the group is only ten people the preacher can still travel free because the travel agency will just raise the price on the others.  Or if a big time preacher can get hundreds of people to go on a trip, then his family, extended family and others in the ministry can go free.  Many media ministries advertise trips to Alaska, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and – lest we forget – the Holy Land.  But they do not say if the payees pay for others, and if so – how many others?  Observe now if you can, who transparently announces who is paying for what.  Why should a regular family pay a multi-millionaire media preacher for his ticket and his family’s ticket to the Holy Land?  As one travel website posits for would-be-spiritual leaders:  “Does everyone know I am traveling for free?  No.  The terms of your arrangement…are strictly confidential.”  One wonders why.  Why can’t millionaire preachers tell us if we pay their way?

Misogyny, Misandry and Androgyny – Emotions between genders can be difficult as shown in the song lyrics: “When I hate you, it is because I love you.”  But a man with a misogyny spirit hates women.  And a woman with a misandry spirit hates men.  Yet God is love.  And God is whole.  Ergo if a man is to be complete, he must manifest some of the spirits of a woman.  Likewise if a woman is to be complete, she must manifest some of the spirits of a man.  (But God forbid taking this to homosexual or lesbian behavior.)  To manifest the holistic spirits, then, of humankind makes oneself somewhat androgynous.  Perhaps this was what Jesus was trying to communicate to Martha when Mary chose to ignore the household (female) duties and assume the discipleship (male) duties of hearkening to the Master.  Martha protested to Jesus that Mary was failing her female role.  Perhaps Jesus said a higher position is somewhat androgynous.  Women say men do not “get it.”  Men say women do not “get it.”  Maybe Jesus says neither gender will get it until they stop the warfare and meet in the middle.  A totally macho, narcissistic, he-male man is rather absurd, no?  A totally spike-heeled femme fatale, or Amazonian-I-am-woman woman is also rather absurd, no?  The ultimate man washed his disciples’ feet, which seems more androgynous than macho.  Life is a balancing act, so perhaps it is time for all of us to get it together, and not be such abominably desolate icons of antagonistic pride-of-gender individuals.  In other words, being a good man or being a good woman may not be the ultimate.  Perhaps the ultimate is to be God’s good and whole person.  Popular culture has made fine commentary on this.  See Annie Get Your Gun and “Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better” for vain gender competition.  Then there is the song “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” by George and Ira Gershwin which says “Things have come to a pretty pass…It looks as if we two will never be one, Something must be done:  You like potato and I like patahto, You like tomato and I like tomahto, Potato, patahto; tomato, tomahto; Let’s call the whole thing off…for we know we need each other so we, Better call the calling off off, Let’s call the whole thing off!”

Mojo Witchcraft Control – Evil techniques used by preachers to bring a Soulish Anointing.  Such preachers control the audience by various techniques including fast speech, mispronouncing God’s name (calling on demons to appear, really,) physical control, rapid fire directions, demanding vocal responses, etc.  It sounds like this:  “Pay-raise the L-A-W-D!  Ah, you can do better than that!  Say ‘JE-E-E-Z-U-S!’  Say, “This is the day!”  Turn to your right and say, “Tonight is the night!”  Turn to your left and say, “Uh-Huh!”  Turn to Psalm 91.  Look at John 3:16…Now Genesis chapter 4.  Everybody say, ‘Hallelujah! God is here!’  You can do better than that.  LOUDER!  HUH!  HUH!  HUH!”  Though insolent, puerile and prideful, it is unquestioned gospel to many.

My Top is Top – The strange thing about religion is its leaders often seem convinced that their understanding is the top understanding.  At the heart of it is unexamined pride and the ugly truth that such leaders are more or less falsely saying, “I am Christ.”  Yet since religious leaders all seem to conflict one way or another, they cannot all be correct saying, “My top is top.” So what is the truth?  The truth is we worship or understand God in partial percentages.  The greater the percentage we know of God, the closer to the top.  Only Jesus got it 100%, the rest of us – all of us – understand at some lesser percentage.  An easy example is the sprinkle baptism believer has a percentage of who is God less than an immersion baptism believer.  An immersion baptism believer who disbelieves healing has a percentage of truth of who is God less than an immersion baptism believer who believes in both.  This continues etcetera, etcetera to infinity or to God.  But the immature “My top is top” crowd really hates and denies this concept.  Sometimes they have a sagacious moment, rise to the next level and then forget their hypocrisy once more and then earnestly again repeat, “My top is top!”  An example of this is a certain television preacher shown on a Christian network who after years of ignoring health advice from that same network became dangerously sick until meeting a doctor at a television station.  Suddenly our televangelist said this doctor’s advice was top and hallelujah!  We never heard how blind he was to that advice on his network for so many years, or the obvious conclusion he – and we – are blind to many things in front of our noses.  The way to stay blind is always proclaim proudly, “My top is top!” as is this preacher’s habit.  The way to perhaps see more is to humbly say, “Here is a greater perspective, but surely superior ones exist which I am not entitled to see or teach yet.  I hope I am not the blind leading the blind into the ditch!”  Jesus said, “The disciple is not above his master…It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master…”  Matthew 10:24-25.  One wonders then, which master?  All of us actually worship a part true/part false God.  Then we become as that master – part true God, part false god.  If we believe God does not heal, we have a non-healing god as master.  And we sure as hell are not going to heal or be like Jesus in that area.  If we believe God stopped making prophets, we have a no-prophet god.  Then we sure as hell are going to have the future dead wrong and probably believe in rapture escapology.  We can recite a Christian creed and still worship a part true God and part false god.  This universal truth is far too bitter for most, especially the Christian cop program crazies who belittle all others but their dry, envious selves.  Lest any reader think I boast, “My top is top” I say no, “My top is not.”

Mysteries of God – What about the future?  When and does Christ return?  How old is the earth?  What about earth ages, the election, the fall of mankind and anti-christ?  These are a few of God’s mysteries.  On purpose He left them to be mysteries not fully explained in the Bible.  Probably the truth about these matters takes more maturity in us than commonly expected by God.  So He left them to be mysteries that some might solve if mature enough to eat what is powerfully bitter.  In other words, bitter truth is just that, something we can’t reject just because we don’t like its bitterness, what it means, where it takes us, where it says we come from or who it says we really are.

Name is the Nature – An old country saying says, “Don’t give a dog a bad name.”  Why?  Because the name is the nature.  Rex, if so named, might be a kingly dog.  Wiggles, if so named, might be a wimpy dog.  In John 16:24 Jesus says, “In my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.”  So much of televangelism has it dead wrong, because they say: ask for that pink Cadillac, or any selfish desire and God will deliver automatically; but God doesn’t reward selfishness.  Ask for My nature and in My nature, and Our Father will give whatever you ask of My nature.  In other words ask Our Father for you to be more like Me and He will give your nature more of My nature – but not more than you can handle in maturity – unti  your joy overflows.  Solomon asked for My wisdom – part of My nature – and not selfish things that are not part of My nature, nor should ever be yours.  This is how a prayer in My name is received Our Father. – Jesus

Never-ending Wisdom – God is never-ending wisdom.  As stupid as things (and we) are in the world, you would think we would all be feverously tapping into – or trying to tap into – God’s wisdom.  God’s wisdom is so deep and so profound that it is hard to fathom its richness, power and bitter-truth reality.  John wrote that the whole earth could be filled with books about Jesus’ wisdom.  (John 21:25)  Perhaps John was saying that what he and others wrote about Jesus was just the elementary beginning.  Perhaps the much maligned Gnostic Gospels attempted to communicate the higher, more difficult, yet easy-to-reject wisdom of God.  So here is a parable:  Tradition Japanese carpenters tell an old story of two competing carpenter clans.  To decide which group was better, they agreed to each build a beautiful pagoda for the community.  The best built would win.  The first group carefully shaped and cut the beams so that on erection day, everything would fit perfectly.  The second groups did the same.  The erection day events would be closely watched by the community.  However, on the night before the erections of both pagodas, the leader of the second group snuck over to the construction yard of the first group and cut its main pagoda pole short by an arm’s length.  The dirty deed went undetected until moments before the first group erected the main pagoda pole.  The leader of the first group of carpenters said, “Look!  An enemy has cut this pole short by one arm’s length!  But never mind, install it!”  To everyone’s surprise, the pole fit perfectly and the first team won the contest.  The master carpenter in the first group had wisely predicted someone from the enemy camp would cut the pole short, so they had kept it perfectly long!  To which we say, Ah so… and so what?  So Father God is the master.  Two thousand years ago the enemy cut down short Jesus on Calvary.  Resurrected, He now carries on as our wisdom of the ages.  However, time grows short for us to advance from apprenticeship, become masters in our trade, outsmart the enemy and carry on wisdom.  (Or do you suppose we are to continue to be passive townsfolk, in wonder and awe at the spectacle of other people’s battles, and think it is sufficient to know when to clap and nod heads in entertainment-value agreement?)

No Discernable Anointing – This is found at dead churches teaching dead doctrine wherein Christ cannot come quickly in them because they are too far from worshipping God in truth and spirit.  What they do is prima fascie, on the face of it, not God-approved.  If you look carefully with eyes to see, you might discover God’s signs of harmonic discord throughout such an operation (see GSAW.)  Are the church’s doctrine’s infantile?  Perhaps there is scribbling desecrating its walls.  Is the church abusing scripture?  Perhaps there is a misquoted or misprinted scripture on its walls.  Is the church dishonoring God’s glory?  Perhaps the United States flag (Old Glory) is being dishonored by violating flag display etiquette.  Are the church men very immature?  Perhaps they meet for Bible study in the children’s second grade classroom.  A church I visited manifested all this and much more!

No Hypocrisy Left Behind – Many media ministries have no fear of hypocrisy because…well, just because.  For example they promote financial freedom by encouraging donations and purchases by credit card, which is to increase one’s liabilities.  Witness Grant Jeffreys who sells a book “Finding Financial Freedom” from his website by credit card.  Choose Mastercard, Visa or Discover to add to your credit card debt.  Then you can “avoid financial frauds and schemes.”  You can “shift your thinking from ‘more income’ to ‘keeping more of your income.’” Finally, you can “escape the spiritual bondage created by a lifestyle of debt.”  If it puts money in their pockets, they feel free to break the very guidelines they sell warning you against all pick pocket schemes but – of course – theirs.  The compromises they do in the name of promoting their self-exalting, self-interested ministries will, they apparently believe, create uncompromised Christians.  But they are wrong.  Compromised masters create compromised students.  A soul that is sold cannot save others but by example.

None/One/Some/All  – What every single person believes about their God or gods:  Atheists say there are none.  Monotheists (Descendents of Abraham – Muslims, Jews, Christians) say there is One.  Polytheists say there are many.  Pantheists say it is the all.  Those of us of a Christian persuasion must stop pointing fingers at the misled None/Some/All crowd, and repent massively for every wrong thought and spirit that in truth, puts so much nominal Christianity into the wayward camps of None/Some/All.  When we err, we all become pagans.  It is the easiest thing on earth to do despite our denials.  We who should know best, often do worst.  Or should we keep on playing the pride game?  What is easier to do:  Pray for the lost or stop being lost?  Christ is unhappy to be seen in us when we try to ram Him down some other person’s poor throat.  Fisher-fools making fisher-fools please only Satan.  How many so-called Christians say what an atheist says, You never know (because there is no God to tell us anything,) or what a polytheist says, It doesn’t matter (because the gods don’t care,) or what a pantheist says, I resent that (Because I am god and I have right to judge.)  For pagans, it is easy to be a pagan.  But for ourselves, we think: never?  The bitter truth is that it is extremely difficult to continuously discern God’s presence, moving hand, rhema words and instant will and then flow in heaven’s harmonic obedience.  It is much more common to be a pagan almost continually except with irregularly punctuated odd moments of genuine now-I-am-believing-in-God faith.  Such brief sparks of light punctuating weeks of consuming darkness is commonly accepted as just what it is to be a Christian.  Maybe it is not.

Non-Elect – Non-elect preachers can be great preachers to the non-elect whom they understand.  But non-elect preachers have a very hard time understanding the elect.  The non-elect religious at best would rather preach to than be served by the elect and at worst would rather kill the elect than let the elect save them from their stupidity and distance from God.  (See the lives of Joseph, Moses, Jesus, Paul, Peter, etc.)

Non-Profit Laundry Machines – You cannot buy them at Home Depot.  They are only available to select heads of non-profit organizations (and their families) who use their organization’s staff, volunteers, broadcasting abilities and quid pro quo arrangements with other non-profit leaders to sell guru religion wares in order to earn royalties going to their persons.  The non-profit organizations are used to strangely promote and legitimize their religious guide’s work, even though such actions besmirch the character of same. There is no apparent end to such self-interest-driven productions of pabulum, which is often advertised as “life changing.”  This is no doubt true, for authors who find no hypocrisy in selling moral advice through their own self-directed non-profit establishments.  The doctrines of these self-serving religious titulars appear to be simplistic, similar to each other and ipso facto (by its fact) suspect.

Old Tricks are the Best Tricks – Sometimes the best covert ploy is an overt ploy.  In the futurist movie The Fifth Element Korben is a retired special forces soldier working as a cabbie.  His former boss, Munro, needs him to go on a secret mission to a far-away planet.  Korben visits Munro at his apartment, picks up Munro’s mail, opens it and reads, “You have won the annual Gemini contest and trip to Phloston Paradise…  Congratulations.”  Korben asks, “You rigged the (public) contest?...You couldn’t come up with something a little more discreet?”  Monro replies, “Old tricks are the best tricks, eh?”  This is how tithing and non-profit laundry organizations are used by some televangelists to obtain gross personal riches through their “selfless” dedication to their own non-profit religious organization run by themselves to create significant payroll checks, expense accounts, executive jet travel, television productions, conventions and royalties for financial benefit to themselves, their family and quid pro quo peers – all in the name of spreading the Gospel.  It is so obvious, but who sees it?  Pray and ask God to reveal any incidences of this kind of ploy being used in your life.  And learn from it.  And do not do it yourself.  And do not support those who do.  And repent if you have done this.  [These teachings are not so much to point the finger at others, as to learn of Satan’s wiles in the so-called religious (who worship strange doctrines like the rapture which promotes such egregious sin) and work ever harder to actually be good one’s own self.]

Only God Makes a Soul Beautiful – And such beautiful souls know each other.  When you discover this pleasant fact, be prepared for unpleasant discord if you ever meet a famous, hard-to-meet, so-called Christian personage who is not.  “Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God.”  (1 John 4:2)  Immature religionists say the above verse is an automatic question to ask a suspect possessed of demons:  “Do you believe Christ came in the flesh 2,000 years ago?”  And supposedly, a demonic person would deny this mantra.  This is a fool’s question, or it is a question asked by a religious leader who wants to fool others that he has Christ in him when he might be just another poser.  When a person filled with God’s spirit meets another person filled with God’s spirit, they both positively affirm each other, often in totally silent confession, which is really just being.   This is the meaning of 1 John 4:2.  Likewise, if a God bearer meets an in-name-only Christian, it is discernable by the nominal person’s lack of God’s good indwelling.  Such is our impossible-to-hide-from-each-other confessions.  Interestingly, God bearers are not normally detected by non-God bearers, except for the strange way the indwelt of God have of bothering the consciences of the non-indwelt of God.  Even so, truth stands alone and can be verified by non-Christians who are nonetheless close to God.  Such others can discern truth or lies being broadcast by religious purveyors just by the sound, strength and spirit.  This should put the fear of God in us all.  In other words, God seems to always let some people outside Christianity be able to clearly discern if our doctrines, spirits or programs are evil or good.  Christians also do not own exclusive rights to healing or other powers of God.  God lets His healing flow, His powers flow and His truth flow in wide varieties of peoples and groups.  (Example from history:  William Lewis of Lewis and Clark fame supposedly had healing powers he obtained from his mother and used to great benefit in the 1803 Corps of Discovery expedition.)  It is not always clear why God allows his powers to flow to select people throughout the planet, but it is clear that pride, jealousy and fear of inferiority make some Christian people ignore, dismiss, dishonor and despise all whom have tapped into God’s abundant nature outside Christian enclaves.  ‘Tis a pity.  Jesus tells us to bless all who come in His nature, so that we can be likewise indwelt with His nature.  (Matthew 13:3)  God is God, and we had better let Him be.  And we had better learn to love all souls God has made beautiful.

Our Doctrines Should Make Us – Our doctrines should make us good.  Everyone has their own doctrines on how to live.  Not all are good.  If a televangelist is more than a little egomaniacal, then beware his doctrine.  If a church is ridiculously weak, beware its doctrine.  If an evangelist begs for a $20 million jet, beware his doctrine.  If you or I are doing something wrong, we must reject our doctrine that allows it.   The doctrine of eternal security makes extraordinarily weak followers.  The pity is in the United States, weak Christians are becoming the definition of a Christian.  The doctrine of Jesus-did-it-all-and-He’s-returning-to-do-what-we-are-too-weak-to-consider also makes weak Christians.  The escapology doctrine of the rapture, alas, also makes weak believers.  Then its leaders manifest that fly-away weakness by, well, flying away in outrageously expensive jets.  The sister of weakness is cowardice.   Cowards cannot find the bravery to realize they might be weak, and that the weakness is from core doctrinal beliefs.  So the wayward church is in a satanic endless loop.  Easy on self doctrine has made them selfish, easy and weak.  With the big three selfish doctrines of eternal security, Jesus-returns-to-reward-us-not-rebuke-us and rapture escapology come other monster doctrines.  The selfish wayward church must disbelieve there are no rules, only guidelines – so they put selfish, self-interested rules above God, who is above rules.  And the main rule for them, don’t you know, is – surprise, surprise – tithing.  And they cannot be satiated with that, so they add to tithes: love gifts and offerings.  Then when a prophet (or a fool) comes along and says this wayward church is abominable and has made itself almost impossible for Christ to return indwelling, the weak and wayward church does… nothing.

Overwhelming Scourge, Part 1 – (Isaiah 28:15-18) We in modernity sometimes have a difficult time imagining what God might be able to do in the spirit realm.  Imagine if there were six thousand spirits in each of us.  We would hope that most of our spirits are good and few evil.  Now imagine that bad people might have a high percentage of their spirits being evil.  Likewise good people would mostly have good spirits.  We could even imagine that two thousand years ago when Jesus walked the earth, one hundred percent of His spirits were good.  Now, imagine if Father God could turn a switch, and send a strong scourge of evil spirits flowing – or overflowing – through the planet.  And imagine if these scourging spirits, say rage and anger, passed through the planet and while they could not be seen by the naked eye, they did affect humans powerfully.  Imagine that anybody who was harboring empowered spirits of rage and anger in their souls on the planet; imagine that their rage and anger became activated and increased by the scourging spirits of rage and anger.  So what would happen would be that people with spirits of rage and anger would find themselves suddenly activated in rage and anger.  They would powerfully manifest those ugly spirits, and know not why.  There would be no place to hide, no relief and no solution for them other than to find God’s biblical path of repentance, forgiveness, faith and fellowship with God.  This removes the demons in a person’s soul.  Little else has much success.  Then God lets loose another scourge of overflowing spirits, this time perhaps greed and self-exaltation.  Those people of the earth with unexamined greed and self-exaltation might find themselves doing very large and very stupid greedy and self-exalting things.  And they would not know why.  They would not see the Overwhelming Scourge.  They would not know what it does to them.  They would only know that suddenly they were not able to control their evil spirits.  So God uses this as a self-discovery tool.  He knows what spirits we are of.  Most of us do not.  The Overwhelming Scourge makes the worst of us self-destruct.  It makes the better of us repent.  The best of us, which does not include this author, are not affected by Overwhelming Scourges because so little evil is in such souls.  In movies we can witness evil spirits being stirred up by others.  A scene from True Grit shows a classic stirring of evil spirits.  Rooster Cogburn, played by John Wayne, interrogates two brothers, one who has a good soul and one who does not.  The bad brother is plucking feathers from a turkey in a most disturbing and agitated way.  Cogburn keeps up with his hard interrogation (plucking truth from lies) until the bad man suddenly kills his good brother.    The bad man’s spirits came out suddenly and manifested.  That is what happens in an Overwhelming Scourge.  It catches all who have like spirits.  Sometimes God will pour out beneficial spirits, such as love, compassion or peace.  Those who have these spirits strongly residing in themselves will then have opportunity to strengthen and magnify those good spirits in their souls.  But evil people cannot receive increased portions of good spirits, because they harbor so few and so disempowered good spirits within themselves.  This then, is the Old Testament’s Day of the Lord, or Day of Wrath or In That Day. 

Overwhelming Scourge, Part 2 – The skeptics are right that this doctrine cannot ever be proved.  But if you can believe the Bible, if you can believe Jesus and if you can believe the witness of your own spirits, you might be able to believe that In That Day has come and with it God’s Overwhelming Scourge.  Like Amos says, it is a dark time for most (because their dark spirits will be activated) while it is a bright time for few (because their stellar spirits will be activated.)  Escapologists have misinterpreted events and disbelieved any spiritually scourging process.  They have made lies their refuge, they have hid under falsehoods and made covenants with death.  The story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde comes to mind.  Those believing themselves to be good Christians citizens may find themselves suddenly becoming horrible monsters during spiritual scourges.  True Christians will be stirred to lesser extents.  But all who are stirred have opportunity to repent and remove evil spirits activated.  Law enforcers and prison keepers have observed that criminal activities come in waves.  This is one explanation.  God is revealing through His mysterious scourging just who is who.  The tares are being sifted from the wheat.  God is in control of this strange sieve work.  And God can select when and to whom the scourging is applied.  This keeps the process hidden from carnal eyes but simultaneously seen by spiritual eyes.

Overwhelming Scourge, Part 3 – It is a time to prepare for the Lord’s coming indwelling.  We must repent of harboring evil spirits, confess our not-so-hidden sins, witness a strong enough character to disallow evil manifestations, pray for God’s mercy and ask for God’s grace, which is His Divine enablement in you.  This is described in Revelation 12:11.  “And they overcame him (Satan) by the blood of the Lamb (obeying Christ by repenting and receiving His forgiveness from the Cross) and by the word of the testimony (by being a witness of overcoming of evil spirits in one’s own soul) and they loved not their lives unto the death. Ever notice the greatest movies sometimes have magnificent portrayals of Divine self-sacrifice?  While some preachers preach prosperity, they model insatiable avarice.  While some preach rapture escapology, they acquire significant assets for benefit of retirement and heirs.  While some ministers preach the value of a sinless and open life, their ministry finances and expense-paid extravagant lifestyle costs are hidden from sight.  While some ministers preach God rebukes whom He loves, they will not take corrections from independent ministry watch groups, the media or anybody else God might send their way.  Meanwhile, our movies often preach the way of self-sacrifice.  “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man layeth down his life for his friends.”  (John 15:13)  We know the future, but we pretend we do not.  The future will be good for the self-sacrificing and bad for the self-serving.  Most good movies tell us this.  The Good Book tells us this.  Some mega-star televangelists preach the way of self sacrifice, but personally demonstrate gross self interest.  As Jesus said:  Do what they say, not what they do.

Pedro Principle #1 – Learned from1880s US government scout and interpreter Tom Horn, whose mentor, an Apache Indian chief named Pedro, desired to join himself and his braves with Union soldiers to kill some bad Indians of his tribe.  In other words, most all groups have good, middle and bad.  Only proud individuals or groups proclaim their universal goodness.  With pride it is impossible to proclaim anything but infallibility.

Pedro Principle #2 – Pedro told Tom Horn that as far as bad Indians go, they never get good, they are wherever trouble is and they never die.  Chief Pedro was speaking about how evil spirits are in bad people preventing them from goodness, making them trouble makers and then passing themselves on to successive generations.

Planting Truth – The Lord’s prayer admonishes us to bring Father God’s kingdom, which is truth, to earth.  In this way, our lives are to be campaigns of truth.  Words, ideas and our spirits do matter.  And when truth is promulgated in a right spirit, the sponsors reap great rewards.  Perhaps the saints of heaven worship God in a way more profound than we might imagine.  Perhaps not only do saints in heaven praise God, but they work furiously on our behalf to continue to promulgate truth, which is Father God’s kingdom, on earth.  Practically speaking, this might mean Moses works in heaven to proffer angelic help towards those doing his kind of work on earth now.  Did not Moses and Elijah meet with Jesus?  Were not angels sent to help Jesus several times?  If this process is continued forward one wonders if a George Washington in heaven perhaps helped an Abraham Lincoln in office.  And are they both helping the President of the United States now?  Are the departed kings and queens of countries who made heaven, now mindless of their beloved countries?  Are the saints of the ages mindless of the body of Christ?  Have saints in heaven who were inventors on earth, ceased inventing?  Have the story tellers in heaven ceased telling stories?  Did a John Ford help a George Lucas?  Does Roy Rogers help those God takes a liking to today?  Is Smith Wigglesworth’s work finished, or continuing on?  Has Beethoven produced music with new ears to hear?  Is C. S. Lewis helping authors write truth?  And what about your family?  Do your blood fathers and mothers in heaven help you?  If you died and went to heaven, could God stop you from helping your children in any heavenly way?  Though our lives at times seem so depressingly impoverished compared to the greats of history, today and the Bible; we perhaps under appreciate the fullness of what seeds of truth we have planted, what growth we can nurture later with the full arsenal of heaven at our disposal and what joy we might share some day with God expanding His kingdom.

Platitude Preachers – A Platitude Preacher will say if something number one (i.e. anything, really) happens, then his platitude number two (i.e. anything, really) will take care of it.  If something number three happens, he will say his platitude number four is the answer.  Then when somethings five through five hundred happen to you, he says, then buy his 50 books on platitudes.  Somewhere in them, perhaps, you will discover what to do.  This is designed to keep platitude ministry coffers full, one supposes.  But Jesus said blessed are they who hear my (rhema) words and obey.  Jesus wants your life to be blessed.  Platitude preachers cannot but curse your life and their own.  How many do they lead astray and into ditches of never-expect-to-hear-God-or-be-indwelt-by-Him abomination?

Poker Principle – In dealing with evil spirits, consider yourself in a poker game with the Devil.  If you lose, the evil opponent takes your chips, but being not satisfied he’ll continue until taking your life.  Thus, an evil spirit is never satisfied, satiated or stopped by weakness in dealings from you.  You win by winning, never by giving up.

Pride and Truth – Pride prevails at truth’s expense and vice versa.  Witness the pride in modern television preachers.  In such, greater truths cannot dwell.  With pride comes always deception.  An historic example is the Civil War of the United States of America.  In 1860 it was madness of the highest order to justify the doctrine of slavery, yet Southerners did so.  Why?  To admit one’s own err in thought and deed would diminish pride in self.  This destruction in pride in one’s own self and ways was unthinkable to most free (so-called, for they were prisoners of thought) Southerners.  Not until the South was almost destroyed by the Union Army did the South reject its pride in its thoughts about slavery.  So it is for the modern church with rapture, imminent second coming and eternal security doctrines.  The wayward church’s pride in wrong doctrine cannot currently be overcome, and since it cannot be overcome, devil spirits are having a great time in Christ’s so-called body, making the body uninhabitable by Christ.  So until a better understanding of truth arrives, Christ waits for more of us while coming in less of us.  But when truth prevails greater on this planet, Christ will come in more of us and wait for less of us.  In this fashion, when pride and its ever-attendant companion lies prevail anti-christ prevails, and when truth and its ever-attendant companion humility prevail so does Christ.  Who will win?

Pride of Religion – Prosperity preachers sometimes get carried away in pride with their overcoming message.  Yes, we must overcome Satan.  But the greatest challenge when having victory with God is to never be prideful about it.  Otherwise we will need to take the advice given in the movie The 10 Commandments when Sethi, played by Cedric Hardwicke, says to Ramses, played by Yul Brynner, “No doubt you can overcome anything, but your own arrogance.”

Purpose of Life – The Purpose of Life may be to hear from our Creator, “Well done thy good and faithful servant.”  We must hear and obey God while we live on earth.  We must clean up our spirits and receive truth in our soul.  We must die to self.  When we die to self we kick self off the throne of our existence.  Then we can put Christ on the throne of our existence.  Then we might get power, love and a sound mind from Jesus.  Then we see the goal of religion is not to just have religion, but to support Jesus living in our souls, so that He and we together can love Father God and fellow man.  Like Luke 2:52, we then grow in stature and favor with God and man.  The screenplay of Ride the High Country puts it this way:  Gill:  “Partner, you know what’s on a poor man’s back when he dies?  The clothes of pride – And they’re not a bit warmer to him dead than they were when he was alive…What do you want, Steve?”  Steve:  “To enter my house justified.”

rapaciously wolfish, sheep-shearing behavior?  Don’t ask the wolves.

Rapture – The Rapture Doctrine is a delusion of ease and self-interest.  Escapologists defend their selfish doctrine with 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17:  “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first.  Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”  Verse 16 is the answer to the question, “What happens to dead believers?”  Well, duh.  Verse 17’s we which are alive are we who are alive to God’s instant-now presence, hear His words, obey quickly and do not join in with somnambulant stupor of religious posers.  Remain means we keep a steadfast faith, even when it is mighty tempting to join in with everybody else in somnambulant stupor towards God.  Being caught up together with them in the clouds means acknowledging the saints in heaven who work mightily for our good, if again we are not in somnambulant stupor.  Clouds (or saints in God) are moved entirely by wind (the Holy Spirit), are above the earth (above carnal enmities), uncontrollable by man (or man’s wrong doctrine), deliver shade for comfort (truth), rain for growth (spiritual fruit), hail for destruction (judgment), and snow for beauty (purity), and lightening and thunder in power (spiritual dynamic power).  So in truth, Paul’s verses here are a strong admonition to perform with God and his saints, and an even more powerful incrimination of those religious fakers who prefer an easier out.  Old tricks are the best tricks, and Satan has brazenly twisted this overt call for spiritual fortitude and action into a covert call for do-nothing-escapology.  After all, the word rapture appears nowhere in the Bible.  And despite the millions made in selling this escapology, nobody has been “taken” yet.  Except, that is, for all that money taken from buyers and going to sellers who remain earthbound.  If you still believe in the rapture, perhaps you would like to give $799.99 to the self-proclaimed atheists at www.postrapturepost.com to leave “I told you so” messages for the misinformed after the big escapology event occurs.  They guarantee delivery with the same assurance rapture believers guarantee the big beam up.

Red Headed Stranger – In 1975 outlaw country music singer Willie Nelson came out with an ethereal ballad about an avenging angel kind of preacher.  The unusual story – wherein a preacher kills his unfaithful wife, her lover and a woman who tries to steal his wife’s horse, while the preacher ends up happily in love with another woman with a young son – was made into a movie starring Nelson in 1986.   He sang, “It was the time of the preacher, when the story began, of the choice of a lady and the love of a man.”  But the woman “left him for someone she’d left behind.”  His loss was so keenly felt, “he screamed like a panther in the middle of the night.”  So he goes riding.  “It was the time of the preacher in the year of 01, now the preachin’ is over and the lesson’s begun.”  The story gets darker, as the preacher cannot forgive.  “Now the lesson is over and the killin’s begun.”  He kills three people, not just his ex-lover.  “An’ just when you think it’s all over, it’s only begun.”  The production is reported to have only cost $30,000 but sold over two million copies.  What is the spiritual story behind this amazing poetic production?  Answer:  Red Headed Stranger is another of God’s many apocalyptic productions explaining His future through bold parabolic stories, because His nominal preachers have not the eyes, ears nor spirit to promulgate such a message.  Jesus, we know from the last page of the Bible, returns spiritually to reward every man according to his work.  If our work is truly good, then we recognize Jesus as good when our rewards manifest in goodness.  If our work is truly evil – and we are deceived and do not see our own evil spirits within us – then we do not recognize stranger Jesus, as our death-dealings result in death-dealings and our rewards manifest in horror.  The Red Headed Stranger, then, is a jealous Christ – jealous of his bride “who left Him for someone she’d left behind.”  Like all apocalyptic messages, the swath of the Lord’s vengeance runs wide, seemingly wild and fearfully beyond man’s control.  “Don’t cross him, don’t boss him, he’s wild in his sorrow, ridin’ and hidin’ his pain…Don’t fight him, don’t spite him, just wait ‘til tomorrow, maybe he’ll ride on again.”  At Nelson’s concerts crowds roar with delight when he sings “The yellow-haired lady was buried at sunset, the stranger went free, of course, ‘For you can’t hang a man for killing a woman, who’s trying to steal your horse.”  Revelation 6: 1-8 speaks of avenging horses of God, their colors being white  for conquering, red or bay for (self-)destruction, black for judgment and pale for death.  “This is the (pale, deathly)  tale of the red-headed stranger, and if he should pass your way, stay out of the path of the raging black stallion, and don’t lay a hand on the bay.”  Indeed.  In the future the saints will go marching in God while the butt-heads get eliminated by self-destruction – at times mysteriously quickened.  If this were not true prophetic insight backed by God’s Bible and His mysterious parabolic messages in popular culture, the world would not know Willie Nelson’s strange, haunting and unforgettable tale.  But Nelson’s work is known by the world.  And God’s mysterious stories of end-times winnowing continues to be told, if not always overtly understood, they are nonetheless delivering a covert message to our psyches.  The movie also has a parallel plot in which the unconventional preacher enlists a recalcitrant sheriff to fight a wolfish clan denying a town its free and natural water.  Wolves, of course, represent false shepherds and water represents God’s rhema river of life-giving instruction.  For similar themes see The Who’s “Tommy,” George Lucas’ “Star Wars” and even J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series.  “An’ just when you think it’s all over, it’s only begun.”

Remembrance of Me – When we take communion, we do it in remembrance of Jesus.  Remembrance must really mean more, much more.  This do in fervent desire to immediately and ever-after have My company, My accompaniment with you, My fellowship in suffering, sorrow and joy in your life, that we identify so closely with you and you with Us that Our spirits commingle, Our lives commingle, that we have in each other constant, unbroken, unashamed and unyielding companionship.  By such holy communion, the yearning desires of both God in eternity and man in this age are properly and powerfully fulfilled in fitting perfection. – Jesus

Repenting and Forgiving – If each man or woman on earth only did two things – to  actually repent for being evil (allowing evil spirits to operate in their lives) and forgiving others for also being evil (allowing evil spirits to operate in their lives,) then all would be well.  All of the bible, all of Christianity, all of Christ, all of the Holy Spirit, all of Father God would come together in glorious manifested heaven on earth – if people could repent and forgive.  For then blind eyes would see.  Heathens would inexorably convert to truth.  Mankind’s wastage could stop.  So much has been lost by ignoring these precepts, so much could be gained – if we could but repent and forgive.  Evil spirits embedded in us could be our vanquished and expelled foes, but instead modern Christianity marches on in ignorance of evil spirits because those same spirits have us by our throats; throats that will not repent, neither will they forgive.

Revival:  Stopped by Stubborn Leadership– God wants revival.  Church leaders want revival.  Believers want revival.  But revival does not come.  Why?  God wants to indwell the revived.  He will be able to when He can indwell Church leaders and believers.  But what if God cannot now in sufficient numbers inhabit Church leaders and believers?  What if God doesn’t want new believers that are seven times the devils of current leadership?  Then God’s hand might stay revival, until his true leaders and believers can usher in a proper revival.  If current leaders and believers can’t be indwelt of God sufficiently, it might be because Church leaders and believers are too full of themselves.  They might be too full of themselves if their core doctrines make it so.  Core doctrines that are easy on self and escapist might create self-on-the-throne Church leaders and believers.  Three core doctrines that ooze with the greasy pitch of slimy self-interest are 1) rapture escapology and its mind-entrapping eschatology, 2) the imminent return of fix-everything-but-me Jesus who rewards us for opiate somnolence and  3) eternal do-nothing-now-or-in-eternity security, just believe God gives a pass to heaven for believing what demons confess: that God is.  Add a few more immaturities of the modern televised Church such as mojo-witchcraft get-ready-get-read-get-ready-for-nothing-but-jive, or witchcraft audience control, or tithe and offering extraction or fund-me-and-everybody-else-with-the-same-repitious-inane-self-on-throne-doctrines-of-soul-wastage – and you have a hellacious countermand to God’s will for true revival.  Truth can sometimes hurt, but ignoring it hurts far worse.  It is certainly true that the lost wait for revival.  However, it may also be true that legions of stubborn Church leaders have blood on their hands for causing true revival to be so long delayed.  These same leaders want revival, but without the cost God is asking.  God wants the televised church leadership to repent massively for believing and promoting stupid and erroneous doctrines that are outside the truths of the Bible.  The triumvirate of desolation doctrines are 1) Rapture escapology, 2) God’s fix-all-return and 3) eternal security.  If  believed, these doctrines make its owners so lazy, escapist and demon-infested that God cannot abide them.  So, it is time for Church leaders who have espoused these lousy doctrines to first repent and repent massively.  After repentance and God’s subsequent greater indwelling in His believers, true revival will come.  It will even come quickly and – dare I say – quite epically.  You might even say it will come on a scale that could only be described as, well, biblical.  That has been the problem with revival and the solution to revival all along!  Repent of holding on to non-biblical hogwash and succeed!  Or be stubborn and fail.  God is letting His Church decide.  And so far, televised Church leaders are happy with their own stubbornness and attendant failure in revival.  They appear to be the last who could admit they are stubborn and failing God.  So God lets revival wait.  And it has waited a very, very long time.  Question:  Does blood wait to go on the hands of self-on-the-throne Church leadership espousing a triumvirate of desolation doctrines?

Rhema Madmen – If you want to see a manifestation of trouble, listen to a rhema only preacher.  Rhema means instant-now-word-from-God.  In the charismatic arena sometimes you can find churches filled with the spirit but disconnected from truth.  The problem is people can be part-filled with God’s spirit, but also filled with other soulish spirits – and they can’t always discern between the two!  Logos men have a solution:  Run away from God’s Spirit!  But Jesus, who had an unlimited filling of God’s Spirit, said we must worship God in spirit and truth.  Rhema Madmen only concern themselves with things of the spirit, which is really problematical.  Worshipping God in spirit and truth is the balancing act of life we must learn, and learn well.

Righteousness and Holiness – Righteousness is good and so is holiness.  But there is a big difference between the two.  When we begin with God, we must learn righteousness – which is learning, loving and obeying God’s rules.  A lot of people get stuck there – in major pride-of-religion.  And they really, really like it.  They are the Christian Cops!  They believe what they have achieved is It.  Period!  However, the saints break the rules of righteousness– so what gives?  Well, holiness is that relaxed, close fellowship with God.  It let Jesus pick corn and heal on the Sabbath.  It let David eat the forbidden temple show bread.  Righteous people are God’s servants; holy people are His friends.  Righteous people can’t hear God’s voice very well.  Holy people hearken unto the voice of the Lord, which really upsets righteous people.  Righteous people are rigid, holy people flexible.  Righteous people might do a wrong thing in an emergency, holy people do the perfect and creative thing because God tells them and they hear instantly.  Righteous people have an extremely hard time understanding how to break the chains of rigidity and become flexible with God, who may be the most flexible entity in the universe.  After all, God has to deal with six or so billion of us poor creatures, right?  He is of course flexible, and our stiff-necked rigidity problem is pride.  Righteously proud teachers say the book of Job says we must endure trials because we can never really know God.  Holy teachers say the book of Job tells us we must endure great tribulation to get rid of our rigidity and pride-of-religion so we can hear, obey and really know God.

Ring of Truth – Matthew 7:28-29.  “…the people were astonished at his doctrine:  For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.”  This innate ability to discern truth spoken in a right spirit compared to other things spoken in a wrong spirit is still available to us today.  Truth rings like a bell while lies sound cracked.  If so, all teachings from here or anywhere are subject to this independent test.  Truth, like God, is not prejudiced to any sect.  We therefore must be as God, no respecter of persons, but great respecters of worshipping and being of a right spirit in truth.  Here is a confirmation from popular literature:  In “The Horse and His Boy,” C. S. Lewis’ third book of The Chronicles of Narnia, a boy warns his king of an enemy attack under way.  The king’s attendants question the boy, wasting precious time.  “Question him no more…” said King Lune.  “I see truth in his face.” 

Rule-based Tithing – Jesus is quoted three times in the Gospels denouncing those who tithed.  (Mat. 23:23, Luke 11:42, Luke 18:12)  Were these poor-in-spirit individuals guilty of trying to give money to get penance from God?  Were they “waving that check” while waving off God?  Was the money ill-gotten?  Were they giving extorted money to money extorters?  We do not know the details, but Jesus was adamant that you can tithe incorrectly.  Not all groups have God’s mandate to receive tithes.  Not all people are mandated to tithe.  Whatever happened to giving to another?  (Luke 3:11)  There are no rules.  Yet the modern televised church insists in rule-based tithing to itself based on Malachi 3:10’s storehouse, which not all who claim themselves to be actually are. The concept is most often justified by a doctrine of prosperity, which goes like this:  Preacher B says he was poor.  Preacher B gave to Preacher A’s non-profit organization.  Now Preacher B is rich, praise God.  Ergo, if you give to Preacher B’s non-profit then you can be rich Mr. C (with luxury jet, trophy wife, rich husband and so forth.)  The line is: Give-to-my-non-profit-laundry-machine-which-returns-royalties-and-salary-and-expenses-to-me and then you will receive from God nebulously somehow.  A truer correlation is that if Mr. C becomes Preacher C, then he can later say to other Mr. Ds give-to-my-non-profit-laundry-machine-which-returns-royalties-and-salary-and-expenses-to-me and then you will receive from God nebulously somehow.  In the future audience of Mr. D’s, some will get the not-so-hidden message and become avarice Preacher Ds extorting from gullible Mr. Es.  And so goes the prosperity message.  At a typical prosperity convention you might observe secondary and tertiary hangers-on who lust for their day of rising to the top of the tithe pyramid.  The self-interest is so thick you could cut it only with the sword of Christ’s mouth.  (Rev. 2:16)  Yet consider the simple proverb:  Good things happen to good people, meaning God things happen to God people.  Giving must be rhema-based, as directed by God.  Does prosperity really happen to those who give to non-profit organizations with self-interested leaders who channel from their non-profit enterprises significant amounts of salary, royalties, high-life-expense-account-living, executive jet travel, glamorous television production and creative extravagances on themselves, their relatives and quid pro quo peers?  Is the emphasis on being good (and disciplining one’s own spirit to be aware of insidious self-interest) or on doing good for ones own self and lounging around in la-la  land doctrines of rapture, winning new souls to become the next prosperity pyramid base, and vain braggadocio of prosperity mantras memorized?  If so, then join in, wave that check and hide that soul!  Jesus tithed to…whom?  On the cross He waived his soul as a sacrifice and had no self-interest to hide.  That is the Malachi 3:10 tithe, and the ultimate storehouse is Father God’s in heaven.  For so many self-interested non-profit laundry leaders to claim theirs is God’s storehouse is gross darkness, for they say they are God’s “untouchable” (meaning uncorrectable) anointed.  It is also human secular madness, a New Age Eupraxsophy less logic, ethics and morals.  It is also morally relativist, for they believe that with evangelism, goes any unblessed thing.  In sum, the whole prosperity-tithe-to-my-religious-non-profit/self-serve-laundry-and-get-from-God-doctrine is perhaps best described in Isaiah 66:3 and 17 as being simply just hog wash.  That’s all.

SAPP –  Sorry Affluent Piker Preacher:  Try as they might, certain television preachers are losing ground daily in their “Mine is Bigger Than Yours” struggle to compete with the truly rich.  Despite their desire to be billion dollar preachers with luxury cars, corporate jets, prime real estate holdings and top-flight pay for themselves and family – the Gospel truth is that certain oligarchs of Russia, oil-rich sheiks of Arabia and capitalists of the West remain the undisputed kings of carnal excess.

SAPP – GEN2 – A Sorry Affluent Piker Preacher, Generation Two is a former SAPP who has seen the error of his small-minded ways and now believes to receive a luxury yacht longer than 500 feet, or a working spaceship of any size or the ability to sell his or her own soul more than once.  Shall we pray these mere rich have greater angelic help and more widow and orphan partners to help them surmount the obscenely rich?

Satan Steals – Satan steals memories, especially greater Christian teachings.  God’s angels help preserve them.  It is your choice.  If you want to grow to the next level in Christianity, fight to recall good teachings on a regular basis.  And use them.  If you do not bother to think a teaching is important, Satan will eventually steal it from you.  Also, anytime you allow yourself to become highly agitated in a wrong emotional state (whether it is drugs, alcohol, anger, jealousy, rage, revenge, screaming, etc.) then Satan’s hordes have full right to steal virtuous capabilities from your soul without you usually discerning a thing.  But after such pandering to evil, you are not the same, you have less good in you.  You may not recognize yourself.  This is a dangerous dynamic to play with.

Scorpions – Patronizing Love Mush practitioners penetrate their victims with immobilizing platitudes (“You never know,” which is their tail stinger,) hold them in place with more weakening platitudes (“Jesus did it all,” – meaning don’t move, which are their claws) while they vomit their bile on the victim with “Should Jesus Tarry” (i.e. be rapture somnambulant vs. strong and of a good courage) and suck up their money, time and life with “God is faithful” while being unfaithful to the true good of believers.  You can tell a Scorpion church by its weak praise, weak preaching, weak members, baby talk, condescending attitudes and hopeless prisoners of the mind who avoid all rebuke.

Seeing Beyond the Beyond – To see with the spiritual eye means to be able to see beyond the carnal realm by two measures.  First, you discern things in the immediate spirit realm, including angels, devils, demons, spirits, visions, unearthly feelings, gut-level hunches and so forth.  Second, you discern what Father God’s hand is doing and His will in the matter for you and others.  This is seeing beyond the beyond.  Surprisingly, much of what passes for Christian preaching simply involves platitudes for the carnal realm:  Do this and do that, thus saith the wise, glorious, broadcast-round-the-world televangelist.  Just as surprisingly, little in modern Christian preaching broadcast around the world involves wisdom in the two spiritual realms:  local spiritual discernment of all things not carnal and Father’s God’s spiritual, immediate, rhema wisdom on whatever is happening.  However, the Bible repeatedly admonishes “Hearken unto the voice of the Lord” as well as Jesus’ admonition:  “Blessed are they who hear my (rhema) words and obey.”  The goal of In That Day Teachings are to get as much of humanity hearing and obeying God’s rhema voice…while extracting as little money as possible from the same members of humanity.  Why is it that much of Christian media ministry seems to have the opposite agenda?

Self-service Promoted – Watch out for prosperity leaders who believe to receive for themselves at day’s end… from you!  They teach you to believe to receive from God, but they themselves believe to receive from their sheep.  Rather believe God will receive what He wants from you and do not worry about receiving from God.  That is His job.  Whatever you do, do not believe to receive from God by extorting from gullible underlings you say will somehow receive from God nebulously.

Sheep and Wolves – To observe the very real gullibility of rapture believing Christians, consider a website called www.postrapturepost.com.  When rapture sheep are fleeced it is expected to be politely covert and not openly overt.  This rapture website was created by two self-confessed atheists who need to support their “sinful lifestyles.”  They decided to offer a service of delivering messages after the so-called rapture.  For $4.99 to $799.99 a person’s message can be delivered by these “rapture proof” atheists to loved ones who don’t believe in the so-called rapture.  As one person writes in the website’s Guest Book:  “I hope you are making LOTS of money.  It just warms my heart to think about (it.)  Just remember, (rapture believers) are not all there upstairs, so it’s not fair to take TOO much advantage of them.”  Tell that to televangelists. 

Snakes – Oh so charming preachers must have a mesmerizing onslaught of designer suits (or gorgeous dresses,) coifed to perfection hair, gaudy watches, gold jewelry, opulent stage sets and glossy ministry magazines because without pandering the spirit of envy there would be no way to squeeze enough donations to top the tanks of their $20 million must-have jets.

Some, All and Never – “You may fool all of the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”  This quote from Abraham Lincoln also applies to the escape from God’s spirit and truth. The sophists of escapology sell rapture, prosperity, supine security, cheap cerebral intellectualism, worshipping weakness, dry bones factoids, mojo get-ready-get-ready witchcraft or the next amazing sells-books-by-the-millions-it-must-be-great, new fad.

Soulish Anointing –Wherein preachers want their audience to feel good, if not God.  So they practice whatever is acceptable to the audience to bring a false anointing not of Christ.  In truth, they bring anti-christ spirits neigh and say, “God is in the house!”  For techniques, see Mojo Witchcraft Control.  God’s presence is not predictable or always repeatable, but Soulish Anointing is something some preachers can and do bank on.

Spirits Pack a Punch – The spirit of a person is not unlike the punch of a martial artist.  Just a punch alone – or a person’s spirit alone – can make another person angry or submssive, sick or healed, energized or de-energized.  Sometimes a spirit can pack much more power than a punch.  Jesus’ spirit knocked down an armed posse.  (John 18:6)  Yet some people do not seem to care what spirit they are of.  Just being close to a person might rob you of all energy, or it might make you feel wonderful or even heal you.  Spirits, both good and evil, transfer to other people.  A person who cannot keep good thoughts in his head may have troublesome spirits.  And such a person will be troublesome to be with.  On the other hand, an upbeat person has upbeat spirits.  This person will be fun to be near.  Good spirits work for God’s good; evil spirits help Satan’s agenda.  People must deal victoriously with their inner demons.  Success in this is what makes a good person good.  You can trust good people because they are of good spirits.  You cannot trust people who cannot control  their own troublesome spirits.  When people of opposing spirits associate the spirits themselves sometimes fight each other without the hosts themselves necessarily discerning the warfare.  As ever, stories in popular culture provide the parabolic example.  In the Pink Panther movie, Inspector Jacques Clouseau overtly expresses proper respect to his boss, Chief Inspector Dreyfus.  Yet simultaneously Clouseau’s spirits manage to attack and destroy Dreyfus’ office, possessions and person.  Dreyfus is a dishonest boss who assigns his supposedly worst inspector on a case to purposely bungle it.  In the spirit realm, however, the spirits of the good man Clouseau actually bungle with Dreyfus since Dreyfus is bad.  You can fool people but you cannot fool spirits in the spirit realm.  This humor accentuates the truth to 2 Corinthians 6:14:  What fellowship can light have with darkness?

Spiritual Trigger Switches  – To believe God is alive in heaven and among us in life on earth is one thing.  To understand just how God manages to work with us is another.  It would be good to know more about the precise interface between us and God.  Specifically, what is the nature of the point of contact between us and God that makes a God-event happen?  Is there something to know more precise than the action of prayer?  Well, perhaps there are spiritual trigger switches wherein a small thing on our part creates a God thing happening.  First, look at how a fast draw cowboy revolver works, say an 1873 Colt .45 Peacekeeper.  Follow the sequence:  1) A hand begins to draw the gun from its holster and aim 2) The opposite hand is used to cock the hammer.  3) A finger from the drawing hand is used to pull the trigger.  4)  The hammer hits a primer on a cartridge.  5)  The primer makes a small explosion in the cartridge.  6)  The powder in the cartridge explodes.  7)  The bullet is propelled through the barrel.  8)  The rifling in the barrel spins the bullet.  9)  The bullet flies through the air.  10)  The bullet hits the target.  It is reported that fast-draw artists Bob Munden, of Butte Montana, could “draw and hit a man-sized silhouette at 21 feet in a record 0.0175 seconds.”  Likewise, the turn of a key of a 2007 Ford Shelby GT500 begins this chain reaction:  1) A battery turns a starter motor which turns the engine.  2) Gas and air enter the engine’s combustion chamber.  3) Sparks from eight spark plugs ignite the gas and air.  4) The 500 horsepower engine comes to life.  Thus, small actions can create big actions.  It is the same in dealing with the spiritual.  This is why Jesus’ first beatitude was “Blessed are the poor in spirit” because we must walk gently amongst such invisible power.  The trigger is pulled when our spirit touches the spiritual realm by a decision of our spirit – for good or evil, for blessings or cursings, for obedience or rebellion.  Recall when Moses turned aside and explored God’s burning bush.  This spiritual trigger switch changed the history of the world.  To finger such God go-buttons you must be qualified, in the right place, in the right time, able to notice God’s hand moving, receive God’s mysterious instructions, willingly obey those instructions and not doubt you are crazy.  Amazingly, the whole operation is delicate – like a hair trigger.  We do not exchange lightning bolts with God when we communicate.  The next person you meet could be received by you as a God-sent angel to change your life for the better, or one you give only your back.  We worship God in truth and spirit.  His truth and Spirit are all around us, if we would but honor God’s mysterious being.  Is His next message to us in animal, mineral or plant?  It is whatever God wants Himself.  And hardest for us to accept, is when God chooses to manifest Himself in a person He sends our way.  We really hate that, unless we grow and mature and find ourselves someday being sent to others who often despise the God that is sent in you to them.  And then you watch in horror as they pull that spiritual trigger switch saying nay to what God can show of Himself to their selves.  For God is a God of reward, recompense and requiting.  His power of good or Satan’s power of evil cannot but be in our lives.  We continually pull spiritual trigger switches causing one thing or the other to spark, explode and manifest.

Stridency 24/7 – That monotone stridency so often heard from preachers is not exactly a good thing.  Stridency practiced twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week is not good.   Our non-strident Lord was led of the Spirit and could hear Our Father’s voice.  Jesus said, Agree with your enemy.  Ever thought about that?  Maybe the American Civil Liberties Union has points worth considering.  Maybe even the Devil.  Maybe you, maybe me.  Cards cannot always be kept close to the vest.  Let them play out.  Once they are on the table, everyone will be able to see them.

Subtle Subtexts of Extraction – One non-profit ministry website has a proliferation of donation buttons.  Selecting one of the “donate” buttons gives you these radio button choices:  $30.00, $75.00 or $100.00.  Below that is a field for entering a different amount.  By that box is the message:  “No commas please (Ex: 1050.00)”.  This not-so subtle arrangement seems to discourage donations under $30, and suggests amounts above $1,000.  This seems to be rather wily, or is it wrong to point out sly tricks of extractors?

Sweet Laziness–Sweet laziness results in bitter rewards, while bitter discipline results in sweet rewards.  God’s prophets of the Bible had to eat bitter truths, but no doubt their rewards in eternity have been sweet.  If you listen to too many saccharin soliloquies from easy-on-the-ears preachers, don’t be surprised if you get spiritually lazy and have bitter rewards from God.  The Bible says learn from the ant.  On the last page of the Bible, Jesus says He comes quickly with a reward to give every man according to his work.  So be prepared to say to Jesus, “Here is my work” instead of “Work?  What work?”  

Sword Play Closes Ears – Before going to the cross, Jesus ordered his disciples to be armed and Peter wielded a sword.  Then another lesson began.  Peter cut off the ear of the servant of the high priest.  The use of truth (represented by the sword) to deafen (remove the ear of) a religious man (a priest’s helper) by mistake (Jesus healed the ear) and a wrong spirit (in pride Peter first raised his hand) only to be rebuked (Live by an over aggressive sword, and die by it.)  Peter may have been the greatest disciple because he alone was brave enough to engage physically with Jesus while the others merely engaged in word or silent thought.  Like the best student in a martial arts class, Peter is the exemplar one challenging and being bested by the master, while simultaneously suffering hopefully permanent ego damage.  Through such bruising episodes, brave hearts obtain the most of their master’s essence.  Peter learned that great truths are to be delivered in kindness (a right spirit) only to prepared ears that can hear spiritually, lest they become so deaf to God, only divine healing can remedy.  And just as in martial arts, a master must heal whom he (or his miscreant assistant) has hurt in class.  Jesus modeled for Peter how to recover from both carnal and spiritual mistakes in ministry and life.

The Answer – The answer my friend, as Bob Dylan wrote, is blowing in the wind, which is the Holy Spirit.  In other words, the answer to everything is the Holy Spirit, who Jesus said will teach you all things.  (John 14:26)  All things covers a lot of territory.  Albert Einstein might have failed to discover the universal equation of the universe.  But Jesus did not fail to provide the universe’s elocutionist.  But pride keeps the Holy Spirit away from those who need him most because they think of Him least.

The Man Behind the Curtain – “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain,” say posers in religion, which includes most of us.  “Pay attention to that man behind the curtain,” says the Spirit to us.  “Behold, there is no curtain before the man in whom I am,” says Jesus.

The Men Who Knew too Much– Despite the seeming indifference the Christian broadcast media machines have to the Rosetta Stone message found in this website, (www.inthatdayteachings,) its creator, Robert Winkler Burke, of Reno, Nevada believes multitudes know what it means to global escapist Christianity.  The In That Day Teachings excoriate the triune escapology doctrines ( escape by rapture, the imminent return fixing all things but escapists, and escape from responsibility eternally via eternal security) as anti-christ, unbiblical imaginings and introduce (or re-introduce) scourging, overcoming and God-indwelling as the paramount doctrinal position supported by the Bible.  Further, Burke says escapology – by definition – has no truth in its dispensational future scenarios, but that In That Day Teachings’ doctrines provide great insight into God’s future for this planet.  Lastly, Burke says the escapology doctrine ministries employ fear, greed and extortion to receive monies by false dictate while he maintains the in That Day Teachings enable believers to hear and obey God, including how much and to whom to give to – with greater emphasis on person-to-person giving, as supported by the Bible.  In sum, bad doctrine creates evil that evil inhabits and expands; while good doctrine creates good that God inhabits and expands.  This has no less potential to shake today’s religious order than what happened 500 years ago.  Martin Luther excoriated Catholic indulgences and reintroduced truth, which always seems revolutionary and new, with Protestant Reformation.  Now Burke is no Luther.  But he is not nothing either, nor are other comrades in thought and deed nothing either.  One such warrior for truth is Rusty Leonard with his www.ministrywatch.com website and organization.  Though the two men do not appear to have much common ground with theology, they have the same line on what is the root of the problem.  And that is money: lusty, leviathan amounts of money.  If you hazard a guess at the annual income of escapology doctrine Christian networks, media ministries, media publishers and conveyors (books, movies, music, ministry materials, websites, etc.) it might amount to at minimum $4 billion annually.  Maybe ten times that.  If escapologists keep expanding into less sophisticated non-U.S. markets they could increase their gross receipts astronomically.  A 25-year income stream of $4 billion annually is $1 trillion.  Suppose the hard-charging recipients of that income stream do not take a liking to the truths of Mr. Burke, Mr. Leonard or others just as irritating.  It all will be putting the name Christian to the test for some ultra rich ministry family dynasties.  But if any whistle-blowers or modern-day-Luthers end up dead by suspicious circumstances, just follow the money and the self-serving escapist doctrine leaders who have the most to lose.  (If anybody thinks this is immature paranoia, just read a crime book or watch a crime show.  Money is the root of all evil, and we are talking about riches beyond human understanding.)  Perhaps God is right now sowing some hard charging detectives into Christian being who will have a nose for what don’t smell right.  And right now, there is a lot that doesn’t.  And it easy to predict the future for escapology non-profits:  Before the air freshens in the realm of escapology mega-ministries, it’s going to stink to high heaven.

The Next Goal for the Bride of Christ – The next goal for the bride of Christ is not perfection but that she has a humble spirit seeking perfection.  Stated amplified:  The goal for the bride of Christ as ushered by the groomsmen (preachers/televangelists/leaders) and the best men (the elect/apostles/prophets) is not perfection (spiritual maturity) but that she has a humble (self-correcting) spirit seeking perfection (spiritual maturity.)  Now the televangelists of the day are perfect examples of pride on parade.  They seek no corrective prophets, nor will they receive them.  They say their shiny gold watches, multi-thousand dollar suits, elaborate stage sets, big hair, big egos and other devices of strange reality distortion and envy pandering (i.e. worshipping the manipulated-to-exalt-self Word and loathing the ego-damaging Spirit of correction) are the living end of Christianity.  So they are in a ditch of abomination, calling good evil and evil good.  What are the sheep to do but say, “Bah!  Bah!  Here are our tithes and ministry jet love offerings!”  So, leaders of wayward Christianity must first repent, that all followers of what is wayward may repent.  Then all can journey towards more maturity in Christ.  For an example in popular culture, see the 1953 movie The Naked Spur.    The hero, James Stewart, is haunted by betrayal and unwilling to trust or love.  He is a bounty-hunter, joined by two strangers he meets on the trail, attempting to bring bad-guy Robert Ryan in for reward.  The kicker of the story is Janet Leigh, who is admired for her duty to Ryan, while misplaced, and her ability to transcend her love of bad for good – even to the point of convincing Stewart to abandon the ill-gotten gain of bounty hunting.  Do you think the Bride of Christ could do that for its money-hungry televangelists?

The Question is: – How to shepherd the next move of God…and drop the truth on the church…and help it repent of wrong escapology doctrines of the rapture, waiting for Jesus to return and fix all but the passive yet intellectual waiters, and eternal security do nothing ever but escape from Jesus-indwelling maturity…and cleanse itself of doctrine-driven demons of ease, self-interest, fear-based abuses in the false mandates of give-to-get prosperity, extraction of huge sums of money for jets, broadcast air time and book sales to pander to ego idolization; and evil control of congregations to force them to tithe to self-interested non-profit entities with much false doctrine and fear of the future…and help multitudes of cleaned-up-to-maturity Christians to manifest Jesus, which is the Colossians Chapter 1 mystery of God for these end time days…and enable a post-correction revival so new Christian converts don’t become seven times the devils the current full-of-wrong-doctrines-and-demons so many current believers are: How to do all that… without being immature, a radical or out of God’s will?  The Answer is:  Wait.  Wait until God’s church is ready to massively repent of loving lying doctrines and wants to believe true and hard doctrines.  It is not ready to do this.  It seems stuck in an eternal evangelism, baby-doctrine, la-la land.  The immature church is a happy toddler sucking on a baby-doctrine teething ring.  It only throws tantrums if any remark is made about its puerility.  Meanwhile, it is happy to have the blood of multitudes of souls on its hands – souls that cannot turn to Christ because they see that so many evangelists themselves are consumed by demons of self-interest, self-ease and selfish escape from greater responsibilities in Christ.  And at this time the believer’s main responsibility is to manifest Christ, which so many Christians cannot because they proudly love the mad doctrines in their heads and the mad familiar demons in their souls more than they love God’s hard truths that would begin a cleansing scourge enabling their lovely Savior to live in them fully.  So all we can do is pray… and wait… and prepare ourselves… and endeavor to somehow be humble yet excellent groomsmen and bridesmaids full of God’s wit, wisdom, wealth, health, happiness and surprisingly powerful, all-present and unpredictable Spirit.

The Restoration of All Things – Rick Joyner’s “Word for the Week” for 8/20/07 -- http://www.morningstarministries.org/feature/wftw/2007/3407.htm -- is worth a look.  He says there were three kind of operations to be done when Katrina hit the South:  Rescue, Stabilization and Restoration.  And these take three different archetypes of people.  And they do not do each other’s jobs too well.  From this I conclude perhaps the televangelist, the preacher/teacher and apostolic/prophet seem to be ignoring each other.  And God is not happy with this situation.  Because perhaps God is keenly interested in the restoration of all things.  And that is complicated.  And that is not infantile.  And that takes some intelligent introspection.  And it takes, perhaps, an intelligent salvation plan.  And all of this is perhaps too much to ask of present day broadcast Christianity.  Isn’t it just easier to send money to the televangelists?  Now today’s Wall Street Journal has an editorial pointing out that “research is increasingly questioning the benefits of foreign aid.”  In other words, throwing money at an under-developed situation guarantees nothing.  Only when recipients of aid are required to receive and maintain a working, intelligent infrastructure of hard and soft assets, can the needy put received monies to good affect.  Otherwise, it is a waste of time and money.  Could the same also be true regarding the needy media ministry machine?  Heaven forbid the thought?  Or perhaps heaven encourages the thought.  Have the rescuers of souls, i.e. televangelists, hogged the stage of what occupies the mind of a Christian, and left no room for maturity in Christ?  Is Christ Himself intelligent, mature and multi-dimensional?  Of course.  Then let His Church be likewise, even what is shown of Himself on broadcast media.  From this perspective, media Christianity appears to be quite adolescent, displaying the bifurcated teenage personality of insisting on all the honor and respect of adulthood while desperately clinging to every conceivable immaturity.  Let’s just praise the milk!

The Spirit Realm Provides Leading Indicators – Above the carnal realm is the spiritual realm.  Things happen first in the spirit realm and then later manifest in the carnal realm.  If you can discern what is happening in the spirit realm, you can have a good clue about certain future outcomes.  For example, consider a logging operation in a forest.  It is a dangerous occupation to fell large trees.  Everyone on the crew must be safe.  A new hire comes along who might be unsafe.  He trips a lot just walking in the forest.  Does he have a mindless spirit?  This would be dangerous to the crew.  Does he have a forgetful spirit?  Does he have a careless spirit, especially in regards to others’ safety?  These things would also be dangerous to the crew.  But our new hire promises the crew that he will be safe.  The boss must decide if the new hire can be safe.  But the new hire forgot to bring his lunch.  The new hire continually says, “Whatever.”  The new hire seems to look down a lot, preoccupied in thought.  And he walked through the company’s entry door and let it close without holding it open for the next person.  These things proclaim a spiritual message that the man is better kept away from dangerous jobs.  Some might say this is being carnally judgmental.  But the new hire’s spirits are announcing to all who have eyes to see and ears to hear, “I am incapable of being safe in a dangerous environment.  I have little regard for myself and others.”  Further, inside this new hire are probably foundational lies.  One might be:  “Who cares, so what, nothing matters.”  Maybe the person said this mantra ten thousand times while growing up as a child.  This implanted a “nothing matters” spirit deep within the poor man’s soul.  Before he ever works with people in a dangerous environment, he must realize what spirits he is of, and if they are bad, shine the light of confession and repentance on them, get them completely removed from his soul and replaced by godly spirits of care, compassion and esteem of his fellow man.  Only after all that could this poor fellow be safe to himself and others in a dangerous environment.  As Jesus said, “Ye know not what spirit ye are of.”  These teachings agree with Jesus:  Spirits matter.  Regrettably the world – and much of Christianity – is in carnal enmity toward such spiritual wisdom, teaching and practice.  Jesus had a name for living in complete awareness of the carnal, spiritual and will-of-God world we live in.  He said you must worship God in spirit and truth.  So...now ask yourself this:  What spirits would drive a faith and prosperity ministry to break IRS rules and get the ministry's leader in prison for a year?  Answer:  The greedy spirits inhabiting the rotten prosperity doctrine ministries -- the same love of mammon spirits the faith televangelists display without shame.

The Trouble with Hearing from God – Hearing from God is not a panacea.  It is infinitely better than being clueless about God’s will for you.  But it is not a cure-all.  Why?  Because to hear from God takes great maturity, which might be why so few are members of God’s two-way radio club.  Why does it take maturity?  Because as soon as you begin hearing from God, people who know you will think you are crazy.  Even family members who agree to let you try to hear from God may turn and rend you…just like the Bible warns about casting pearls before swine.  Lest I sound too harsh consider this simple example:  Suppose a husband and wife need to buy a vehicle.  God tells the husband to buy a Ford sedan.  The wife wants a Dodge pickup, but she is not hearing from God on this.  Whoo, what a fight!  But it gets deeper.  Suppose the husband prays and God says, Let her buy the Dodge pickup.  Then the husband has to really hear from God to be able to switch gears and stay in obedience.  This can take a lot of maturity.  It takes a lot of maturity to hear from God and not fight those who do not.  Situations in life are often in a kind of dynamic river.  And God is the river of life instructor.  So one season He might say the previously mentioned couple needs a Ford sedan.  Another season it might be a Dodge pickup.  Later it might be an SUV luxury car.  Then it might be sell every vehicle and move to a city where they do not need a car.  But the biggest problem often seems to be the resistance – if not outright warfare – a God bearer receives from people used to having their unquestioned way.  As has been mentioned elsewhere, the great battle of Armageddon seems to be the battle against self-on-the throne of people and families.  As soon as a person in a family begins hearing and obeying God, it is sure to upset, challenge and even elicit violent reactions from people used to having their “large-and-in-charge” and “to-heck-with-God” way.  If they find out you believe you’re hearing from God and it runs contrary to their hugely selfish agendas, then you will be despised.  You will despised for a good long time by them, if they survive a good long time.  Until they finally see that season after season, time after time, again and again they remain in spiritual ditches and you remain in God’s good graces.  Over time your inner character keeps being blessed, growing and becoming more pure while those out of touch with God may have characters in steady decline.  The cursed just cannot forgive the blessed for so being.  This kind of trouble takes some getting used to.  It takes maturity.

The Trouble with Media Ministry Conventions – As practiced by the wayward media ministries, their convention meetings have many doctrine-driven difficulties.  Imagine a hopeful attendee traveling half way across the country or planet to discover the following:  1) Attendees are not fed true food or true food (material or spiritual.)  2) Very Important Persons are treated royally different than our poor attendee.  3)  Donations are requested thrice daily, for which our attendee has no budget.  The leaders request donations toward their non-profits (which directly enrich themselves) while promising indirect returns to the attendee by nebulous means of God.  In other words, they state that money coming directly their way will somehow result in money nebulously coming back to the giver.  The leaders, themselves, never trust such a nebulous income stream.  They directly ask attendees to directly give to their organization, which cannot but financially benefit the leaders directly.  The leaders never comment on their self-serving prosperity program.  4)  After several days of self-promotion, the ministry asks for money for its jet program, or jet ranch program – at a time our poor attendee’s financial defenses are down.  He is told to, “Wave that check!”  5)  The speakers play to the cameras rather than the audience, because the audience participates only passively to somehow legitimize the background ambiance for later broadcast.  In other words, the attendee is used to enrich the video recording while the attendee’s needs are poorly met.  6)  No attendees are allowed to ask questions of the leaders.  7)  Attendees cannot receive personal ministry from any leaders.  8)  Meanwhile, the speakers may jokingly complain about the high cost of repairing their ministry jet’s air conditioning system.  9)  A ministry speaker might explain how ministry jet travel is vastly superior to the commercial travel that the attendees used to get to the meeting.  10)  If something anointed happens by chance, it is quickly dishonored and dismissed by rigidly sticking to the video camera schedule, since the real purpose of the meeting is not ministry to the people in attendance, but creating copious amounts of video for later broadcast.  11)  Our attendee is supposed to applaud when a media minister says he will become the first billionaire preacher.  This and any other revelatory events will be edited out of all videos broadcast later.  12)  The attendee discovers the leaders have booths selling most every conceivable item under the banner of Christ.  13)  The attendee senses that any attempt by him to state to the meeting managers the obvious – that the meeting appears to be largely anti-christ in nature – will be interpreted by the managers that the attendee has surely confessed that he, himself, is Mr. Anti-christ the Abominable and will, naturally, be removed with great dispatch, complete disregard and infinite disgust.

There Are No Rules – Don’t make rules your God.  Putting rules, even God’s rules, above God is to break the First Commandment.  Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.  It takes maturity to grasp, but understand God is above the rules we set about Him.  If He wants to write a new testament, do miracles today, stop doing miracles, manifest His Son in people, not do such and such, do such and such…well, let Him.  He is God.  We either make our rules subject to God’s obedience or we are obedient to God our ruler.  Sound unfamiliar?  It shouldn’t.  Exodus 15:3 says, “The Lord is a man of war…” The U.S. Marine Corp. Tactics manual puts it this way:  “There are no fixed rules that can be applied automatically, and every situation is different…Leaders must remember that there are no fixed rules and no precise checklists, but there are bounds.”  Gene Autry put it another way in his song Back in the Saddle Again: “And the only law is right.”

There Are Spirits – God the Father is a Spirit.  Jesus is a Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is a Spirit.  God’s angels are spirits.  The Devil is a spirit.  The Devil’s angels are spirits.  Each person has a spirit.  Our spirits contain spirits that are good and evil.  But the Church tells us not to concern ourselves with spirits.  It is like telling a lineman who works on high voltage power lines for the power company, “Don’t concern yourself with that unseen electricity some people believe exists in the power lines.  Just be careful.”

Think What You Want – “Think what you want, live with your thoughts.”  These lines were spoken by Charlton Heston in the movie Arrowhead.  His character was loosely drawn from Al Seiber, a famous 1880s Chief of Scouts for the US Army.   Heston quoted this proverb from the Apaches.  So the question is:  Are these In That Day Teachings a Rosetta Stone of sorts, a holistic guidebook to help selfless Christians manifest Christ at high levels for the coming age?  Or perhaps some might prefer to discard all this rebuke, chastisement and higher calling as simply unprofitable, non-prophet rubbish.  People can think what they want.  If self-serving doctrines like the rapture, Jesus’ return to fix all ills but our own and eternal do-nothing security appeal to some as being the height of Christianity, so be it.  But time has shown ministries with these doctrines tend to stray into dispensational insanity (maybe the intrigue and fear of international mayhem occupies guilty minds avoiding light in dark places of the soul) or prosperity extremism (since if we think we have little self-sacrificing duty to God, perhaps God has a duty to give everything and more to us) or huzzah excitement (since if we think we have no power, calling or duty in God, perhaps we must get excited about not much and call it much.)  By this we see that adhering to the above-mentioned self-serving doctrines, its leaders at some point tend to become surprisingly greedy, or silly, or deceived, or rapacious, or mojo-controlling, or intellectually dishonest, or ungodly religious, or superciliously vain or laughably unscientific, or historically inaccurate, or strangely weak, et cetera ad infinitum.  So to believe in the Three Big Easies:  Rapture, the imminent return of fix-all-but-me Jesus so I do not ever have to ever manifest the essence of goodness on earth and eternal do-nothing-whatsoever security create basically two problems.  If you believe such self-serving doctrines, you may live with wrong thoughts that create distance from God; and with distance: trouble.  And secondly, with those wrong thoughts you may die.

Three Earth Ages – 2 Peter 3:5-11 says a lot about the three earth ages.  In fact, the whole Bible does.  The knowledge of the Three Earth Ages explain much, if you are brave enough to believe it, along with Ezekiel Chapter 5.  Starting with the first verse of the Bible, God creates the ancient heaven and earth.  This would be Earth Age One.  Verse two tells us the earth then was without form, darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.  This would be the end of that age.  Verse three starts the beginning of Earth Age Two.  What happened there?  Well other places throughout the Bible fill in the details.  In the first earth age Satan took a third of the spirits to his evil side.  Another third were middling toward him.  Another third were middling toward God.  A few brave souls elected to fight strongly on God’s side.  Perhaps a few brave souls elected to fight strongly on Satan’s side.  Though God is furious with all but His precious elect, He decided to give everybody a second chance.  Instead of obliterating the souls who blew their first chance at decision-making, He obliterated the ancient earth to satisfy Devine justice.  Then He started over with Earth Age Two in Genesis 1:3.  Now Satan was already there in the Garden ready to mess things up.  But God had some chosen trusted souls like Joseph, Moses, David and Paul who had elected to give up their free wills in the Second Earth Age.  They get God’s job done and serve their generation.  So every soul perhaps lived once in some spirit form in the previous earth age, and gets to live just once in a body (if not aborted) in this earth age.  That is why this is most everybody’s second chance to get right with God.  It is also why God’s elect have little free will.  It is also why Satan’s elect are so troublesome.  It is also why God has to resort to movies like Total Recall to get his parable stories out in the public, because so many Christian leaders are extremely closed-minded to God’s greater truths.  Such Lilliputian intellectuals rail against the very movies of common culture God uses to tell parabolic truth, because God’s shepherds do not know those greater truths.  And for those who have eyes to see, God also used Total Recall to help Arnold Schwarzenegger become governor of California in a 1993 recall vote.  All of this draws attention to God’s timetable of revelation, which His timing for truth’s total recall, which is the beginning of Earth Age Three.  (See Pastor Arnold Murray from Shepherds Chapel in Gravette, Arkansas.)

Time is Slow Motion Truth – In the end truth always wins, just like God.  Sometimes it is vain to argue against lies.  These teachings along with all other teachings, these doctrines along with all other doctrines, this book along with all other books will be judged by time.  And will we not also on judgment day be judged by time, which is truth, which is God?  So our goal should be to get as many lies out of and truth into our lives.  We have got to take a look at our doctrines, remove bad ones and install good ones.  Then we will look better to ourselves and others.  Perhaps this is the rising and shining of Isaiah 60:1.  Like Humphrey Bogart said, “Here’s looking at you, kid.”

Tithing Makes You Smarter– Tithing is a fixed-in-eternity unbreakable rule to force others to pay a lifetime of ten percent of their income to you if you call yourself a leader of religion, or if you have a seminary degree, or if you have an honorary degree or if perhaps your dog might have a pedigree.  Christ three times criticized people who tithed.  Let us then forget Christ’s warning against financial absolutions and instead, wave that check…goodbye!  All mw, if you will, to wave it…hello!  May I promise you will go to heaven if you make my life heavenly now?  Will you then be my pay pal?  Just sew your need to my greed, amen?  Just remember, it is a fixed rule that does a lot for me!  Remember, it is a fixed rule…a fixed rule.  Right?  So here is the honest-to-God deal:  Send ten percent of your income to me, Robert Winkler Burke.  (Make checks payable to Robert Winkler Burke, 16155 Cedar Springs Way, Reno, NV, 89511 USA.)  I guarantee you will be smarter when you stop!  I promise to make a copy of your check or cash, deposit it in my personal account, and report it to the IRS as part of my income of gifts received.  I promise I will spend the money on personal needs.  I will not return monies sent.  I have always wanted to go hunting in Alaska.  Perhaps some day I will buy an executive jet.  And with every single dollar you send my way, you will be smarter…when you stop sending it.  I also promise that any money you send to me will deliver to you absolutely no absolution from the necessary character growth God desires in your spirit, soul and body.  I actually prefer not to increase the ranks of tithing people.  Jesus criticized tithing individuals three times in the Gospels, but I am flexible and will break this rule of mine if it makes me richer and a few people smarter.  Tithing people may then they figure out how some organizations have used guilt to twist the scriptures into saying tithing is a rule any supposed non-profit organization can use to its founder’s advantage.  Just do an internet search on tithing, and you will see many cogent pieces on why tithing is being abused by non-profit organizations.  That being said, tithe your income to me, Robert Winkler Burke, and when you stop you will be smarter!  Guaranteed!  Your money will definitely not come back to you, but you may come back to yourself (Luke 15:11.)  And that, by God, is priceless!  Maybe ministries could return to themselves!  The above paragraph is a ruse to help with epiphany.  Do not send tithes to me. – rwb

Tools, Parity and Advantage  –  The fundamental tool of an evil person is the lie.  The fundamental tool of a good person is the truth.  A personal tool of an evil person to project an extreme lie (i.e. murder) is a gun.  A personal tool of a good person to defend truth against its worst attacks (i.e. murder) is a gun.  Good governments should allow good people to be armed, because with surprise attacks, evil takes every advantage, and it is typically stopped only when equal or greater force overwhelms and deters them.  A tool of evil government lie-projecting is the bomb, or mass murder.  A tool of good government truth-defending is the retaliatory bomb, or mass casualty.  Good governments should allow their militaries to be armed, because with surprise attacks evil takes every advantage, and it is typically stopped only when equal or greater force overwhelms and deters them.  In this it is seen that the only advantage good has is in always being potentially more vicious in its defense than evil in its offense.  In other words, evil always tries to win by being brazenly vicious.  Good wins when it finally resorts to being even more vicious in its own defense.  This is how the Allies won World War II.  It is how the War on Terror will be won.  It is how we win in our internal war against demons.  It is how to handle extreme confrontations with evil.  But in the modern world, it seems Satan has gelded almost everyone, so his blitzkriegs often meet no resistance from victims.  But Satan loses when people finally believe in the absolute goodness of good and become its extreme defenders.  Evil people just cannot believe how vicious good people can be without themselves becoming evil.  When evil is vicious, it just becomes more evil.  But if evil experiences the pain of unconquerable viciousness against itself from good; evil quits and surrenders.  The evil loses faith in itself, while the good gains an absolute faith in itself.  This is why absolute faith in good will defeat secular humanism.  The start of the ultimate defeat of secular humanism began with the wakeup call of September 9, 2001.

Total Recall – Our loss of memory from before birth is a universal experience.  Yet God knew us, and we Him prior to our births.  (Jeremiah 1:5; 1 Timothy 1:9)  In the movie Total Recall, Douglas Quaid, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, is asked by Kuato, “What do you want, Mr. Quaid?”  He replies, “The same as you, to remember.”  Kuato asks, “But why?”  The answer:  “To be myself again.”  Perhaps all of us would like to remember, and be ourselves again.  Jesus remembered.  John 17:5 Amplified:  “And now, Father,…restore Me to such majesty and honor in Your presence as I had with You before the world existed.”  But perhaps it is a mercy in this Second Earth Age we cannot recall our actions in the First Earth Age.  In Total Recall Douglas Quaid’s character chooses to find redemption by refusing to go back to is apparent evil former self, Hauser.  In a sense, everybody gets a second chance: this life in the Second Earth Age.  If partial recall is allowed, then it would explain childhood prodigies like Akaine Kramaric, Beethoven or Mozart.  A reporter said of young artist Kramaric, “You can justifiably call her an old soul in a young person’s body.”  For souls like Kramaric, they “Must have done something good” as Julie Andrews sang in The Sound of Music: “Somewhere in my wicked, miserable past (i.e. First Earth Age life,) There must have been a moment of truth…(because) Nothing comes from nothing, Nothing ever could, Somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good.”  On the other hand in Total Recall Quaid learns that his former self – Hauser – was actually wicked, so he chooses to win back his soul by keeping his second chance in life as the planet-saving Quaid.  For Biblical reference see how God hated Esau before he was born.  Perhaps he had been a Hauser type also.  Later Esau redeemed himself, didn’t he?  (See Pastor Arnold Murray from Shepherds Chapel in Gravette, Arkansas.)

Triune Harmonic Balance vs. Discord – Triune harmony is when you have your spirit, soul and body in balance with universal good, or God.  Discord is when any part of your triune being (spirit, soul or body) is not in alignment with universal good, or God.  Likewise, an evil person can achieve a powerful position by aligning his evil triune self with universal evil, or Satan.  But most of the people of the world seem to believe themselves somewhat good, while providing the conflicted witness that their trinity of spirit, soul and body lack the greater parts of good.  A common proverb says, “Beauty is skin deep.”  Indeed.  True beauty goes past the skin, through the mind and emotions of the soul, deep into the heart of the spirit and connects in loving harmony with God Almighty Himself.

Truth is a Hot Potato – Swords in ancient times represented truth defended in the hands of a good person, or lies promulgated in the hands of a bad person.  Swords have been replaced in modern times with guns.  Guns are a hot topic as well.  Truth, according to the Bible, is a bitter pill to swallow.  So also are guns rights in immature regions.  There is a subtle yet discernable ratio observable:  Where a man (or woman) can legally carry a gun, a knife and a Bible the hope for truth persists.  Where you cannot, it is harder to possess that brave spirit of defiance against all that is wrong and therefore a lie.  For lies and swords or guns in the hands of bad people can always pop up anywhere and do damage if unopposed by those gelded of truth and truth’s tools of defense. In other words, disarmed people have a harder time possessing that spirit which enables them to be the greatest evil slayer, which is truth. 

Truth is Free, Amusement is Not – Without carnal cost you can buy truth.  It only takes maturity and desire.  But it can be amusing to pay for entertainment.  It can be amusing to support an amusing church.  It can be amusing to support an amusing televangelist and family.  But with amusement comes a cost.  Proper amusement veils truth – hard truths – in parabolic forms of duality.  You pay for such creativity and intelligence.  Because it takes a lot of genius to veil hard truth sufficiently for easy consumption, while simultaneously proffering tantalizing shadows of truths.  The amusers earn their money.  But beware.  An amuser’s audience, by definition, does not want or may not be able to discern raw truth.  So amusers tend to stray widely from truth.  It is safer money for the amuser.  But it is wasted money spent by the amused.  This is equally true for Hollywood as it is for the Church.  Truth is free, amusement is not.

Truth Surrounds Us – Luke 17: 21 Amplified says: …For behold, the kingdom of God is within you [in your hearts ] and among you [surrounding you].  The kingdom of God is truth.  So truth surrounds us, if we have spiritual eyes to see.  Truth is actually universally present confirming or denying the truth of whatever is going on.  This explains what otherwise seem to be mysterious events.  See the In That Day Video #106 – Pranks God Plays on Posers.  God created a universe in which the carnal is separate from the spirit.  Conflicted people sometimes have their material and spiritual realms in harmonic discord.  Thus, an overly proud man cannot deliver a speech of truth without notable evidence of his antipodal ways.  Thus a puerile Christian prosperity convention in Fort Worth in 2005 began with the praise team leader singing Amazing Grace in a cartoon-like duck voice.  Thus when Idaho Senator Larry Craig was given a radio interview in 2007 questioning if he is gay, the senator denied he was gay using sexual malapropisms while a bird chirped loudly in the background.  The Michael Savage radio program repeated this interview on 8/29/07 and Savage asked, “I don’t get it.”  A caller said the bird sounded like a blackbird.  An internet search revealed that blackbirds are identified with temptation.  Savage said the German word for bird is Vogel, which is similar to a Jewish word for gay.  Currently the senator is embroiled in a scandal regarding his sexual orientation.  So the interview of denial was marked by three things:  Sexual malapropisms and a chirping bird indicating perhaps homosexual temptation.  The third thing was the weak truth or absence of truth in the Senator’s voice.  To see and hear spiritually is a hard thing.  It can be horrible to witness.  1)  You can look away in horror.  2)  You can be that brave first responder and administer first aid.  3)  Or you can be that experienced doctor who, if the patient wills, performs operations to get the cancer out.  For Wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered together.  Matthew 24:38.  It’s all about spirits.  The above-mentioned Christian prosperity conference, which celebrated its 25^th year in 2005, was exceedingly immature.  So the event had to start with its leadership speaking in a duck voice.  Even a US Senator cannot outrun truth.  His denial radio interview had to have his voice untruthful, his words full of sexually inappropriate double entendres and a chirping bird giving a clue about homosexual temptation.  The kingdom of truth is within you and among you.  Truth always manifests in affirmation or denial.  The beginning of wisdom is the fear of God, because in whatever we do – from pauper to prince – we cannot control how truth will be overtly and covertly confirmed or denied amongst ourselves.  Prideful people, by definition, cannot see, understand or believe this.  Humble people, by right, should be able to see, understand and believe this.  But such knowledge cannot be used for much self-exaltation, self-aggrandizement or selfish benefit.  Such knowledge, for the most part, can only be used to promote the kingdom of heaven, which is truth.  Truth and its way exist independently of humankind.  God and truth and two things no man can control.

Two Camps Exchanging Hate – God is love, not hate.  When conservatives and liberals, or gun grabbers and gun owners, or preachers and the American Civil Liberties Union, or you and your opponent or me and mine rage against each other, God witnesses only two camps exchanging hate.  Each party is guilty of being either dead right, dead wrong or both.  Prideful people only accomplish being dead to God’s spirit and truth.

Two Sorrows – There are two kinds of sorrows: godly repentance that leads to life and worldly grief.  According to II Corinthians 10:18 Amplified, The hopeless sorrow that is characteristic of the pagan world) is deadly [breeding and ending in death.]  The wayward Church, appears so lifeless.  Because:  It often broadcasts its ministers preaching the lies of rapture, dispensational dogma, the imminent return of Jesus to fix what we will not, that Jesus “tarries”, that every believer has eternal security, that weak worship is strong, that truth can be proclaimed my ministers in whack-out ridiculously opposite spirits, that such death is such life.  And the wayward Church has not repented of promulgating those lies.  Without repentance these ministries will never have God’s lively Spirit in them.  They will remain deathly so long as they remain dead wrong.  No great revivals are possible, unless its shepherds are shepherds of God’s life and life-giving doctrines, and not unwitting wolves-in-sheep’s-clothing devouring the sheep with lies, extraction and hypocrisy.  First the wayward Church must repent, and repent massively.  It must not believe the cheap sorrow of pagan hopelessness.  It must truly, truly repent to God Almighty.  The repentance must be private, public and most especially broadcast strongly to make up for decades of broadcasting the devil’s doctrines. The wayward Church has called itself Christian but has been far too anti-christ itself.  It seems not to care about its own rapacious self-interest, for its ministers have morphed God’s give to one another message (Luke 3:10-11) into first give to God’s organizations, and not all proclaimed as such are.  And second they have made many such organizations appear to be legitimate non-profit charities when in fact they are veiled laundries directing too much of the proceeds back to personages in salary, benefits, housing, travel, vehicles, jets and especially royalties from today’s “newest-is-truest” fad-based sales of downright wrong books and other vapid media productions.  When they finally awaken to the horror of their ways, God will forgive if they publicly repent.  If they want to continue to call themselves Christians, God will put their names to the test!

Two Swords in Twelve – The minimum ratio of defenders in a group is two in twelve as recorded in Luke 22:36-38.  The role of defender is often ego enlarging and consequently mishandled, as shown in Luke 22:49-51.  Nevertheless, no innocent group need suffer harm without an adequate, vigorous and hopefully successful defense.  In this gelded age, the ratio of defenders in a group now seems at times to be Zero in Twelve, but Jesus approved of Two in Twelve as a minimum.   Truth, swords (ancient times) and guns (modern times) are tools, often mishandled and more often misunderstood.  Jesus did not misunderstand anything about anything.  First he admonished his disciples to have swords, but when shown two He said, “It is enough.”  If some states or countries want to geld all groups – then massacres and individual violence are the result.  Those states and countries which refuse to geld themselves and allow the sword of defense (i.e. concealed carry permits) obtain happy results of less massacres and violence to those who have tools to defend themselves.  Ignore Jesus’ wisdom at your peril.  Groups breaking His commandments end up only breaking themselves.

Watch What They Say, Watch What They Do – Recently one radio minister began his program with a description of how many of people in New York City face home invasions where thieves dress as policemen, knock on doors of people’s residences and are allowed in – only to rob the people.  Not long after this remarkable story, the ministry asked for donations.  Apparently, this ministry fails to see God’s irony in their actions.  God is a God of irony, and keep watch over your spirit that you not be made an example.

We Need Baby Examples – We Need Baby Examples from which we may indulge in immaturity and then progress to maturity.  We neither throw out nor crucify the baby with the bath water.  Errant paths are necessary offenses.  Leave them be, they have enough woe as it is.  (Matt. 24:19; Mark 13:17; Luke 21:23)

We Should Be Nice Until… – Like God, We should be nice…until is it time to not be nice.  Hear from God and you will know when to stop being ready to make nice, but err on the side of nice, for the sake of Christ, who on earth seldom was not nice to others.

What Big Ministries Teach – Besides teaching the doctrines big ministries have, they also show that doctrine’s fruit.  This is why it is good to study televangelism’s fruit, because the fruit is becoming amazingly huge.  Small churches can teach their doctrines without it really being so clear.  But when a ministry has an income in the hundreds of millions of dollars, then you will see its doctrines’ gargantuan fruit.  Look at the doctrines of The Gideons International, which appears to be blessedly selfless and non-aggrandizing.  Their website says:  “In the association’s fiscal year ending May 31, 2006 it received $115 million in total income of which $105.7 million was directly contributed for the purchase and placement of Scriptures…”  That is ninety-two percent going straight to Bible distribution, which seems most exemplar.  Now look for financial reports at ministries promoting escapology doctrines, and if you can find them (many disclose nothing) they might be less than fiscally or morally understandable.  (Ministry Watch www.ministrywatch.com gives Trinity Broadcasting Network and Benny Hinn Ministries poor grades because of their supposed lack of financial transparency and gross personal/family expenditures.)  The point of the In That Day teachings is not to be a hateful critic of television ministries, but rather to discover why they are in error and how it applies to every church and every believer.  Because God does not necessarily live in an executive jet, or a luxury hotel, a euro-luxury car or a lavish stage set.  God must live in people.  And people must have good spirits and good truths in themselves for God to indwell them.  We must worship God in spirit and truth.  And God must indwell us, or so is our hope.  That is the fruit that counts.

What Have You Done for Me Lately? – This is God’s question for us each day.  We had better have a good answer.  We might wish otherwise, but God simply is a God who continually asks, “What have you done for Me lately?”  We are on earth to serve Him, and we keep thinking God has got it backwards.

What is In That Day? – The phrase In That Day occurs 112 times in the King James Bible, according to the free e-Sword software program.  The phrase Day of Wrath: 4.  The phrase Day of the Lord: 29.  The phrase Day of Vengeance: 4.  The phrase Overflowing Scourge: 2.  The word overflowing: 11.  These words and phrases generally but not always refer to a time beyond Christ's resurrection when a spiritual scourging occurs to separate good from evil.  Now, most importantly, the question must be asked:  How many times does the word rapture occur?  Exactly zero.

When the Well-Wishing Stops– Christians should by nature be well-wishing.  They are certainly well-wishing to lost souls.  And most Christians are well-wishing to new believers.  But the well-wishing may stop when a new believer has the calling to grow in maturity.  A sprinkle baptizer finds it hard to wish well an immersion Baptist (whom they believe wrong!)  A believer who cannot believe in healing finds it hard to wish well the healing believer (or be healed by him!)  And many shepherds fail to well-wish any sheep who overpass them in God.  The believer waiting to be raptured finds it hard to wish well the believer in whom Jesus has returned now and is manifesting in His strength, glory and anointing.  (The rapture waiter thinks, this God-bearing fellow’s light and love of Christ sure bothers me because he isn’t waiting for Jesus to return!)  The rainbow-stew-for-me-and-you prophet finds it hard to wish well the rebuking prophet chastising the dollar-driven, self-interested, buy-my-prophetic-goodies church.  And especially, the dead-logos, non-spirit-filled preacher find it most difficult to well-wish the spirit-filled preacher who obeys not the opinions of man, but the unpredictable God of John 3:5-8.  Often the first believes the second is his nemesis.  What is going on here?  Pray tell do we smell fear, loathing, competition, resentment and religious pride?  Yes, sadly and more.  In each example the former is at a level below the latter.  Thus the one tier denies the tier above it, often by denying the existence of any tier above their own and thus concluding their protagonist being ipso facto insane.  Interestingly, those in an upper tier – by its nature closer to God’s heart – actually tend to be well-wishing towards those blind to truth’s next tier.  But in the military a mature private can well-wish the captains, who, if mature, can well-wish the generals.  This is how to make rank.  It is a pity that so many Lilliputian Christian warriors fight the advance of any believer beyond their own tier, believing it paramount.  Anything beyond is repulsive insanity or damned heresy, right?  To welcome unbelievers into God’s family of faith while also loathing, cursing and stopping the advance of other believers is to posses either the lazy mind of a hypocrite or the busy mind of a quisling.

Where are the Taken? – If the rapture is a self-serving doctrine of lies, then what about Luke 17:34-36?  “I tell you, in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left.  Two women grinding...” ditto.  And two men in the field…ditto.  Always one taken, the other left…dare I admit…behind.  In verse 37 the disciples ask “Where (are the ones taken,) Lord?”  And He said, “Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.”  This is not the rapture.  The taken are the ones called to higher overcoming who undergo the excruciating process of brutal soul inspection, ugly demon discovery that cannot be denied, difficult confession of culpability, final removal of deeply embedded demons and resultant purity, purpose and power in God.  The eagles are also referred to as vultures.  It is the ugly business of picking dead flesh, which is sin, from a living body so that it can be later indwelt with Christ at higher levels.  The scriptures are eagles.  The hosts in heaven are eagles.  (1 Thessalonians 4:17’s “them in the clouds”)  If you are lucky, God will send you some persons who are eagles.  Even you yourself can act as an eagle.  (See Glossary Teaching:  Heads God Wins, Tails You in Religious Pride Lose.)  Only those deemed mature enough to not be jealous and vengeful against their eagle superiors will qualify for overcoming.  (Which makes one wonder how many Christian leaders would submit to such brutal soul inspection?) What about the ones remaining who are not taken?  These people either never will be called to higher overcoming or they will be called later.  It simply is not their turn.  God’s considerable mercy means some people go through these amazing things with Him while most everybody else in the world neither knows nor cares.  But for those going through it, the individual tribulation is so excruciatingly tortuous, it is no wonder that lazy theologians invented the rapture to hide out in deceived satanic hope that darkness wins over light.  (Ezekiel 13 slams the rapture concept of souls flying away in false deliverance.)  Men have always preferred darkness over light.  (John 3:19)  But thank God, just not all men. 

Where to Park Your Car? – Either God tells you what to do on little things and you obey or you find a preacher who says he, you and God don’t care.  Which do you prefer?  God has angels that can kill 180,000 people in one night.  Do you think they can protect your car, person or family?  Answer:  Not if you don’t.  God gives you what you believe about Himself and His universe.  Practice on little decisions and build up to big decisions.  All of them are best decided by God.

Whether a Doctrine Works… – A doctrine’s proof is not whether it works for you.  A doctrine’s proof is the fact that it is true, as evidenced in scripture and aligned with God’s Spirit.  God does not defend His doctrines.  God’s truths simply are.  This is difficult to fully comprehend in maturity.  Here is the mistake we make:  We learn of an advanced doctrine and believe it to be a wonderful tool.  Then we misapply the tool to a situation not of God’s choice or timing.  An example would be the discovery of the laser, which is a good tool.  Then a foolish man tries to use a powerful laser to cook an egg and ruins it.  Jesus said John the Baptist was the best prophet, but he was beheaded.  Then Jesus was crucified.  Truth and results do not always meet our expectations, because God is God and we are not.

Who is the Burning Man? – This week (8/29/07) Reno residents note another celebration of Burning Man in the desert playa to the north.  This desiderata of drugs, nudity and let-it-all-hang-out happiness always draws crowds of like-minded hedonists.  But God continually asks:  Who are you now?  Are you a Burning Man for whatever goes?  Or are you a Burning Man for whatever is God?  We can burn bright in God's glory, or burn dark in man's folly.  Many are drawn to the playa this week like moths to the flame.  Many are likewise drawn to God's light, which also consumes.  Is it petulant to state the obvious?  We are given a choice, then, on how we are to burn... today and all the days of tomorrow. 

Why Eternal Security Preachers are Strident – A parable:  Once the President of the United States wanted to veto a huge appropriations bill for research to cure laryngitis.  His advisors recommended he sign it because the bill benefited the Marines.  How so? he asked.  Well, an advisor said, for two decades the Marines sergeants have yelled themselves horse.   Why? asked the president.  The advisor said, they can’t get their troops motivated without yelling.  Why must they yell? asked the president.  Well, answered the advisor, twenty years ago the Marines wanted more recruits.  So they adopted a program guaranteeing full retirement benefits to all enlistees, regardless of performance.  Wouldn’t such a guarantee result in non-performance? asked the president.  That’s exactly what happened.  The Marines call the program MESS – Marine Eternal Security System.  And that is the mess that is causing laryngitis?  Yes, Mr. President – It’s from all the yelling.  So as President I could order the Marines to cancel their eternal security program – their MESS – and the sergeants would re-learn to motivate their people, they wouldn’t have to yell, and there would be no more laryngitis and no need to fund  research to find a cure for laryngitis?  Yes, Mr. President.  Or you could choose to not rock the boat and sign the bill.  It will make you look good, you know, helping the Marines.  Right, get my pen.

Why Media Evangelists are Uncorrectable, Part 1 – Media evangelists are uncorrectable because they believe their reason for being, their raison d’etre, is to preach the gospel.  That calling – that reason—is irreproachable, they believe.  Yes, but no.  Yes, if their media gospel is true.  No, if their media gospel is not.  And in this day, often much of their media gospel – what they preach and teach – is simply not true.  The rapture is not true.  Escapology doctrines are not true.  The fixed rule demanding and extracting tithes to the self-appointed is not true.  Sometimes their very witness of pride of position and pride of life are not true.  Their mojo jive talk and witchcraft control (i.e. Stand up and say “Praise my mantra!”  Look up a verse.  Turn to your left, now right, now Simon says, “Raise your hands in surrender” while I take control of your body, soul and spirit!) is not true.  Even prophets, whom they parade for entertainment value, are not true or corrective.  In fact, so much of their media gospel is not true that media evangelists’ original reason for existence – to preach a true gospel – is virtually gone.  The result seems to be multitudes of misguided followers supporting royal gospel personages of ego, ease and error with funds to live in prosperous, regal abundance.  This kind of bizarre media evangelist message sells well because in our souls are little devils who whisper in our ear:  You can be that big fish in your own small pond of life; full of ego, ease and irreproachable error.  If those media evangelists are the best of Christianity, say the devils within us, then you can do the same – and without shame!  And as Christ said, The blind lead the blind into the ditch.

Why Media Evangelists are Uncorrectable, Part 2 – A recent dunning letter from a faith ministry (here unnamed) comes from the founder’s son.  The son informs us his father is in prison.  For a year and a day.  So the letter continues, send money.  The father is in jail for not reporting to the IRS monies received from donors like me, so send money.  Finally, the last page of the letter includes a form to fill in my credit card billing information, check box for automatic debit, choice of which Thursday of the month to make the transaction indicated to “until I inform you otherwise” send money.  It does not, apparently, cross such ministry minds that perhaps their wayward faith doctrines drove them into ditches.  Nor does the message of John the Baptist come into play.  John said, “Repent!”  Because: repenting eliminates the roots of evil spirits that cause sin.  Repenting, asking forgiveness, apologies and mea culpa’s are mandatory to drive out the evil spirits.  It sheds Christ’s light upon the dark recesses of ministry pride and – in this case – subornation of faith into avarice and entitlement.  But don’t count on this corrective teaching to come from the lords of lunacy in the faith media ministries.  They are part and parcel of the same uncorrectable problem.  For them, there is no problem (even, grin – a messy mishandling of mammon problem) that more money won’t fix.  Ronald Reagan said, “Government is not a solution to our problem; it is the problem.”  Perhaps insofar as the wayward faith name-it-and-claim-it ministry message, money is not a solution to its problem; it is the problem.  Heaven help us… if we send money.

Why Media Evangelists are Uncorrectable, Part 3 – The Faith/Prosperity/Give-to-Get doctrines promoted by media ministries in this day cause problems.  But apparently, people do not think those wayward doctrines matter.  Preachers show egregious pride in their celebrated personas, while their big hair, luxury suits, expensive sets, high-class jets and even more expensive air time are just “imperfect executions” of a good idea:  Which is the name-it-and-claim-it doctrine.  It sells really, really well.  But in truth, the name-it-and-claim-it doctrine works only if you say, “I am God and I name-it-and-claim-it.”  Because God, remember, is inviolate.  He can choose to hate Esau unborn.  He can busy Himself with getting His kingdom in heaven on earth.  Meanwhile, name-it-and-claim-it ministries continue to court their date with the ditch.  When one of them succumbs to a ditch, as apparently happened to a ministry leader now in jail for a year for troubles with the IRS, it is apparently no cause for name-it-and-claim-it trouble shooting.  Forgive me for imagining this phone conversation:  Hello?  Son, this is Brother Prosperity and we in the television ministry business – oops, Ah mean uh television ministry evangelism – are so sorry to hear what happened to yo’ poppa.  Thanks Brother Prosperity.  I just saw him in prison and he is so sorry.  Dad keeps wondering: What made his ministry get in trouble?  So do I.  Well, never mind that, son.  Here’s the big question: How are your ministry finances?  Bad, really bad.   We’re going to close.  Now hold your horses, son!  But Dad’s in prison, what can we do?  Ah’m going to sew a seed, that’s what Ah’m going to do.  My professional ministry team will write you a letter.  It’ll go to your donors.  We’ll pay for printing and postage, but it’ll be from you ‘cause you’re gonna’ sign it. And you’re gonna’ ask those partners of yo’ daddy for help – and Ah mean M-O-N-E-Y!  But Brother Prosperity, isn’t that brazen – for me to ask for money when that’s what got my father in prison – mishandling ministry funds?  Brazen, smazen, Ah’m telling you what works, son!  O’course you gonna keep everything clean with the IRS from now on.  But we love you and yo’ poppa, and soon you’ll both be back in tall cotton!  Hell son, once this blows over we'll be braggin' who's got the biggest, fastest, baddest ministry jet!  An'  like Ah like to say under the anointing:  Not even God can stop prosperity when it’s on the move!  Now, do the right thing and forget about mea culpa’s.  Just let Brother Prosperity help you help yourself! 

Why Such Rebuke? – How can I rebuke a dunning letter from a son of a faith ministry man who is in prison because of breaking IRS rules about ministry money handling?  Perhaps the father or son would like to punch me in the nose.  They might want no criticism, chastisement or rebuke.  But I might want them to see:  God is alive.  The IRS perhaps gave them a "behold the severity of the Lord" moment.  I might wish them a breakthrough epiphany:  Gee!  The name-it-claim-it ministry crowd is penetrated massively with spirits of greed, avarice and entitlement.  Media ministries often ignore what spirits they are of, while bragging about the limited gospel they preach.  These spirits of greed and entitlement are what hit the imprisoned man's ministry.  Those distorted faith teachings claiming prosperity while ignoring spirits of mammon worship have resulted in the man being in prison.  The faith/prosperity media televangelists run mammoth reality distortion energy fields to captivate blind-in-the-spirit contributors.  These distortion fields are mighty expensive in air time and air time (broadcast and private jet.)  God has had enough.  It is time to wake up, learn greater doctrines, be of a right spirit, repent massively, manifest Christ and expand Father God's Kingdom, which is truth.  So, take the hurt lesson and stop defending the ditch of abomination of the self-serving faith ministries.  It is time to move out of baby gospel land of Lilliputian theology.  Who has greater love?  The In That Day Teachings wanting you to see spiritually the mess media Christianity is in, then repent and grow?  Or do the self-serving faith ministries, who want you to contribute endlessly, have the greater love?  Johnny Cash sang, "Love is a burning thing."  Or maybe love is a smarmy thing.  Who has greater love?  Is it the gardener who sleeps or the gardener who pulls the weeds, trims the limbs and kills the pests?  Who has greater love?  It depends on if you are a wheat or a tare.  If you are a tare, you want a tare gardener who will put a stop to those nasty wheat gardeners, who appear to be quite mad.

Word of Faith – Wherein one must proclaim positive outcomes, remove God’s volition and make WOF leaders rich by caving in to their self-service requests.  The problem with the WOF doctrine is that God insists on being God, and insists on having His own will, plan and purpose.  God’s plan doesn’t line up with WOF’s doctrine that God has automatic blessings hard-wired to prosperity mantras stinking of greed and avarice.  We must instead believe that God will get what He wants out of you, not the WOF brazen, craven reverse.

Words God Hates – One of God’s names is the Word.  Not surprisingly, there are certain words in the English language that He detests.  “Cute” is one of them.  It has been abused and has become an upside-down opposite word.  Jesus said let your yea be yea and nay be nay.  (Matthew 5:37)  The reason?  Words are so absolutely powerful, they must not be used to mean opposite things, else the soul becomes bi-polar damaged.  Thus, a mocking “That’s cute.”  Really means a foul epitaph.  Often instead of encouraging a manly thing the word is used to disparage it, to geld whatever righteous and valiant spirit appeared.  (This is not to disallow the double entendre.  Rather, it is to disallow the use of the word “cute” in mocking God or godly spirits in others.)   Another word is “stuff.”  When used nebulously, the not-so-hidden meaning is excrement.  “Rapture” is best not mentioned because it is the Isaiah 28:8 vomit on the table doctrine.  If you need to refer to it, just say “fly away escapology doctrine.”  (It was used in this book for clarity and I did break this rule in using it.)  The word “scary” is often breathed with a spineless, whispered spirit that is the exact opposite of “…God has given us a spirit of power, love and sound mind.”  (2 Timothy 1:7)  Nothing is “scary” to a person of God; we fear only Him and nothing else.  Newspaper editorialists use the word to disparage things that might be righteous, such that an anti-abortion ruling, they would say, is “scary.”  Another word to avoid is “ghost” when prefaced by Holy.  The King James mistranslated it, and the reference to the Third Deity is Holy Spirit.  To confirm this, just listen to a wrong spirited preacher harp and gleefully repeat the “HG” word as a sort of devilish mantra.  If you have ears to hear, you will be convinced that the Father and Son don’t want to hear it anymore.  However, I’ll venture a guess that the Holy Spirit is so humble (since he promotes Jesus and not Himself) he allows the HG word in songs because it rhymes with so many other things.  Still, if you have ears to hear, it doesn’t sound right in songs either.  Use the words “Holy Spirit.”  Recall that Jesus warned that He would allow Himself to be blasphemed, but there would be no forgiveness for intentionally blaspheming the Holy Spirit.  (Luke 12:10)  Another word to avoid is “incredible.”  Often it is used in televangelism to advertise their “incredible” wares.  Would God that was not the truth!  Another bad word is “whatever.”  Used with a sarcastic spirit in reference to anything good, it means, basically, an epitaph against all things godly.  The above-mentioned words are not extent.  If you are careful to obtain and keep ears to hear in the spirit, you will be taught what words God hates in any language.  When others use them, your spirit will cringe.

Worshipping in Spirit and Truth – Jesus told us to worship God in spirit and in truth.  This means when we do the right thing, we do it in a right spirit.  This is very difficult to do all the time.  When we work, play, rest or even are sick – we must do it in truth and in a right spirit.  Nothing makes an out-of-sorts person madder than being told they are of a wrong spirit.  Not a preacher who preaches in a falsetto voice, not a preacher who preaches in a big-radio-announcer voice, not a preacher who preaches in an impatient high-speed manner, not anyone who cops out and simply communicates truth while being brazenly lax with all things of the opposite spirit.  In today’s modern world, media preachers enjoy railing against all things evil – except their own bipolar spirits.  They give themselves a free pass to heaven, ask that you pattern your life after them and then demand tithes and offerings towards their non-profit organization.  Yet Jesus was somewhat different.  He said to his disciples, “Ye know not what spirit ye are of.”  Understanding this at a high level enables one to discern what is true simply by the sound of it, and how it resonates with the Spirit of God in you.  This is why almost all talk about the rapture sounds terrible.  It simply is not truth when it is spoken.  When you have ears to hear in the spirit realm, then you can listen to a preacher preaching (who might not, indeed probably does not understand this process) and that preacher will go in and out of synchronicity with truth.  While the preacher preaches, his truth will ramp up like a sine wave, his voice will ring with authority; then he will speak a doctrine of the devil, his voice will crack like a frog (or screech like chalk on a board, or go into falsetto whine, or growl in false authority, or get radio-announcer-big to compensate for the charade, or drum up a mispronounced name of God – JAHEEEZUS, GUHAWD, LAHAHAORD, etc. because the demon now in voice must parade who is in control) and the sine wave dips into the Devil’s territory.  This sine wave happens in a matter of seconds, more or less continuously in a standard sermon.  So if you have eyes to see and ears to hear, a lot is going on in the spirit realm.  And you must never be tempted to pray that God remove from you the gift of spiritual hearing and seeing.  Most preachers apparently hate the gift of seeing that doctrines they might have had to kiss in Bible college make them manifest the devil in the pulpit.  Hard truths are just that.  Who will believe a devilish doctrine if it does not line up with God’s instant-now voice of confirmation?  This is why preachers are famous for having affected voices.  If they preach in error, their voice cannot but be affected because God refuses to cooperate and give them a spiritual voice of authority.   He lets the Devil give them a weird, crazy voice only fools would follow.   Many preachers choose to speak wrong doctrines that leave them bereft of God, because they really do not believe they are bereft of God.  So mi amigo, their voices sound muy loco.

Worshipping Weakness – That wispy, high-pitched, weak-sounding, hard-to-follow praise music found at so many casual Christian churches sounds that way for a reason.  They have spirits of weakness which manifests in weakness widely.  Their weak praise follows their weak doctrines.  They prefer to worship a very weak god.  And God lets them do that, but He will not give them strength in voice, character or being.  Weakness is their reward for their work.  To be rewarded strength in spirit one must believe that our God is a strong God.  But weak worshipping churches get the god that serves them perfectly well, which is a god of consuming weakness. 

You Can See God – Jesus said, Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God.  Matthew 5:8.  Yet few have seen visions of God.  Then what is the truth?  Look at verse three:  Blessed are the poor [humble] in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven [truth.]  Now look at Matthew 23:38-39:  Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.  For I say unto you, Ye shall not see Me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name [nature] of the Lord.  The lesson seems to be humility, humility, humility.  Because: We can see God in others, if we are humble!  But, if a full-of-self preacher pontificates on high, tells people to look up… and therefore away from each other…but to look up for the return of God, then here is what can happen:  Neither the preacher nor his congregation is held accountable to manifest Christ.  Yet Christ wants to live and manifest in every man, woman and child on earth today.  He died that He can manifest in humanity in goodness and peace so that people’s souls would not be desolate or empty.  With humility, anything is possible; with pride, virtually nothing.  It’s either: “Wow!  I see God in you, and I am so thankful and I would also like to shine like that with God’s truth and love!”  Or it is: “You are really weird.  You know nothing about God.  I refuse to listen to you or anyone like you.  My pastor says to beware of false prophets like you!”  And God set things up this way.  The godly can see Christ in each other.  The ungodly cannot.  The problem is that for ages, many of those who cannot see are those who preach, teach, lead and keep their sheep in ditches where God cannot with them be.