Grace is no Bull

June 16th, 2014

Sit Down, Relax, and Win

Sometimes Biblical stories don’t mean what we think they mean, and sometimes we think more of Biblical figures than we should. They made mistakes, although the Bible doesn’t always clearly condemn their wrong actions.

Case in point: Elijah and Jezebel.

Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal. Two bulls were prepared to be burnt as offerings. The idolaters tried to get Baal to burn their bull, and Elijah called on God to burn the other one. Baal did not succeed.

When the idolaters were worn out, Elijah took his turn. He had his bull soaked in water, and he had a ditch dug around it, and he had that filled with water, too. He called on God, and God burned the bull and took the water, too.

After the idolaters lost, Elijah had them beheaded. When Jezebel heard, she said she would kill Elijah. She came after him in a chariot, and he had to run through the wilderness and hide. God’s servant had to hide from a silly woman who served the devil. Why?

When the Baal worshipers were pleading with Baal, Elijah mocked them. He said they needed to yell louder. Maybe Baal couldn’t hear them. He said, in the idiom of his day, that perhaps Baal was busy defecating.

That’s where Elijah dropped the ball.

Elijah had not been instructed to taunt the priests of Baal. Doing so was a little childish. It did not glorify God. If anything, it glorified Elijah. And it made other idolaters less likely to repent. It made them angry and inflated their pride against God. So God let Elijah feel a little heat.

When we wander off into carnal behavior, we lose the anointing–our authority–and we become more vulnerable to the enemy.

Moses listened to Satan at the spring of Meribah. God told him to speak to the rock in order to make water come out, but Moses whacked it with a stick, which took glory away from God. A person witnessing it could say, “That was no miracle. Moses broke the rock.” As a result, Moses was not permitted to enter the Promised Land.

What Elijah did was no different. He “helped” God by ridiculing his enemies. Jezebel could never have put him to flight had he restrained himself. Elijah knew what he had done. Like believers before him, he had gotten ahead of God and relied on his own power. In the wilderness, he said so: “It is enough! Now, Lord, take my life, for I am no better than my fathers!”

I’m thinking about this today because I saw a story about Nancy Pelosi. She has warned a Catholic archbishop to stay away from a pro-marriage rally in San Francisco.

The Catholic church, like almost every denomination, is a powerless mess. They teach man’s foolishness. The church abandoned the Holy Spirit something like 1800 years ago, and prophecy and revelation dried up, and the Catholics and the Orthodox started making things up. They gave us ridiculous ideas such as sainthood, Mary worship, the glorification of the cursed state of poverty, conversion by torture, genocide of unbelievers, burning at the stake, celibacy, indulgences, and the worship of physical objects. Then the baptism with the Spirit returned, and charismatic churches popped up, and they proceeded to trade the Holy Spirit for lies about money, self-help, and positive thinking.

Satan took over the world in Adam’s time. He took over the temple during the time of the kings. He took over Christianity in the early centuries AD. He now has a strong grip on the TBN crowd and the tongue-speaking churches.

Christians love to gloat over Adam and the Jews, while congregating in churches that belong to the devil. We did the same things our predecessors did, but we can’t see it. No wonder. Prayer in tongues is THE specific tool that opens eyes, and we keep discarding it in order to please men.

The Catholics run from the abortion lobby and the gay lobby. They won’t excommunicate anyone. They won’t take a real stand. They clothe their failure in a skin of love and patience, but that’s a pretext. They just can’t cope with the secular world. I don’t know what the archbishop will say to Nancy Pelosi, but I have a feeling it will be pretty weak. And she is still receiving communion, which, according to the Bible, is only for those who have repented.

The spirit of Jezebel lives in Nancy Pelosi. Jehu killed Jezebel, but the spirit survived. It made it all the way to the chair of the Speaker of the House, and it stayed there quite a while. And now religious figures have to take this benighted, grasping woman seriously, because they use man’s weapons instead of God’s.

The Catholics–and all other churches that expect nothing from God in this life–have no power. As long as they refuse to live by faith, they will rely on carnal tools, and since Satan is the false god of carnal tools, they will not win. They are playing on his home field. This is why we see real estate agents listing churches.

I try to keep a lid on the childishness these days. I used to think Elijah’s story proved that ridicule was okay. That was a mistake. It may be that the Holy Spirit will lead you to needle someone, but unless you get a clear order, it’s carnal. It works to drive people away from God. It may make other Christians hoot and applaud, but what’s the good in that? They’re already on God’s side.

I am trying not to sink into verbal mud-wrestling. Paul said our weapons were not carnal, and that they were able to pull down strongholds. I believe him. I speak defeat to people like Pelosi, and I go my way. I don’t paint signs and carry them in front of TV cameras. I don’t do pilgrimages on my knees. I don’t volunteer to work for political campaigns. I speak destruction to evil and go my way. It works in every area of my personal life, and I am confident that it will work on a national scale, much better than sending money to the RNC and the friends of Grover Norquist.

Let the dead use the weapons of the dead.

If you build yourself up through prayer in tongues and take this approach, you will get better results than you get now, and you won’t have to dedicate your life to serving carnal people who oppose your enemies. God didn’t send you hear to spend 18 hours a day canvassing for a Mormon. Trust me on that.

Give it a try. Give it a month. If it doesn’t work, you can quit.

But it will work.

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