Drownproof Yourself

I had a dream last night, and it’s obviously a message from God.

Before I get to it, I’ll go back over some other dreams I’ve had which turned out to be messages.

I used to go to Trinity Church in Miami. It turned out to be a greed and fame cult dedicated to the promotion of the Wilkersons, the family that owned the church through a corporation. The head pastor was Rich Wilkerson. I left the church because God kept showing me bad things about it (and about the pastors), and Wilkerson ended up treating me like a sort of public enemy, as though I put the church in danger by speaking about its flaws.

After Trinity, I went to New Dawn Ministries in Miami. In many ways, it was much better. They took a serious interest in God’s presence and the supernatural. Still, the church fell apart because the pastors were greedy and arrogant. They were like pharaohs. They craved admiration and submission, like gods. They eventually rejected me, and I quit going. After that, they took the Wilkerson tack, treating me like an agent of Satan. The head pastor had a screaming fit in the parking lot while talking to a friend of mine about me.

While I was serving at New Dawn, I had this dream: I went to the church (a small rented room) at night. It was pitch black out, and there was only one light burning in the church. That light was in a small office. I looked into that office, and I saw Rich Wilkerson, wearing a visor, counting money. New Dawn was not his church; to him, all other churches in the area were business competitors. He was trespassing.

This dream meant that while the pastors were teaching about prayer and the supernatural, they were really thinking about money and man-worship. They wanted pretty much the same things Rich Wilkerson wanted. Sure enough, the dream turned out to be valid. New Dawn dissolved in greed, pride, and anger.

In the second dream, I went to New Dawn and walked into the kitchen. New Dawn didn’t have a kitchen, but that’s what happened. In the kitchen (not the sanctuary), I saw Rich Wilkerson, giving volunteers orders as though he owned the place.

The message: the Wilkerson spirit was in the church, working behind the scenes among people who served the pastor. This turned out to be true. Example: his sister and her husband got extremely holy after a year or two of Christianity, and the husband, who was very ambitious, started pushing carnal corporate culture and ideas on the church. He eventually got very angry at me and told me off on Facebook, saying I thought I was the voice of God. Very combative stuff. At the end, he said something like, “Love you, bro. Call if you want prayer.” I pointed out the utter hypocrisy, and that was that.

I’ll quit typing “the husband.” His name was Sander, and he was from Honduras. He came here as an illegal. His problems with me started when I wrote a Facebook post explaining that illegal immigration was a curse. The Old Testament warned the Jews that if they disobeyed, the alien among them would have power over them. That’s what’s happening today, to American citizens. Sander wrote a long, angry piece accusing and “correcting” me, and he never got over his offense.

Sander heard from the Holy Spirit sometimes, so I used to have high hopes for him, but as anyone who is familiar with my history knows, a carnal person can hear from God and still be a mess.

He accused the church of disloyalty after the pastor was arrested for child molestation. He didn’t say, “You are disloyal.” He posted a meme asking what the sheep do when the shepherd is wounded. His accusation:”Run?”

Here is a comment posted by a lady who worked in the church nursery: “Speak… We are called to forgive n continue to renew ourselves in His truth then restoration flows from within n we can extend it outwards.”

That is lack of understanding. Forgiveness doesn’t mean allowing a child molester to run a church. If he wants to attend, great. Supervise him very carefully and hope God reaches him. But don’t allow him to speak or give commands, and keep him far from the kids.

Charismatic churches have a poisonous tendency to circle the wagons when corrupt officials are exposed. Unfortunately, they circle the wagons with the wicked inside them and those they have harmed on the outside, receiving fire like hostile Indians in an old western.

Forgiveness and prayer are default options for Christians, but sometimes we are supposed to let people go and move on. God has told me over and over not to pray for the pastor and his wife. The message is very clear. Otherwise, I would certainly be praying for them. Even then, though, I would pray for God to keep them away from any type of authority in churches.

So. Those are my background dreams.

Today I dreamed I was at Middlebrook Church, the megachurch where I have been taking my dad. We sit in the back and mind our own business. I will never volunteer for anything. I will only give them money if God tells me to. If they have a pastor worship…I mean “appreciation”…day, I will stay home. I’m just there to be among Christians and to see if the experience will help my dad with his first steps.

In the dream, we were at the very back. The altar was maybe 150 feet away. Guess who was preaching? Rich Wilkerson. He was wearing what I keep wanting to call a clown suit. This is actually normal for Wilkerson.

Many charismatic preachers dress like clowns. It’s very strange, and it has nothing to do with lack of funds. They wear ugly jackets, silly ties, vests that are too tight, wild shirts, and so on. Keith Craft is a big-time greed preacher from Texas. He came to Trinity, and he wore a tiny vest and a weird little tie that came down to the middle of his chest. His hair was disorderly, as if he had just gotten out of bed. To make matters worse, he looks a lot like Gary Busey.

He looked like he was trying to be funny.

Wilkerson has a bad wardrobe, too, and it’s not unusual to see him wearing things other people clearly passed by when they went to the store. I think preachers dress this way because there are consultants who tell them to make themselves stand out. That’s my best guess.

I know the money preacher John Gray. He works for Joel Osteen now, and it looks like he wears nice suits. Back when he used to speak at Trinity, he dressed like a hobo who had been turned loose at Goodwill.

In my dream, Wilkerson was wearing a funny suit which was somewhere between purple and royal blue. He had a pink tie and pink shoes. He was wearing stilts under his pants, to make himself look larger. He had to swing his legs to walk.

I turned to my dad and excused myself, and I walked to the front left corner of the sanctuary. I felt I had to gather things I had left at the church and take them home. It amounted to enough to fill three cardboard boxes.

As I walked to the front, I passed low shelves that were against the left wall. They were full of goods. It was the sort of display you would see at a junk store. I saw a bunch of toys that belonged to me, and I realized I had to grab them or Meadowbrook would steal them.

The toys were odd. They were a little bigger than the green plastic soldiers kids used to play with before masculinity came to be regarded as a mental disorder. They were plastic. They were multicolored. Some had tiny lights on them. They were very, very sturdy, as if made by a technology we don’t have. I don’t know what they did, but I had a whole collection. Maybe a hundred.

My other items were already in two boxes. I walked around the church looking for a third box I could take. I felt that my experience as Wilkerson’s armorbearer entitled me to walk around and grab a box, whether I had asked permission or not.

While I was working with the toys, I got down on my hands and knees. I felt a hand touch me. Wilkerson was beside me. He said, “Steve, I’m going to have to say goodbye to you.”

That was remarkable. It was classic Wilkerson. Don’t confront. Never be “negative.” Passive aggression, all the way. It meant, “Get out of my church NOW and don’t ever come back.”

I did something strange. I don’t recall my actual words, but I told him it was all right, and I said something about how he needed to get it together. I called him by his first name. I said something like, “You need to get it together, Rich,” and I patted him on the cheek, like a condescending movie mafioso talking to someone he was thinking about whacking. When he approached, his head was way above me, but when I patted him on the cheek, I had to reach down.

I would never do anything like that in real life, and it would be very uncharacteristic for me to speak to another person like that. In the dream, it didn’t come from me.

Rich was mortified. His eyes went wide, and he was silent. He could not believe my gall. He had felt safe and omnipotent when he leaned down to run me off, and here I was, talking to him as though he were just another human being.

When I was at Trinity, he and his wife were exalted. No one called them by their first names. Actually, I did it once, but it just slipped out.

To slap one of them on the cheek would have been like elbowing God in the ribs. In the dream, he was aghast to see his pride violated by a mere former volunteer. By an ordinary mortal who didn’t get to sit in the green room or fly around the country at the church’s expense.

If Luther Campbell had done it, he would have been fine with it. He made Luther a VIP when he visited Trinity. We had to escort him to a special seat up front, and he was allowed to give a campaign speech. He was running for mayor.

If you have money or fame, you can talk down to the Wilkersons, and they will lap it up. If you’re rich, they want your huge tithes. If you’re famous, they want you to promote them.

Before I left, I saw sand on the floor, and I got a broom and swept it up.

I know what the dream meant.

Meadowbrook is a money church, and it’s a cult, just like Trinity and New Dawn. My former churches were obedience cults. You were supposed to give yourselves to the pastors completely. I don’t think Meadowbrook works that way. I think they charge people for the service of isolating them from God.

Meadowbrook whisks people in and out, and they don’t beg and cajole in order to get people to become their servants. They don’t seem to expect you to become slaves. On the other hand, they seem to work to avoid pushing people to become servants of God himself. There isn’t much talk about dedication or the Holy-Spirit-led life. The short services are scheduled rigidly, so it’s not like you can fall on your face at the altar and bask in God’s presence for an hour. The scheduling is a stronghold that prevents that.

If you go to Meadowbrook, you can enjoy very pleasant services which go by quickly, and then you can zip home or over to Cracker Barrel and feel like you have settled things with God. He has been fed for the week, so now you can go home and do your own thing.

Until today, I thought all cults enslaved people. I didn’t realize you could have a cult of denial that protects people from the voice of God and his demands.

Why did Wilkerson (actually the demonic spirit that limits the church) tell me he was going to have to say goodbye to me? He did it because a person like me would threaten the system at Meadowbrook if he opened his mouth. I will not be accepted. I’m being told in advance that I will never be a part of the church, and this will help me not to get stuck to a tar baby.

Should I accept this, given that it came from an evil spirit? Yes. It didn’t really come from an evil spirit. God created the image of a spirit in my dreams to let me know what was happening.

I can stay and battle the spirit, but there is the problem of free will. I would also be battling the people who obey the spirit. Even Jesus couldn’t tell human beings what to do. If the people could be reached, the dream would have been different. I’m not supposed to become an agitator at this church.

What were the toys? They were my non-spiritual gifts. Writing, cooking, and so on. Meadowbrook will never benefit from them. I will not do anything for them with the gifts God gave me.

I knew that already! From before my first visit, I intended to refrain from serving. I plan to do nothing at all for them except pray from a position of comfortable obscurity.

Notice that the gifts were toys. They weren’t very important. We greatly overestimate the importance of natural gifts. God isn’t twiddling his thumbs and fretting, wishing smart and gifted people would come to church and help him. We’re supposed to impress people with God’s gifts, not our own.

A lot of Christians would hate to read that. Christians who can sing or preach or whatever tend to think they’re very special. No. They’re not.

You know who didn’t have a natural gift? Samson. He was probably a bow-legged little runt with 10-inch biceps. The Bible never said he was big and strong. It said he performed great feats with the strength of the Holy Spirit. No Spirit, no strength.

There were huge, powerful men in Samson’s time who could not begin to do what Samson did when the Spirit was with him.

Gifts are not a big deal. I am gifted, and I say that. “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts.”

I’m not even sure what the purpose of natural gifts is.

What was the sand? Jesus said wise people would build their houses on rock, meaning revelation from God. The ideas of God are rock. They can’t fail. They are the solid foundation of the universe. Man’s ideas are sand. They are small and discrete. They are not bound together in unity, like the particles that compose rock. They are not anchored in anything.

If you wanted to build a barbecue, would you use bricks or sand?

Jesus said this:

“Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.

“But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.”

The sand on the floor of Meadowbrook Church was the ideas of man. Things like Rick Warren’s awful book. Things that waste our time and open us up to disaster. I knew enough to sweep it up and dump it. That makes sense, because I have been telling a couple of people about the errors Middlebrook’s pastor makes. I didn’t do away with the dunes of the Sahara, but I cleaned up a small spill.

What were the stilts? Puffery and pride. The leaven of the Pharisees.

Preachers who don’t hear from God or possess his authority use man-made tricks to make themselves look powerful and smart. Wilkerson is a master at this. His church runs on debt, so it looks more successful than it is. He pushes people to donate money they don’t have, twisting scripture to find justification, in order to shore the place up. He is very quiet about the church’s failures. He uses every carnal tool he can find to pump the church up. Stilts everywhere!

When I left, he was up in his sixties and didn’t appear to have a single grey hair. He had had hair restoration surgery, too. Meanwhile, his body was in very bad shape. Lots of diseases. The facade was everything.

Meadowbrook appears to be a profitable church. It seems to run very smoothly, unlike Trinity and New Dawn. The pastor is a very gifted speaker. The people seem strong and well-fed. But the Holy Spirit is lacking, so all of these natural strengths are stilts.

I have been praying for correction for this church, so I hope people won’t lay into me for criticizing while doing nothing to help. I’m doing what’s important and powerful. Prayer is my best tool.

I’m sorry to see churches get things wrong, but it’s very nice to know I won’t get sucked into another pit of quicksand. I don’t want to sink again.

Carnal churches are like mills that grind up God’s seed so pastors can eat it.

Addressing preachers who cause others to offend, Jesus said it would be better if they had millstones tied around their necks and were tossed into the sea. Preachers who teach effort and carnality turn people into servants and milk cows instead of helping them to become powerful children of God who receive supernatural favor. They should be watering us so we can grow, but instead, they grind us up and combine us with leaven so they can stuff themselves at our expense.

A preacher who teaches carnality will not have supernatural help.

In the Bible, water represents voices and words. The world is a sea of this kind of water. Satan rules the world, and his spirits whisper and shout all around us. This is very powerful. Human beings who are against God and his children add their toxic voices. Look at the Internet and see what leftists are saying.

A person who doesn’t have revelation from God will sink beneath the waves. Voices that are against God will defeat him, and he will be the tail and not the head.

Here is what Psalm 31 says:

Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven,
Whose sin is covered.

Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity,
And in whose spirit there is no deceit.

When I kept silent, my bones grew old
Through my groaning all the day long.

For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me;
My vitality was turned into the drought of summer. Selah

I acknowledged my sin to You,
And my iniquity I have not hidden.
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”
And You forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah

For this cause everyone who is godly shall pray to You
In a time when You may be found;
Surely in a flood of great waters
They shall not come near him.

You are my hiding place;
You shall preserve me from trouble;
You shall surround me with songs of deliverance.

Waters rise against Christians, and those who refuse to confess and repent will drown. If you think you can make it in your own strength, you are in denial. You are proud, whether you realize it or not, and you need to confess. Only then will God deliver you and lift you over the water.

Preachers who teach carnality rely on millstones, and those millstones pull them under the water and drown them. They don’t get deliverance.

The flood is rising every day, and we are relying on Rick Warren and other carnal preachers. They make us easier to drown.

Interesting stuff. Revelation is much better than guessing. Inheriting is better than earning. If God will simply tell us things, and we will believe them, we won’t have to perish for lack of knowledge. We need to inherit his knowledge and wisdom instead of working to develop our own.

Hell is full of self-made men, and there isn’t a single one in heaven.

Everyone in heaven is a pampered heir.

I think this was a neat dream, and I hope God keeps giving me information like this. There is nothing like solid guidance, in a world where everyone else is winging it.