You Aren’t Called to Drag People into the Kingdom

I’ve been watching more Mark Hemans videos. Hemans is a healer and teacher from Australia. He travels the world doing speaking engagements.

So far, I’m favorably impressed. I think God does heal people through him. I believe his teaching is generally sound. I do see some issues, though. He seems proud, he doesn’t seem to teach anyone else to do what he does, and I don’t sense a lot of love coming from him.

If you heal people and don’t teach them to be like Jesus, you accomplish nearly nothing. Everyone dies, so all physical healings are temporary and relatively unimportant. God created the world so he could reproduce, and our primary purpose here is to be instruments of reproduction. If you exhibit all sorts of godlike characteristics, but you don’t have disciples, you are a failure.

For all I know, he has hundreds of disciples who are just as powerful as he is, but I doubt it, because if they existed, they would be in his videos. Tom Loud, an American healer I follow, creates all sorts of disciples, and he films them. If Tom Loud heals you, he is very likely to make you heal the next person who needs help. Loud gets it. I don’t think Mark Hemans is doing what Tom does, and if that’s true, when he dies, people who depend on him instead of God will be left without help.

I am not that thrilled with Loud’s approach to sanctification. He seems very content when strangers tell him they’ve met Jesus. I’m sure very few of them are doing well in their walks. Salvation is the most important thing in life, but you can’t stop there.

I like Hemans’ teaching. I like the way he receives words of knowledge. I like watching him heal and cast out demons. I like it when he flat-out tells people tattoos are not okay and that they need to get rid of their rock music. I just wish he would get other people involved.

There is a big danger for Christians who do great things with the gifts of the Spirit. If they go it alone, without peers or disciples, they can turn into celebrities, and it’s not a big step from there to receiving worship. Most famous healing preachers fall into this trap. They convince people they’re necessary, so people end up treating them the way they should treat Jesus.

When I think about this, I always think about something I heard about the Iraqi army. When an American unit gets a new piece of equipment, they hand out manuals and teach everyone how to use whatever it is they’ve been given. In the Iraqi army, an officer in charge of such a unit would confiscate the manuals so no one else could read them. This would assure that he, alone, knew how to keep the equipment working, and it assured his continued value to the army.

Christians have always been like the Iraqi army. Clergymen like to keep people dependent. The Catholic Church once banned the Bible in order to prevent lay people from reading it, interpreting it on their own, and introducing doctrine which conflicted with the church’s Satanic notions. At Trinity Church in Miami, Rich Wilkerson Sr. had a rule that only he could receive a message in tongues. At my last church, we were forbidden to lay hands on people until the pastor, an active pedophile and rapist, cleared us to be sure we were as qualified as he was.

We are called the children of God, and children are supposed to become adults. If you’re tying your son’s shoes when he’s 7, or he’s wearing a diaper when he’s 4, something is wrong. Most preachers don’t teach us how to tie our shoes. They want us to keep coming back to hear their nonsense and pay tithes every week.

Mark Hemans seems stronger on prophecy and the word of knowledge than Tom Loud, and I think he takes a better approach regarding cleaning up your life and becoming sanctified, but Loud (and The Last Reformation) generates disciples, and that’s crucial.

Hemans speaks very honestly, without fear of offending. That’s a wonderful thing to watch.

I saw Hemans warning people to cut certain individuals out of their lives. He said the Holy Spirit was behind it. I liked that. One of the strangest things God ever showed me was that cutting the toxic people out of my life was much more important than bringing beneficial people in. You can get by with only God for a companion, but you can’t thrive if you mulch yourself with parasites.

I call this revelation strange, but it isn’t. It’s exactly what Jesus and Paul taught. It seems strange because modern Christianity is so phobic of disapproval. Our man-pleasing, money-loving leaders teach us to be doormats who waste our lives praying for stubborn friends and relatives who are most assuredly going to hell no matter what we do. Jesus and Paul said to cut them loose, except in the case of marriage, and in that case, Paul said not to stop them if they left.

I’ve been thinking about this over the last day or two. Sometimes it surprises me to find out who turns out to be a good investment of my time and who doesn’t. Often, a person who seems very humble and receptive–even desperate–at the start turns all high and mighty later on, and once the wall is up, I can’t do anything for them. Sometimes people who seem totally useless at first end up very serious and committed later.

Maybe desperate people are more inclined to end up this way, because a desperate person will clutch at any lifeline, even if it’s something he or she would not ordinarily want. They say there are no atheists in foxholes.

This is something for men to think about when they marry. The last thing you want is a woman who pretends to be excited about God because she’s actually just excited about you and desperate to be taken care of.

Women are known for molding themselves to men in order to hook them. You like truck pulls? She loves them. Can’t get enough. You like riding motorcycles? She thinks it’s really sexy, and she totally supports it. You like eating meat? She’s all about steak. She wouldn’t dream of trying to make you a vegan. You want sex almost every day? Wow, so does she. She’s so glad she found a guy who doesn’t think it’s weird.

You marry a woman like that, and the first thing you know, your bikes are on Craigslist, you’re eating soy, you only get sex when you’re obedient, and her most absorbing hobby, apart from decorating the nursery and ridiculing you to her girlfriends, is throwing out things you love.

A lot of women convince themselves they’re not like this even though they are. A manipulative and dishonest person will lie to herself as much as anyone.

Feminism is a real problem. It has convinced most women they’re supposed to run their households and “correct” the males. They’re not. The New Testament makes it very clear. The burden of leading families falls on men. The other approach is evil. This is why matriarchal cultures are represented so well in prison.

I’m not going to cite scripture. If you don’t know the scriptures, you should read more often. There is a spirit in America that tells us masculinity is a bad thing, when in reality, it is part of the nature of God, and it’s essential to our protection and development. Prisons aren’t full of the children of single dads. There’s a reason for that.

Women are much more likely to be corrupted by the occult, and to spread the infection to their families. How many male fortune-tellers have you seen? How many male witches have you seen? The term “witch” is gender-neutral, but witchcraft is so full of women, we think it refers to a woman. We even use the term “male witch” because we know anyone who hears the word “witch” will assume it refers to a woman.

I saw this dynamic at work in my family. My own mother, a Christian, brought the occult into our home. She went to palm readers, and she tried to read my palm. She had my astrological chart done. My dad, whatever his faults were, never had the slightest interest in the occult.

The first practitioner of the occult in the Bible was a woman. Eve practiced witchcraft with Satan, because she thought she knew better than Adam and God. She was going to “correct” things. She took a dangerous, forbidden drug and then convinced her husband to take it. We all know where that led.

Statistics say over 80% of yoga practitioners are women. Most early Mormons were women; this is why they resorted to polygamy. More women than men believe in astrology. The Jehovah’s Witnesses are mostly women. The vast majority of American pagans are women.

All of the prophets and apostles were men. Moses was a man. Joshua was a man. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were men. The tribes of Israel were named for men. Israel itself is named for a man. Jesus was a man. All of the priests were men. Paul would not permit a woman to teach publicly. There is a reason for these things. Men were created to stand guard.

A husband and father is supposed to be the priest of his house. If you get stuck with someone who sits back and clucks her tongue and disagrees while you share Holy Spirit revelation with her, your house will be a mess. This is why the Bible says–twice–that it’s better to live in the corner of a rooftop than in a big house with a quarrelsome woman.

A lot of women resent the notion that God is masculine, but he is. The scriptures call him “Father” and “Son.” We never see “Mother” or “Daughter.” Mary was inseminated by the Holy Spirit, according to scripture. Females can’t inseminate. God did not appear as a woman and let Joseph inseminate her. The Bible calls the church “the bride of Christ,” not the husband. Jesus is called “the sower.” Sowing is a masculine activity. Males sow their seed in females.

Who was God’s big enemy in Israel? I don’t know which false god did the most damage, but I can tell you this: the only one that had a second altar in the synagogues was “the queen of heaven.” These altars still exist today.

It could not be more obvious.

The unfortunate thing is that Satan has convinced women that their position is degrading, that they are victims, and that they are naturally superior to men. This is why so many men have wives who act like mothers. I don’t know how men like that keep from killing themselves. Often they resort to adultery to make themselves feel whole again. I know a guy who is doing that right now; he is a prolific, committed, determined serial adulterer. His wife is like Chrissy Teigen, Hillary Clinton, and Angela Davis, rolled into one. She is completely unbearable. She’s like a little sun of compressed hate. I can’t even guess how many demons she carries around with her.

I can’t tell you how I pity him. He married her because she gave him extraordinary sexual pleasure. Ironic.

Sometimes I wish I had found a wife when I was young, and then I think about this guy. If God gave me the choice between dying right now and marrying his wife, I would beg for death.

Anyway, if you hook up with a woman who can’t listen, and you think it’s cute that she’s so spicy and spirited, or you think you “need” a hard-headed, “strong” woman because she’ll make you a better man, you’re going to suffer like you can’t imagine, and it’s all your fault. You will never please her, and she will never stop crushing your spirit.

Women who listen and who don’t have chips on their shoulders are very refreshing, and it’s always a shock to find out you know one. It’s not always the ones you think will turn out that way. If you find a wife like that, she will be a source of strength all your life.

To get back on track, I know some people who seem to be at, or past, the end of their teachability. If that’s the case, we will probably grow somewhat distant until and unless they get over it. I feel God is letting me know that. I’m fine with it, because dealing with such people is like trying to push a car in the mud while the driver stands on the brake. I am only too happy to quit pushing, and I love meeting new people who cooperate and provide me with some reward for my effort. There is nothing like seeing someone run with what you tell them and then come back to bless you.

There are some people who are never going to improve, but I’m sure there are also people who are simply ready to be allowed to ferment until they decide to listen to God, and it’s not necessary for me to pester them and cajole them until they do. Someone else can help them when they come around. I’m not God, and I’m not the whole church.

Listening to Hemans, I felt a lot better about excluding my biological sister from my life permanently. He told folks they needed to let certain people go. He didn’t say they should fast or beg God to fix them. There are some people you just can’t tolerate. I rarely wonder what’s happening to my sister. I have no desire to contact her. I consider every day without contact to be a beautiful gift, and I have prayed many times for God to keep her away from me.

I see why God won’t let me join a church. I find a teacher, learn a great deal, find out what his ministry is missing, and move on to someone who has something else to show me. If I stuck with one guy, I’d be held back. Almost all pastors are seriously stunted.

Don’t put any man on a pedestal, and don’t marry your mom. That’s my advice for today.