The Tuition has Been Paid

Today I’m not in church. This will not be news to anyone who reads the blog.

I have friends who have suggested churches, and I can tell some of them feel that a person who doesn’t have a church is in danger.

I would have said the same thing a few years ago. It’s true for most people. My situation is different, though.

I’ve known people who felt they were too holy to go to church. They got mad at the other congregants, usually. They stayed home and criticized, and sooner or later, they got way off the path. I have advised people to stay in churches that are 85% good and 15% bad, because that’s about the best ratio you can hope for.

Am I a hypocrite, then, for staying home?

Short answer: no.

I used to have much more respect for Christian leaders than I do now. I thought Kenneth Copeland was a genius (there may be some truth to that, if it means he has a natural talent which is used to damage people’s lives). I probably thought Benny Hinn was an apostle; I don’t recall.

When I started going to Trinity Church in Miami Gardens, I thought I had found the real thing because I felt the presence of God. I thought Rich Wilkerson was doing a great job. I didn’t know very much. I hadn’t heard about the things that went on behind the scenes, and I didn’t have a great prayer life, so I didn’t have as much discernment as I should have. I was not that hard to fool.

I didn’t know that God’s presence is unrelated to his approval! God will show up and let believers feel his presence in places where people are in the process of failing.

I started praying in tongues three minutes a day, and when I got up to 15 minutes, I felt like I had accomplished something. I didn’t know I was only scratching the surface.

God started showing me things. I got up to thirty minutes, and he continued showing me things. One of the things he showed me was that Trinity was very screwed up. He showed me that the leaders were only interested in money and fame, that they used people, that people didn’t grow much under their care, and that the main purpose of the church was to promote the Wilkersons. I also realized Wilkerson was using the deranged theological fantasies of his pal Steve Munsey to collect money, even though he probably knew it was a scam.

I started to see through the TV idiots. If Kenneth Copeland came into my house today and used a glass, afterward, I would soak it in bleach to kill the cooties.

Trinity started to wear on me. I couldn’t tell the pastors anything, and it was almost impossible for me to tell other members anything. They wouldn’t listen. Only a few paid attention. The rest assumed that anyone who disagreed with a pastor was “out of submission” and headed for some kind of divine punishment.

After a long period of prayer for a new church, I ended up at New Dawn Ministries. The pastors there were better, but as my prayer time increased, I started to understand that they were proud and ignorant. They were like the character Jade Fox in the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, who stole a martial arts manual, became powerful by looking at the drawings, and then hit a plateau because she couldn’t read.

They were able to make a certain amount of progress in the kingdom because they were open to the Holy Spirit, and they really did want to see people do well. But their arrogance made further progress impossible.

Like the Wilkersons, they had the attitude that anyone who disagreed was out of line. That’s not a bad attitude, if you have the revelation to back it up. But they didn’t. Revelation doesn’t soak into hardened bricks. The ground has to be ready to receive it.

They seemed lazy. The church was not open except during services, and they traveled and vacationed a lot. I don’t think they had serious prayer lives, because if they had, they would have learned.

The church is still tiny, forty-three months after I first showed up. They talk about “breakthrough” and so on, but they are going to be in their little rented room until someone new takes over or the church collapses.

As for famous preachers, I liked Perry Stone and Fred Stone. I still like Fred, but he died a few years ago. Perry receives all sorts of wonderful information from God, but it’s not very helpful with changing your heart. It’s about prophecy and the hidden meanings of things in the Bible. You can only get so far with that.

He has pride and anger problems. He has a very haughty way of talking about unbelievers and Christians who don’t know as much as he does. Sometimes he seems excited about the possibility that they will suffer for their unwillingness to listen.

I used to receive Perry’s monthly CDs, but they got repetitious. Any time a preacher seems to be going in circles, there is a problem. Circling is symptomatic of a loss of anointing. The Hebrews circled in the desert because they wouldn’t listen.

I like John Bevere a lot, but he doesn’t seem all that excited about prayer in tongues, which is the most important thing in our arsenal. He does encourage it, but I remember him complaining about a time when the church was too caught up in it. He has also said things that show he doesn’t have the kind of prayer life I need to see in a teacher.

Andrew Wommack is pretty good, but he clearly has a discernment problem, because he is palling around with prosperity preachers. That’s a major issue. If you’re sitting down and dining with the wolves, and you see nothing wrong with it, what other deceptions have you swallowed?

I don’t listen to anyone now. I don’t know anyone who is teaching the whole package in a way that makes it worth it for me to sit down and listen. I hear error most of the time, and when I hear the truth, I don’t hear anything new. They’re talking about things they consider major revelations. I heard the same things years ago, directly from God, and could not get anyone to listen to me.

I put in several hours of prayer every day, so I hear a lot of things from God without man’s help. I don’t want to learn something and then have to sit for an hour and listen to someone else repeat it. Usually, it’s not a profitable use of my time, and it’s boring.

It can be nice to get confirmation, but it’s not so nice I want to go on Youtube and listen to every John Bevere sermon.

Is it a bad thing to have no teacher? Yes. But I do have a teacher. I have the only good teacher.

John taught that we would learn directly from the Holy Spirit, and he made it clear that this teaching was an antidote to the false teachings of men. Here is a passage from 1 John:

Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour.

They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest, that none of them were of us.

But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things. I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth.

Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

Therefore let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that He has promised us—eternal life.

These things I have written to you concerning those who try to deceive you. But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him.

Ask yourself this: was John serious? Surely. This is the Bible. If we can’t rely on this, then nothing we believe is trustworthy. If John was serious, then a Spirit-led believer does not need a human teacher.

This sounds horrific to the institutionalized Christian mind. The Bible says we should not neglect the assembling of ourselves together! But consider this: the Spirit-led are not under the law.

It’s a good idea to assemble. For some of us, it’s necessary. But it’s not law. For some Christians, it’s inappropriate and a waste of time.

Jesus cautioned us not to linger where our peace was not received. He was not kidding. If you’re hearing directly from God, and churches keep mistreating you, the best thing is to stay home.

This is not a new idea.

Adam walked with God and learned from him. Enoch was set apart for God, and he was eventually taken to heaven without the intermediate step of physical death. Moses got away from people so he could learn from God. At least some of the prophets were solitary. Elijah ran off and hid by a brook, where the ravens fed him. We have no record of him living among people. After Paul was converted, he went to Arabia and Damascus and learned from God. John was living in exile on Patmos when he wrote the Revelation.

Here is a passage from the fourth psalm: “But know that the Lord has set apart for Himself him who is godly; The Lord will hear when I call to Him.”

Every humble person who prays in tongues a lot learns the same things from God. When two people hear from the same Spirit, the things they hear will always agree. This knowledge will not agree with what carnal people believe, and most Christians are very carnal. So the closer you get to God, the further you will get from humanity. You will get further from other Christians. People who have a huge amount of knowledge will be separated from people who only have a great deal. That means they will infuriate pastors and teachers.

Enoch and Elijah probably couldn’t stand life on earth. That’s probably why they were removed. They had so little in common with humanity, they didn’t belong here.

Why write about it? Because it should give everyone hope. It’s hard to find a decent church. It’s hard to find good teaching. But anyone can find the Holy Spirit.

The availability of the Holy Spirit neutralizes the danger of bad teaching. You can compare what other people say with what the Spirit says. What they leave out, he will fill in. What they don’t know, he knows.

That’s a big deal. As the Bible says, people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Through the Spirit, knowledge is available, right now, wherever you are.

You may think this was only for special people, like Paul and John. If that’s true, why did John tell us otherwise? “You do not need that anyone teach you.”

When did God become a respecter of persons?

If you’re starting at square one, by all means, find a church. But once you get the ball rolling, if you do it right, you will find that you need church less and less, and that it needs you more.

This stuff is important, because persecution is really ramping up. You will need power and knowledge.

The gay marriage surrender was a disaster. We didn’t get earthquakes and plagues, and no one set off an H-bomb in Times Square, but America lost its protection. Doors are now open that used to be closed. Fallen angels and their children the demons now have authority and access they didn’t have in the past.

Christians who don’t hear from God think our mission is to spread peace and love. They think we’re supposed to be super nice, and that this will correct the world.

That’s not how it works.

We are supposed to bring people to repentance, help them get to know the Holy Spirit, and help them to throw off the spirits that rule them so they can serve God. To get this job done, sometimes we have to say things that don’t sound nice. We have to criticize. We have to be willing to be excluded.

By obsessing on making people love us, we are giving up real power. We’ve turned Christianity into a popularity contest. Paradoxically, this will make our enemies confident, bring more hatred out into the open, and enable them to destroy us.

We get power by turning from the world and leading it in righteousness. By kowtowing to confused perverts and letting them lead us, we opened our gates. Now America is becoming more and more corrupt. Trashy, cruel people who used to lose now defeat us, and they will continue to do so. Their triumphs will increase.

Look around you and ask yourself if this is the America you knew eighteen months ago. People who are controlled by demons are bold now; they are oozing out of the woodwork and assuming command over us.

Right now, it’s hard for a Christian to own a bakery. A few years from now, you may not be able to have a credit card or a bank account.

To understand the way the enemy works, think of the Muslims and Israel. The Israelis gave up one piece of land after another, thinking their enemies would be satisfied and make peace. The problem is that their enemies don’t want peace or small bits of land. They want everything, and they want Israel to disappear from the earth. They will never stop attacking. This is how people who hate God see Christians.

They aren’t going to stop when we give up bakeries and academic jobs. They’ll take everything. Wait and see.

They don’t even know they want it. Not yet. But they will. The masks will fall off, and people will treat us the way the Nazis treated the Jews. There will be no shame. They will be proud of it. The things they’re doing to us right now are very much like the things the Nazis did in the 1930s. Read up and see.

If you know the Holy Spirit, and you continue listening to him, you will receive a certain amount of power to protect yourself. You will be able to defeat persecutors and the loser spirits they’ve given their souls to. That’s very important. Many of us will have to suffer and die, but there is no law that says every Christian has to be a punching bag.

Satan owns America. Christians hate hearing that, but it’s true. We gave it to him. God is not going to swoop down and fix things. America is going to continue to rot. You are not going to be able to set the kingdom of heaven up around you. That’s a fantasy. The thing to do is to set it up inside yourself.

Now that we’ve dropped our pants for the devil, things are accelerating. It’s not clear how much time is left. How crazy will God let us get? Will he let us design babies the way we design fantastic CGI creatures for movies? That technology is not far off. Will he let computers become so powerful our governments can have us under complete surveillance at all times? Will he let us destroy every church building and every book and recording? Things like this are rapidly becoming possible.

Today God told me something. Many Christians have done well without churches, but every Christian who has no prayer life is a failure. Every single one. So don’t get your priorities screwed up.

I hope this is useful to you. Things are going sour fast, and I hope you have the time and the inclination to prepare as well as possible.