Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him (James 1:12). I’m convinced that the decision by true Christians to stand up for Jesus on certain issues will spark an onslaught of persecution against us that we’ve not experienced before.

We are living in a time of great crisis, but it is also time of great opportunity. The tension between living for today and looking for tomorrow is one of the realities of the followers of Christ. So we must be prepared for the challenges that lie ahead of us. New technologies are making our lives more convenient, but they also make us more dependent on those conveniences.  We will and are finding ourselves living in a very different world from the one into which we were born.

The signs of the last days the Hebrew prophets told us to watch out for are all around us. These include:

• Famines and outbreaks of plagues and pestilences;
• Unusual and violent weather;
• An increase in earthquakes and extreme weather patterns;
• A tremendous and rapid decline in moral standards and behavior;
• Persecution of believers;
• Secular humanism,
• The decline of nationalism and individual nation-states
• The rise of global governance,
• An unbelievable increase in the amount of human knowledge,
• Jerusalem being a burdensome stone for all nations;
• Wars and rumors of wars and ethnic conflicts,
• The frightening and sudden rise in lawlessness, corruption, including individual, corporate, governmental, and societal disregard for law and order;
• And economic chaos.

All these changes and challenges will confront us in the days ahead but preparing for Christ’s return is something each of us must do for ourselves. No one else can get our hearts ready to meet God. You and I must do that ourselves. Jesus urges us to do three things in view of His second coming:

1. We are to keep watching: But take heed to yourselves and be on your guard, lest your hearts be overburdened and depressed (weighed down) with the giddiness and headache and nausea of self-indulgence, drunkenness, and worldly worries and cares pertaining to the business of this life, and lest that day come upon you suddenly like a trap or a noose; For it will come upon all who live upon the face of the entire earth. Keep awake then and watch at all times (be discreet, attentive, and ready), praying that you may have the full strength and ability and be accounted worthy to escape all these things taken together that will take place, and to stand in the presence of the Son of Man (Luke 21:21:34-36 AMP).
2. We are to watch and be ready at all times: Watch therefore (give strict attention, be cautious and active), for you do not know in what kind of a day whether a near or remote one your Lord is coming. But understand this: had the householder known in what part of the night, whether in a night or a morning watch the thief was coming, he would have watched and would not have allowed his house to be undermined and broken into. You also must be ready therefore, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not expect Him (Matthew 24:42-44).
3. We are to remain faithful and serving: Who then is the faithful, thoughtful, and wise servant, whom his master has put in charge of his household to give to the others the food and supplies at the proper time? Blessed (happy, fortunate, and to be envied) is that servant whom, when his master comes, he will find so doing (Matthew 24:45-46).

How to Overcome the Onslaught of Wickedness

In meantime, what should we do to enable us to overcome the onslaught of wickedness that is increasing? First and foremost, we should spend quality time with God. This sets the tone of any other expenditure of time. We will not be at our best, emotionally or otherwise, if we do not daily cultivate our relationship with God by spending time in His presence.

R.T. Kendall reminds us, “When you stand before the Lord you may well regret how you used so much of your time, but I can safely promise that you will not regret a single minute you spent alone with God.”

Secondly, as Christians we are called not to conform to this world or let the world around us squeeze us into its own mold (see Romans 12:2). This is not easy as it is very difficult to be different. I read a story of a young police officer taking his final exams at Hendon Police College in North London. Here was one of the questions:

You are on patrol in outer London where an explosion occurs in a gas main in a nearby street. On investigation you find that a large hole has been blown in the footpath and there is an overturned van lying nearby. Inside the van there is a strong smell of alcohol. Both occupants-a man and a woman-are injured. You recognize the woman as the wife of your Divisional Inspector, who is presently away in the USA.

A passing motorist stops to offer you assistance and you realize that he is a man who is wanted for armed robbery. Suddenly a man runs out of a nearby house, shouting that his wife is expecting a baby and that the shock of the explosion has made the birth imminent. Another man is crying for help, having been blown into an adjacent canal by the explosion, and he cannot swim. Bearing in mind the provisions of the Mental Health Act, describe in a few words what actions you would take.

The officer thought for a moment, picked up his pen, and wrote: “I would take off my uniform and mingle with the crowd.”

We can sympathize with his answer. As a Christian, it is often easier to take off our Christian uniform and ‘mingle with the crowd’. It’s human to stand with the crowd; it’s divine to stand alone. It’s manlike to follow the people, to drift with the tide; it’s godlike to follow principles, to stem the tide. It’s natural to compromise conscience and follow social and religious fashions for the sake of gain and pleasure; it’s divine to sacrifice fashions on the altar of truth and beauty. Truth has been out of fashion since man changed his robe of fade-less light for a garment of faded leaves. Think about it for a moment!

Thirdly, human leaders will come and go. Some will be better, some worse and others will be what we deserve-a reflection of our own wickedness and sinfulness. But behind all human governments, God still reigns over the eternal destiny of mankind. Beyond this temporal world, God rules from His throne in heaven. He guides His children and overrules in the affairs of men and nations to accomplish His will and purposes. The Bible assures us, there is no authority except from God (by His permission, His sanction), and those that exist do so by God’s appointment (Romans 13:1).

Regardless of who our leaders are, we are commanded to offer petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings on behalf of all men.  For kings and all who are in positions of authority or high responsibility, that outwardly we may pass a quiet and undisturbed life and inwardly a peaceable one in all godliness and reverence and seriousness in every way (1Timothy 2:1-2).

Fourth, the church of Jesus Christ is still precious and our mission is still clear. The church stands as the salt and light of God in society. “We are to declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9). During this age and dispensation of grace, God is still working through His church to evangelize and disciple the world. Jesus gave us clear directions about what we are to be doing until He returns. He said:

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen (Matthew 28:19-20).

The church may flourish or be persecuted in these last days, but she is to be faithful to her mission until Jesus calls her home to glory as the Apostle Paul tells in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

God Did Not Call Us to Win

If you choose to become a person who is deeply committed to a cause, the world won’t understand you; you will be alone. Noah built the ark and voyaged alone except for his family. He preached 120 years and never had a convert, and yet he did not get discouraged.

Don Wildmon, the founder of the American Family Association (AFA) stood boldly against the increasing immorality in our society for years, until his resignation in 2010. The sad thing is that he often reported that some of his main critics came from within Christianity and many of them were pastors!

He said the typical letter he got from pastors read something like this: “Don, you are wasting your time. Evil has greatly multiplied since you began speaking out about it. You need to face up to the fact that you are losing the battle”. Don responded by saying:

God did not call me to win. He called me to stand. We will not win until Jesus returns.

The Lord also assessed the faithfulness of the servants mentioned in Matt. 25:14-30, not by their net gain but their percentage increase. The servant who gained five talents was not considered more faithful than the servant who had gained two talents although he gained more talents.

It is on their faithfulness, as expressed in the percentage increase achieved, that their judgment is based. Whether one man originally received five talents and another one two, this was not the basis on which their faithfulness is assessed. Rather, each of these servants was considered equally faithful because each had achieved the same increase.

It is easy to lose the joy of serving Christ when we take our eyes off him. The more we look away from God’s eternal purposes towards our own sacrifices, the more frustrated we will become.

Baruch’s Service to Jeremiah

Baruch was the scribe who recorded Jeremiah’s words on a scroll. He had long been serving this weeping and unpopular prophet, writing his book of struggles and judgments and eventually Baruch became overwhelmed with his trials. God told Baruch to take his eyes off himself and whatever rewards he thought he deserved. Listen to what Jeremiah told him:

The word that Jeremiah the prophet spoke to Baruch son of Neriah, when he had written these words in a book at the dictation of Jeremiah, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah, saying, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, unto you, O Baruch: You said, Woe is me now! For the Lord has added sorrow to my pain; I am weary with my groaning and sighing and I find no rest.

Say this to him: The Lord speaks thus: Behold, what I have built I will break down, and that which I have planted I will pluck up—and this means the whole land. And should you seek great things for yourself? Seek them not; for behold, I will bring evil upon all flesh, says the Lord, but your life I will give to you [as your only booty and as a snatched prize of war wherever you go (Jeremiah 45:1-5 AMP).

Sir William Smith, in his Dictionary of the Bible says, “Baruch plays a role familiar in normal human life today—that of having to take second place, having to play second fiddle.” He was of high birth; his grandfather Maaseiah was governor of Jerusalem in the days of King Josiah (II Chronicles. 34:8).

Considering all that Baruch was doing to make Jeremiah’s prophecies permanent by recording them for posterity, it is not surprising that he seems to have expected to share the prophet’s rewards. “To play a prominent part in the impending crisis, to be the hero of a national revival, to gain the favor of the conqueror he announced,” seems to have been his high ideal, his glorious dream.

When its realization was denied him, “he sank in despair at the seeming fruitlessness of his efforts” Yet Baruch is an excellent illustration of how little the gift of prophecy depended on men, and how completely it remained for God to grant or deny prominence and recognition to His perhaps equally deserving servants.

Each man’s eternal rewards are proportioned according to his faithfulness, and not according to his earthly recognition or the lack of it. Whether one man originally received five talents and another one two, this was not the basis on which their faithfulness is assessed. Our faithfulness is assessed in light of eternity.

God has always warned the world of coming judgments so that they might return to Him.  You will find if you read your Bible diligently, that God always precedes judgment with mercy and grace. Grace is a forerunner of judgment.

The Hebrew prophet Isaiah resolved:

My soul yearns for You O Lord in the night, yes, my spirit within me seeks You earnestly; for only when Your judgments are in the earth will the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness (uprightness and right standing with God) (Isaiah 26:9).

When we study the Old Testament, we find that the Israelites sought God, repented, and prayed when things were not going well, and God in His grace and mercy heard and answered their prayers. But in prosperous times they forgot God and sinned— time and time again.

He warned Noah of the coming flood (Genesis 6:13), Abraham and Lot of the future destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18: 17; 19:14), Jeremiah of the destruction of the temple and Babylonian captivity (Jeremiah 25: 1–11), Jonah of the destruction of Nineveh (Jonah 1: 2; 3: 4), and Amos of the downfall of Syria, Philistia, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab, Judah, and Israel (Amos 1–2).

Hosea warned Israel about her apostasy in her covenant relationship with God (Hosea 6: 4–10:15). The prophet Joel also warned the people to turn to God in repentance (Joel 1: 1–11). Various prophets were told in detail about the final events in connection with the captivities of the chosen people, and in every case the warnings were startlingly executed.

The Destruction of Jerusalem

The awful destruction of Jerusalem, in 70 A.D., which resulted in the extermination of a million Jews and the captivity of multitudes more, was preceded by the offer of divine mercy at the hands of the Son of God Himself. When Christ came to plead with the people in Jerusalem, it was their day of grace; but they mocked and laughed at Him. He then said,

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! (Matthew 23:37).

The Bible says that while Jesus was being led through the streets to His crucifixion, and although He was suffering so terribly, His heart was filled with compassion for these women who were weeping for Him. He saw their tears and He must have felt their broken hearts. He turned to them and said: “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children” (Luke 23:38).

The Lord saw what would happen in the not-too-distant future, around 70 AD in only about 40 years, Jerusalem and the Temple would be destroyed by the Roman army under Titus in a very cruel and ruthless manner. Jesus saw the terrible things that these women and their children would soon experience.  Before that, the Bible also makes it clear that Jesus wept for Jerusalem as He was returning to the city for the last time. Luke writes that:

Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation” (Luke 19:41-44 NKJV).

Forty years afterwards, thousands of people begged that their lives might be spared, and eleven hundred thousand perished in that city. Those who survived fled Jerusalem to a town known as Pella on the eastern side of Jordan. The Temple was completely destroyed and not one single stone was left upon another exactly as Jesus had prophesied.

In the course of that war, two million Jews were killed and one million were sold into captivity as slaves throughout the Roman Empire. The lesson to learn from is this: The people who gave heed to the words of Jesus saved their lives and those who didn’t lost theirs.

The Great Awakening in Britain

There is no more devastating judgment than war. Historians tell us that when God sent revival or a Great Awakening in Britain in the eighteenth century, He saved her from the bloodshed that had happened in France during the time of the French Revolution. Thousands of people repented of their sins and began to live holy lives, spreading a spiritual and social revival. It touched and changed approximately one million lives.

This awakening was truly a reformation of the heart. The impact that this Great Awakening through both George Whitefield and John Wesley had on this country and its people was unfathomable; it had far-reaching effects and lasted well over a hundred years.

In four waves, it crossed the Atlantic and brought conversion to 20% of the population in America. However, although Britain was spared mainly because of Wesley’s preaching, most of the great revivals in history came before the war, not during or after.

Great Awakening in America

The first great awakening in America preceded the Revolutionary War, which terribly devastated the cities and countryside of America. The Second Great Awakening preceded the Civil War, which was the most devastating war in America’s history.

In 1857-59 a great revival wave visited the United States, sweeping a half a million souls into the fountain of salvation. This revival swept over America in the east and on to the western cities, and over to the Pacific coast. It was God calling the nation to Himself. Immediately the terrible carnage of 1861–1865 the Civil War followed. Americans were baptized with the Holy Spirit in 1857, and in 1861, they were baptized in blood. It was a call of mercy preceding judgment.

Azusa and Welsh Revival

The Welsh Revival, which greatly impacted the whole world, but especially Europe, preceded World War I. In 1904 the Welsh revival began. It created almost desperate hunger worldwide for such a blessing. In Germany, the evangelicals organized conventions and prayer efforts. The cry was, “Lord do it again.” The revival visualized was a repeat of the Wesley-Whitefield-Edwards awakenings. But God wanted to do a new thing and waited.

In 1904– 1908, just six years before World War I, God poured out His Holy Spirit at Azusa Street in fulfilment of the prophecies of Joel that the Holy Spirit would be poured out once again. This Pentecostal outpouring spread through Florence Crawford to the Pacific Northwest of the United States, to the Midwest through William Durham, and eventually to New York through Elder Sturdevant.

The following leaders came to the Azusa Street Mission and spread the Pentecostal message in individual states: G. B. Cashwell in North Carolina, Glen A. Cook in Indiana, C. H. Mason in Tennessee, Samuel Saell in Arizona, and Rachael Sizelove in Missouri. And R. E. McAlister took the message to Ottawa, Canada.

In 1907 T. B. Barratt, a Methodist Norwegian pastor held revival meetings in Oslo, which attracted international attention. Jonathan Paul from Germany came to those revival meetings and was convinced this was truly the work of the Holy Spirit.

He began experimental services for the baptism in the Spirit, which drew a mixed multitude of wonder seekers, many of dubious religious stock. That same year he returned from Oslo to start revival meetings in the city of Kassel in Germany, the result of which was the formation of a German Pentecostal Denomination.

In 1908 T. B. Barratt, on tour in the United States during that time, took the message in Monkwearmouth, Sunderland in England, and the people were filled with the Holy Spirit and they spoke in tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

By 1909 the outpouring of the Holy Spirit was reaching the whole of Europe and spreading throughout the world. The message spread to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, France, and Germany. However, things did not proceed well in Germany, and two experienced Pentecostal women brought from Norway to help went home disgusted.

The Berlin Declaration (Die Berliner Erklarung)

That same year in 1909 the revival prompted the evangelical churches in Germany to a meeting in Berlin to discuss the disputed manifestations of the Holy Spirit. They issued a statement, known as the Berlin Declaration, a theological statement by fifty-six leading evangelical theologians that condemned the Pentecostal experience.

The declaration stated that the Pentecostal movement was “not from above, but from below,” and that speaking in tongues, healing miracles, and all manifestations of this revival were of the devil. This short document was merely assertive and contained not a single argument, scriptural or otherwise. Most German evangelicals, under threat of disfellowship, had to toe the line it laid down. Thus the Declaration rooted itself deeply and bore bitter fruit.

This history of speaking in tongues from the beginning of the first day of the twentieth century is full of spiritual significance. It has produced the greatest soul-saving witness in the entire Christian age. However, the evangelical world conjured up a real fear of tongues, and leaders massed their weight against it. That was tragic and had far-reaching consequences.

“Enlightenment” and the Two World Wars

What happened after that is either a coincidence or something else entirely. The witness of the Holy Spirit in believers’ lives was for the most part silenced and God’s Word became a human theory rather than the living, breathing revelation of the eternal Triune God.

Since then, Western thinking has been dominated by secular and godless theories. Satan has planted agents in the highest educational establishments and even theological seminaries. Everywhere the effects have been frightening. The biblical grounds of morality are being destroyed. Without any inner light, each decade ever since has brought a worse wave of heathenism, evil for evil’s sake destruction, and even murder for the sheer pleasure of it, both by governments and devil-inspired individuals.

Anti-Christian concepts have destroyed the spiritual backbone of nation after nation, beginning with Europe, where the Bible-doubting cult of intellectualism was hatched during the eighteenth century with the so-called Higher Criticism or Enlightenment, which spawned the evils of revolution and war.

Along with the higher criticism movement that had destroyed the concept of divine revelation, this event spiritually prepared the way for Hitler and the Nazis. Subsequently, the German church and most of Europe gave the world the bloodiest century in the history of humankind.

The hills and valleys of this continent are still stained with crimson from more than 50 million lives lost in two world wars and a set of related conflicts. Most historians find it hard to believe that Europe will ever fully recover from this setback.

God had sent revival, but it was rejected by millions of biblical Christians. Apostolic-style revival made its own way mainly without evangelical encouragement. When George Jeffreys, the greatest, and earliest of British Pentecostal evangelists went through the United Kingdom like a flame of fire, warnings against him went out from almost every church pulpit.

In Britain’s second-largest city Birmingham, ten thousand people received Christ, and one thousand testimonies of healing were received, yet a leading free churchman tried to organize a counter-attraction against him.  That position only changed when the era of charismatic renewal began in the 1950s and ‘60s. The nations, which could have been swept by revival if the moving of the Spirit in this new way had been accepted by evangelicals, were swept by war.

What’s the Main Lesson?

True even in our time, mercy rejected means judgment, and on a corresponding scale. In all of the history of God’s world, there has always been first the offer of divine mercy, then judgment following. The prophets ceased not day and night to faithfully warn Israel, but their tears and entreaties, for the most part, were in vain. As Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke puts it,

These prophets of Israel often spoke to the whole nation. The New Testament prophet does not. The Hebrew prophets, before Christ, spoke to the nation as God’s people, and the Christian prophet speaks to the church as God’s people. No New Testament figure after John the Baptist went as Jeremiah or Amos did with a commission to address national affairs.

In the time of the kings of Israel some prophets, such as Nathan, were retained in some kind of official capacity for this purpose of national guidance. Samuel and the charismatic judges acted as national leaders, but there is nothing like this in the Christian dispensation.

The voice of God to the nations today comes through the whole body of the church. What Isaiah was to Israel, the whole church is to Britain, Germany, or America. The church’s existence, way of life, and principles of service should be a constant challenge to the ways of nations.

The world is at a tipping point by virtually every measure. We are now witnessing a worldwide political, moral and social bankruptcy where America has become an empire of lies, and where ‘truth-tellers’ are guilty of treason.

And so, as we anticipate the coming revival, which is already assuming rapidly worldwide proportions, we wonder if the judgment will follow mercy, like other times. And judgment in proportion to the mercy extended. The good news is, that God is holding up His justice because of His mercy and because a Savoir died.

It is only by grace that we are saved, and that is why Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord (see Genesis 6:8). No one was ever saved in any other way other than by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

American history shows that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, parents were the primary teachers of their children. Education was not the responsibility of the government, but primarily placed upon the fathers.

Moral values, reading, writing, and eventually some sort of vocational training were the main educational tools in the early American home schools. The Bible was the primary textbook in most homes and served as the motivation for acquiring literacy skills and children were exposed to a variety of subjects and given the gift of time, space and opportunity to do more where their interests lied.

Young people were introduced to skilled trades, engineering disciplines, entrepreneurship, invention, and encouraged to work with their hands and their minds so that they would experience the joy of self reliance. We’ve now lost the true meaning of being educated. So the question is:

What is an Education?

To educate means to bring out, to develop the intellectual, moral, and religious faculties of the soul. Charlotte Mason (1842–1923) was a British educator who invested her life in improving the quality of the educational system in England in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Her educational methods, which are widely used among homeschoolers, are centered on the idea that education is an atmosphere, a discipline, and a life.

By suggesting that education is an atmosphere, Charlotte meant the atmosphere of the surroundings in which the child grows up. A child absorbs a lot from his or her home environment, and that atmosphere makes up one-third of a child’s education. She knew that the child breathes the atmosphere emanating from their parents, which eventually rules their own lives.

By discipline Charlotte meant the discipline of good habits and especially habits of character in a child’s life, which make up another third of his or her education.

She compared good habits to railroad tracks that parents lay down and upon which the child may travel with ease into their adult life. It rests with the parent to consider well the tracks over which the child should travel with profit and pleasure.

Lastly, by a describing it as life, she believed that we should give children living thoughts and ideas, instead of dry, factual concepts. For example, her students used living books rather than dry textbooks.

She preferred books written with a passion for the topic, books that were alive, engaging, and a beautiful literary style while communicating great ideas rather than mere facts.

She believed the size of the book not as important as the content and style. She emphasized the priority Bible lessons should have in our curriculum: “Their Bible lessons should help them realize in early days that the knowledge of God is the principal knowledge, and, therefore, that their Bible lessons are their chief lessons.

She also emphasized treating each child uniquely as a person—a human being not a human doing or as a container into which information is dumped.

Charlotte believed that all children should receive a broad education, which she compared to spreading a feast of great ideas before them.

Susan Schaeffer Macaulay, another mentor of the modern homeschool movement, expressed a strong disapproval of the modern approach to education, noting:

How colorfully and scientifically our generation talks down to the little child! What insipid, stupid, dull stories are trotted out! And we don’t stop there. We don’t respect the children’s thinking or let them come to any conclusions themselves!

We ply them with endless questions, the ones we’ve thought up, instead of being silent and letting the child’s questions bubble up with interest. We tire them with workbooks that would squeeze out the last drop of anybody’s patience.

We remove interesting books and squander time on “reading skill testing,” using idiotic isolated paragraphs which no one would dream of taking home to read.

Dr. Ruth Beechick, a former teacher and professor of education, in her book, You Can Teach Your Child Successfully, pointed out that presenting our students with information that is “predigested, pre-thought, pre-analyzed, and pre-synthesized…deprives children of the joy of original thought.”

And Neil Postman asserted in his book, The End of Education that “knowledge is often presented as the accumulation of facts, dates, times, places—trivializing the pursuit of knowledge to the extent that “there is no sense of the frailty or ambiguity of human judgment, no hint of the possibilities of error. Knowledge is presented as a commodity to be acquired, never as a human struggle to understand, to overcome falsity, to stumble toward truth.”

Macaulay and Charlotte both believed “Boys and girls must have time to invent episodes, carry on adventures, live heroic lives, lay sieges and carry forts, even if the fortress be an old armchair; and in these affairs the elders must neither meddle nor make.” As John Ratzenberger rightly said, “We built this nation guided by our imaginations and the skills we learned from our elders.”In his testimony to Congress House Committee on small business, he said,

Manufacturing is the Backbone of Western Civilization

This great country of ours, this land we call the United States of America was founded and nurtured on 2 basic guiding principles: Freedom and the Ability to use that freedom to build the finest civilization yet seen on earth.

We built this nation guided by our imaginations and the skills we learned from our elders…. There are close to a million jobs available right now in small businesses around the country that rely on people with mechanical common sense skills that we’ve stopped offering in our public schools three generations ago.

The fate of Western Civilization rests entirely on our ability to make things. The world would get along just fine without actors, reality stars, musicians and sports celebrities……Think, however, what would happen if all the skilled trades people from carpenters and plumbers to farmers and truck drivers decided not to show up for work tomorrow. We, the entire nation, would instantly grind to a halt causing problems that would take generations to overcome.

So why then have we stopped teaching our children the joys of crafting something out of nothing? About fifteen years ago while visiting a number of factories and filming the different ways companies make things for my TV show “John Ratzenberger’s Made in America”, I realized that there were hardly any workers under the age of forty in any of the facilities.

After talking with dozens of CEOs and plant foremen in every state, I was made aware of the fact that nationwide, the manual arts, that is: wood shop, metal shop, auto repair shop and even home economics were taken out of the middle and high school curriculums about 35 years ago.

Not only did that result in a dropout rate back then of 30 percent instantly but it left us with a skilled essential workforce whose average age today is 58 years old.

The most repeated complaint today from potential employers is that it’s impossible to train someone for any of the jobs available when they graduate from high schools everywhere without the ability to even read inches and fractions from a simple ruler.

The big worrisome question then is this: How do we reinstate the necessary programs in our schools to give our children a familiarity of the tools that built and maintain our civilization and way of life?

If the average age of the people that keep our nation and the nation’s infrastructure working is 58 years old, then how long do we have before it all stops?”

I also submit that we do away with the term “blue collar worker” and replace it with “essential worker,” because that’s exactly what they are… We had better get busy introducing our youngsters to the vital art of using tools and the joy of self reliance.

Ratzenberger’s sombre view of American education is echoed by Mike Rowe who also gave his Testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, about the failures of the American school system:

In high schools, the vocational arts have all but vanished. We’ve elevated the importance of “higher education” to such a lofty perch that all other forms of knowledge are now labelled “alternative.”

Millions of parents and kids see apprenticeships and on-the-job-training opportunities as “vocational consolation prizes,” best suited for those not cut out for a four-year degree…..

In a hundred different ways, we have slowly marginalized an entire category of critical professions, reshaping our expectations of a “good job” into something that no longer looks like work.

Greek Work Philosophy

This negative attitude towards manual labour came from Greek philosophy, and it is no wonder that the apostle Paul‘s message to the Greeks was plagued with numerous problems.

For instance, Acts 17:21-30 describes a sermon preached by Paul on Mars Hill auditorium, the famous place of discussion of the judges and learned men of Athens.

Athens was the principle city of that part of Greece, which was at that time a commonwealth of its own. It was one of the most noted places in the whole world for learning, philosophy, and human wisdom.

It continued for so many years until the Romans conquered Greece, when its reputation began to diminish. Rome borrowed the learning of science and the arts. However, at the time of Christ and the apostles, it was still a place where the most wise and learned men in the world gathered for debate.

When Paul started preaching, he was called a babbler, for preaching Christ crucified which was foolishness to the Greeks (1 Corinthians 1:23).

Paul had all the credentials to debate with these philosophers; he was an educated rabbi taught by the finest scholar of his day, Gamaliel. He probably excited their curiosity because they loved discussing new intellectual ideas.

In spite of his great learning, Paul was taught a trade, as every good Jewish boy was. His trade was manufacturing tents in addition to being an evangelist, preacher, and church planter.

In 2 Thessalonians 3, Paul says when he did this work of tent-making; he was serving as a model of the disciplined lifestyle that should characterize Christians. In fact, he strongly commands certain sluggards in the church “to work in quietness with their hands, and earn their own food and other necessities.” (2 Thessalonians 3:12)

Again in his letter to Titus, he again reiterates this admonition, “And let our own people really learn to apply themselves to good deeds (to honest labour and honourable employment), so that they may be able to meet necessary demands whenever the occasion may require and not be living idle and uncultivated and unfruitful lives.” (Titus 3:12 AMP)

However, in Greek society, if you worked with your hands you were lower down the social scale than those who worked with their heads and were ‘pen-pushers’-an attitude that, sadly, the West has inherited.

Since Western civilization is based on Greek and Roman thinking, it also explains much about the education system today. But in the Bible jobs such as tent-making and fishing were well respected. So the Bible attaches dignity to manual labour. After all, the Lord Jesus Himself had worked as a carpenter.

In his book, The Closing of the American Mind, Alan Bloom decries the deterioration of our schools, particularly as it applies to the solid content of education.  In the U.K morals have faded and are now being replaced by a feeble attempt at creating “British Values.”

Another writer by the names of John Chancellor had this to say about the education system in America:

If the United States runs out of scientists and engineers by the turn of the century, who will replace them? Today’s thirteen year-olds? Hardly. The Department of Education in 1989 helped fund a study of the mathematics and science skills of thirteen year-olds in several countries. The American children came in dead last, with lower scores than the Spanish, British, Irish, Canadian and South Korean children.

South Korean thirteen-year olds were first. The comparison was devastating. South Korea is a developing country, nearly destroyed by war in the 1950’s with a population that was mainly poor farmers a few decades ago.

The United States is an economic giant, but suffering from a softening of the brain. The Council on Competitiveness estimates that sixty thousand mathematics and science teachers in our high schools are not fully qualified to do their jobs. 

Again in 1989, Chancellor reports,

The Secretary of Education, Lauro F. Cavazos, reported that since 1985, American high school students had flat or declining scores on college entrance examinations and an unchanged dropout rate. One out of every four high school students does not finish school—close to one million young people.

Another fourth-another million—who are graduated are functionally illiterate when they get their diplomas. Half the eighteen-year-olds in this country today have failed to master basic language, mathematics, and analytical skills. A million dropouts here, a million functional illiterates there, every year.

Can these attitudes voiced by writers almost two decades ago be thought of as isolated prejudices by those who don’t want to accept the facts?

Ann Herzer reports that “the teachers who dare to object are accused of being negative, non-cooperative, not innovative, and eventually fired or driven out of the programmed system.” Leading her to conclude that:

Unless the objectives of modern education change, they may be concisely and accurately described as the ultimate destruction of the human individual as a person; the eradication of all the traditions, ideals, and moral concepts learned from home and church; the destruction of the family as a constructive unit in society; and a complete transformation of the individual from a self-reliant-independent, and one with individual initiative, to just another number in the master record book.

The individual will have been bred, reared, and taught by every deceitful device possible to deny and reject responsibility for himself, and to transfer that responsibility to the group, that is, the State. This is the state of modern education under the deceitful, Utopian, One-World plan known by several names, but today titled “Common-Core.”

And what is Common-Core? The Lord willing,  in our next post we shall talk about the history of the public school system and how this modern concept called Common-Core has been introduced into the education system.

The increase in church fires and bombings should not be dismissed; it is a precursor to the increasing global annihilation of Christians. The Communist New World Order globalists know exactly what they are doing and that’s why few of them has said a word to condemn these attacks on Christians. Instead, two of them tweeted that those murdered were “Easter worshipers” not Christians.

A Communist has written, ‘The only people who can help the world in its present condition are the Christians, but they do not realize it.

The great ideological motivator of persecution against Christians is Communism. The communists are busy forming cells. What are Christians doing? We are busy building projects and fighting against each other. The struggle is between cessationists and continuationists.

Almost a quarter century ago, something remarkable happened. Religious leaders were oblivious to the Russian revolution that was about to take place. It was reported that on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, conferences were being held in two hotels on the same Moscow Street.

At the consultation sponsored by the Orthodox Church, clergy vestments were the principle agenda item. In another meeting, Vladimir Lenin and friends were finalizing plans to overthrow the existing regime.

Jan Pit in his book Persecution: It Will Never Happen Here writes:

During the appalling Vietnam War, church leaders from a certain Christian group held their annual conference. The southern Vietnamese city resembled a fortress. There were soldiers everywhere, barricades, and a terrifying collection of weaponry. Daily attacks were being made on the city by the communist Viet Cong, yet the pastors continued to discuss the various activities which they would embark upon in the ensuing years.

They even adopted a ten-year plan. Despite all the evidence, no one there thought it possible for South Vietnam to be overthrown. All were convinced the country would remain open to mission work. The church remained unprepared.

The churches in the Western nations are in a similar situation. They are going about with their business, as usual, ignoring the impending distress and persecution that could come to Christians.

What is most extraordinary is that despite the systematic persecution that generally prevails against Christians in Communist nations, Christianity is nonetheless flourishing in some Marxist/communist Western countries.

There are four ways churches are likely to respond as the pressure comes from government or other sources:

1. The church closes;
2. They attempt to co-exist with government regulations;
3. They resist and become a protest church; or
4. They go underground.

Sprit-led Leadership

Spirit-led leadership is most important when the church is facing a hostile situation. The type of church leadership which is widely accepted in Western society today, with one man at the centre of all activity, cannot continue in a repressive society. It is easy for the authorities to remove the key man and stop that church’s impact.

Open Doors with Brother Andrew described what happens when a country suddenly falls to Communism just as it happened in Cambodia and Mozambique:

By the time communists take over a country, they have already identified the key Christian leaders on the local as well as national level. Anyone who was a full-time Christian worker before the takeover must assume he is a “marked” man.

In Vietnam, even Christian businessmen who were not full-time Christian workers, but who had exercised lay leadership, were marked. These people do not have the option of going underground. They must stand openly or face the consequences.

In the period of confusion that immediately follows a takeover, some small groups of Christians may be able to move to a different locality and become underground churches, but they must leave their “institutional” forms behind. Then through the Holy Spirit leaders will be raised up.

House Churches

The early church worshipped in the temple, synagogues, lecture halls, open forums, riverbanks, and ships, as well as homes for worship. The New Testament specifically refers to them as “house meetings.”

Tell Priscilla and Aquila hello. They have been my fellow workers in the affairs of Christ Jesus. In fact, they risked their lives for me, and I am not the only one who is thankful to them; so are all the Gentile churches. Please give my greetings to all those who meet to worship in their home. Greet my good friend Epaenetus. He was the very first person to become a Christian in Asia (Romans 16:3-5).

The churches here in Asia send you their loving greetings. Aquila and Priscilla send you their love, and so do all the others who meet in their home for their church service (1 Corinthians 16:19).

Please give my greeting to the Christian friends at Laodicea, and to Nymphas, and to those who meet in his home (Colossians 4:15).

To the beloved Apphia, Archippus our fellow soldier, and to the church in your house (Philemon 1:2).

So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart (Acts 2:46).

And daily in the temple, and in every house, they did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ (Acts 5:42).

How I kept back nothing that was helpful, but proclaimed it to you, and taught you publicly and from house to house (Acts 20:20).

Greet the brethren who are in Laodicea, and Nymphas and the church that is in his house (Colossians 4:15).

And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting (Acts 2:2; see Romans 12:4-8 Titus 1:1-16 1 Corinthians 14:26 Matthew 18:20).

Today one-third of Christians in the world operates (worship?) in secrecy with the threat of extermination. Believers may have to worship alone, in their homes, secretly, or in various ways corporately. In his one of his Personal Updates, Chuck Missler wrote:

I think that real believers will increasingly meet in homes. That day may come that they don’t arrive all at the same time, but drift in singly, so as not to call attention to themselves. We are locked in a very serious spiritual struggle in the West.

Richard Wurmbrand was arrested by the secret police because he was leading Christian worship and witnessing–both of which were deemed to be illegal under the Communistic regime of Romania. In his book, Tortured for Christ, he wrote:

It is not possible to give a course on the church underground, in a short time. I would urge you to put this question before your synod, before your denomination, and to ask absolutely that courses on the underground church be introduced.” …..We have to make the preparations now, before we are imprisoned. In prison you lose everything…..Nobody resists who has not renounced the pleasures of life beforehand.

When Idi Amin banned Christian sects and denominations in Uganda, people had to decide whether to join official churches or form house fellowships. Within days of the ban, thousands of secret house fellowships had sprung up across the land. In the midst of severe persecution, Kefa Sempangi’s congregation, one of the largest churches in Uganda at that time closed suddenly. Sempangi says,

The Redeemed Church as we had known it had come to an end. After one of the last raids it was unlikely that we could continue to hold public services. We would have to take the church underground. We would have to develop a network of invisible leadership and begin meeting again in individual homes. The prospect of breaking up our 14,000 member church in this way seemed to us an overwhelming task and out of fatigue and perhaps even fear we all agreed that a discussion of a detailed plan should wait the following evening.

Unfortunately, that detailed plan was never discussed, as night came on when no man could work. Some of the leaders of this church would not see each other on earth again. Because of this persecution, church leaders had to flee, some went to the world preaching the gospel of love and forgiveness, and others started house churches.

According to Don McAlvan:

The Holy Spirit may lead different people and churches to respond differently. There are examples from Scripture of people who reacted in diverse ways. The House Church movement has been the means of great growth of the Body of Christ in China. When all churches were officially closed as a result of the Cultural Revolution in 1996, people began meeting in homes.

The number has varied through the years with only five or six people in some, hundreds in others, and thousands in a few. Denominational lines are gone so that the only question asked is “Do you belong to Jesus?” Sometimes believers came together at the same time with no prior announcement. They reported, “The Lord Himself told us to come.”

As More Than Conquerors describes:

If the believer, because of fear, cuts himself off from all contact with other Christians, Satan will have won. It is called divide and conquer. A Christian cannot survive victoriously for long if he is spiritually cut off from fellowship, worship, and teaching. When physical isolation comes, the believer must turn to a deeper spiritual fellowship with Christ.

This must be coupled with increased alertness to look for other Christians. Often a simple word, the humming of a few bars of a hymn, or the almost casual making of a Christian symbol, can be used to make contact with another secret believer…. It may be necessary for a believer to lead someone else to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ to end his isolation!

Richard Wurmbrand says:

Some regimes come to power without having real power….The initial situation does not last long. During that time they infiltrate the churches, putting in their men in leadership. They find out the weaknesses of pastors….They explain that they would make those weaknesses known. Then, at a certain moment the great persecution begins. In Romania such a clamp-down happened in one day. All the Catholic bishops went to prison, along with innumerable priests, monks, and nuns. Then many Protestant pastors of all denominations were arrested. Many died in prison.

As an aside, this frightening thought from Francis Schaeffer is offered:

The danger in regard to the rise of authoritarian government in America is that Christians will be still as long as their own religious activities, evangelism and lifestyles are not disturbed…. But let us be realistic in another way, too. If we Christians do not speak out as authoritarian governments grow within or come from outside, eventually we or our children will be the enemy of society and the state.

No truly authoritarian government can tolerate those who have a real absolute by which to judge its arbitrary absolutes and who speak out and act upon that absolute.

If what some Christians leaders are saying is true, sooner or later the church must face two alternatives—social-political compromise with anti-Christian forces or incur the wrath of a controlled political-religious hierarchy.

Since these alternatives have already been posed in many parts of the world, there is no reason to believe that the area where we live will continue to escape their realities. Let us then, as Christians, prepare ourselves now and be sure that our children have a clear example before them if their turn comes.

Consider the following testimony of the saintly Dutch woman, Corrie Ten Boom:

There are some among us teaching that the Christians will be able to escape all this. Could this be the false teachers Jesus was warning us to expect in the latter days? Most of them have little knowledge of the persecution that is already going on across the world. I have been in countries where the saints are already suffering terrible persecution.

In China the Christians were told, “Don’t worry, before the tribulation comes, you will be translated—raptured.” Then came a terrible persecution. Millions of Christians were tortured to death. Later I heard a Bishop from China say, sadly, “We have failed. We should have made the people strong for persecution rather than telling them Jesus would come first. Turning to me, he said, “You still have time. Tell the people how to be strong in times of persecution, how to stand when persecution comes—to stand and not faint.

It is surely better to warn believers to be ready for the Great Tribulation and then discover that they will not go through it than to tell them they need not to be prepared for it and then find that they should have been.

What is very frightening is that persecution of Christians is most likely to come from lukewarm believers as the writer mentions in this book. There will be betrayals, love growing cold due to multiplied lawlessness, division, complacency, and lukewarmness. The cares pertaining to the business of this life will chock out the seed of the Word of God in the hearts of most Christians.

Surveillance Police State

This will be a time to become accustomed to divulging little information and keeping silent. This is an area that is very difficult especially for Americans. It is the American way to help, to talk freely, and believe the best of people. Unfortunately, Americans are also easily deceived and manipulated.

Americans don’t want to believe that their own state is capable of doing the most despicably evil acts known to mankind. However, as freedom is lessened, it will become more important to divulge little information about people and activities. I believe God is going to allow human wickedness to come to its full expression. If we are still alive, we will see real, innate evil manifested with ugliness and fearfulness hardly imaginable.

We already live in a surveillance police state where telephone conservations are monitored and certain words trigger “bugging.” Many technological tools like smart phones are suggested as possible tools for monitoring.

Every unnecessary word spoken can endanger someone. Useless talking is some countries means prison and death for one’s brother. “You cannot learn to be silent the very moment the country is taken over. You have to learn to be silent from the moment of your conservation,” writes Wurmbrand.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn relates that the one who had been his greatest persecutor, the one who denounced him, was his own former wife. It is written in the book of Ecclesiastes not to tell the secrets of your heart, even to your wife…The secretary to Solzhenitsyn was put under such pressure by the communists….that she finished by hanging herself. If Solzhenitsyn had kept silent, this would not have happened.

This is not suggesting lying. A person can withhold information and not divulge information without being untruthful. There is a difference between openness and being honest. As Wurmbrand wrote in God’s Underground:

A brother had been taken to the police and was asked, “Do you still gather at meetings?” He answered, “Comrade Captain, prayer meetings are forbidden now.” To this the captain replied, “Well, it is good that you conform with this. Just go.” The brother had not said that he conformed; he had not said that he did not go to meetings.

When Wurmbrand was asked about meetings of the underground believers, he knew he would be risking danger for them if he answered. “Where the results of resisting are beatings and tortures, you have to take them upon yourself, even if you die.”

During World War II, posters around America and England warned: “Loose lips sink ships.” The same applies to believers under persecution or functioning in the underground church. Be very circumspect with what you say, with the information you give out.

Use a “need to know” strategy, and not only impart that information which is essential and only to those who are highly trusted. Even children and spouses should not be burdened with the information they don’t have a “real need to know.

Concluding Thoughts

We have to prepare for persecution. This is the fundamental purpose of the book of Revelation being written to us. Its message comes across loud and clear to Christians who are suffering for their faith, encouraging them to ‘endure and overcome’, and thus keeping their names in the book of life and their inheritance in the new creation.

Jesus predicted universal hatred of His followers before the end of the age (Matthew 24:9). So we all need to be prepared. If this is not already happening in the West or in your country, it will certainly come. And so will Jesus, before whom cowards will be ‘shamefully exposed’ (Revelation 16:15) and condemned to hell (Revelation 22:8).

 

Please I am writing this out of a true sense of deep compassion and love and not from any other motive. God alone is the author and finisher of our faith. The whole work of sanctification and every good word, work, or thought found in me, is the effect of His power and abundant grace.

Without Him, I can do nothing. In the strictest sense, ‘He works in us to will and to do according to His own good pleasure and satisfaction’ (Philippians 2:12). How amazing it is that we can talk so much about men’s power and goodness or even their sins when, if God did not hold us back every moment, we should be devils incarnate!

Most people are unaware of the controlling spirit because they are ignorant of spiritual warfare. The Bible tells us we are not fighting against flesh and blood (Ephesians 6:12). Therefore, a controlling spirit is not a person but a spirit living in a person. It is a high-level intelligent spirit that uses human beings to accomplish its purpose.

When you have this spirit operating on you, you will have feelings of revenge, anger, bitterness, unforgiveness, malice, fear, jealousy, envy, pride, and self-condemnation. You will control, manipulate, slander, falsely accuse, gossip, and use character assassination tactics to destroy others.

Here are the following suggested steps for being delivered from this spirit.

1. Know the Lord intimately

People who have a controlling spirit tend to be emotionally dependent. They have a great inner drive to be connected with someone or to have a special relationship with a particular person in order to heal their wounded self-esteem.

While it is normal to need other people, God has placed deep within every human spirit a heart cry. He made us for Himself, and our heart is restless until it finds its place of rest in Him. He also designed us to be relational people with a longing for fellowship. But unless we allow our heavenly Father to fill that core need, our identity will become like that of an orphan.

We will drift along, desperately looking to others to meet our needs and adopt us. For such wounded souls, God is the healing balm. God gently woos and draws us to the only place where our deep hunger can be satisfied. Our misplaced longings can only find true rest in God the Father. As the Holy Spirit bears witness that God is our Father, He will also attest that we are His children (Romans 8:16).

We will be given a spirit of adoption, by which we are enabled to cry “Abba, Daddy!” To know Him as Father is to love and accept His authority over us. Our dependency then falls on Him, rather than on another person. You are His child and no longer a slave to fear. Sing along and worship Jesus before you continue reading.

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2.  Reject the Spirit of Fear

A spirit of fear is a sign of spiritual enslavement. It leads someone into being subservient to the control of others. They will be tempted to view authority as being tyrannical. Those with a Jezebel spirit have a history of enslaving fears of neglect, of rejection, of being punished, of loneliness, and perhaps of missing the will of God.

All fears of being dominated or controlled must be brought to the Cross. Recent fears, as well as those rooted in childhood, must be reckoned as dead on the Cross (Romans 6:11) in order for new life to begin (2 Corinthians 5:17). To begin our healing, we must ask God to show us the circumstances that led to opening our soul to fear. We must—through faith—cast down what the Bible calls “vain imaginations.” By faith, we need to cleanse ourselves of fear and ask other Christians who are free from fear to stand with us in agreement.

We also need to ask God to fill us with love, power, and sound reasoning because His perfect love casts out our fear (1 John 4:18). When our mind is ruled by our spirit, we will focus on the virtues that spring forth from the Lord. We will be able to concentrate on that which is true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of a good report, virtuous and praiseworthy (Philippians 4:8).

3.  Overcome the Fear of Failure

When we avoid making decisions, our motive may lie rooted in self-condemnation and a sense of incompetence. We may never have been taught how to make responsible decisions. Or, we may feel incapable of making good decisions. If that’s the case, we may have been raised in a harsh and critical home were punishments for making mistakes outweighed the actual offenses. Hence, it seemed as if we could never do anything good enough! So, we avoid making decisions due to the fear of being penalized for making bad ones. To compensate, we acquire a mindset that anticipates failure.

We become afraid to take risks. Instead, we listen to the whispers in our head that predict eventual failure. Shying away from responsibility, we then grow up unable, indifferent, unmotivated, or disinterested in making decisions. To overcome a fear of failure, we will need to change how we think.

We will need to learn how to envision success, not failure. The healthier we become, the more we will be able to practice making good decisions. Remember, God is faithful to show His will to any who humbly seek Him and are willing to obey His will.

4.  Reject The Pitfall of Shame

Shame is the sense of feeling fundamentally bad, inadequate, defective, unworthy, or not measuring up to standards. Many need healing from a deep sense of shame. At some point in our life, all of us feel shame. But for those who have been damaged by a Jezebel spirit, shame will be a constant painful memory. They will doubt their ability to hear from God, as though they are eternally flawed or blemished.

They may believe that God is disgusted with them. Therefore, it may be helpful to remind them that all is not lost. Instead, a great lesson has been learned. It’s often at our lowest point that we discover the wonder of God’s amazing and profound grace.

Grace is contrary to shame. While shame brings depression, grace brings hope and light-heartedness. Grace refers to God’s undeserved kindness directed toward us. It is unearned and unrepayable. Through God’s grace, we are able to bond with our loving heavenly Father who longs to lavish His great love upon us. As we embrace His Son Jesus, who is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, He calls us His “sons and daughters.”

When we journey through the “dark night of the soul,” we may be able to hear God whisper to us, “I love and accept you. The plans I have for you are for good and not for evil” (Jeremiah 29:11). The love of Jesus found your soul worth dying for! Worship Jesus.

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5. Reconcile with Family and Friends

Forgiveness does not mean excusing someone’s behavior. Rather it acknowledges the actual offense and then chooses not to hold that offense against the person. When Jesus Christ died on the Cross, His blood was the payment for our sins so that we could be truly forgiven.

Likewise, by extending forgiveness to someone, we mirror the depth of God’s forgiveness to us. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you (Ephesians 4:31-32).

Those with a Jezebel controlling spirit will need to ask forgiveness of individuals they have wronged or hurt, and leaders whose church or ministry they have maligned. They may want to ask God to help in making their confession. They may want to communicate that they realize their actions were intolerable.

As they feel some of the pain they inflicted on someone, they will be able to ask sorrowfully for the person’s forgiveness. They may feel compelled to make amends with their loved ones. Such reconciliation will bring about restoration and greater spiritual release.

As a result, curses spoken by the spirit of Jezebel are rendered void and powerless. The process of forgiveness will take time. They will need time to recuperate and re-enter old routines. Family chores that have been left undone will need to be resumed, not begrudgingly but in an attitude of gratefulness. This kindness will help restore healthy relationships. Godly counselors can also be beneficial in the healing process.

I have been asked several times by people who have been terribly hurt and wounded by this spirit what to do especially if those that hurt them are family members or close relatives? If you’ve been cursed and abused by people being used by the spirit, give your wounded soul enough time to heal. It can take months or even years for your soul to fully heal. You will have deep hurts. The fact that people around you cannot see what you are seeing, adds to these hurts.

If it is a family member, seek God…He will show you what to do. Spend a lot of time in the presence of God alone. This creates growth in your personal relationship with your creator and gives the Holy Spirit a chance to heal you and comfort your wounded soul. This is one single action that really helps me personally to recover from my past wounds.

It is the Holy Spirit who revealed this to you because you humbled yourself therefore you must let the Holy Spirit create in you a new nature full of His grace, love, and forgiveness towards those that have hurt you. Eat a humble pie or a bitter pill and forgive.

Forgiveness is the only way to healing. If you justify yourself and say you were wronged and you will not forgive, you will instead entertain resentment, hate, bitterness, and unforgiveness and legally invite unclean spirits to torture you until the day you forgive.

Remember forgiveness is unconditional, reconciliation is conditional-it depends largely on the other person. Our choice to forgive is a matter of our will. We must decide that we will walk the way of forgiveness. Once we make the choice. God inhabits our decision and empowers us to fulfill our commitment. If we do not make that choice, then God will not force us.

But once we make that commitment, he enters in–and He helps us. On our own, we cannot create a lasting powerful forgiveness. Only, as God activates our choice, as He enables us in this choice, can we effectively forgive. The choice to forgive opens a door, inviting God to do the work in our hearts. It is not our work; it is God’s work in us.

6.  Abstain From Praying Witchcraft and Soulish Prayers

When we do not submit ourselves to the Holy Spirit and seek His direction, our prayers are motivated by envy and self-seeking (mentioned in James 3:14) or by other fleshly attitudes, such as resentment, anger, hatred, criticism, or self-righteousness. The Holy Spirit will NOT and will NEVER endorse prayers that proceed from such demonic attitudes, nor will He present them before God the Father.

Inevitably, therefore, our praying degenerates into the James 3:15 “syndrome”: earthly-soulish-demonic. When we pray for our fellow believers, there are two soulish attitudes we must guard against: We must not accuse, and we must not seek to control. When we begin to play the role of accusers, we are following the pattern of satan, not of Christ. Satan’s main title-devil means slanderer or accuser.

In revelation 12:10 he is described as the one who accuses Christians day and night before God. He has been engaged in this task from time immemorial and he is an expert at it. He needs no help from Christians.

A person with a controlling spirit prays well-intentioned but misguided, accusatory, and condemnatory prayers. They are confused, have unrest, disharmony, rebellion and all sorts of evil and vile practices (James 3:15-16). Please whoever is reading this…go to chapters 3 and 4 of the book of James and study those two chapters prayerfully and let those words read your heart. James insists that genuine faith must produce fruits that are deserving and consistent with your repentance as a Christian, otherwise, you are deceiving yourself.

Our intercession for our fellow believers should follow the example based on the pattern of Jesus as described in Romans 8:33-34:

Who will bring any charge against God’s elect (His chosen ones)? It is God who justifies us declaring us blameless and putting us in a right relationship with Himself. Who is the one who condemns us? Christ Jesus is the One who died to pay our penalty, and more than that, who was raised from the dead, and who is at the right hand of God interceding with the Father for us.

Christ certainly sees our faults as believers more clearly than we see each other’s. Yet His intercession on our behalf does not result in condemnation, but in our justification. He does not establish our guilt, but our righteousness.  Shall we dare to bring a charge against those whom God has chosen? Or to condemn those whom God has chosen? Or to condemn those whom God has justified.

It is so sad that those who are closest to us can wound us the most, and it can also be deeply painful to love someone so powerfully with whom you disagree so profoundly. I know a person who told me a close relative boasts that she literally went to the Lord after they had a disagreement over their mum and prayed that his son would die.

The problem with that story is the person who claims to have been praying for the baby to die didn’t know whether the wife of her brother was pregnant. She only knew when her brother told her that they had a stillbirth and then she confirmed and was delighted God had answered her witchcraft prayers. These are siblings-same dad and mum!  How do you respond to such a person? They were deluded and grossly deceived by this controlling spirit.

Deception is to believe a lie and not realizing you have done so. That’s why if this spirit is in a family, it will end up destroying and poisoning the entire family to gain acceptance, love, power, and control. The Psalmist declares, ‘Poison under the lips will sharpen the tongue like serpents adders’ (Psalm 140:3).

Regardless of how a person has offended you, don’t ever pray accusatory, witchcraft, or demonic prayers for them. God doesn’t answer such prayers. That’s from the devil or another god –an idiot of your imagination. You will instead curse yourself because you cannot curse what God has blessed.

7.  Don’t Fear the Supernatural

Supernatural gifts are actually tools by which we attack the enemy’s camp. But a person with Jezebel spirit unknowingly disdains such supernatural gifts, and they inadvertently play into the enemy’s plans and they revert back to the old adage, “What we don’t know can’t harm us.”

Sadly, this overreaction will hinder a person under the influence of a Jezebel spirit from appreciating the endless variety of God’s supernatural gifts such as dreams and visions, deliverance from evil spirits, etc. They may regard anything beyond their five senses as being suspicious. They may feel uncomfortable during a deliverance process or worship service when God’s presence is powerfully manifested.

However, this reaction will only cause them to hold God at arm’s length. If you have an aversion to deliverance, ask God to remove any stronghold that you may have, and which blinds you to see the answer to your healing.

Our ability to embrace supernatural gifts is founded on knowing God as our loving heavenly Father. As a Father, God yearns to give good gifts to His children. When God manifests His presence supernaturally, we see His awesome glory and majestic splendor. He is a living God who dwells among an innumerable company of supernatural beings (Hebrews 12:22-24).

8.  Stop Controlling Your Situation and Others

Science tells that many people cannot see pictures in their minds like others can so don’t feel bad that you cannot see my dream. As an architect, I look at a blueprint and see a completed building; you see lines on a paper.

I am a driven man with a dream and a burden to build a Christian polytechnic. But sometimes I have to believe that it might not be God’s will for me. Why? Because I am not in control of my life. By the grace of God, I have, therefore, the comfortable assurance that He will direct my paths concerning this part of my service, as to whether I shall be occupied in it or not.

If you have a controlling Jezebel spirit, you might have an inborn personality trait that makes you demand to be in control and that means you will need to ask God to help you turn control to Him. Actually, you are not in control. Your temperament is controlling you to do the opposite of what anyone tells you to do, making you in reality not to be in control.

You need to work on your anger and temper, which you use to control other people and ask God to help you surrender your will to Him. In time, as your relationship with the Lord deepens, your spontaneity and childlike innocence will be restored. As you let go of trying to control others, you will stop trying to predict what others will do, and thereby, rediscover a childlike wonder, innocence, and peace when you lose control. Let’s worship Jesus now.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZNDD2qxJYo]

9. Trust Jesus Daily

When our needs for love go unmet, co-dependency and the impulse to “bend into” another person is bred. Instead of looking to another person who is limited and unreliable, we need to develop our spiritual well-being. Each day, we need to look to Jesus, who is sufficient to supply all our needs—emotional, physical, spiritual, and relational. He is the all-sufficient One! In Him resides the fullness of abundant life (John 1:4). Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths (Proverbs 3:5-6).

If you have this spirit operating in your life, your life and future are in your hands.  If you will endeavour to humble yourself and ask the Lord to forgive you, you will be at peace with yourself and with others, and you will understand and be able to deal with your toxic emotions with God’s help. But the question is when will you stop running from God? Before you crush, I hope.

10. Let’s Pray!

Those who have this menacing and very dangerous spirit may want to pray these words of repentance and deliverance along the journey toward wholeness:

Heavenly Father, I need Your Holy Spirit to help me not think and live according to my old ways. I place my childhood fears and bloodline curses behind me and ask You to cancel them. By faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, I choose not to be enslaved to them any longer!       

Today, I lay aside my fear of facing the pain from past friendships, romances, lovers, and relatives. I renounce the spirits of pride, bitterness, lying, self-exaltation, rebellion, witchcraft, and the occult. I choose to not walk in these any longer.

When I am tested by these deceiving spirits, I want to respond in godliness. God, please remove any mental strongholds and to help me think and see clearly. “I choose not to listen to other spiritual voices. Instead, I choose to listen to Your voice.

From this time forth, I will not trust in lying spirits nor the spirits who claim to offer me protection from evil. I close every door to Satan. I will not seek a false defence to shield myself from wrong, exploitation, or harm. I look to You, Lord Jesus and place my trust in You to protect me from the harm of well-meaning people and from demonic spirits. Jesus, I choose You to be my Saviour and Holy Spirit, I choose You to be my defender.

Lord Jesus Christ, please forgive my sins. I confess that I have not loved rightly. I have resented others. I now recognize this as sin and confess this to you now. I choose to forgive those who have hurt me. By Your blood, I forgive myself as You have forgiven me. I am sorry for my sins. I confess and renounce them, known and unknown.

I believe you died on the Cross for my sins, and that you rose from the dead and ascended to God the Father. You now sit at His right hand. With repentance in my heart, I ask You, Lord, to deliver me from the snare of the fowler and to set me free. Your truth is a shield to me. Under Your wings, I seek refuge.

Jesus, I claim Your promise in Psalm 91:14-15: Because I have set my love upon You, You will deliver me. You will set me on high because I have known Your Name. I will call upon You, and You will answer me. You will be with me in trouble. You will deliver me and honor me. In Jesus Name I pray Amen.

Reading and studying do not come naturally but anyone interested in a comprehensive study and insight of this subject is referred to the following teaching where some of these lessons were adapted.

• Journal of the Unknown Prophet: A Visitation of Jesus Christ- Wendy Alec
• Blessing or Curse: You can Choose-Derek Prince
• Unmasking the Jezebel Spirit-Paul Jackson
• The Jezebel Spirit: Spiritual Wars on Relationships-Joseph GM
• Destroying the Jezebel Spirit: How to Overcome the Spirit Before It Destroys You!-Bill Vincent
• Jezebel’s Puppets: Exposing the Agenda of False Prophets-Jennifer LeClaire
• Jezebel Exposed: Destroy the Jezebel Spirit before she consumes your family, church, and workplace- Marie Moyers