The Prophetic Telegraph - No.57
THE NEW BLINDNESS
In our last Prophetic
Telegraph I referred to the current wave of spiritual power that is sweeping
the
Our continual prayer and
plea to God our Father is that Satan's work will be made manifest, so that he
will bite the dust yet again. This has been our prayer for a quarter of a
century, since the charismatic movement began in earnest. And now that a new wave
of power has begun, we address those prayers the more earnestly before the
throne of grace. We do not doubt for one moment that a great surge of power has
been liberated. But we are not so gullible as to believe that all power derives
from the Holy Spirit of God. The main thrust of this number of the Telegraph is
to see how the Lord, long ago, spoke about current events through the prophet
Malachi.
A brief perusal of the four
chapters of Malachi must surely display the fact that the people to whom he wrote
were BLIND to what they were doing. Blindness was the factor that came out of
the SUGAR-ICE-DUCK vision. Those who ate the sugar became progressively blind
to the truth. And as a result they were ultimately claiming the black beast to
be their leader. Such blindness doesn't happen over night. We have seen the
development of it in the charismatic church for 25 years, and now it seems
almost total. It is our considered opinion that if the events now being
reported from
"The burden
of the word of the Lord to
He says, "I
have loved you," and they respond, "Wherein
have You loved us?" (1:2)
He says to the priests, "You
have despised my name," and they respond, "Wherein
have we despised Your name?" (1:6)
And again the Lord says to
the priests, "You have offered polluted bread on My
altar," and they say "Wherein have we
polluted You." (1:7)
With the priests still in
mind, the Lord says, "I will not regard your offering any
more," and they reply, "Why not?"
(
Yet again the Lord says to
And again the Lord says, "Return
to Me and I will return to you," and they seem totally
perplexed, saying, "In what respect shall we return?"
In other words they never even realised that they had gone away! (3:7)
Finally, the seventh time,
the Lord says to them, "Your words have been stout against
Me," and they reply, in so many words, "What
have we said that we shouldn't?" (
It will be profitable for
us to consider the LAST of these seven responses in a little more detail,
because it depicts fairly clearly the problem that now obtains amongst many of
God's people. "What have we spoken against You?"
they say, and the Lord says, "You have said, 'It is vain to
serve God; what profit is there in keeping His commandments? or in mourning
before the Lord of Hosts? As from now we shall call the arrogant blessed, and
those who practise lawlessness shall be established, and whoever puts the Lord
to the test shall escape (punishment)'"
Six items are contained in
this, the Lord's own summary of what they say. Of course, none of them ever
uttered words EXACTLY like that, but the Lord saw them as flowing from a heart
that had become blind to the clean, pure, and holy way He had set before them
from the days of
1. IT IS VAIN TO
SERVE GOD. But
the Lord had said "You shall not take the Lord's name in
vain." The outworking was such that they had grown weary of
serving the Lord with a whole heart, because there was little evidence of God's
power and presence amongst them. They were craving something more tangible, in
exactly the same way that the children of
2. WHAT PROFIT IS
THERE FOR US TO KEEP HIS COMMANDMENTS? But Jesus said, "If you love
Me, you will keep my commandments." Bearing in mind that the
question came from their hearts, rather than from their lips, what do the words
signify? In today's world, how many Christians are prepared to take the Sermon
on the Mount seriously? From our own point of view, although we view it with
great seriousness, yet we find that it is so exacting, that it finds us out
constantly. The more we study it, and ask the Lord for help to keep it, the
more aware do we become of our own shortcomings. But coupled with this is the
comforting knowledge that "we are forgiven all of our sins by
the riches of His grace." So what does this mean in the
present day climate? It means that the pathway of difficulty, the "way of
the cross", has been down-graded, and another principle allowed to rise in
its place, that of "health and wealth," of "triumphalism,"
of "name it and claim it," and of "kids
of the King." Under these headings a new "gospel" is being
preached which is no gospel at all. It takes away all the necessity for
suffering, and promotes the right to riches, and therefore, although no one
would ever think of dismissing the Sermon on the Mount, in effect it has been
laid on one side, and that is why God would read the heart as saying, "What
profit is there for us to keep His commandments?"
3.WHAT PROFIT IS
THERE FOR US TO WALK AS MOURNERS BEFORE THE LORD? This follows on from the last item.
As the "prosperity gospel" declares, the believer's right is for
riches, not poverty, not only in the spiritual realm, but also in the material
realm. Hence any sign of mourning, sadness, unhappiness, lack of joy, etc.,
would cause the leaders to look upon it with suspicion, and attempt to deliver
that person from whatever hindrance afflicted them. But Jesus said, "Blessed
are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." There must
therefore be a place for sadness and mourning in the Christian's life. Jesus
also condemned the attitude of the Laodicean saints, who said "We
are rich and have need of nothing." Instead He said, "Blessed
are are poor in spirit, for theirs is the
4. FROM NOW ON WE
SHALL CALL THE ARROGANT BLESSED. Arrogance and pride are works of the flesh,
and have no place in the spiritual life of a believer. Although we all possess
some measure of these evil works, the Master progressively purges them from us
as we seek to walk faithfully before Him. So what did these people mean? They
were discarding the life of humility and replacing it with a life of
showmanship. God calls it arrogance or pride. They would have used different
words. They would have spoken of "aggressive evangelism",
and "power healing" to depict today's trends in
Christian living. And work of this sort requires men of "charisma"
(to use the word in the sense the world uses it), who would be ready and
willing to be "up front", names that become
world-famous as preachers and healers. But this is a far cry from the One who
never lifted up His voice in the street, and whose care and concern was such
that He never "bruised a broken reed, or extinguished a smoking
flax." Neither did He want His name advertised as a
"healer". "Go and tell no man," was
His frequent message to the healed.
5. THE LAWLESS
SHALL BE ESTABLISHED. The antichrist is dubbed "the man of
lawlessness." The Lord has always been against those who
break His laws, whether the laws of Sinai, or the Sermon on the Mount. "Whosoever
shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall
be called the least in the
6. THOSE WHO PUT
GOD TO THE TEST WILL ESCAPE PUNISHMENT. Jesus spoke to the Devil in the wilderness,
saying "You shall not put God to the test."
What was he referring to? The Devil had urged Him to throw Himself off the
pinnacle of the
We believe that all the
signs of these six attitudes have been escalating in the charismatic movement
for a quarter of a century. Furthermore, the movement has now become so well
established throughout the land that to try to stop it would be like stopping a
huge spinning wheel full of built-up momentum. No, the only course of action
lies in giving the word of caution to those who are still capable of listening,
and saying to them, "Come out." This was the thrust of one of the two
brief prophetic messages we published at the end of Telegraph 56.
But the coming of the
"Toronto Blessing" brings vastly new power onto the world stage. It
is spread by contagion. Those who have "received it"
are then able to "pass it on" to those who haven't.
And those who firmly believe it to be the power of God's Holy Spirit, are
prepared to go forth and use it to "take the Kingdom by
force" on behalf of the Lord. They are delighted with the sudden
arrival and availability of this power, many times greater than anything known
to the charismatic movement hitherto. But we want to caution our readers not to
imagine that ALL power derives from the Holy Spirit. If all the areas of
disobedience depicted above are practised by those "up-front" in the
charismatic scene, then it would be impossible for the Lord to honour what they
are doing with true holy power. But there is one who comes in his own name, who
would be willing to supply unlimited power for the sake of effect. This we
believe to be the antichrist, now very much at work within the Christian
church.
Be not deceived by the
apparent healings that may be in evidence. Our souls are of far greater value
than our bodies. Edgar Trout had a ministry of healing back in the late 1960s,
and he declared that it was nothing for Satan to be holding a man round the
throat to strangle him, so that when prayed for he might declare that he had
been healed. All that had happened was for the Devil to release his grip for
the sake of deception. But the crowds would praise the Lord in ignorance. He
said that the Lord had shown him this during a time of retreat. Ask yourselves
whether you could imagine the Lord indulging in the antics prevalent within the