The spirit of Antichrist in the church has been in the church
since the apostle John wrote about that[1].
There have always been counterfeits of the Holy Spirit and Christ around, all
based upon a wrong image of God Father. It always happens when people turn over
to "that prouder god", as Bonhoeffer describes satan in "The
Fall". The devil is always more pious than God, he is the most pious god,
because he wants to be more god than God. Since the devil despises humanity, he
also despises individualism. Despising individualism, he has to destroy any
kind of intellectual capacity, which could sort out things and discern spirits;
in other words, he has to shut off conscious control. So in all religions
(except Historic Protestant Christianity) as well as in all Christian and
non-Christian cults and in all heretic movements and in all end time-apostasy
symptoms you will find people deliberately hanging up their brains at the
entrance wardrobe, succumbing to demonic interference they are not in
control of.
The motor of all these
happenings is a wrong concept of God and also a failure to understand God as
the incarnate Jesus (see doctrinal pages of this site). The way out of the
Toronto-blessing-paradigm is to fully understand and embrace the orthodox
doctrine of God, of that God who is personal, specific and particular. The
Living God which the Bible presents to us, is the God of Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob, He is a specific God dealing with specific people in a personal way and
according to specific convenants. He is the God of the covenant and of the
promise, not of some upside-down-tipsy-turvy-feely-touchy experience.
That God does not need to dumb down, to drug, to hypnotize, to
mesmerize a human being's mind, because He knows that He is the truth. Actually
He wants to be worshipped by humans using their full rationalizing capacities.
"With all our will, all our hearts and all our minds", not just with
some hidden part of our personality which is to be brought out via trance or
other far eastern religious techniques. Also, Jesus knows He is the truth,
therefore He is not afraid of having people questioning Him, see John 7, 17[2].
The devil, on the other hand, has to manipulate and betray, because he
is a liar. He has to resort to using force and intellectual lobotomy. Yet his
demand of submission is much more radical than that of God, in a way, he does
not only want people to worship him, he also wants people to become mutilated
for him. The devil is the inspirer of all false-circumcision[3]-schemes.
He knows that once a human being becomes a being that is only partially human,
that being is out of the reach for God to save it. Because God died for 100%
HUMAN human beings, not for Frankenstein monsters. Somebody may be handicapped
from birth or due to sickness or accidents, which is another case. What I am
talking about here is people piercing themselves[4]
to bits because of some natural religion, which really is an expression of hate
towards the Living God, becoming part of a huge machine, becoming genetically
manipulated, cloned or having a microchip injected. This is why it says in
Revelation that whosoever accepts the sign of the Antichrist will 100% surely
go to hell:
If anyone worships the beast and its image, and receives a
mark in his forehead or in his hand, he also will drink of the wine of the
anger of God, having been mixed undiluted in the cup of His wrath. And he will
be tormented by fire and brimstone before the holy angels, and in the presence
of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever. And they
have no rest day or night, those who worship the beast and its image, and
whoever receives the mark of its name. (Rev. 14, 9-11)
Because if you accept the mark of the beast, you are outside of
the human community, you become a being that is partly animal and partly human.
In Gen. 6[5]
the devil succeeded in having humans becoming “genetically” mingled with demons.
That was the indirect reason for the flood (the direct reason was man’s
sinfulness, but that which went before, was one of the causes for men to become
sinful).
Every religion besides of Historic Protestant Christianity depends on making humans less human, on diluting humanity. The devil wants to distort humanity and to create a caricature of it. This is because
1) He tries to imitate God as a
creator and
2) Because he
cannot otherwise have people worship him because they would not, if they REALLY
knew what that meant, to worship a demon. As a being created in the image
of God any human being would refrain from worshipping God's adversary if he or
she REALLY knew all the implications.
There is no other human
being, who is more human than Christ and Christ is the only human, which God
accepts, the second Adam. Unless I am in Christ, God cannot find pleasure in
me. However, Christ enriches and fulfils my personality instead of annulling
it, while all at the same time I die in Him and my life is hidden in Him[6].
The devil wants to nullify the individual, that is why in far eastern religions
you always have to "deny yourself", not according to the teachings of
Christ, but according to a false-circumcision-pattern, in order to get melted
together with some abstract notion of a "nirvana" or other vague
concept of "god".
In Christianity,
circumcision means you give up your WILL and receive Christ's life. In
religion, however, you give up your God-created-ness. In Christianity God comes
along and says, "Give me your heart, won't you?" In Religion the
devil comes along and says: "Give me your
created-in-the-image-of-God-ness, or else!" God takes your life and
glorifies Himself through it. The devil takes your humanness and converts you
into an android replica, a demonic counterfeit-human. In Christianity God is
100 % God and holy, not because he is awkward and alien, but because he also
becomes 100% human in Christ and is personal. This is why God is holy, not
because he would make strange things to occur. God is not a wizard. Christ is
not a phantom. Christ is not interested in alienating, bizarre, hazy, fuzzy
gimmicks. When you are dealing with God you know that you are dealing with God.
He is not interested in goose bumps. The devil however, wants to copy God's
holiness by putting on some frightening and alienating splatter-show. Because
of this I believe that all the occult thriller genres, such as Harry Potter and
all that kind, is actually there in order that some demons or the devil can
receive that kind of worshipping awe, which is actually due to God.
When we enter into a true
atmosphere of conscious worship, we know why we fall on our knees, because the
Holy Spirit puts his finger on this or that sinful thing in our lives and then
we become repentant in that or that very specific area or else we become fully
convicted about our overall state and capitulate before Him. When we enter into
a counterfeit worship atmosphere, however, we are just in the devil's
ghost-cabinet. We get some thrills and goose bumps and possibly demons obtain
God's permission to influence us from then on. The Holy Spirit is sobering and
empowering. His counterfeit is intoxicating and makes us arrogant, turning us
into manipulative agents of evil, of "that prouder god".
There is none like the God
of Jeshurun, who rides on the heaven to your help, and in His majesty on the
clouds. The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting
arms. And He shall throw the enemy out from before you, and shall say, Destroy! (Dt.
33. 26-27)
(In my German Bible
“eternal” is traditionally rendered as “old” – the old God is our refuge, not
the “new” God of the Toronto “blessing”!)
[1] 1 John 2:18 (MKJV) Little children,
it is the last time. And just as you have heard that antichrist is coming, even
now many antichrists have risen up, from which we know that it is the last
hour.
[2] If anyone
desires to do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it is of God, or
I speak from Myself. (Jn. 7, 17)
[3] Beware of dogs,
beware of evil workers, beware of the concision party. For we are the
circumcision who worship God in the spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have
no confidence in the flesh (Phil. 3, 2-3)
[4] Leviticus 19:28 (MKJV) You
shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks on
you. I am the LORD. Leviticus 21:5 (MKJV) They
shall not make baldness on their head, nor shall they shave the corner of their
beard, nor make any cutting in their flesh. Deuteronomy 14:1 (MKJV) You are
the sons of the LORD your God. You shall not cut yourselves nor make any
baldness between your eyes for the dead. 1 Kings 18:28 (MKJV) And
they cried with a loud voice and cut themselves with knives and spears until
the blood gushed out on them, as is their way.
[5] There were giants in the earth in those days. And also after that, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore to them, they were mighty men who existed of old, men of renown. (Genesis 6, 4 MKJV)
[6] I have been crucified with Christ, and I live; yet
no longer I, but Christ lives in me. And that life I now live in the
flesh, I live by faith toward the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself on
my behalf. (Gal. 2, 20 MKJV); Colossians 3:3 (MKJV) For you died, and your life has been hidden
with Christ in God.