Mt. 24:24 "For false christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders, so as to mislead, if possible, even the elect. I Th. 2:9 … whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders, 10 and with all the deception of wickedness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved.
Dt. 13:1 "If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, 2 and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known ) and let us serve them,' 3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the LORD your God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
Since the Trump election of November 2016 in America, we have entered into a manifestly new season of the Spirit. At the heart of the spiritual contest leading up to this election has been a great proclaiming of “signs” from various quarters. In the continued aftermath of initial entrance into this new era, a strong burden of the Lord has captured my heart to expound on the nature of lying signs and wonders.
Through the apostle Paul, the Holy Spirit oft said, “But I would not have you ignorant.” Today, gross ignorance is upon the body of Christ, particularly the “Spirit-filled” church, in relation to lying signs and wonders. Such signs have already been released into our midst by various prophets and other visionaries. But we are entirely unaware of what they really are. And so, ahead of the Lord's coming, our people are being beguiled by them into “committing fornication” with the gods of human civilization—money, power, entertainment, fame, national pride, ethnicity, etc.
A Message to the Elect
This is going to get intricate as I will have to break it down very precisely so you can understand what is going on. This message is specifically directed to those who Jesus identifies as “the elect.” As the elect, your spirits already know and understand the truth of what I am going to expound (I Jn. 2:27). But your minds may not have caught up to your spirit yet.
This article is sent from the Lord to assist your discernment, to quell any consternation over what you may be encountering, and to help keep you from deception in the pure and true love of God.
What God wants to Protect
We want to start this breakdown by asking, “What is it God is trying to protect by warning us against false signs and wonders?”
Without a clear handle on what God is trying to protect, we can’t know if what He is trying to protect is at risk by what the sign purveyor is inducing us to believe through the sign or wonder.
Deuteronomy 13 spells out very plainly what God is protecting and testing by allowing us to be exposed to deceiving prophets and visionaries. God is seeking to prove and protect our first love for Him:
Dt. 13:3…for the LORD your God is testing you to find out if you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
Now for this to mean anything, we have to understand what God means by “love” for Him. If we don’t understand love for God on God’s terms, then we may already be seduced from pure love for Him even though what the false purveyor is inducing us to believe also professes the “love of God.”
Words without substance are worthless. And divine words that do not reflect God’s meaning and values assigned to them are a core component to the deception behind lying signs and wonders. If I come to you bringing to pass a sign and wonder while professing a false love of God, and therefore you believe the sign because you are already sold on the idea that “God is love,” you will have been seduced away from what God is trying to protect by this warning.
The Love God Wants to Protect
Two issues stand out that define the love God is proving and protecting relative to false signs and wonders. The first is idolatry (also referred to throughout scripture as spiritual adultery). The second is obedience.
Verse 2 of Dt. 13 above identifies the idolatry at the heart of a false prophetic sign:
2 and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,'
The obedience God seeks to preserve is identified later in the passage:
4 "You shall follow the LORD your God and fear Him; and you shall keep His commandments, listen to His voice, serve Him, and cling to Him.
- Not the Euphoria of “The Presence”
Notice what is not at issue in God’s exhortation to stay in His love. The love God is not trying to protect is spiritual emotion, feeling and experience that otherwise characterizes His love under what we commonly call “the cloud of His Presence.”
Paul describes the critical difference between the experiential Presence of God and true uncompromised love for God which served as the backdrop to the warning of Deuteronomy 13:
I Cor. 10:1 For I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all under the cloud …; 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud …; 5 Nevertheless, with most of them God was not well-pleased; for they were laid low in the wilderness. 6 Now these things happened as examples for us, so that we would not crave evil things as they also craved. 7 Do not be idolaters, as some of them were;
This means that in examining the “I love God” message of someone peddling a sign or wonder from inside the corporate sense of God’s Presence, we must test deeper than for the fact of the Presence itself. We must test deeper than for the emotion, feeling and experience we may be enjoying while listening to the sign purveyor.
This is vital, church. The immediacy of God’s Presence is no guarantee that we are not being seduced by what we are hearing under its influence. That is the lesson from wilderness Israel.
God’s loving Presence does not protect us from seduction, but oft rather serves as an effective shield and cloak to support a message of seduction! In this way, God’s Presence itself can be leveraged as a false sign. (To understand how this is possible, please review my teaching on The Holy Spirit of Delusion from the treatise, The Holy Spirit in the Church of Laodicea.)
No. We must be testing the purveyor’s prophecies, visions and declarations for their effect on our uncompromised devotion to Christ and on our obedience to the established will of God, from both of which we can be drawn away within the cloud of His Presence, just as happened in ancient Israel.
New Covenant Idolatry and Obedience
The warning against false signs and wonders was issued not only under the Old Covenant, but through Jesus and the apostles under the New Covenant. Under the Old Covenant, the test of idolatry was with respect to the competing gods of Canaan and Egypt. The test of obedience was with respect to the Law that God gave to Moses.
But under the New Covenant, idolatry is with respect to the gods of this world through the entirety of the world system with its alluring appeal to our fleshly affections and allegiances. John makes this clear in his first letter:
I Jn. 2:15 Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. 17 The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever. 18 Children, … even now many antichrists have appeared; … 4:5 They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them… 5:21 Little children, guard yourselves from idols.
Paul seconds the notion:
Col. 3:5 Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.
Behold here the nature of New Covenant idolatry. We are no longer speaking merely of overt images. We are now talking about all that charms the lust of our flesh, evokes covetousness and causes us to take the pride of identity in the social relationships, entities, institutions and systems of this world—from family to nation.
James refers to this adulterous affinity as “friendship with the world.”
Jms. 4:4 You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5 Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: "He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us"?
In short, these apostles are warning us against cultural idolatry. It is over adulterous affection of the adamic culture (people, places, things, statuses, groups, lusts, fads, families, nations, etc.) that God seeks to prove and protect His love in the elect before the face of lying signs and wonders.
In like manner, the test of New Covenant obedience is with respect to 1) the Lord’s numerous commands of self-denial toward advancing the welfare of God’s people and 2) the apostolic commands to holy moral excellence in all our words and dealings and relationships—all distinguishing us from the world. We must not be led to believe that the Lord does not hold us accountable now or in the future to this obedience and that He will not judge us for our works relative to these standards.
&&&&&&&
To sum then, God does not want us to believe signs and wonders supporting messages whose effect is to reinforce our love for and identity in the surrounding culture, or that enables compromising moral behaviors and relational alliances in support of the culture’s values—even though the messenger of the sign may profess an experiential passion-based adoration of God and it may come to us in context of a very worshipful “anointed meeting.”
Got it so far?
If you’re not sure if you understand this, go over it until you do and don’t go any further. Because this is the central issue at risk regarding lying signs and wonders. For further assistance, please study my articles on Culture Prophets, The Mystery of Passionism and Divine Love.
Identifying the Class of Prophetic Seducers
To this point we have discussed almost nothing specifically about lying signs and wonders. We have only laid a foundation for understanding their purpose which is to lead us into idolatry of the world and into moral disobedience in support of that idolatry. Before directly discussing lying signs and wonders, we are also going to first look at the people associated with purveying them.
Deuteronomy 13 identifies the purveyors of false signs as “prophets” and “dreamers of dreams.” In Matthew 24, Jesus extends this class to include “false christs,” which John the apostle refers to as “antichrists.” What then are false christs or antichrists?
The common understanding of false christs is that of people who claim to be “the Christ” or “the Messiah.” People thus think of antichrists as those claiming to be “Jesus” (or someone like Him) who gather followers around themselves to form a cult.
While this is quite true, it only touches the surface of who Jesus and John are talking about. To see this, we have to understand the simple meaning of the word “christ.”
The term “christ” means “anointed one.” It is descriptive not only of Jesus the “Anointed One,” but of anyone who is operating by means of spiritual anointing. And we are talking indeed about the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
For instance, Judas was the consummate forerunner to the end time “man of sin” (both of whom are called the “son of perdition”). Judas was anointed by the Holy Spirit to do miracles as were all the disciples. Yet he was a false disciple. Many such “false christ” disciples are cited by Jesus (Mt. 7) professing to have done anointed works of prophecy and demonic deliverance by the Holy Spirit, but who Jesus yet says He “never knew.”
John clarifies that falsity of an antichrist is centered in his message, not necessarily in the anointing itself. He tells us that antichrists are those who “speak as from the world.” That is, antichrists speak to us in such a way as to reinforce our love for and/or minimize our holy distinctiveness from the world.
To sum then, a false christ can be anyone operating in an anointed gift of the Holy Spirit who is employing that gift to seduce the church into reinforcing idolatrous identity with, affection for and accommodation of the disobedient behaviorial practices of this world. They may further employ lying signs and wonders to accomplish this. And all of this can be happening “under the Presence.”
- False Christs within the Body of Christ
One of the generalized misconceptions about false christs / antichrists is that these are just people of the world largely associated with other religions who employ satanic powers to accomplish their signs and wonders. For instance, Simon the Sorcerer whom Paul confronted on Crete would fit this common belief (Acts 13:6-11).
Again, this is a true application. But it is not the primary meaning Jesus and the apostles convey. The New Testament makes abundantly clear that the primary identification of false christs pertains to people who arise from within the midst of the church itself. For it is from within the church, the temple of God, that satan ultimately intends to show himself to be God:
II Thess. 2:3 …[T]he man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, 4 who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God…. 9 that is, the one whose coming is in accord with the activity of Satan, with all power and signs and false wonders….I Cor. 3:17ESV…and you are that temple.
The book of Revelation especially identifies false christs within the church in terms of the spirits of Balaam and Jezebel:
2:14 'But I have a few things against you, because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit acts of immorality…. 20 … you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols.
The Balaam and Jezebel spirits epitomize the seductive culture idolatry and moral disobedience first intimated in the Deuteronomy warning regarding lying signs and wonders. Balaam gave true prophecies while at the same time working to lead Israel into compromise with the world. He was a false christ.
(For an extensive list of other New Testament scriptures on false christs within the church, see the addendum at the end of this article.)
Angels of Light
Paul expands further in identifying false christs. Let’s take a look at who he notes in this genre:
II Cor. 11:4 For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted….13… such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. 14 No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. 15 Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds.
Gal. 1:8 But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!
Col. 2:18 Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind…
II Th. 2:1 Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, 2 that you not be quickly shaken from your composure or be disturbed either by a spirit or a message or a letter as if from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.
Paul expands our understanding of false christs under the caption of “angels of light.” These “angels” include “angels from heaven,” visionary angel worshippers (exalters), and false apostles, including apostolic impersonators who broadcast over the air and write books! With all of these, lying signs and wonders may be present.
Angels from Heaven
I want to especially examine here Paul’s phrase “an angel from heaven” in Gal. 1:8. There is more we must recognize in this than we normally do. First, we have to remember that “angel” refers to anyone bringing a message, not just spirit beings. Paul equates the false apostles he cites with “angels” of light, i.e., messengers of false revelation. These are men, not spirit beings.
Second, we have to also understand that the phrase “from heaven” does not refer just to spirit beings who originate from heaven, but also to human messengers who may travel to heaven and then return back to us from heaven. Today, in our times, numerous people are reporting either visions or out-of-body experiences (OBE), including near death experiences (NDE), claiming to have traveled to heaven and/or hell and back specifically to bring us messages from God. (For an extensive list of such modern visionaries, please see http://heavenvisit.com/.)
Most of these testimonies are very convincing, and those cited by earnest Christian websites appear to be substantially true. However, no matter how persuasive these testimonies, they must all be tested for their effect on our sole devotion and obedience to Christ in separation from and opposition to the culture, especially if any accompanying signs or wonders are predicted or exercised in relation to them.
Because of the unique convincing power of “visit to heaven” testimonies as well as angelic visitation testimonies, certain critical understanding must be set forth:
1. Out-of-body and other angelic visionary testimonies are never to be “stood upon” (Col. 2:18) as our fundamental source of revelation or final basis of belief on anything pertaining to the afterlife. And wherever any such testimony cannot be reconciled with scripture, the point of testimony must be shelved until reconciled and otherwise rejected.
The Father has ordained the revelation of the Holy Spirit upon the Scriptures to be our fundamental source of all revelation. Out-of-body and other angelic oriented testimonies, even if true, are exceptional and complementary only to what God would have us to know about anything through Spirit-illumined scripture.
This is made clear to us from the story of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man wanted to go back and warn his brothers on earth about hell. Abraham’s response was that the “law and the prophets” (for us, the “scriptures and the Holy Spirit”) are God’s intended means of truth and warning regarding hell.
In some cases, God will use out-of-body and spirit angelic means to reach people with the gospel and warn of hell where the scriptures and human witnesses are unavailable. But even these remain exceptional, His intent being for all mankind to receive and believe spiritual truth through revelation upon the founding testimony of the scriptures (Jn. 17:20).
Paul also discounts the value of out-of-body experiences as a basis for establishing his own ministerial validity. In II Cor. 12 he mentions the fact of having had personal OBE encounters only because he is forced to, specifically saying he will not “boast” in any such revelation.
He also clarifies that stewarding such revelation requires weakness and humility on the part of the visionary. This becomes an added point for testing the spirit of anyone purveying an out-of-body testimony and any doctrine related to it. Any scent of arrogance and boasting automatically invalidates the testimony.
Paul’s ultimate reference point for knowledge is knowing “nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified” wherein his only “boast” is that he counts himself “crucified to the world” (I Cor. 2:2 with Gal. 6:14). Notice in all how Paul is extremely careful to guard the culture-free obedient love we have been discussing with respect to his own revelatory gifting.
2. Out-of-body and like testimonies are never to be believed at surface value without testing against the fundamental source of Spirit-illumined scripture because the encounters are filtered through the mortal frailties of the visionaries.
Those experiencing out-of-body visits to heaven and hell do not all witness the same things and what they do witness is filtered through their own remaining mortality. This creates slants on what they have witnessed to where their witness may be partly skewed by their own superimposed beliefs, their incompleteness of perception, their spiritual immaturity or even their own uncrucified passions. These testimonies are not inspired in the same way the Holy Spirit moved on the apostles to write the inerrant scriptures.
While so many of these testimonies agree on many points, they do not agree in all points and in some cases directly contradict each other. For instance, several testify to having seen singer Michael Jackson in hell while another testifies to seeing him in heaven. In another instance, one vision reports Jesus saying He is taking His entire church out of the world in the rapture, yet another reports Jesus saying He is coming only for those separated unto Him and ready.
To borrow from the words of Mark (14:59), “Not even in this respect was their testimony consistent.” These discrepancies reveal the standalone unreliability of out-of-body testimonies.
For this and all the above reasons, all mortal testimonies to extraterrestrial spiritual encounters must never be believed without testing against the fundamental witness of truth given to us through the Spirit-illumined scriptures. And, being signs and wonders in and of themselves, such testimonies must be proven for any evidences of cultural idolatry and disobedience promotion pursuant to Deuteronomy 13.
Deceived and Self-Deceived Deceivers
As we approach our direct look at lying signs and wonders, we need to make one last observation about those who purvey them. It is that those who advance false out-of-body testimonies, prophecies, or other miracles are usually operating from a platform of a priori spiritual deception and/or self-deception. That is to say, they actually believe what they are saying to be true because they themselves were conned prior by a false spirit, and/or at some point they came to know better but convinced themselves that what they were saying was true anyway because that is what they wanted to believe.
Those who are deceived a priori or self-deceived are especially convincing because they carry the sound of sincerity. They earnestly believe what they are saying to be true. It is hard for those who intentionally seek to deceive others to communicate sincerity. Most false christs in the church begin ministry from a platform of a priori deception, not intentional deception. Their appearance of sincerity thus acts as a third layer of deception after the fact of the Presence and the specific ministry anointing by which a false sign may be purveyed.
Sincerity and earnestness of testimony however are not the test of truth. The test of truth is the effect of what is purveyed. If the effect of an anointed messenger, however sincere and under the Presence is to lure the church into compromised identity with, affection for and moral conformity to the world through an altered gospel, the ministry is that of a false christ.
Signs and Wonders
Finally we come to directly discuss signs and wonders. First we talk about what signs and wonders are and their purpose. Then we will discuss lying signs and wonders.
A sign is simply a thing that appears or an event that serves as witness to a particular assertion or prediction. A sign may serve as the proof of something else asserted, or the sign may be the thing itself predicted. A sign may be purely visionary (revelatory), or it may be visible in the natural realm.
A wonder is essentially a miracle, or anything out of the ordinary that causes wonderment. And it serves the same as a sign to witness to the validity of an associated utterance or prediction.
A sign or a wonder serving as proof of an utterance is spoken this way: “When you see ‘such and such’ happen, you will know that ‘thus and so’ is true.” The “such and such” is the sign or wonder. The “thus and so” is the utterance or prediction.
Alternatively, the sign or wonder may itself be the thing asserted or predicted in context of these words: “Such and such is going to happen, period.”
We see both types of signs described in the New Testament relative to the end times. For instance, Jesus predicts signs that point to something else, namely, the nearness of His coming: “There will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth dismay among nations, in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves.”
But then the Lord references His own coming as a sign. “Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven.” This is similar to the signs John sees in the book of Revelation pointing to themselves, such as the woman and manchild, the dragon, and the angels with the seven plagues.
So it is that the sign or wonder may be bearing witness to the veracity of an accompanying assertion / prediction, or it may itself be the thing attested to / predicted.
Idolization of Signs and Wonders
“Here a sign, there a sign, everywhere a sign, sign”
Signs and wonders are given to confirm the word of the Lord. They are demonstrated numerous times by Jesus and the apostles in support of the gospel message. The life of God is not in the signs or wonders, but in the gospel message they point to.
But signs and wonders can also be hijacked by satan through false christs to testify to a false message, thus becoming lying signs and wonders. En route to the conversion of signs and wonders into lying signs and wonders is the idolization of signs and wonders themselves. Such idolization was referenced by Jesus more than once:
Mt. 12:39 (16:4) But He answered and said to them, "An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet;
Jn. 4:48 So Jesus said to him, "Unless you people see signs and wonders, you simply will not believe."
Jn. 6: 2 A large crowd followed Him, because they saw the signs which He was performing on those who were sick. 26 Jesus answered them and said, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.
Jn. 12:37 But though He had performed so many signs before them, yet they were not believing in Him.
As Paul said it, “For indeed Jews ask for signs…”
Today exists a massive and growing emphasis on end times signs and wonders in the body of Christ. Some ministries have no other purpose than to seek after, follow and expound upon any and all reports of signs that purport to indicate the exact day of Christ’s return and/or the fulfilment of some biblical prophecy, and/or of the numerous political and other culture prophecies that have proliferated throughout the church. Books and blogs, programs and videos abound to this end.
These “ministries” however do little to magnify the message of eternal life through the cross of Christ. They rather exist to titillate people’s relentless curiosity of the paranormal. In fact, in their hot pursuit of signs and wonders, some ministries have even turned to ancient Jewish mystic writings to chase down their predictions of the end times. These seek to compare and align biblical prophecies with what Paul calls “Jewish myths” (I Tim. 1:4; II Tim. 4:4; Tit. 1:14).
In the end, such ministers serve only to stoke idolatry of signs and wonders, including the anointed ministries of healing and prophecy (which are signs and wonders in themselves). Such idolatry has followed the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit throughout the century-long restoration of the Pentecostal, Charismatic and Prophetic movements.
Once the heart-set is in place to esteem signs and wonders in their own right and to in turn glorify their purveyors, the stage is fully set for lying signs and wonders to take effect. And to that we now turn in our discussion.
Lying Signs and Wonders
What then, at last, is a lying sign and wonder?
The essence of a lying sign or wonder is not that a sign was predicted that failed to occur, or that an illusory miracle was accomplished by a sleight of hand trick, and therefore the purveyor should not be believed. No. Rather, it is exactly the opposite!
A lying sign or wonder is first of all one that factually comes to pass as predicted. It really happens. Please review the warning of Deuteronomy:
Dt. 13:1 "If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, 2 and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known ) and let us serve them,'…
What makes the sign or wonder to be a lie therefore is not in regard to its factuality, which is real. The thing does come to pass. What makes it a lie is that its factuality supports a lying message inducing us into the disobedient idolatry of reinforced identity with, affection for, and behavioral conformity to the world! The lie is not in the factuality. It is in the message or the subtle unspoken conclusions one is led to draw from it. It is in the effect of the sign on the people’s hearts and beliefs.
It is because the lie is in the disobedient effect rather than the fact, that signs and wonders must therefore be primarily tested for their effect, not for their factuality. Believing signs to be from God based only on superficially apparent fulfilment is the huge delusion that has come upon the church, resulting in our perpetual undoing. Faith in prophetic factualities has and is deceiving us now and every day regarding what God thinks of the world and what He approves and disapproves of in the church.
Layers of Deception – Depths of Idolatry
The factuality of a lying sign and wonder is only the final coup de grâce on an elaborate multi-layered deception giving context to the Father’s proving of our true hearts before Him. In our lead up discussion, we identified several precedent layers on which lying signs and wonders form. We review them once again here all together:
- The Presence
Remembering that false christs primarily arise from within the body of Christ, the first layer for setting up antichrist deception comes from the fact of God’s sensible Presence in our midst (the “cloud”). We sense God’s real Presence in a corporate meeting, therefore are predisposed to receive whatever is ministered under its canopy as real and from God. For many churches, the fact of the Presence is all that is tested for. As long as the Presence is sensed, no testing of anything conducted under it is considered necessary.
- The Anointing
The second layer for setting up antichrist deception comes from the fact that the minister in question possesses a verifiable spiritual anointing with power for ministry, usually either in prophecy or in healing. A real prophetic or healing anointing is upon a minister inside a worshipful gathering. And again, for many, the fact of such anointing is enough, speaks for itself, and thus its accompanying message needs no testing.
- The Sincerity
The third layer for setting up antichrist deception is that the minister of a false sign or wonder is sincerely convincing, because he or she is functioning under a priori deception or self-deception, masking his or her own heart from consciousness of the deception. The apparent sincerity of heart of the minister wins the trust of the listeners. “How could anyone so sincere be deceiving us?” is the conclusion. And any questioning of one sounding sincere is considered to be “judgmental.”
- The Sign
Finally, upon these three layers, the fourth layer of the lying sign itself actually comes to pass. Perhaps it is a prophesied event, or perhaps a self-standing miracle. A certain event may actually take place that the deceiving prophet predicted would come to pass. Or people may in fact be healed through the deceivers’ anointing for healing.
&&&&&&&&&&
- The Idolatry
Nevertheless, against the weight of all these layers is the testing and proving for the evidence of a false message. We are testing for a message seducing our hearts into:
· the worship of angels, spiritual phenomena, the anointing, and/or the messenger;
· reinforcing our identities in the institutions and entities of the world, especially the political institutions;
· strengthening our affection for the world’s cultural allures—their material possessions, their sports, their musicians, their movies, their eateries, their fads, etc.
We are testing for a message seducing us to
· excuse conformity to disobedient and immoral behaviors in the world;
· break down our sense of distinctness from the world to rather blur our identity with the world;
· abandon the specific requirements of the gospel (ie., repentance and confession of sin), the cross and of self-denying discipleship.
These are the components and effect of lying signs and wonders. Such become the points of harvesting idolatry already latent in the hearts of God’s people. They reap the idolatry in those already prone to adulating preachers and Christian media personalities. They reap the idolatry in those already attracted to the anointing for its own sake. And they reap the idolatry in those whose definition of God’s love is based entirely in spiritual euphoria.
Putting False Christs to “Death”
Dt. 13:5 "But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has counseled rebellion against the LORD your God who brought you from the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of slavery, to seduce you from the way in which the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from among you.
The Deuteronomy mandate regarding purveyors of lying signs and wonders is that they be put to death. We note how Balaam was specifically put to death by Moses once he was discovered as the source of seduction regarding the Peor affair. Yet he had given a true prophecy about the coming Messiah.
Much later, at the Mt. Carmel showdown, Elijah called for the execution of Jezebel’s 450 prophets of Baal. Not one was to escape.
Notably, the prophets of Baal (meaning “lord”) were the false christs of kingdom age Israel. They claimed to be of the same “lord,” yet their purpose and effect was that of Jezebel, which was to seduce unto idolatry. Nevertheless, the people had no discernment and could not tell the difference between Jehovah and Baal.
Today the situation is the same, as the book of Revelation shows us. The prophets after the image of Balaam and of Jezebel’s Baal prophets are still in the church. Jesus refers to them as “her children,”
Rev. 2:23 'And I will kill her children with pestilence, and all the churches will know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts; and I will give to each one of you according to your deeds.
God’s mandate remains that false christs be executed from the church, which in our day means excommunicated. But that has never happened because the Elijah ministry remains hidden awaiting release in God’s timing. This execution will only happen once the Elijah spirit is sufficiently restored in the church ahead of the coming of the Lord to precipitate a New Covenant Mt. Carmel showdown.
The Mount Carmel Showdown to Come
Today, the false christs of the church are gelling around “another gospel” referred to as the Seven Mountains mandate. It is a gospel dedicated to reinforcing the church’s identity in the world by seducing us away from crucified identity in Christ alone to instead christianize the carnal works, institutions and enterprises of the world a la the ancient Holy Roman Empire.
We have already written extensively on the Seven Mountains teaching. But for our purposes here, we want to further observe that lying signs and wonders are now being performed in support of this message. And you, the elect, are being seduced toward perplexity and surrender of the holy circumcised internal ground God has labored to secure in you. Prophecies and miraculous signs sporting angelic encounters and even OBE “angels from heaven” are promoting such defection to this belief system.
- The Trump Election: A Lying Sign and Wonder
Throughout the American election of 2016, major culture prophetic ministries already intoxicated on Seven Mountains belief came to predict the election of a born again Spirit-baptized President Donald Trump. The earliest of such (to my knowledge) was the juxtapositioned prophecies of 2007 by the lately deceased Kim Clement. One prophecy was about Trump. Another was about the coming president. (People later joined them into one prophecy to indicate Trump would be that president.)
Later came the first-failed 2011 prediction by firefighter Mark Taylor which was revived in 2015. Taylor’s prophecy was marked by numerous claimed signs, some or all of them apparently true, on which his prophecy was supported, all of it laid out on the gospel of restoring America’s greatness again in terms of stature and wealth and power.
These prophecies were in turn followed by the various “Cyrus” prophecies beginning with Jeremiah Johnson, subsequently reinforced in prediction by Seven Mountains teacher Lance Wallnau and many others, including “angel from heaven” visionary Kat Kerr.
Here is what must be understood. The election of Donald Trump, however accurately predicted with accompanying signs and wonders (indeed, the wonders surrounding this election were great!), came to pass on the wings of a gospel professing the glory, not of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, not of salvation from sin and hell through broken repentant faith, but rather the glory of America and its culture. The Trump prophecies were advanced to the luring of the American church back into adulterous esteem of the American nation.
What this means in simple English is that the election of Donald Trump is a lying sign and wonder sent to prove the heart of the American church and to further divide the rejoicing culture idolaters from the world-denying worshippers of Jesus Christ in spirit and in truth ahead of a decisive showdown to come.
It matters not that Trump prophecies may have come forth under the baptizing cloud of the Lord’s Presence. It matters not that most purveyors of these prophecies are anointed by God. It matters not that the purveyors of these prophecies exude earnest sincerity based in a priori deception and self-deception. And it matters not that the prophecies (in this happenstance) came to pass! Therein is the lie. This is all part of the Deuteronomy 13:3 test.
What matters is the synthetic gospel message behind the prophecies and the effect of their fulfilment unto further political and cultural adultery with America by God’s holy people.
- Make Who Great Again?
The mantra of the Trump campaign was and remains “Make America great again.” It echoes the claim of the king of Babylon:
Dan. 4:30 "The king reflected and said, 'Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?'
Indeed, Donald Trump, unlike any other politician of modern times is very poised to become manifest as the last great deal-making (read “covenant making”) King of Babylon, the man of sin renowned for his great boasting, and, should he become “baptized by the Holy Spirit” as prophesied, even the final son of perdition antityped by Judas.
(Careful, please! I am saying only he is poised to become, not that he is the man of sin or will necessarily become so. Time will tell. He may yet repent of his derogatory, arrogant and vulgar mouth. Lord, may it be so. However until time proves such, we look only at the fruit of the lips as commanded in Mt. 7:15-20; Lk. 6:43-45 to take our cues for discernment. We pay no heed to prophecies, dreams or visions that declare the man’s heart to be other than what his words project.)
(Meanwhile, if it is signs we are interested in, we may ask if perhaps the real truth was let out of the bag when for its Christmas message barely seven weeks after the election, the Republican National Committee chairman tweeted as follows:
Just as the three wise men did on that night, this Christmas heralds a time to celebrate the good news of a new King.
A “new King?” In America? Heralded by the RNC Chair. Hmmm. Who could that be? Have we just heard the prophecy of a Caiphas?)
Wake up you idolaters!
The truth is that there is only One who is to be magnified, meaning, to be “made great.” It is not America, and it is not Donald Trump.
American Christian professors, you cannot sing “Be Magnified” to the Lord in your worship services and also proclaim “make America great again” through your prophecies. This is adultery with the world. And if you do this, it means you are a prophet of Baal and a child of Jezebel. You are an idolater. And the God who will share His glory with no king or country has said He will come swiftly to witness against the idolaters and put them to death.
Mal. 3:5 "Then I will draw near to you for judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers and against the adulterers and against those who swear falsely,… Rev. 2:23 'And I will kill her children with pestilence, and all the churches will know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts; and I will give to each one of you according to your deeds.
[A final word to the wise here: The mantra “Make America great again” will especially prove to be a false sign should America obtain any initial short term sense of a return to “greatness” under Trump. Such a greatness would be illusory only, corresponding to what the medical world calls “terminal lucidity”—the momentary final burst of coherence found in a delirious terminal patient before his death. We may write on this again, but do not be fooled if this happens in America!]
- Clashing Restorations
At this moment, competing spiritual restorations are under way in America—the first full of pomp, the other quiet and virtually unknown. The first is an attempt at societal reconstruction, the other a spiritual regeneration. The first is the Baal restoration of American greatness leading to the worship of human culture and embrace of the man of sin. The other is the hidden Elijah restoration of the identity-circumcized gospel of Christ.
This second restoration is the one prophesied by Malachi and then again by Jesus, and then again by Peter. It is the restoration of “all things” through the Elijah spirit—the rebuilding of the true altar—by which the Baal spirit is to be purged out of the church before the Lord may return for His people.
In a time yet to come but nearing significantly, God is going to release the Elijah company from its hidden place in the land to challenge the prophets of Baal, their Seven Mountains worldview and their cross-less gospel of human destiny fulfilment. (You do realize that human destiny fulfilment is the new gospel, don’t you? Salvation is not about rescue from sin and eternal damnation. It is about God’s bringing forth his “hidden treasure” out of every man. It is the gospel of self-realization. The peddlers of this gospel are no longer preachers of righteousness. Now they are all “life coaches.”).
At that time there will come a New Covenant Mt. Carmel showdown just as before. The Elijah company will challenge the Baal prophets to a duel. The Moses company will challenge the magicians of Pharaoh to a duel. And the Daniel company will challenge the pride of the King of Babylon himself who will be turned out to eat grass like an ox. Who the earthly king and Pharaoh of that time will be remains to be seen. But the wonder of the Trump election compels us to rise to a new level of discernment as an Elijah class people ahead of this showdown.
When that clash comes, God will bring forth the superior next revelation of Christ, the cultural Baal prophets will be “put to death,” and God will take His people out from under the dominion of those who proclaim their own greatness.
Let us take heed at this hour to the true nature of the lying sign before us!
Be Not Soon Shaken in Mind
I am writing to especially encourage my fellow Elijah-hearted brethren who are perplexed—not so much because Donald Trump was elected president, but—by the fact that all the culture prophets who prophesied and offered signs for this election appear to have been vindicated by God Himself under the Presence, the anointing, the sincerity and the actual fulfilment of these prophecies and signs.
When Paul realized that his faithful were receiving forged letters purporting to be from him, letters which ran entirely contrary to all that he had been teaching them about the end times, Paul came to the rescue, bringing forth his true mind and to quell the disturbance that had been brought to these believers by the forgeries. The forgeries looked like Paul’s work, sounded like Paul’s work, but were not Paul’s work.
So it is with the false signs and wonders that have come to pass with this election and will continue to come to pass. They look like God. They sound like God. They have all the trappings of God. But they are not God’s. They belong to the antichrist spirit. And the Holy Spirit of truth is come to the rescue of His hidden Elijah people, telling them not to fret. He wants them to believe Him, not what they are seeing unfold before them. He wants them to hold fast to the ancient apostolic framework, no matter how much any sign appears to vindicate the message of Baal.
Fellow brethren, we must come to this same mind. We must come to the mind where we don’t care if their signs are true or not. We must not care if their prophecies come to pass or not. We must penetrate behind this veneer. We want to know who is pushing it, and what his /her relationship is to the gospel of cultural idolatry and moral disobedience.
Are their signs challenging us to unconditionally embrace the world or to lay down our affection for the world? Are their miracles supporting a gospel of human destiny fulfilment or the gospel of the cross? Is the self-proclaimed messenger from heaven and the angel of light seeking to prove we are to become more holy, or to become more tolerant and less judging of sin?
The Holy Spirit is writing today so that you will not be soon shaken in mind, and so that you will not be deceived by what appears to be a true miracle supporting a false message.
Today, if you can hear His voice…..to Him that has ears to hear, let Him hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.
Welcome to 2017!
With all love in the most holy faith,
First Love Ministry
Chris Anderson
New Meadow Neck, RI
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org12/16
Addendum:
Apostolic Scriptures on False Christs within the Church
Ac. 20:29 "I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; 30 and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.
I Tim. 1:2 To Timothy… 3 As I urged you …. that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, 4 nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation rather than furthering the administration of God which is by faith. 4:1 …[T]he Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, 2 by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron… II Tim. 2:16 But avoid worldly and empty chatter, for it will lead to further ungodliness, 17 and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, 18 men who have gone astray from the truth saying that the resurrection has already taken place, and they upset the faith of some. 4:3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, 4 and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.
Tit. 1:10 For there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision, 11 who must be silenced because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach for the sake of sordid gain. 13 … For this reason reprove them severely so that they may be sound in the faith, 14 not paying attention to Jewish myths and commandments of men who turn away from the truth. 16 They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless for any good deed.
II Pt. 2:1 But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. 2 Many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the truth will be maligned; 3 and in their greed they will exploit you with false words; their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. 13 …They count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, as they carouse with you, 14 having eyes full of adultery that never cease from sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed, accursed children; 15 forsaking the right way, they have gone astray, having followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; 17 These are springs without water and mists driven by a storm, for whom the black darkness has been reserved. 18 For speaking out arrogant words of vanity they entice by fleshly desires, by sensuality, those who barely escape from the ones who live in error, 19 promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved. 20 For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first. 21 For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them. 22 It has happened to them according to the true proverb, "A dog returns to its own vomit," and, "A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in the mire."
I Jn. 2:18 Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.
Jude 4 For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. 5 Now I desire to remind you…that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. 8 Yet in the same way these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh, and reject authority, and revile angelic majesties. 10 … [T]hese men revile the things which they do not understand; and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed. 11 Woe to them! For they have gone the way of Cain, and for pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam, and perished in the rebellion of Korah. 12 These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted; 13 wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever. 14 It was also about these men that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, "Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones, 15 to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him." 16 These are grumblers, finding fault, following after their own lusts; they speak arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of gaining an advantage.
Rev. 2:14 'But I have a few things against you, because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit acts of immorality…. 20 'But I have this against you, that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray so that they commit acts of immorality and eat things sacrificed to idols. 21 'I gave her time to repent, and she does not want to repent of her immorality. 22 'Behold, I will throw her on a bed of sickness, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of her deeds. 23 'And I will kill her children with pestilence, and all the churches will know that I am He who searches the minds and hearts; and I will give to each one of you according to your deeds.
BACK TO TOP
Webmaster littleflock@netzero.net
Page created December 30, 2016
