| [HOME]
[INDEX OF ARTICLES
] [ COPYRIGHT
INFORMATION ] [ ABOUT
US ] [CONTACT
] |
Perspective on the
True End Time Meaning of “Taking Canaan” for God
The mixture of prophetic anointing and carnal mortal thinking in the end time church has birthed a hybrid system of belief and teaching that has greatly misinformed and produced false expectations regarding God’s actions today in human nations and culture. It has bred what throughout this ministry I have labeled as “false kingdom teaching” and “culture prophecy”—the idea that God’s purpose is to sanctify, rebuild and “take dominion” over (aka “transform”) corrupt fleshly society—its structures and institutions—through the power of the Spirit, particularly through the power of intercession and prophetic decree.
Central to this misbelief is appeal to the prophetic type of Israel’s conquest of Canaan. As Israel was commissioned by God to take over the Promised Land, so God’s people are commissioned today—the belief goes—to “take their nation for Christ” with all its spheres of cultural operation. I can easily remember when this militarized prophetic concept came forth in the early 1990’s emerging from the “Kingdom Now” teaching during the “Reagan Revolution” here in America. (Today’s “seven mountains” dominion teaching is just the latest iteration of this belief).
The “taking Canaan” typology has however been severely misapplied in one crucial respect, which is the focus for this discussion. In the original type, Israel’s conquest required the complete destruction of Canaanite civilization. Whatever was left to Israel by way of “houses you did not build and vineyards you did not plant” (Dt. 6:11) came otherwise at the total expense of the civilization which built and planted those things. The fully corrupted civilization itself was ordered to be destroyed., not “saved.”
But in the modern misapplication, the prophetic taking of Canaan is seen as God’s destroying only the overtly evil aspects that have arisen in our times to occupy human culture, while otherwise preserving, restoring—even sanctifying—its overtly good aspects. The modern Canaan conquest belief (as exhibited through such words as “destroy the democrats but redeem the republicans”) is actually more in line with Saul’s conquest of the Amalekites which claimed to “spare the best of the sheep” as an “offering to the Lord” while destroying all the rest. God cited Saul’s action as rebellion against His will (I Sam. 15:1-23). This misapplied view of “saving the best of Canaan for the Lord” is akin to trying to redeem the good from the tree of human knowledge while destroying the evil from it, when God says the whole is one corrupt tree—the good flesh as well as the bad flesh, all subject to death—and must be cut down entirely to be replaced by the tree of eternal life.
The prophetic will of God for the church in this hour is not to “save the best” of American civilization or any nation’s culture as an “offering to the Lord.” His will is not to restore, rebuild or transform “America” or any other human nation as it now exists, including Israel. His will is to collapse the entirety of man’s tired sin-founded civilization earthwide out of its fully ripened harvest of iniquity, and to hand its remainders over to His equally fully ripened and harvested immortalized people—His “many sons,” His army, His Bride, and His Jerusalem / Israel. This is why, as we have already explained, the only true meaning of the world’s kingdoms “becoming” the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ is the meaning that envisions the destruction and replacement of man’s babylonian kingdoms. This is the only true application of the Canaan conquest typology for the end times.
Departing Egypt Precedes Canaan’s Conquest
To understand why the Canaan typology has been so misapplied, we have to look back to the preceding typology of Israel’s exodus from Egypt. The term “condition precedent” is a legal term that refers to something that must happen first before something else can be considered to legally take place, because the something else is predicated or “conditioned” on the first thing that must be done. If the first thing doesn’t happen, the second thing cannot legally happen and has no legal validity if it does happen.
Before Israel could “take” Canaan, they had to “depart” Egypt. Israel’s departure from Egypt was condition precedent to their taking Canaan. For generations and millenniums now, God’s people have rightly understood “Egypt” to be a prophetic type of the unredeemed world with its cultural systems—all from which God’s people are to be delivered. At the exodus, God did not will to “save” Egypt by returning Egypt to the days of His favor under Joseph. After 400 years of ripening development, He determined to get His glory by the destruction of Egypt’s king, his armies and their entire idolatrous way of life in process of releasing His people from their bondage—out of which to create a new “kingdom of priests” devoted entirely and only to worshipping Himself.
The problem in today’s prophetic however is that God’s people have not first “left Egypt” before trying to “take Canaan.” They have not met the condition precedent to legally taking Canaan God’s way and on His terms. God’s people do not see themselves as distinctly unique and separated from the Egypt of this world’s nations. This includes God’s “messianic” Jewish people and others who see themselves as “one” with national Israel (whom God specifically calls “Egypt” (see Rev. 11:8)). God’s people have not been “identity circumcised.” We remain entirely dependent on Egypt’s national identity, values, ways, “mythics” and support. We depend on Egypt’s social insurance system, its pagan medical system, its pharmaceutical sorcery (look up the meaning of the Greek word pharmakeia) and its completely corrupt financial system. The reality is, God’s people do not want to leave Egypt first before taking Canaan.
It is no wonder then that the modern prophetic idea of taking Canaan is based on “preserving the best of the sheep.” You cannot put to death outside of you what you have not first put to death inside of you. You cannot believe in and declare the downfall and replacement of that which your flesh still internally remains devoted to sparing. As a result, today’s prophetic concept of taking Canaan is but a deceived rebellious way to advance the uncrucified desire of going back to and rebuilding our past relationship with Egypt. This is the kind of prophetic produced when the anointing falls on uncircumcised hearts—the kind which has dominated mainstream America propheticism to the present.
God is in process of harvesting the full evil of carnal human civilization en route to both delivering His people from this world’s kingdoms as well as taking those kingdoms down by destructive co-laborship with His people. (See what destructive power we shall be called to exercise in Rev. 11). Our Exodus and our Conquest are in process of being fulfilled together. All of this is with the view of replacing human civilization with Christ’s fully harvested immortal king-priesthood. This is what John’s Revelation of Jesus Christ itself is all about!
Doing Exploits in Taking Canaan
This discussion can’t be complete without addressing the upside of taking Canaan for God. Sometime recently I watched a video of one of the well-known mainstream prophets talking about this. He described how God wants to indeed give us “houses full of all good things which you did not fill, and … vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant.” But his idea was that we would just “effortlessly” go in and sit down to enjoy “watching TV” in such a house. (Seriously!) This was a prime example to me of someone whose heart has never left Egypt in the first place.
Putting such aberration aside, God still impressed on me the truth regarding this promise for these end times. The truth is that, in the course of our participation in replacing this world’s systems, God still wishes to bless His godly waiting ones with fulfilments of natural things that He wants them to obtain by conquering faith—obtained to advance His ultimate eternal kingdom ministry purposes. There are indeed “houses—and lands” (Mk. 10:30) and vineyards and buildings and businesses and finances on the intermediate temporal level God wants claimed for Him out of Canaan for such ends.
Understand well: our transfer from mortality to immortality and the removal of this world’s civilizations does not happen in a single blockbuster moment. Everything God does He does by way of process. This is why everything He does is described in terms of harvesting. Immortality must be harvested over a process, and so must the destructive replacement of the world’s enterprises. The two harvests in fact interact to produce one another.
It’s because this is so that God orders His people to exercise faith for taking temporal things held by Canaanites en route to the eternal (See Heb. 11:33-34). This is not a short-sightedness of the true mark. It is a necessary part of the process toward it. There are earthly things we must wrest from Canaan by faith in order to ripen for our own eternal changeover where we will not need such things—things to be seized from the culture before its final collapse.
But how can we know the difference between true and false campaigns to “take Canaan for God?”
The difference between true Canaan-storming faith and aberrant Canaan-preserving faith is that the goal of the true faith seeks Canaan’s stuff at Canaan’s expense—outside the support of, preservation of, dependence on and approval by Canaan’s systems. Further, the true faith neither claims nor possesses anything from Canaan for the sake of its own blessing, while vigilantly eyeing the ultimate eternal goal and Canaan’s replacement.
This is a tough but highly critical distinction to make. And it must be proven in every heart seeking to conquer and obtain for the Lord something held in Canaan’s custody. We must know we have left Egypt behind and have been circumcised in heart desire before ever saying to God “give me this mountain!” This applies to anything we must wrest by faith to fulfil God’s remaining mortal purposes. In any case, it’s because Canaan-usurping faith is demanded on immortality’s path that discernment and proving is always required. We can’t assume someone’s claiming for God something in Canaan’s grip is a carnal claim (even though it usually is!). Only by the Spirit can Canaan-storming faith be discerned from Canaan-preserving faith. Let the wise understand.
Final Word
Right now the church is in a state of extreme flux and confusion over the true meaning of taking Canaan. Declarations have gone forth for decades, yet neither Egypt nor Canaan is being “restored” or “transformed.” Their harvests of iniquity are proceeding on schedule as first prophesied (“O fools and slow of heart to believe in all the [founding] prophets have spoken! Ought not America and all the nations to have suffered these collapses that My Church might enter into her glory and share in my immortal rule over the earth?”).
Each failed culture-prophecy however is an opportunity to repent and get on board with the true meaning of conquering Canaan, where we learn how to exercise legitimate short-term faith for commandeering the world’s things while remaining committed to its longer-term overthrow and replacement by our immortal rule under a completely new—never before seen—dynasty in the earth.
Let this article prove especially illumining for anyone wearied and troubled by the recent debacle of all the failed mainstream Trump re-election prophecies. A new spiritual leadership with a never-before-seen anointing on the true gospel for our times is on the horizon, set to arise in all nations, proclaiming:
“Fear God and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come; worship Him who made the heaven and the earth, and sea and springs of waters.”
Under the leadership of such true shepherds, a new unified remnant body will arise to finally take the earth (down) for our Lord and His Christ:
“Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, because God has pronounced judgment for you against her.” Then a strong angel picked up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, “So will Babylon, the great city, be thrown down with violence, and will never be found again”…After these things I heard something like a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying, “Hallelujah! Salvation, glory, and power belong to our God, because His judgments are true and righteous; for He has judged the great prostitute who was corrupting the earth with her sexual immorality, and He has avenged the blood of His bond-servants on her.” And a second time they said, “Hallelujah! Her smoke rises forever and ever.” Rev. 18:20-21; 19:1-3
This is what it looks like to take Canaan for God.
Chris Anderson
New Meadow Neck, RI
First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org03/21
BACK TO TOP
Webmaster littleflock@netzero.net
Page created June 11, 2021
