eating the fruit of contradiction: the anti-Christ spirit

I am learning that the entirety of the gospel is a dangerous instrument when it is not perceived through the lens of the true grace of God.  It is indeed a two edged sword, cutting in whichever direction it is brandished.  Because of that knowledge, (and having been on the receiving end of the religious, dogmatic, legalistic swing) I am diving head first into the sea of what “grace” really means.  Although the subject of this particular post is not directly addressing the matter of grace, it is most certainly a byproduct of it.  This blog post carries the potential to be unbearably long, so for the sake of the sanity of those reading this, I’ve decided to break it up into several.  I love to body of Christ, and want in no way come across as though I am criticizing her, nor merely focusing on her “problems”.  I long for her to be whole, secure in her identity, and free of her chains.  I believe the misinterpretation of  His grace, “Godliness”, and subsequently the spirit of anti-Christ, to be a good majority of why she is not yet entirely unbound.  My desire to address this issue came from the experience of a dear friend of mine, who will go unnamed.  Without revealing too much about him, he has an incredibly pure heart, and is one of the few carrying the TRUE forerunner message in our generation.  I am grateful for every expression of the heart of God within the body, and honor each “stream” for their diligence in stewarding the knowledge of Him in the way they’ve understood it.  I do not however feel it necessary to swallow the bone simply because there is meat to be had, and am decidedly resolved to speak truth as it is revealed to me, regardless of the reaction it may produce.  That being said, I can say with confidence that we have yet to understand as common knowledge within the church the actual meaning of the forerunner spirit and message.  This young man is one of the few who does.  Upon feeling called to a certain community of believers who have given themselves to the pursuit of global evangelism, he moved his entire life to the city they call their home base.  It is safe to say that he does not agree with most of what they teach, their methods, and consequentially their understanding and practical out working of the gospel.  He solely joined them in obedience to the word of the Lord, and has done a phenomenal job of maintaining humility in service and heart.  On a certain occasion, he was driving with another member of the community, and listening to music that he had chosen and thoroughly enjoys.  The artist coming through the speakers was one who very obviously does not live a lifestyle of “surrender to the Lord”, and who finds most of her fame through the exploitation of controversial dress, lyrics, and lifestyle.  The passenger in the car heard the song, and began reprimanding my friend for sowing into the jezebel spirit.  He spoke condescendingly, and involved other members of the community.  Word spread, as it often does in a religious environment pretending to understand love, and people began treating him differently.  Leadership took it upon themselves to publicly “correct” the issue at hand without incriminating my friend by name…you know, they did it “in love”.  Several times in the presence of the entire community leaders addressed the destructive nature of secular music, detailing the harm done to the human soul upon listening to it, and the detriment of partnering with hell in such a way…going as far as to use the specific name of the artist they had been listening to in the car that day.  In other words, indirectly “unveiling” to him that he was, indeed, fraternizing with the anti-Christ spirit.  The young man called me a few days later in distress.  He had been obedient to the Lord, only to find himself ostracized and alone in community.  He is an incredible man of God, full of passion and radically anointed.  He now stood the spiritual “inferior”, however unspoken those words may have been.  The overall attitude and response of those around him made a loud enough statement.  Against my advice, he stayed in the community and continued serving them.  He is a better man than me.

The reason I wanted to open with that story is because it is a simple and yet compelling picture of the deception we live in as believers.  I will not argue with you whether or not secular music that does not glorify the Lord is actually partnering with hell.  I will tell you I think that’s one of the most small-minded things I’ve heard since I left that type of community, but I will not argue with you.  The very spirit he was being accused of bedding with was in actuality what those accusing were in full, albeit unwitting, submission to.  Satan, and every foul thing that proceeds from him, LOVES to accuse the brethren…and they love to use the “word of God” to do it.  Scripture says that the deceiver comes as an angel of light.  This does not mean that he makes sin, and all his ploys, attractive so we’ll do it.  That is so obvious, it’s not even revelation.  It means that he uses the truth of God, and things of a supernatural nature, to deceive humanity.  He was once in the ranks of the heavenly host; he knows ALL about what we’re trying to figure out.  I want to make an effort to challenge the current and common ideas concerning the anti-Christ spirit, and I will most likely offend SOMETHING that you’ve held on to for dear life as long as you’ve been breathing.  Please remember as you go here with me that I am not trying to jump on the “I’m right, you’re wrong” band wagon.  I’m actually trying to COMPLETELY DO AWAY with that process of thought.  I am just beginning to scratch the surface of the scandalously good grace of God, and the revelation that we have been afraid of our inheritance for far too long.  I am COMPLETELY willing to hear the Lord tell me I’m wrong, in whatever fashion He may choose to do so.  But, until He does just that…I’d like to invite you into discovering the depths of the love and wisdom of our God right alongside me.

ANTI-CHRIST: ANTI-MESSIAH

This spirit of the anti-Christ is not the spirit of Lady Gaga, nor is it the spirit characterized by any slew of “sin”.  The spirit of the anti-Christ is just that…anti Christ.  Now the problem with a statement like this one (spirit of the anti-Christ) is the dogmatic doctrinal connotation it carries with it from years and centuries of pointed teaching.  Because we have been taught to approach the gospel as “sinners”, we have then defined the antithesis of the saving knowledge of the good news as sin.  Therefore, since we were saved from our sin, the spirit that hates the One who saved us must primarily propagate the love of sinfulness and the partaking of it…right?  While it is true that the out working of unrighteousness is indeed a part of the kingdom of darkness, I want to suggest that it is not Satan’s foremost device in binding the earth to blindness.

To rightly understand the operation of the anti-Christ spirit, we much first rightly understand the operation of the One it opposes.  When a counterfeiter of currency goes about creating his forgery, he does not study any former counterfeit, but rather the authentic note itself.  It needs to appear on its face to be the bona fide currency it imitates.  It even needs to withstand exceedingly intimate inspection.  The gospel of Jesus Christ is the sincere currency of life, and the counterfeiter has wielded its potency to obtain his ambition since the dawn of time.  In the account of the “fall” of man in the book of Genesis, chapter 3 verses 1-5, it says

“The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made.  One day he asked the woman, ‘Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?’ ‘Of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,’ the woman replied.  ‘It’s only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat.  God said, “You must not eat it or even touch it; if you do, you will die.”‘ ‘You won’t die!’, the serpent replied to the woman. ‘God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.'”

When the author of Genesis calls the serpent the “shrewdest” of all the animals, the Hebrew word used is “arum”, meaning “crafty, shrewd, or sensible.”  However, the english language is built upon germanic and latin foundations.  English is considered to be a linear language, far more literal & widely varied in its word usage.  Hebrew is called a conceptual language, utilizing descriptive context surrounding specific words to imply meaning (i.e. – “You are beautiful” becomes “You are as a sunset”).  Greek is also a very linear language, and the translation most widely used to convert the scripture into English.  The greek word used here for “shrewdest” is “phronimos”, which more accurately dictates the original Hebrew intention within the word.  The word phronimos comes from the same root from which we derive the english word diaphragm.  The diaphragm is a muscle that involuntarily regulates your breathing.  In light of its root, phronimos could more accurately be translated “personal perspective regulating outward behavior.”  It basically means to be controlled from the inside out.  In the context of the deceiver, it entails that his internal perspective WAS and IS his identity.  The conversation following this statement with Eve was his willful effort to imprint her with his identity.  So, to do just that, he utilized the word of God to cause her to doubt her God-like identity.  He accuses the heart of God, using His very word, to misrepresent the intention of God and rob humanity of their identity in Him.  The truth about Adam and Eve, and by extension ALL of humanity, is that the were made like God.  When the accuser said they would “be like God, knowing both good and evil”, he was appealing to the seed of doubt he had planted in them (“Did God really say..?”).  The lie was in that being like God never included knowing evil.  God had never known evil.  The word used here for “know” in the greek is “ginosko”, and is the same word used when Mary the mother of Jesus doubted her immaculate conception, proclaiming she had not known a man.  It denotes not only first hand experience, but also an intimate and experiential knowledge.  He used the truth, that they would indeed know (ginosko) the contradiction between good & evil, to indirectly challenge the kindness of God within the heart of the woman.  By saying “God knows that your eyes will be opened…”, as though He had withheld the complete truth from them, he knowingly tainted the goodness of the God who breathed life into them.  For them to know both good and evil would not make them like God, as He cannot know evil (He cannot do evil), and they were already created in His likeness.

The outcome of the fall of man (commonly referred to as the “fall from grace”, interestingly enough) was not primarily characterized by the action of man; it was decided by the source of the action, and the result of its completion.  We tend to think of sin as the list of actions associated with the “do nots” of scripture.  However, the greek word for sin is “harmatia”, defined on wikpiedia.com (sometimes secular sources provide far more agenda-less information) as “an injury committed in ignorance when the person affected or the results are not what the agent supposed they were”.  It is used throughout much of secular greek literature to denote “a hero’s fatal flaw”, and most directly refers to the consequential misfortune of the action taken, not necessarily providing delineation between the “right” or “wrong” of the action itself.  As a matter of fact, it was often used to describe the rightful action a hero had to take because of moral obligation that lead to misfortune.  Biblically speaking, the real meaning of harmatia should sound something like “an inward element of deficit that produces unrighteous action”; it is literally the governing entity of emptiness that plays heavily into how a person lives their life, not primarily the lifestyle they live.  Throughout the generations of church history most have associated “worldliness” with the anti-Christ spirit, saying the church must strive to be “in the world, but not of it”; to die to our desire to fulfill selfish longing, and live a life consecrated to the Lord.  Anything lesser has been carelessly thrown into the “anti-Christ” category.  It is the primary reason the new-age movement, the homosexual population, and the abortion doctors are keenly aware that they are unwelcome in the church by some unspoken law of “we’re right, you’re wrong”.  I am OBVIOUSLY not saying the actions taken by those portions of society are good nor Godly.  But we have theologies CENTERED around the rise of the anti-Christ detailed in the book of Revelation, most of which have been misconstrued to a degree that incriminates humanity in THIS day based on a fear of what will happen in that one.  

The spirit of the anti-Christ is not primarily manifested in “worldliness”.  I regret having to say it, but I believe it is primarily manifested currently within the church itself.  The reason I believe this is relatively simple when it is rightly understood, but unfortunately most reading this have been too offended already, and forfeited any desire to journey with me into it.  The phrase “anti-Christ” does not, contrary to popular church belief, mean “anti-Jesus”.  As a matter of fact, it is the very gospel OF Jesus this wicked spirit has wielded to accomplish its purpose since the dawn of the church…and regrettably used to ensnare the body in subtle deception.  “Anti-Christ” actually means “anti-Messiah”, or “anti-Anointed One”.  This is why the church has missed its rise in our midst while we were out witch-hunting, as it is the very spirit who cultivated a misunderstanding of the messianic work and role of Jesus, and (by that same token) blinded us to its own true purpose.  The intention of the anti-Christ spirit (it is my resolute conviction) is to blind the church of God to the true grace of God, and restrict them in a nearly undetectable manner to the law Jesus came to fulfill.  It plans to keep the body of Christ beneath the supposition that WE ARE TO BLAME FOR OUR SIN; to coral a body of “sinners” into its buildings every sunday to learn about how far they are from how God wants them, and how much they still have to do to get there.  It wants to come up with good strategies, and dreams of global transformation to distract from the only revelation that will actually accomplish it.  It longs to cultivate shame within the heart of the bride, and utilize a system of “repentance” as her only way out of never being good enough (that is EXACTLY what the sacrificial system of the law was).  It intends to mix the grace of God with the law of the old testament, in unbelievable subtlety, to keep us needing a savior instead of having our Messiah.  It’s not nearly as concerned with keeping the world “in sin” as it is with keeping the church in religion.

Next Post: Hebrews 12: 1-2 ANTI-CHRIST: ANTI-CROSS