Haggai 2:12-13
“12 If one carries in the skirt of his garment flesh that is holy [because it has been offered in sacrifice to God], and with his skirt or the flaps of his garment he touches bread, or pottage, or wine, or oil, or any kind of food, does what he touches become holy [dedicated to God’s service exclusively]? And the priests answered, No! [Holiness is not infectious.]
13 Then said Haggai, If one who is [ceremonially] unclean because he has come in contact with a dead body should touch any of these articles of food, shall it be [ceremonially] unclean? And the priests answered, It shall be unclean. [Unholiness is infectious.]” AMPC
This message the Holy Spirit is giving is intended for the Church, the Body of Christ. The infectious unholiness He refers to in the last part of verse 13 is witchcraft in the Church. There are many people that have one foot in the world and another in the Kingdom. While they go to church to partake of the divine food given during the services, outside of that they visit psychics, witch doctors, get potions and amulets for good luck, and things to charm their way out of their circumstances and the fiery tests God wants to bring them to because He knows that in their state of contamination they are not effective for the Kingdom.
God is calling them to repent—to turn from their way of thinking and behaving with godly sorrow—that will help them start producing fruit consistent with their repentance and according to the will of God for them. Then, will they learn to have the right kind of intimacy with God that will enable them to become stronger in their walk with Him. For this, they need to allow the Holy Spirit to take them to the process that will turn them into the new wine skin that can hold the new wine that He so desperately wishes to pour into them for God`s glory alone, so they can truly enter His Kingdom and receive His promises.
God will not share His glory nor His goodness with idols and with people that choose to negate and neglect His word and its power, and who instead trust more in the copycat and so-called power of the devil that comes through witchcraft and the lure of Jezebel which is the spirit that seduces people into not entering the Kingdom. This spirit also opposes those who try to enter and have a heart that is solely after God`s own heart.
Revelation 2:18-23 shows us how this spirit is found in the Church and how Jesus, the Son of God, charges us to not tolerate even the appearance of it among us. The reason is that the leaven of the Pharisees or witchcraft is contagious. A little of it is influential enough to contaminate the whole lump or group of people. That is because everything a person that is involved in witchcraft touches gets contaminated. Even the food the person touches or prepares and then feeds it or offers it to other people. The Scripture says,
18 “And to the angel (messenger) of the assembly (church) in Thyatira write: These are the words of the Son of God, Who has eyes that flash like a flame of fire, and Whose feet glow like bright and burnished and white-hot bronze:
19 I know your record and what you are doing, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your recent works are more numerous and greater than your first ones.
20 But I have this against you: that you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess [claiming to be inspired], and who is teaching and leading astray my servants and beguiling them into practicing sexual vice and eating food sacrificed to idols.
21 I gave her time to repent, but she has no desire to repent of her immorality [symbolic of idolatry] and refuses to do so.
22 Take note: I will throw her on a bed [of anguish], and those who commit adultery with her [her paramours] I will bring down to pressing distress and severe affliction, unless they turn away their minds from conduct [such as] hers and repent of their doings.
23 And I will strike her children (her proper followers) dead [thoroughly exterminating them]. And all the assemblies (churches) shall recognize and understand that I am He Who searches minds (the thoughts, feelings, and purposes) and the [inmost] hearts, and I will give to each of you [the reward for what you have done] as your work deserves.” AMPC
Verse 20 of this passage talks about the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and claims to be inspired, but her teachings lead God`s people astray and charm them into sexual immorality and eating food sacrificed to idols.
This spirit affects many in the Church who are called to operate at different levels of the prophetic in God`s house. They are supposed to edify and encourage God`s people to continue in the work of the Lord with endurance and follow the blueprints given by God to build His house that will host His glory through His people. But being able to see this reality in God`s house entails the healing and wholeness of the people as well as making sure that their souls (their minds, their wills, and their emotions) work properly as they mature, for we are called to live our lives according to the first and principal commandment found in Mark 12:30 which says,
“And you shall love the Lord your God out of and with your whole heart and out of and with all your soul (your life) and out of and with all your mind (with your faculty of thought and your moral understanding) and out of and with all your strength. This is the first and principal commandment.” AMPC
However, many of God`s people, including the leaders, are unaware of the fact that their souls are sliced or cut to the point of disfiguration due to generational sin, sins committed by them, sins committed against them, sexual immorality (any sex outside of the marriage covenant between man and woman and the demonic and emotional soul ties that resulted from those relationships), traumatic events, accidents, and so on. This disfiguration has the people leaking out different types of dysfunctions. These are desires of the flesh or human nature without God found in Galatians 5:19-21,
19-21 “It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on.
This isn’t the first time I have warned you, you know. If you use your freedom this way, you will not inherit God’s kingdom.” MSG
This is what happens in a place where there is a strong influence of the Antichrist spirit (the spirit that rules this world) and has as its three- part deity the spirits of religion (independence from God and His will and timing), mammon (worship of the work of their hands, idolatry, and materialism), and Jezebel (control, manipulation, and seducing away from true intimacy with God).
So, going back to explaining the influence of the Jezebel spirit that God has charged His people to not tolerate in His house and in their lives, Acts 16:16-18 gives the account of a young girl that had a prophetic gift but was being trafficked by oppressors as a fortune teller because of the woundedness of her soul due to reasons mentioned above in this teaching. This caused her to be used by the enemy to give words that sounded like the truth, but had their origin in divination. The Scripture says,
16 “As we were on our way to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who was possessed by a spirit of divination [claiming to foretell future events and to discover hidden knowledge], and she brought her owners much gain by her fortunetelling.
17 She kept following Paul and [the rest of] us, shouting loudly, These men are the servants of the Most High God! They announce to you the way of salvation!
18 And she did this for many days. Then Paul, being sorely annoyed and worn out, turned and said to the spirit within her, I charge you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her! And it came out that very moment.” AMPC
This is what happens in the Church that God is saying to not tolerate even its appearance. That is because individuals who are operating under the influence of the Jezebel spirit many times are unaware of when the spirit of divination takes over and starts speaking through them or influencing them to do things contrary to who they really are in their nature and personality given by God. This also includes the fact that during times of food preparation, this spirit likes to contaminate the food handled or served to others to contaminate the person eating it.
Romans 14:20 states, “20 You must not, for the sake of food, undo and break down and destroy the work of God! Everything is indeed [ceremonially] clean and pure, but it is wrong for anyone to hurt the conscience of others or to make them fall by what he eats.” AMP
That is because this spirit causes the person influenced by it to have a split personality. The serpent or python is the one behind this beguiling of the people and it has a split tongue symbolic of the split personality which switches the person to become someone else that would not otherwise act or think in the way he or she is seduced to, because of the weakness in their soul.
But our Lord and God, the restorer of our souls (Psalm 23:3), calls us in His love for us, to be set free from this influence by the prospering of our souls. This takes a process that involves deliverance and going through the fire that destroys the works of the devil in our lives and works a restoration that prospers our lives in every area.
3 John 2 says,
“2 Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in every way and [that your body] may keep well, even as [I know] your soul keeps well and prospers.” AMPC
So the first step in this restoration and prospering of our souls and of our live is to identify and acknowledge to God the influence of this spirit and cry out to Him for deliverance according to 2 Chronicles 7:14,
“14 If My people, who are called by My name, shall humble themselves, pray, seek, crave, and require of necessity My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land.” AMPC
More on the next posts. To Him alone be all the glory. ▪ © 2017.
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