Elijah took his cloak, rolled it up and struck the water with it. The water divided to the right and to the left, and the two of them crossed over on dry ground.I'm going to tell you these things because I love you and want you to have the joy I have. I am nobody special, and I generally want to remain anonymous because I want the attention to be on Jesus, not me. I am not afraid to be recognized, however, and am perfectly happy with meeting those who are in Jesus, too! He wants us to get together, to love one another and build one another up in Him.
When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, “Tell me, what can I do for you before I am taken from you?”
“Let me inherit a double portion of your spirit,” Elisha replied.
“You have asked a difficult thing,” Elijah said, “yet if you see me when I am taken from you, it will be yours—otherwise, it will not.”
As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind. Elisha saw this and cried out, “My father! My father! The chariots and horsemen of Israel!” And Elisha saw him no more. Then he took hold of his garment and tore it in two.
Elisha then picked up Elijah’s cloak that had fallen from him and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. He took the cloak that had fallen from Elijah and struck the water with it. “Where now is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” he asked. When he struck the water, it divided to the right and to the left, and he crossed over.
The company of the prophets from Jericho, who were watching, said, “The spirit of Elijah is resting on Elisha.” And they went to meet him and bowed to the ground before him. (2 Kings 2:8-15 NIV)
As I said in a previous post, I prayed some really crazy things in the days after my baptism, and one of the things I specifically remember was asking for a double-portion of the spirit of Elisha. I did that because I was led to, but also because I had been devouring the Bible and was fascinated by many of the stories, including the stories about the prophets. Both Elijah and Elisha performed miracles, and Elisha performed more than his predecessor. I figured if Elisha could ask for more, I could, too! Be careful what you pray for!
A little more background about me before I move on: My parents bought us (my siblings and me) a set of encyclopedias when I began school. It was the World Book, and I read it cover-to-cover, volume-by-volume, during my elementary years. One of my teachers was an ex-librarian, and she told my mother I needed to read more books, apparently because, in her opinion, I was not reading enough fiction books. My mother told her in a conference that I always came home from school and read the encyclopedia, and the teacher didn't say another word about it, although I think I recall her encouraging me to read other things, as well. By the time I was in the sixth grade, and about twelve years old, they tested me and I had a twelfth-grade knowledge of science and geography. That's what reading the encyclopedia does. Yes, I was weird, but that's how God made me.
Fast-forward to when I began reading the Bible. I consumed it like I did the encyclopedia. I read it over and over and over again; cover to cover and then cover to cover again. I listened to an audio version while I mowed the lawn or went for walks, and it became part of me. It got so I recognized Scripture when I heard it, and knew when people were misquoting it or telling lies about it. I didn't memorize much of it because that's not how I am wired, but I knew it, and still do. That's how God made me. I started measuring everything I read and heard against what I knew was in the Bible, and considered anything other than the Bible suspicious, because I knew it was all "words of men." I still do that.
I saw all kinds of things in Scripture, and still do. The Holy Spirit shows them to me and I know it is Truth. I know it is actually Jesus, whose name is The Word of God, among many others. I cherish it. Perhaps I worshiped it, and that's probably okay, as long as we realize that the Bible is not the only thing God ever said. God is bigger than a book, and the early followers of Jesus did not have the Bible. They only had the Holy Spirit, and living today with the Holy Spirit is how God wants us to be, not searching for answers in a book.
God showed me His heart in those days, and taught me to fear him. He used the Bible to show me things He hates and things He loves. He hates sin in all forms: lies, disobedience, unbelief, idolatry and murder of the innocent. He loves those who are humble and have contrite, repentant hearts. And He is going to bring Satan's dominion to an end, both in heaven and on earth.
I spent much time in prayer, always seeking a clean heart, and He knew that. He tested me, to see if I would follow Him or not. I didn't always get it right at first, but I loved Him and feared Him, and I wanted to follow Him more than anything. He showed me things in me that I needed to take care of, and I did the best I could to repent and make things right. For example, He showed me that I was bitter toward some people I interacted with during my late teens, and I sought them out and told them I forgave them, even though they did not remember the incidents. When I shaved my head for the first time in my life, to be "Mr. Clean" at a vacation Bible school, I was pretty much that: Mr. Clean. And God used me.
The prayer of a righteous person has great power and is effective. (James 5:16)
I hate pillars, and pentagrams, and five-pointed stars, and anything else that is a symbol of Satan or exalts itself over The Most High God. This is God's heart, and it is throughout the Bible. Many people like to think that God loves them, because it feeds their narcissism and lets them think they are okay with God, but they are deceived and do not understand the judgement they are under from a holy and righteous God. God created man to walk with him, to know him and to see the amazing things he does, but man sinned and God hates sin. God hates sinners, and would still be a perfectly just and loving god if he simply threw everybody into hell and started over. He effectively did that with The Flood, and He threatened to do it with the Israelites at the golden-calf incident. Instead, He relented and eventually provided us a way back to him by sending Jesus to live a perfect life and then take our punishment.
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| Click image to enlarge. |
One of the first things God did after my baptism was let me experience the words, "Sift you like wheat," in my brain. At first I thought it was funny and kept quoting it, but then I realized where it came from and I became frightened, felt it was a warning to both me and those I attended church with, and pleaded to God for protection. Soon after that, I saw a weather map on television and knew something strange was going to happen concerning the weather in my home town that weekend. On Monday, a holiday, a rare tornado went through our community, tearing some ventilation equipment off the roof of a hotel and eventually damaging the church we were attending. I was astounded.
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| May 3, 1999 F5 Tornado, Moore, Oklahoma |
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| American Red Cross, Heart of Oklahoma |
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| August 11, 1999, Salt Lake City |
My focus was with God and against Satan, and to this day I know it was God himself who was leading me on these things. I am at peace about it; no conviction. Satan doesn't like me, and he has taken me through periods of doubt, but God is faithful and has witnessed to me that I did the right things.
I talked about these things in a previous post I did last year, but have since deleted. If you have been following my blog, you may remember it. There was an additional story I did not tell, which I am going to tell you now. I could write a book about it, but I need to keep it short.
In the spring of 2001, we decided to take a vacation and asked our girls where they would like to go. Our younger daughter, who was nine years old, said she wanted to go to Washington, D.C. (Why would a nine-year-old want to go there when we had promised to take them to Disney when they were ten?) We were late making our plans, but God opened doors for us. While we were there, we got to stand on the Speaker's Balcony of the Capitol Building, a rare treat, and I prayed for the protection of the city and the Capitol while looking down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the northwest. On two consecutive nights, I prayer-walked around the White House praying for its protection, once with my wife and once with my mother (the two people who went to Jacksonville with me). On one of those occasions, I sat on the wall against the fence on the north side of the White House and prayed in the Spirit for its specific protection. Lastly, on our way home, we stopped for lunch at a rest stop along the expressway near Somerset, Pennsylvania, and while there I experienced some spiritually-unusual things that would take too much time to get into.
When we got home from that trip, I felt strongly God wanted me to leave my job, and by the end of July I had done it. On my daughter's birthday, I was shredding papers when God called me to pray. In the Spirit, He took me above the towers in New York, and knowing that they were a symbol of Satan's dominion, I asked that they be brought down. I specifically remember saying, "But what about the people?" The answer was, "That is not your concern."1 While I was there, I remembered the pentagon-shaped building I had seen as we drove into the city from the southwest (I-395), and I said some things about that, too. That was it.
Three weeks later to the day, I was astounded like everyone else, but I was even more astounded because of the insight God had given me. I tried to tell people about what happened, but everyone was prevented from hearing, understanding and remembering; only my wife truly heard me and was able to give me comfort. Eventually, I suffered a lot of persecution and isolation, and after several years of intentionally refraining from working for pay, was enticed to return to my original employer. But I never doubted God for one minute and my wife and I knew he was always with us. Thank you, Jesus!
I am telling you these things because I love you and I want you to fear God, as I do. He gave me that "Abraham/Sodom-Gomorrah" experience to teach me to respect and fear Him, to show me His heart, and to introduce me to the spiritual realm. God is very real, and so is the Spiritual. More importantly, the Spiritual and the Natural (where we live) interact, and what happens in the Spiritual reflects in the Natural. I believe He wants me to encourage all "apprentices of Jesus" to develop their spiritual awareness, understanding and capabilities, so they can be more effective for the Kingdom of Heaven. Those who have the Holy Spirit have him in totality, just as Jesus did. We can, and should, do greater things than He did. Mountains truly do uproot themselves and cast themselves into the sea. The world does not understand these things, and Satan doesn't want us to know we have these capabilities because he knows we can hurt him, and he knows his time is short.
I had a number of demons cast out of me at Neptune Beach in Jacksonville, as did many other people. My Christian birth was not as "normal" as it could have been, but God is faithful and made sure I had the experiences he wanted me to have. When I look in the Bible at the people who lived under the Old Covenant, there is very little said explicitly about Satan and demons, except for small parts of Genesis and Job, but they have clearly existed since Creation, and the pharisees were certainly aware of them when they accused Jesus of doing things by "the prince of demons." I think those who were "people of God," like Elijah and Elisha, had their battles with Satan and probably didn't know they had demons inside them, just like me. Elijah was very afraid at one point, and Elisha was very angry with Jehoash when Elisha was ill with what ended up killing him. The Bible doesn't say explicitly, but what I see in those guys is what was going on with me. One of the spirits I had was a spirit of anger, which is now gone -- praise Jesus! Satan is fighting a war against God, and any adversary worthy of his opponent is going to intelligently deploy his limited resources against the things that can hurt him most. In Satan's case, that is going to be the people of God!
Now it came to pass, when the time had come for Him to be received up, that He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem, and sent messengers before His face. And as they went, they entered a village of the Samaritans, to prepare for Him. But they did not receive Him, because His face was set for the journey to Jerusalem. And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?”
But He turned and rebuked them, and said, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.” And they went to another village. (Luke 9:51-56 NKJV)
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. (Romans 12:14 NIV)
The New Covenant way to behave is to bless and not curse.2 James and John were two of Jesus' closest guys, and they didn't get it right. Now that I am free and am living with the Holy Spirit completely, I understand this and my mode of operating is probably a bit different than it was. Instead of seeing some people as "the enemy," which may have been coming from my unwelcome guests, I now see every human being as a soul that will spend eternity someplace. I knew that before, but I gave up too easily and did not know how to truly win people to Christ. I felt like I was at a dead end with everyone and that I was all alone. What I had been taught to do was wrong and ineffective, but now I know differently! Thank you, Jesus!!
So, my intentions are to bless people, but I also know I need to deal with Satan directly and rebuke him strongly when I encounter him. I did so in my second dream after Neptune Beach, and I'm sure the Holy Spirit will enable me to do so in the future.
I have told you these things because I love you and want to point you to a right relationship with God. If you are in the ministry, or simply love God and want to pursue him, please take stock of where you are with respect to the Full Gospel and personal deliverance. Ask God to reveal these things to you -- He wants to do it!
You must repent, and that is an ongoing, lifetime requirement. You must be baptized by immersion on your own faith, to die with Christ and rise up with Christ. If you have already been baptized by immersion, and you did it to obey God and not men, once is enough. Methodology and the words spoken are less important than full immersion and evidence of a changed life afterwards. Finally, you need to be baptized in the Holy Spirit, which probably means speaking in tongues. That is what drove me to Jacksonville, along with the fear that Jesus might one day say to me that he never knew me. I spoke in tongues during my deliverance, and I do it now to communicate intimately with the Father.
You need to do this. Satan will lie to you and help you come up with all kinds of excuses why you don't need to do it. Don't listen to him! He is wrong and he is a liar. He will whisper directly to your spirit, and you might think it is God talking to you. He will use people you love and trust to mislead you. He will tell you lies about me, my motivations and cause you to doubt my words. Pay no attention to institutions, or seminaries, or historical figures, or commentaries or anything else created by human beings. They are unreliable. Even the various versions of the Bible have been translated to suit the tastes and biases of sinful human beings, even your most favorite version! Satan currently owns the world, and we are living in enemy territory. Trust Jesus, and him only! He will not fail you!
Thank you, Jesus for giving me Life, and thank you for those who are reading this, who you are edifying with your wisdom and truth. May they toss "the world" into the trash, as I have, and follow you to the ends of the earth, until we all meet in Glory!
Amen.
All glory to God!
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UPDATE, March 15, 2022...
1Many people experience cognitive dissonance when I tell them this.3
Please consider reading one of my more recent posts, Good God. I think it may be more gentle than what I wrote above in 2016. Don't let the pictures dissuade you either. I think it is an important post.
UPDATE, July 19, 2022...
2Saying that, Paul did some "cursing" in a couple of his letters. See: 1 Corinthians 16:22 and Galatians 1:8-9.
UPDATE, March 26, 2023...
3I have been composing a slide-show presentation, and I included a discussion about the Hegelian Dialectic. While doing so, I realized what the tower prayer was really all about. I still believe what I wrote back in 2016 was, and still is, true, but there is a deeper meaning. The Father's purpose is becoming clearer to me now.
I was a relatively new believer when I had those experiences, and they certainly got my attention and helped cement my faith. I was focused on battling Satan, and I saw the towers and the pentagon shape as symbols of Satan's dominion, which they are. The towers were phallic symbols, and two of them side by side emphasized the message. Seeing those satanic symbols blatantly in front of my face helped me realize I live in enemy territory. I wanted to fight back. And that's okay; God wants me to fight.
But I now realize the problem is not symbols. The mission is to free people from bondage and destruction. The people in the towers and the part of the Pentagon that was attacked on that day were destroyed because they were in the wrong place. This is a serious game, and it is "for keeps." It is war, and people die in war. People are God's creations and He can do whatever He wants with them. He destroyed the Egyptians to teach the Israelites, and He is doing the same thing here.
These are screenshots of the slides I created, as they stand at the moment...
People will have legitimate reasons for being in one of the two "towers." For example, those who primarily act on their feelings will focus on emotional aspects of an issue, and those who think about things will focus on facts and logic. Both views are legitimate and people will "be right" about their views, given their perspectives and values. Those who push the division capitalize on those justifications and push to polarize the situation. They herd like-minded people into the two groups and then pit them against each other with propaganda. Once the groups are firmly established, the propaganda can inflame the division and promote destruction.
Multiple sets of "towers" divide our culture. People do not notice it is happening because it is everywhere, even in our leisure time. Children are taught that division and factions are normal, through cross-town football rivalries and other forms of competition. We think nothing of supporting various sports franchises, but it is all calculated to make us accept the Dialectic. Call me cynical, but I believe that is what is going on.
The message and mission of "Burned Toast" is to get God's people "out of the towers." To do that, they must learn to "not play the game."
This is about peacemaking. It is about loving people and showing them how to disengage from the traps that lead them to destruction. That is why Yeshua came, and that is my job.
Amazing. 😊