CULTURE PROPHETS -
REVISITED
How Do I Recognize and Die to
Culture Prophecy?
This principle of anointing corruption is intimated where Paul says the truth of God can be changed into a lie, and Jesus says the light within us can be changed to darkness. By applying the Spirit liberty of II Cor. 3:17 to Gal. 5:13, we can see that the Spirit's ministry can be subverted to serve the flesh. The Scriptures actually present many examples of people who were deceived under the real manifest power of the Lord because they harbored unsurrendered hearts. Such include Balaam, Samson, Saul, Ahab and Judas—to name the best known.
In the end times, this perversion of anointing forms the essence of the "strong delusion" sent by God upon those who do not fully embrace the inner work of truth, and is what enables the powerfully deceptive image whereby the man of sin will appear in God's very temple as the Son of God (II Th. 2:9-11 and 4). Not those who have embraced the manifest presence, but only those who have covenantally submitted to the inner work within that presence will be able to tell the difference. [For an extensive study on the corruption of the anointing, you may study the treatise The Holy Spirit in the Church of Laodicea.]
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A critical misunderstanding has pervaded the Spirit-filled body of Christ since the great outpourings first began 100 years ago. It is the idea that possessing or participating in an outpouring of the Holy Spirit somehow nullifies or transcends our need to submit to this inward process of life exchange—either because the Spirit's Manifest Presence proves this is unnecessary, or proves that we have already embraced it, and—whichever the case—His outpouring is its own sign of His approval of us. That this is the prevailing belief in our Spirit-filled churches and movements is evident if only by the prevailing silence on this biblically central message.
But does this silence make sense? Would the Holy Spirit in the first century embed the truth of exchanging our life for Christ's life as the core teaching of the New Testament, and in the twenty-first century dismiss it as irrelevant, unnecessary or just remain silent on it—riveting all our attention only on His ability to impact temporal life and/or only on the emotional pleasure we can derive from experiencing His Presence? If this doesn't make sense, then how do we explain the Spirit's seeming silence on this amidst His outpouring?
The Lord Himself tells us that His Presence "among the candlesticks" is no guarantee that the truest things of His mind and heart are being imparted or received by us (Rev 1:12-3:22). By His Spirit, He can be fully outpoured among us, yet we can still be deaf to Him.
The reality of the last 100 years is not that the Holy Spirit has abandoned the core New Testament message of the crucified life and that His silence on it proves this. It is that we have proven somehow incapable of hearing this message underneath the cloud of His Presence. The seeming silence is not from His end, but from ours. And it is from this deafness that our misunderstanding about His Presence is then built to support the belief that the crucified life is no longer an issue to the Holy Spirit.
Because we can encounter Him without truly hearing Him, God's manifest presence automatically acts as a silent prover and divider of those among whom He dwells (Rev. 2:23). If our hearts are surrendered to hear and submit to the process of the crucified life exchange, the Lord's Presence is truly a blessing to us.
But if our hearts are not hearing and not surrendered, God's Presence becomes a self-deception to us. Warped by the enemy's presence in our flesh, God's Presence is converted to a hidden judgment. In this state, the enemy actually "piggybacks" the Lord's presence to strengthen his position, able to subvert the very things of God to the reinforcing and justifying of our bondage to natural soul life and our love for the culture. Thus, the strong delusion for not embracing inward truth.
This is precisely what has happened alongside and within every move of the Spirit since 1900. Whether the Baptism of the Holy Spirit of the early 1900s, or the manifestations of the 1960's Charismatic Movement, or the Faith / Kingdom Movements of the 70s and 80s, and now the Prophetic-Intercessory-Worship movements—in every case where the crucified life has been bypassed, the ministry of the Holy Spirit has been subverted to reinforce our native soul attraction to this life. (The Faith/Kingdom movement anointing—from which today's massive prophetic movement is largely birthed—brought spiritually reinforced culture love to an unparalleled benchmark in America.)
All of this has obvious implications for the prophetic ministry. Again, for a process so centrally native to the prophetic heart is it not amazingly curious how little teaching on life exchange is found within our Prophetic Movements—save for the occasional hints and fleeting acknowledgements?
The clear inference from this is that, as a manifestation, the prophetic can be saying one thing, yet because of our own interior deafness as prophets, we can be failing to hear and so to speak what it is the Spirit is most deeply saying to the churches—leaving the false impression that the Spirit is silent about it. This observation leads us directly to discussing how prophecy is affected by culture love.