The Ancient Path

Easy, was never a guarantee.

Have you ever noticed that the primary focus of the New Testament is the Body of the Lord and his interactions with it? That may seem incredibly obvious, but I think it needs to be pointed out.

Nowadays, various ministries push and shove to champion their various causes. But the New Testament doesn't do that. Instead, the primary focus is on the functions of the Body and living in this world, as well as the age to come. If scripture was being written today, how many people would be screaming and yelling that various causes need to be addressed? Would we have protests? Would we denounce various leaders for failing to address political issues?

It should be noted that the first century had its fair share of hard topics. Many Romans got married and divorced many times. Unwanted children after birth were sometimes placed on the “exposure wall” as a sacrifice to some god. Some parts of the military inforced homosexuality with the idea that it might make a stronger military if they fought to protect their lovers.

Human sacrifice happened, as well as slavery, the destruction of homes and families, the crushing of nations, and a conscripted Navy by forced slaves. All this and more, and yet so little of this is mentioned in the New Testament. This is because the focus was not on the evils of society, as we see today, but on the soul of man. Once the soul is changed, everything else falls into place.

Every Generation Must Fight

There is a value to fighting, a value that the Hyper grace/Polly Anna attitude will never understand. “These are the nations THE LORD LEFT to test all those Israelites who had not experienced any of the wars in Canaan (he did this only to teach warfare to the descendants of the Israelites who had not had previous battle experience)” Judges 3:1-2

The reason the Lord did this was education and a test; the same is true for us. Question; “When the road gets hard, who will you trust?”

Right now, it is good that so many have woken up and are exposing the pretenders in the pulpits. But is it possible to go too far? The answer to this completely depends on the condition of your heart and the job assignment the Lord has given. I can not answer for you how far is too far, that is between you and the Lord. This is also why I generally only stick with speaking about my former employer, MorningStar Ministries.

I do, as long-time readers have noticed, will reference others as needed for what I am writing. But I let the IHOP people speak about IHOP, and the same goes for other ministries. They know the playing field, I do not.

Spiritual Traps

In the Wuest Expanded Translation bible, the devil is referred to as the “pernicious one,” which, of course, was a clue to his tactics. Satan is generally slow, but persistent in his planning, so consider Paul’s statement, “so that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes.” 2 Corinthians 2:11 NASB.

There is a ‘flip side’ to this scripture that should be brought up, and it is a very dangerous trap for the mind. The diving line difference, at least to me, is clear but often blurred by demonic tactics. We are to be aware of how the devil seduces and entraps the Lord’s family so that we may live the life the Lord has for us.

There is a big difference, however, between “not being ignorant of his schemes” and the “Warrior for God” mindset that some have been ensnared into.

In the decades of walking with Christ, I have observed an odd pattern that I have seen played out way too many times that seems to always end the same way. This pattern, regardless of whether you are an intercessor, prophet, teacher, or whatever, often starts with the desire to do good by exposing the traps of darkness. Then, at some point, it takes on more and more momentum until the person takes on such extreme behavior that they start pushing people away by their toxic attitude in the pursuit to confront, expose, and challenge the darkness.

My understanding of how this works goes like this. The basic nature of darkness is to hide, but once a child of God exposes the hiddenness (a good thing), the demonic realm changes tactics and starts supplying the information. This action is very smart on their part because it accomplishes two things at the same time.

1. Because the information is coming to you so easily now. You are being programmed to believe you have been given the grace/anointing for the position (Warrior for God) you assume you now have. This reprogramming is designed to feed your carnal nature of pride.

2. The second part is the far more dangerous part. Because you are so quickly accepting this, you are slowly being trained to accept this new voice as the Holy Spirit.

In my early years, there was a female pastor who ran a large ministry in our county. We talked many times via email, and her entire church was devoted to rescuing children who were entrapped in darkness. Unfortunately, Sharon kept digging deeper and deeper. One day, this “Warrior for God” appointed a new pastor in her place and disappeared. A couple of years later, she showed up on the internet as a priestess of the Egyptian goddess Isis.

This is because she had been trained by another spirit to accept this new voice as the Holy Spirit, who guided her to this newfound role as a high priestess.

Unfortunately, so many of the people working to expose the pretenders are at risk if they do not learn when to move on when the assignment is done. The reason they are at risk is they were NEVER trained in spiritual warfare by the lukewarm ministries they have now walked away from. Now, like I said, this exposure and standing up for the victims is a good thing. But to quote the old Kenny Rogers song, “The Gambler.” (1978)

“You've got to know when to Hold’em
know when to fold ‘em.
Know when to walk away,
know when to run.”

When it’s your time to step out of the fight, do it. Your soul is more important to God than the work you do. But on the other side, do not quit before he releases you. Obedience is still better than sacrifice.

The Ancient Path

Here is a screenshot of a recent warning dream from Pam Clark on this subject.

In the last several Substack posts, I have been writing about the traces of the ancient path that I have found. Also, in future posts, I will continue writing more because I believe this IS the direction the Lord is taking us. But what is some of the historical evidence of when we started to fall apart?

Consider this short excerpt from Foxe's Book of Martyrs during the reign of Emperor Gallus (251-253 AD) who was later killed by his own soldiers. “Most of the errors which crept into the Church at this time arose from placing human reason in competition with revelation.” True revelation not only comes from God but is also carried in the common union of the experience of fellowship.

Because errors crept in, it is also recorded during this time the following, “it was unfortunate for the Gospel, that many errors had, about that time crept into the Church: the Christians were at variance with each other; self-interest divided those whom social love ought to have united; and the virulence of pride occasioned a variety of factions.” At this point, the outside world saw the Christian community splitting apart. They seized the opportunity and drastically increased its persecution of Christians. The experiential relationship we had with the Trinity and each other was replaced with human reasoning and we lost badly.

The reality is that, according to John 17, the world will understand once they see the love of God resting on the community. The community was designed to be a testimony to the world. That’s what it means when it says “...the world might be understanding...” This is something we need to recover.

Pam’s dream seems to be saying that a new generation is seeking the Ancient Path, but once the elders saw it, they ran away in terror and left that generation stranded. Division will then reign in the body until (I believe) that generation has passed away and the new baby is born.

Do we really want to keep going around the mountain without purpose, forever broken and divided? The Israelites spent 40 years in the desert until that generation finally died. What about us?

“This is what the Lord says:

Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths,
ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.
But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.” Jeremiah 6:16