Taking the Rose Colored Glasses Off

We were meant to be a community

This week, I decided to take inspiration from Martha Gayle Substack and share part of my book My Fathers House. This book is a self-published 162-page work that is a part of my personal Deconstruction and spiritual rebuilding process. It is a conversational journey to reclaim and behold the restoration of the community that Jesus gave his life for. I have stopped publishing (temporarily), but I do have two boxes left, if you're interested, see the details at the bottom.

FYI, there is also a short MorningStar update at the bottom.

My Fathers House

P. 16-20 of Chapter One ~ Taking the Rose Colored Glasses Off.

The Wind is Changing.

The Holy Spirit is stirring the body. In some ways, many of us are now becoming restless ‘waters’, unsettled with the trapping of an artificial reality enclosed in a building, with a glossy web page of smiling faces, polished budget, and a mission statement that no one ever reads. We often find ourselves anxious for something we can not describe, but looking around we cannot see it. Impatient, we read of the whispers of another life, illustrated in the lives of Jesus and his Apostles.

So we wait and wait some more as we comply with the narrative that we need another bible study, another impartation, another prophetic word, more prayer, another spiritual whatever before we can move forward. In effect, we become subliminally trained to be “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (2 Timothy 3:7 NASB). Much of modern Christianity is designed to psychologically manipulate the assembly toward giving to the corporate institution with tax deductions, well-played worship music, heartfelt blessings, and misplaced spiritual duty. So that the system of pointless religious repetition stays well-fed and a little more devoid of the life Jesus came to give us every day.

This manipulation is often highly decorated with the ‘things’ of the church, but not the life of the Lord. Sunday morning follows the same, often predictable, format of music, offering, and preaching. This week looked like the last and that one will look a lot like any given Sunday morning ten years from now. When you come in, someone either applies layers of guilt or floods the floor with warm fuzzy words to make you ‘feel’ good about yourself and the church you are sitting in. Seldom does real education or equipping take place. And if it does, demonic spirits are often soon sent in to pull our minds away as they speak through peoples ‘good intentions.’

What many now seek, has been longed for by many before us, just like Abraham before us. “...for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” (Hebrews 11:10 NASB)

As the reset button gets hit in my life, my eyes are opening to see something larger and bigger and simpler than I could ever conceive or imagine. To quote 1 Corinthians 13:9 WET “...for we know in a partial, fragmentary, incomplete way, and we utter divine revelations in the same way.” What I understand is incomplete and is being added to even as I write this. But based on the comments from many others I have interacted with, I believe that others within the Body of Christ might be getting a glimpse of a new life as well.

So, hopefully, what I write here can become a catalyst for discussion and ponder within you and among your group of friends. May you take what I have written here, add it to the things you feel the Spirit is telling you, and make your moment of choice. For it is in the grace-filled moments of personal interactions with the Lord at the center, that you and your friends will find the smoldering embers of the wonders of another life.

Let's do the math.

I have spent an enormous amount of hours pondering, looking, reading, and praying. As I have looked at archeological records, modern trends, distant cultures, and other assorted things as I ponder the past. And in between the pages of old books and web pages, the Lord has used them all to challenge my thinking. As I discard many things to the waste bin and hold close to others, the reset button of my thinking gets hit over and over again as a new level of life is found each time, a little deeper and a little more profound, causing me to wonder even more.

And like others before me, I have started to question our “modern Christianity.” At this point, I should stop and define what I am saying when I say “Modern Christianity”. What I mean is that if it currently exists today then I am talking about it. Charismatic or Non-Charismatic, Baptist or Lutheran, it all carries the same issues at the core.

All I can say for certain is that something was lost, something precious and so simple even a child could understand it. And in some ways, it’s kind of like C.S. Lewis qualifications for seeing the wonders of Narnia, good for children’s eyes but lost on the adults. I believe that what has happened is that we have been culturally trained to trip over it with the traditions of men that have been carefully, skillfully laid down by an Anti-Christ spirit within our walls, so hidden that we often do not even know it exists.

Consider the following, Jesus said;

“You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they? So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their fruits.” (Matthew 7:16-20 NASB).

Here is a strong biblical principle that can be used for evaluating not only people but movements, churches, and teachings. If your teaching produces weak fruit or no fruit at all, then something is wrong at the core and should be corrected.

The experts who have taken a look at church history have noted that by percentage, the Body of Christ grew the fastest during the first one hundred years. After that came the second and then the third centuries. They were strong, but not as strong as the first. Then, starting in the fourth-century things started to seriously derail, slowing the entire body down.

The math of this evaluation is based on the current population increase. Nowadays we have big revivals in some countries, but the percentage is low. If the percentage was the same as the Book of Acts, the entire earth would most likely be converted within a lifetime.

Case in point, in the Book of Acts we assume there were around 120 Christians and then the Holy Spirit brought in 3000, which is well over a 2000 percent increase.

Current estimates place the Christian population at around 2.7 Billion. If the Holy Spirit fell on one million people today and they became Christians, that would only be a 0.037 percent increase.

Comparing this information in light of Jesus’s teaching on fruit means that something at the core of the Body of Christ is not right and should be corrected. Like the old children's story of the Emperor's new clothes, we are operating under an illusion of what we think we have, and not reality. The Body of Christ has become like what Jesus said to the Assembly of Laodicea.

“You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.” (Revelation 3:17 NASB).

“Because you are saying, I am wealthy [in the world’s goods] and have gotten [spiritual] riches and have need of not even one thing, and because you do not have a clear and absolute knowledge of the fact that, as for you, you are the wretched one and a object of pity, and are poverty-stricken and blind and naked...” (Revelation 3:17 WET).

The Voice of the Dead.

From the Band FlyLeaf, “This Close.”
“Had a dream that we were dead, But we pretended that we still lived.

With no regrets, we never bled and we took everything life could give.

And came up broken, empty-handed in the end.
In the hearts of the blind, Something you'll never find is a vision of light.

With the voice of the dead, I'm screaming,

I don't know who I love anymore.”

MorningStar Update

#1 I just heard that since my first Icabod post, which I posted near the end of September, people within Morningstar have started reading and distributing the book I mentioned in the post around the Fort Mill building. This book is Mishel McCumber’s. “The View Beneath: One Woman's Deliverance from the Luciferian Gospel.”

I have decided to include a link back to the original post, the link to purchase her book is near the bottom of the post.

For your information, Because I have been asked, no, I have not read the book yet. I am simply aware of her story and felt it should be included in the original post.

#2 I see on X that some YouTubers who have covered the Mike Bickle fiasco were asked (and they complied) to take their videos down during Ron Cantor's investigation. This is a historical event in the body, and evidence should not be hidden for future generations to learn from.

It was during the Todd Bentley scandal that Ron Cantor did some amazing biblical rebukes of Rick Joyner on social media. But he was talked into taking them down by Dr. Brown. Apparently, Ron is still running off of Dr. Brown’s “wisdom,” and this, I feel, does NOT comply with the essence of what Matthew 18 is intended to deliver.

It is this kind of “wisdom” that may soon scrub the research that people have done on Morningstar, Daystar, and others from the landscape.

#3 Also, Rick Joyner has tried to get a lawsuit against them dropped on the grounds of “religious freedom.” Does this mean, in Rick’s twisted mind, that it is his religious right to abuse and hide the wolves? If so, Pope Rick draws a little closer to Catholic ideology with a touch of Mormon every day.

#4 A bit of an update to my post “Odds & Ends.” A prophetic friend contacted me to say he believes that Rick bringing Todd Bentley back was one of the three moves Rick has left on the chessboard. If you don’t know what I am referring to, please take a moment and re-read that post.

Next Week, “Is There a Better Pattern to Follow?”