Jacob and The Angel, Songs by Suzanne Vega and Chris Welch (separately)

"Jacob And The Angel"

The angel came to Jacob
The room began to glow
Jacob asked the angel
Are you friend or are you foe?

The angel never answered
But smote him on the thigh
They wrestled through the darkness
Till morning filled the sky

This thing between us, has wings, it has teeth
It has got horns and feathers, and sinews beneath
Angel or demon, to the truth I am bound, and so
This thing between us must be wrestled down

Jacob held on to the angel,
Who turned to fly, and to flee
He said I must have your blessing
Before I let you leave me

The angel never answered
But smote him on the thigh
They wrestled through the darkness
Till morning filled the sky

And in the light
He knew another name
As he struggled and surrendered
To the next part of the game

This thing between us, has wings, it has teeth
It has got horns and feathers, and sinews beneath
Angel or demon, to the truth I am bound, and so
This thing between us must be wrestled down

This thing between us, has wings, it has teeth
It has got horns and feathers, and sinews beneath
Angel or demon to the truth I am bound and so
This thing between us must be wrestled down.

From Suzanne Vega's latest CD available also as mp3
Tales from the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles
(Yup, that'll be tarot then! Blog editor does not in anyway
encourage the reading of Tarot cards. There is no need
because the Holy Spirit has been sent to tell us all we
need to know)



THE JACOB SONG: Words and Music: © A. Christopher Welch 1988.
There is no easy way
It doesn't matter what you say
But it is possible / For you....
Now Jacob did a runner
To flee from his brother
Got himself caught on a sheep farm
His Uncle was nice
But kept him there twice
As long as he should've been.
He 'faithed' in speckled,and he 'faithed' in striped
His sheep numbered many
but this life he didn't like
Thought he'd do a runner to flee TO his brother
To get himself off of that sheep farm.
Met any angels lately?
Met any men with knives?
Met any angels lately?
Met any men with knives?
Jacob dreamed up a dream
He schemed up a scheme
With his wives he fled by night
So with his wealth and stealth
Thought he'd preserve his health
Rather than face the one appointed.
Met any angels lately?
Met any men with knives?
Met any angels lately?
May give you quite a surprise.
Now the Lord's kinda kind
But it's not in his mind
That we stay in the state that we are
So he rigged up a fight
With Jacob one night
And fixed him up a name transplant
Yes fixed him up a name transplant.
Met any angels lately?
Met any men with knives?
Wild beasts are clawing at your heels
Maybe it's God in disguise.
There is no easy way
It doesn't matter what you say
Its possible..... For you (x 2)
A name transplant
For you.
Additional Vocals: Nicholas +Elisa Daniels. copyright A. Christopher Welch 1988

Peniel - Meaning

I have never heard a full meaning. The Holy Spirit continues to fill us in.
At the moment I am feeling that there is something 1.about this incident and 2. my intention in writing this song IN 1988 that divides me (at present) from an easy relationship with Daniel Yordy, and others that I believe have similarities with him, such as Brad Jersak and Michael Hardin.
The division seems to stem from this.
If you still see separation ....the genesis 3 condition of man down here and God way off somewhere, then forever and a day you will be praying, hoping, somehow that God's angel/s will  mediate....will somehow come and bridge the gap....come and touch us....or  to use the Bethesda incident....stir the waters.

Ed Miller thought in these terms and really relayed his experience of seeking God in the late 40s in Argentina.
He described the spiritual desolation he went through in a fairy tale....where he representing the Bride earnestly seeking her Prince...the bridegroom Jesus, was led out into a wilderness where she ran out of all resources. At her wit's end. in total weakness, she suddenly is aware of her Prince who comes and sweeps her onto His stallion with Him, and like all good romantic stories they ride off together.

In the Old Testament and the New are a whole series of individual stories of how God "gets" His men and women. The Peniel incident is one of the most mysterious. Yet it is impossible to overstress the importance.
Why? History DIVIDED at this very point.

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were three consecutive generations of one family that not only were believers, they each pressed on further into seeking God. Peniel marks the culmination of this .
Jacob had already wrestled with the man, the angel, or God in physical form. Genesis 32.
When the man saw Jacob was just not going to let go the scripture says
"he touched the socket of his thigh; so the socket of Jacob’s thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him.
Then he said, “Let me go, for the dawn is breaking.” 
But he said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” 
27 So he said to him, “What is your name?” 
And he said, “Jacob.” 
28 He said, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel; for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.” 
29 Then Jacob asked him and said, “Please tell me your name.” 
But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And he blessed him there.
 30 So Jacob named the place Peniel, for he said, “I have seen God face to face, yet my [p]life has been preserved.” 
31 Now the sun rose upon him just as he crossed over Peniel, and he was limping on his thigh."

The guy's socket is wrenched but he's still clinging on!!!! WOW.

The Kingdom suffers violence until now and violent men take the Kingdom by force.

What is your name?
Usurper. Twister. Manipulator. Deceiver. Jacob.

We are forced into face to face mode with God. Well that's the point , we are not forced...BUT IF WE FORCE THE ISSUE....if we really want it....

Jesus is the WAY, the Truth and the Life.
He is the WAY through to the Truth about ourselves and about the holiness of God. In that ugly NON LIFE
moment. When we see our nature...our inner identity full on...our very character....our true agenda of self for self.....
IRONY of IRONIES this is the exact time God births His Life....or unstops His Lifeflow in our inner being, and rivers of Living Water begin cascading out!!!.

THIS IS THE SUBJECT OF THIS BLOG. THIS IS THE THIRD LEVEL.
It is not Abraham's encounters. They were the foundation.

It is not the wells that Isaac dug. Representing the baptism in the Holy Spirit realm. Uncovering new anointings. New waters of the Spirit.

THIS IS A NAME CHANGER.
Where NAME is the Hebrew understanding, and means essential character , essential  PERSON.

In this awful moment  which is exactly related to the end of Romans 7. We see sin in the flesh.
Not the activity sin.
SIN spirit.
In our members.
Rendering us powerless.
And desperate.

The Name change is the realisation that the ONLY LIFE in the Universe is GOD.
We suddenly see through to God.
The devil sells us this fairytale that we, like him can live powered by our "own life", without telling us that it is spirit of wrongdoing which roots itself in us as we fall for the lie of independence.

Even his life is God's life.
Even he is totally deceived.
But it is God's life twisted back in on itself. SELF for SELF. What the Greeks term hubris, or Ego.God's own pure life is self for others love.

For more forensic detail, study the early chapters of Norman Grubb's series "Yes I am".

It is here I want to say something very radical.This is the game changer.
This is is something new.
This is something the Union crowd who formed thenselves around Norman's revelation have yet to see.

Up until now there has been something deeply personal in seeking God's face.
But the scriptures Psalm 110 and Psalm 24 use a shocking phrase which is KEY, and which Daniel Yordy has not yet grasped.

The phrase is:
THIS IS THE GENERATION WHO SEEK THE FACE OF THE GOD OF JACOB.Ed Miller was on his own.
Daniel Yordy has been on his own seeking out the truths behind "the Eyes of Fire"
I was in the Emsworth church and as a church we sought the face of the Lord together. But it wasn't deep enough. You can take that as if I am talking from pride. But you would be 100% wrong. Quite simply I was desperate. No amount of anointing to lead in worship was cutting anything at all. And believe me God had blessed me with much anointing. So I was forced deeper. On my own.

Daniel talks of Asbergers and I have absolutely no idea of the things he has had to face. But as bad as Asbergers is you can still talk about it.
My testimony is not something that can ever be talked about.
Adultery was bad enough ( I as a single) but that was just the beginning as God used a prophet to bring me down to Emsworth.

THIS IN FRONT OF EVERYBODY.
OR EVERYBODY THAT KNOWS....and is now too disgusted to speak.

As more and more come into the RIGHTEOUSNESS of JESUS CHRIST and Him only.
Ian Clayton, Mother Basilea Schlink and others speak of an intense time the Lord takes us through where we actively cover everything...and I mean everything....all figleaves torn off....and we cover everything with the Blood of Jesus.

In the 12 step course devised originally by Jessie Penn Lewis of Keswick Conventions there is the taking of a personal inventory.
There is the NAMING of our NAME....as did Jacob.
For Ian Clayton this meant months of entering the Presence of the Lord and letting the Holy Spirit review every time period of Ian Clayton's life.....and actively he was led to sprinkle the Blood of Jesus over it. After months of this he felt soooooo clean, soooo renewed , a totally new person.

Now as a community forms of such people the Christ Righteousness Forcefield that will be among them shall mean that people will enter and immediately fall before the Lord and repent.

BUT HERE IS THE RADICAL THING....
Some people won't behave in this way, but God in His mercy will increasingly use His collective people to unearth this junk.
Unearth the scrawlings on the inner walls of the Temple as in Ezekiel 8:10.

We will begin behaving as a GENERATION. A NEW GENERATION.

Up until now the only thirdlevellers have been loners. Watchman Nee. Basilea Schlink. Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Ed Miller. Sam Fife.   They have then gathered a people to disciple them.

What I am saying is we as a generation will begin to radically disciple each other.

This is the true third level meaning of the scriptures penned by St Paul in Ephesians.

"The body building itself up in love, joined by that which each supplies (of Christ substance alreadsy inworked in each) once each part is working properly."

When does a part work properly?
The first level? No at that stage, they are learning about basic forgiveness and grace.
The secondlevel? No, this is when the Holy Spirit starts teaching and leading people into the experience corporately of the Holy Place....of learning the basics of the new identity in Christ...

but no...outsode of meetings they are not "fixed there" in their consciousness yet.

NO. THINGS REALLY START TO ROLL IN THE THIRD LEVEL OF GROWTH.

Typically people are not used to FUSED people.
People are used to seeing others after the flesh.
But this is not so applicable if people are fused with Christ in their consciousness.

If like Jesus they are driving moneychangers out of the temple with whips it can nolonger just be assumed that anger is in the flesh. It just may not be.

And this was the path that got me ejected from Emsworth Church, because they too were not prepared for their prayers concerning me to be ever answered.

And this is the problem with Bethsaida type places all waiting round a pool for an "angel to stir the waters". You see it might just be that the third level man called Jesus turn up and suddenly say....Forget the endless charismatic routines....now I AM HERE....God in flesh and blood. Now do you want to get healed and delivered TODAY.

TODAY is the day of salvation.
Today is the DAY God is squeezing us into.
He is the I AM and TODAY is where He lives.

The shadows flee away....the tussles are over...
Our Name has changed.
We are now Prince of EL
Israel
Prince of God.

YES I AM.

It is nolonger I who live but Christ who lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God.......

Electricity Circuit

Where two or three are gathered in My Name, there am I in your midst. 

 
Electricity theory:
 in a lamp circuit that is in series,where there is a power source, no faulty connection to the switch, no faulty connection to a lamp, and where there is a return connection to the powersource, a lamp shall light up.

Galations 2:20 is a staggering concept. Imagine a room of people all knowing by revelation that they have been crucified. That the self-powered delusion they used to live in and was never self-powered but instead was "hooked up with the spirit of wrath".....
Now imagine that swept away, and people just having the consciousness that they were now owned,operated by their new Spirit empowerer...Christ the Living Lord....in other words...like Jacob...after three generations of he and his forebears all seeking God's face...he had a name change to Israel, prince of God.....

well in the same way, these Christians have had their Name changed to Jesus as them in their form. Imagine a circuit of such people linked by gathering in this New Name? 

Who is in their midst? 

The One Firstborn of a multitude of brethren.

The Ancient of Days. present with the Father at the foundation of the world.

 Can you begin to understand what church will be like, and can you understand now why present churches are so pathetic in comparison, run as they are often by one leader, who may or may not know as much as their congregation.

 Can you now see why the pattern true churches run in according to Ephesians 4:15-16 is a blueprint of supernatural power that the earth has never truly ever seen?" Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love." NASV

A Third Level Approach to Ministry III

Continuing the series that looks at how we do the whole thing of "Ministry" as the present Body of Christ.
To quote Gerald Coates from nigh on 40 years ago, "radical" means concerned with the root.
If the root of how we do ministry is a bit off, then like the Tower of Pisa, it doesn't get better the further up we go.

Me and the present setups
After all my postings you are probably aware of the slightly schizophrenic nature of this blog. On the one hand I want to encourage any good, God-raised up vehicle that gets people from a to b in Christ. If there are colleges that are being used to ground people in the Word of God. If there are networks or families of churches that are continually planting out here and abroad. If there are evangelists,especially signs and wonders evangelists bringing in a harvest of new people to Christ, and from there into existing churches.
My problem is this word "vehicle".

Since being with Graham Pulkingham and the Fisherfolk I saw a kind of prototype Kingdom.
A prototype self-replicating Body of Christ. A Body that was birthed in the intercessory pain of Joel. The priests before the altar. Of Graham on a crypt floor for 3 months (read his book in my book list)surrounded by a broken neighbourhood...that neither wanted his church - nor could see anything else in life than the struggle to just survive. Nobody in my hearing has ever used the word "vehicle" about Graham Pulkingham and the Fisherfolk Community.It wasn't a vehicle. It was Christ in their forms.

Here was faith. Evangelistic faith....even willing to come into Dr Challoner's Grammar School Amersham, fresh over from Houston Texas. But here was something else too. Here was a covenantal love between everybody. That was more than duty. There had been some dying and resurrecting...as in Jamie's last post . In Song of Solomon the younger sister is berated for being like a Tower....not having the well developed breasts of Faith and Love.

If we do not have well developed faith and well developed love...
our evangelism contains a lot of hoopla, a lot of brow-beating, a lot of pressure...

The thing is... the gospel is real, folks. We can do some dying and resurrecting. What resurrects is not us, but Christ...in all His unique fragrances and oils. People know on their insides that we have been with Him. The truth is actually far deeper. The truth is He has eaten us for lunch!!!
He never was really that interested in our lives before knowing Him. As clever as we may have thought we were. Whatever we were we really do count as loss. Cos when you've had tasters of Him radiating His Life out through you....such that every one in the room becomes a little irradiated themselves....well why would you ever go back?
So this is my problem
with large networks like Salt and Light, like New Frontiers,and all the many others out there
are they what I have described...the self-replicating Body of Christ
or are they just machines...just vehicles? It was never in Gerald Coates' heart to create a vehicle. But is this in fact what we are left with? New carts for the glory of God. Instead of the poles in my parable.
This is what prompted this post
Obviously I was struck over the weekend by the frankness of Dan's post on Life on Wings. But this is what hit me forcibly yesterday afternoon. And this is nothing to do with Dan.
There is a breed of person who remains in the academic world all his life. Like CS Lewis. Or let's take a Mr Smith. He does all his schooling. He goes to University. He does a Phd, then becomes a teacher in a school. Then out of 30 or more pupils, maybe one or two do likewise. So there already you have 2 generations of pupils that have perpetuated an academic life to perpetuate an academic life.
My point is more subtle than to say we perpetuate academic life, academic study of the scriptures...to forever be replicating just knowledge of the scriptures. Perhaps that is the preserve of the evangelical churches. No my point is a continuation of the last ministry posts.
What our networks perpetuate is a 2 level gospel of forgiveness and moving in the Spirit. The vision of faith (the God of Abraham and his faith walk) and the vision of the Baptism in the Spirit (the God of Isaac and his wells) but nearly nobody reproduces the Life Change or Name change which is hidden in the phrase "seek the Face of the God of Jacob" And it is this last revelation that changes a believer into an oozing Christ stick like Graham Pulkingham. It is this final element that meant the Israel history could start rolling. Via the 12 sons....and we know the rest.
And it is this final level that makes Ed Miller, and Mother Basilea Schlink stand out like Lighthouses in the sea of other ministries. Because, through doggedly seeking God themselves, they both found it,taught it and radiated it. And something similar was coming through Mother Theresa, who for 40 years did nothing but seek God....then when she was called to India she went as "Christ as her". She knew her identification, to use Jorge Pradas' phrase.

The model of Salt and Light under Barney Coombs, and Terry Virgo's New frontiers, and Morris Cerullo's God's Victorious Army , and Rheinhardt Bonnke's ministry schools, and YWAM's Discipleship Training Schools are wrong. They are 2 level affairs, with built-in add ons to try and make up for the deficiences. And to go back to the academic example. This insufficiency is perpetuated throughout the generations. At what point do people learn to live in the real world as "Christ as them". Then perpetuate that. At what point do people see right into the problem of Genesis 3:5, so they can correct it. They don't. So a shallow 2 level Christianity is forever perpetuated.

As I've described before about the Word being like a suspended orb(see comments section of this post)....in the end, when I listen to folk I'm not listening just to their words or their message, I am looking to see if the orb of God's Presence is suspended within what they are saying. This will make more sense if you read the passage again. Because English ministries have little or no knowledge of the 3 part Way of God
You get a limp and flaccid 2 part version
You get sound-ish docrine, but no Presence
You get add-on ministries like "Celebrate Recovery" in Derby church because of the insufficiencies in the original gospel....which leaves people still bound in their particular brand of sins, as I was.Worse than this by the way....at least 3 or 4 of the young people I was in Bible House with are dead. Many more are divorced. Already. I think it's important you read to the end of this post. I am not speaking out of lightweight experience.Perhaps now you can understand where I am coming from with 1st and 2nd level churches
The struggles that Dan describe this weekend are treated by the 1st and 2nd level churches as a brief abberation, as a slightly embarrassing interlude in the running of network churches. This is the tone of one of the Salt and Light church people when describing Todd's difficulties of 2005...let alone his more recent difficulties. It hasn't yet hit the Network churches that THIS IS THE GOSPEL. Everyone plays down these seeming abberrations...but this is Romans 7...this is the Psalms experience David is going on about. This IS how we decide in a safe universe to make a change on the inside of us. This is no human decision. This is a miracle. This isGod doing something at last...when all else failed.(Read Corrie Ten Boom) While we lean on the ultimate victory of the Cross 2000 years ago....this is us making it ours. It is debilitating...read Maurice Smith's 20th Century Pilgrim. It is embarrassing...especially to the pull yourselves up by your bootstraps brigade. But you see, those ones are not fully born again yet. Grace is not active in them yet. Their eternal destiny may be sealed....but God is not just about people's eternal destinies...He wants to get Christ up and running in me and you too...just like all those "top shelf" Christian bookshop people.
Like Watchman Nee. Like Corrie ten Boom. Like George Verwer. Like Madame Guyon. Like John Bunyan who describes all this in incredible detail in Pilgrim's Progress. And no, the order in his story is not wrong. It's you and your churches that are wrong.

Network churches build warehouses of Christians they don't know what to do with. They celebrate two out of the three feasts. Passover and Pentecost. And then they make Tabernacles into a reiteration of Passover because it has a Day of Atonement in it. see Joseph Prince.

No. No. No. Atonement is where it is in the sequence for a reason. If you are established in Passover and Pentecost...and you know His love and His forgiveness and His Presence....on the basis of that grounding He can begin walloping you like a teenager...to conform you into His sonship...to make you into an adult...a Co-worker with Him. Rather than looking at David in an embarrassed way...poor thing...he went through such stuff in the wilderness with Saul and that.... you've got to see that THIS IS THE WAY OF GOD. It's not something God is embarrassed about either.

To conclude I prophesy this with reference to our previous chats recently about Israel.
When the Church gets the revelation about Jacob...and the Name change
When the Church gets the revelation about The Day of Atonement
In that day we are going to provoke the nation of Israel to jealousy
And in that day we will see with our own eyes
A True Day of Atonement
The two houses being made as One (At one-ment) with their God and with each other.
Both flawed and floored by the grace of God in equal measure...that NO MAN MAY BOAST.

Selah