The Negative Spiritual Power of Mixture Part One : Leaven

As the Holy Spirit guides us through life again, this time "seeing only God", we can be sure He is showing His Light on many of the things we were just taking for granted.

One of the things we didnt see
Living in the land of "just-me", of a supposed independent self,  us as entirely self-empowered beings, we were entirely caught up in the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, that is , in a Land of opposites that we had to gingerly pick our way through.

How Great is that Darkness
Jesus said if the very light that we have been living by, turns out to actually have been Darkness all along, then how great, clever and manipulative this same Darkness has been. And this is ofcourse what we are beginning to say louder and louder. This whole process of picking our way between opposites as an activity is actually none other than the root of  "the speculations and thoughts raised up against the knowledge of Christ" that we are now tearing down.
This manner of living was the school master to lead us to Christ : the Law, but once we meet Him and connect with Him we get caught up with His actual Life.




Our lives were a good deal more complicated than black and white, good and bad. We could be doing good as an outer act, but from the dodgiest of motives inside.


Mixture is a Power
But this is all a preamble to say that as fast as the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil has  been set up to "contain" people until such time as they find the Real One, the devil gets to tamper , particularly with the now established Tree of Good.  So the Good we are working with, actually isnt.

Manna
We don't live from the "bread", the leavened dough, of man's Tree of Good and Evil knowledge.
But by "every Word that proceeds out of the mouth of God".
Either in direct format where we hear  "Go out of Egypt" then we go, but all the while celebrating this Word with unleavened bread.....
OR...
The Bread itself is coming out of heaven as did manna.

But what both pictures are, are unleavened. They are pure. They have not been through man's left-brain sorting system, his filtration system, whereby only the bare bones of the chicken remain, and the MEAT, the POWER, the enabling POWER, the GRACE SUBSTANCE , the GOD SUBSTANCE, has been removed.

Leaven exercise
Here's two exercises for you to establish my meaning. One historic, one more recent.

• Acts 2

Acts 2:21 :And everyone who calls
   on the name of the Lord will be saved.
Acts 2:39 :The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”

This was just ten days after the disciples had watched Jesus go up into heaven. Notice Jesus never said "Wait for ten days". He never relayed to them ....and on the day of Pentecost, you will receive the Holy Spirit in power. As far as they knew, they could have still been waiting.

So this explosive sermon of Peter's came out of his own personal restoration on the Gallilee shore. It came out of the disciples subsequent experiences seeing and learning from Jesus AFTER His resurrection. And finally it came out of his most recent experience of obeying the Lord to wait "AS ONE" for the Holy Spirit to come as promised, though they were never given a firm date....but as the crowds who had come for the annual Feast of Pentecost mingled, and the Holy Spirit had come upon the disciples, Peter was under an incredible thunderous anointing as he spoke these words. It was less of a sermon and more of a prophecy. This was Jesus-Peter addressing the new thing in the earth that had properly been born that day...

THE NEW COVENANT  ECCLESIA   CHURCH OF GOD  ON EARTH.

Nowadays, this would be a name tag on a black church outside Birmingham UK.

So now you too are a witness to verses 21 and 39 as spoken under Holy Spirit anointing. So what on earth is happening here in Joppa in Acts 10 :15 "What God has cleansed no more consider unholy."
In other words, once the immediate anointing had lifted from speaking the words Acts2 :21 and 39, Peter had slipped back into default leaven thinking.  What was the default leaven thinking?  That salvation was all about Jews.

• Ern Baxter at Kansas City Shepherd's Conference 1975 - Address Final meeting: Thy Kingdom Come.  

To hear this message all you have to do is click the message on the lefthand side panel of this blog. It is from here that we can get a good idea of what St Peter sounded like on the Day of Pentecost. I spoke with Ern on the phone in 1984 while he was staying in Dunstable with Stanley Jebb, asking his permission to use some of this message as a dramatic presentation in Emsworth. I asked him to confirm his own statement in Dales Bible week that for part of that address, Ern's feet weren't even on the ground. All the 5000 leaders present had already taken off their shoes because the worship was on another level that day in the stadium.

Now, if you are not familiar with these type of churches, visit a church that came into being on the back of the 1970's Bible Weeks. There are many throughout the world. Now compare say, how Terry Virgo of Clarendon Church Brighton is now, compared with this very message which launched these type of churches.
Much of the outer form of the doctrine is still vaguely similar, but the inner substance of God Himself, His Presence, His actual Living Word doctrine, has lifted off these churches. They are little more than a shell. Human leaven, which is actually the doctrine of demons, has long retrenched itself in the meetings and the structures.

What Ern was conveying was a living version where a Living Christ rules and reigns over His church, supernaturally raising up supernatural giftings and ministries, apostles ,prophets, pastors and teachers, together with supernatural evangelists, to build His Church. I can even now get that same whiff of excitement in the 70s magazines as we learned that apostles and prophets still existed in our day and age.

This is the present day reality induced by human leaven.
Terry Virgo thinks an apostle heads up the show.
That one apostle forms a whole load of churches, which are like Baptist churches with Baptism in the Spirit.(How do I know? because Terry came to our Renewed baptist Church in Old Town Amersham, and unlike Graham Pulkingham, who spoke much 3rd level truth and was never invited back, Terry Virgo was welcomed back with open arms.)
That he then is the responsible elder over all the  self-proliferating network.
That teachings, or the "outer forms of teachings"  can be fed through an organisation about
baptism in water
baptism in the Spirit
tithing
running meetings with a worship group followed by a Baptist sermon
home groups constructed on computers according to geographical areas
people out and about "doing witnessing"
evangelistic events  to which others are brought to hear about "these outer forms" of what people think salvation is
surrounded and buttressed by prayer meetings of various types, which are only populated by the few, because they mostly take the form of lists, and people out loud giving God extremely good reasons why their various good ideas and initiatives should surely twist the arm of God, and He be behoved to bless their endeavours.
In amongst all this, the prophetic, and the heartfelt, and further revelation gets emasculated and controlled, and firmly "submitted" under the thumb of the spiritual leaven of  "those with more experience".

BUT as Acts 10 shows, this form of "spiritual checking" fails right here......thinking according to Old leaven Patterns, the tradition of men. And Peter wasn't including in his thinking the very purpose of God: to bring in the FULNESS of the Gentiles.

FOT7 - Unleavened Bread is the Feast we walk in

Feast of Tabernacles - George H. Warnock 1951

CHAPTER 3 - THE UNLEAVENED BREAD

The observance of the Unleavened Bread followed Passover and was associated with it. So much so that the two events were regarded as being one and the same Feast. We read therefore, "Now the feast of unleavened bread drew nigh, which is called the Passover." (Lk. 22:1; Matt. 26:17). The Passover event itself was on the fourteenth day of the first month, in the evening. Then the Unleavened Bread continued from the fifteenth day until the twenty-first day, seven days in all.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF LEAVEN

As to the spiritual significance of the Unleavened Bread we are not left in doubt. Says Paul to the Corinthians, "Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us; therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." (1 Cor. 5:6-8).

The penetrating and spreading characteristics of leaven make it to be a fitting type of malice and wickedness in a believer or in an assembly. Paul likens the persuasive and corrupting influence of the Judaizers upon the Galatians to "leaven." "This persuasion cometh not of him that calleth you. A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump." (Gal. 5:8, 9). Again, our Lord likens the doctrines of the Pharisees and Sadducees to "leaven," because of their evil influence. "Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, and of the Sadducees." (Matt. 16:6). To observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, therefore is to live a life that is free from the corrupting influences of sin and the flesh.

HOW TO BE FREE FROM LEAVEN

When the children of Israel departed from Egypt they gathered up their dough before it was leavened, for they did not have opportunity to leaven it, "because they were thrust out of Egypt, and could not tarry." (Ex. 12:39). Had they lingered in Egypt, they would have had plenty of opportunity to leaven their dough; but because they were thrust out in haste their bread was unleavened.

So it is with the child of God. As long as he is pressing on with God, and fleeing from the corrupting influences of the world, the flesh, and the Devil--his life is free from sin. He does not have "time" for sin to work within him. He is too busy following his God and following on in the pathway of obedience.

(Chris Welch:selected verses from Romans 8

Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. ⁶ The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. ⁷ The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. ⁸ Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.

⁹ You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you..............................

Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. ¹³ For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.

¹⁴ For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. ¹⁵ The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship.)

But let him linger by the way, lose the vision of the glory that is set before him, and yearn for the good old days when he had plenty in Egypt--and leaven will begin to work afresh in his life. Let any child of God, or group of saints, lose the vision of God's glory, and before long that man or that assembly becomes filled with the leaven of malice and wickedness. There is only one sure way by which a stream of water can be kept pure and clean--and that is by flowing. Let it be diverted into an open pit, and before long the water becomes a stagnant pool and will breed corruption and death. So it is with Truth. When an individual, and assembly, or a group of assemblies settles back in self-complacency, satisfied with their condition, and content with the thought that they have arrived at the Truth--stagnation immediately sets in, the leaven begins to function, and "malice and wickedness" characterize the whole denomination. You simply cannot expect to keep a sect clean from the corrupting influences of the flesh, because if they linger behind when the glory-cloud moves forward, they have plenty of time to leaven their dough. On the other hand, if you proceed from "glory to glory" there is no opportunity for you to become leavened.

MODERN PHARISEES AND SADDUCEES

That is why Jesus warned the disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Now the doctrines of the Sadducees were definitely false, for they denied the resurrection, the fact of angels and spirits, and so forth. They were the predecessors of our modern religions which have a form of godliness but "deny the power thereof." They denied the supernatural; and we have plenty of Sadducees in the world today. But the Pharisees, on the other hand, were quite orthodox in their teachings; so much so that Jesus commanded His own disciples to observe and do what they said. (Matt. 23:3). Why then did He tell the same disciples to "beware" of their doctrine? For this simple reason: "They say, and do not." What they said was all right, generally speaking, but their works gave the lie to their teachings. So it is with our modern Pharisees, our orthodox Christian teachers.

1. They teach about the power of Jesus' blood;
   
2. they lift you to heights of praise as they expound the glories of the celestial, and the power of Christ's resurrection;
   
3. they speak much of the miracles of Christ, and the power of the early Church;
   
4. they will expound the doctrines of healing, and miracles, and the various gifts of the Holy Spirit. But "they say, and do not."
   
5. And not only that: for they condemn and denounce the man who wishes to go in and explore the glories of resurrection life and the "powers of the age to come." They think it is all right to talk about resurrection and life and the heavenly realm--but when one suggests that this is the heritage of the saints here and now, there are loud protests from the Pharisees.
   
6. Then the leaven begins its subtle influence, and an orthodox theology develops into malice and wickedness.

O saints of God everywhere, let us launch out into the deep! Let us lift our anchor which has gripped the earth for so long--and let us become anchored to Christ in the heavens, where we ought to be anchored. For God has intended that our anchor should pass into the heavens, behind the veil, whither the forerunner has for us entered. (Heb. 6:19, 20). If we are anchored to earth, and to the doctrines of men, we will be earth-bound creatures; but once we anchor to Heaven and to the Man behind the veil, we are Heaven-bound creatures--and we are constantly rising higher and higher and higher into the realms of the Spirit.

Then one day, thank God!--the veil of the flesh shall be rent asunder, and we shall see Him as He is! And when we speak this way, we are not talking about physical death, nor about the rapture; but we are speaking of seeing Him "who is invisible," as Moses did of old. We shall see Him, even though the world sees Him not. Did not Jesus say, "The world seeth me no more; but ye see me..." (Jn. 14:19)? And was He not speaking of seeing Him in the Spirit, because of the coming of the Holy Spirit into the hearts of the disciples?

Unleavened Bread - The Feast we Walk In by Chris Welch

No movement has been able to date to walk consistently without leaven. The Israelites died in the wilderness. In recent history perhaps there was something special about the 100 year Moravian Prayer meeting. Certainly the resultant missionary push not only affected England through Wesley and Whitfield, but their missionaries went to the ends of the earth.

More recently still, only a handful of people came through the 60s charismatic awakening and together with Arthur Wallis walked out of the denominational restrictions into the new things God was building. And perhaps less still could say together with Derek Prince that they had consisently walked with the Cloud all their lives.

Facebook - Chris Welch

What's the big deal about the Feast of Unleavened Bread?Why Manna? Simply this.God is concerned about Union with you, so rather like Sony or Itunes with their DRM restrictions limiting CD/Mp3 copies, the Word is made to perish before it goes through to many inbetweens.Why is this fact important?

The denomination/church organisation you are with only has "perished"," hand me down Word". It always gets diverted to the left or the right...but God's Word is Living and goes straight through the centre.ie it is neither Armenian nor Calvinist but both simultaneously. There is no getting away with it, we want to have word separate from Him...but only He is the Word...and for this reason we walk in a permanent Feast of "Unleavened Bread".....bread that has NO LEAVEN whatever!!!! HE DOES HIS OWN RISING!!!! Hallelujah

Why do we have to rightly divide the Word?Well actually it's simpler than that.The Word is a Person who walks between two dead carcasses of Truth split like an animal in two,like two boundaries to the left and the right.Armenianism is dead.Calvinism is dead.But Jesus is alive.Some say seeking after the spectacular is immature and quote "This unbelieving generation seeks a sign." Others quote Paul: earnestly seek the higher gifts especially that you may prophesy. Both sides of opinion are dead carcasses.Jesus walks right in the middle.

Leaven is NOT authentic. Like cancer , it is extra to the original life or structure. It is a hideous deformation. It is the "bewitching" of Galations where the church had bowed to the pressures of the "circumcision". Getting back to working for your salvation.

Let's name leaven spiritually. It is a spirit. It is the spirit of error that we inherited in the Fall through choosing what we supposed was our own way. But there is no "own way". Spiritually we need to either be empowered by God's Life through Christ, or we default to a "Satan-I hookup". We need to be empowered by some deity. Either the TRUE Deity, God the Father, or a false one, Satan, masquerading as freedom. And only as we truly begin the reckoning process of reckoning ourselves dead to sin and alive to God, are we taken through the experience described in Romans 6 and 7. This leads to us finding out that at salvation, Christ really did a radical replacement of my "I", which was really Satan-I, pulling me hither and thither, and Christ came in joined to my spirit, as the new "I".

How leaven shows up in charismatic churches is extremely subtle. For there everyone is, going deep in praise; pressing through in regular prayer; feeding on many messages and sermons...
but the reality is the Satan-I remains absolutely unchallenged. The self for self drive that like the proverbial fly in the ointment, makes you drop the whole ointment cream and run like Heidi Venie off into the wilderness of Alaska.

If charismatic leadership was mature in Christ ,maybe a case could be made out for exonerating them in these twoissues....but then again...perhaps neither of these will ever be allowed.
Issue 1. Leaders circumvent the New Covenant and write a new commandment by which a man shall be saved. Tithing. And this tithe goes to the leaders. Not to the poor. Yes to buildings.But mostly to paying salaries. Levites may have lived from the tithe in the Old Covenant, but in the new they live from freewill offerings...and wherever possible, from the work of their own hands.
In other words, like George Mueller they live by faith in God who supplies their needs.
Today's leaders create a breeding ground for leaven. Symbiotic systems are mutually reliant systems. The fleshly leaven system is promoted by forcing people to give you a tithe so you are virtually a salaried employee of a club or corporation. The Kingdom symbiosis gets both sides reliant on the Cross, and the Presence of God. The leader, trusting in God for his or her finances
is totally free to "circumcise" the flesh life of their congregation with the Living Word that has no leaven.The hearers can choose to support their leaders and love them, or harden their heart...but one thing they wont do is hang around long if they are unwilling. In an atmosphere of very little anointing and loads of leaven, churches get clogged up with hearers who "think they are righteous" because they are tithing, but they are not even interested in the Living Word of God. And so it is that churches like Havant which began so well in the 80s get clogged up with people that are not actually in church purely for Christ and Him alone, but go to church for a whole host of other reasons....some of which are just a result of being bewitched by law."You shalt go to church".
Issue 2. Those who prophesy today have to check out their message first with leaders who are themselves filled with "leaven" between their ears. These leaders wouldn't necessarily recognise the "Now" Word of Christ, because they have now lived for about 30 years without it. They are living instead with a 1980s distortion of what was then the Living Word of Christ. Their version however has "independent self" stamped through it like lettering through rock. Those prophesying DO NOT HAVE TO CHECK their messages out first, because for a start they will only ever know a small gist of what the Spirit will speak through them by the energising power of that same Spirit. The scriptures say the Body, and those mature in the Spirit will then judge what has been said, and will guide a response as appropriate. If things go awry, then mature ones can guide things back on course. But wrong use never implies no use, or unscriptural use...it causes us to press through to right use. Certainly as things stand we have laid out an airport runway for leaven....because we have made an impediment to people delivering messages of the Lord in the Spirit...and instead we are encouraging people to tamper by means of their own minds.
Who has known the Mind of the Lord? I mean that, not just rhetorically. Who actually has known the mind of the Lord?
Imagine say a mature leader like Peter Stott weighing up a prophecy about the Virgin birth of Christ. And then another coming up and saying "Hmmmm....I'm getting something about a food trough in a stable out the back of a hotel...and it's very smelly." "I'm afraid we cannot accept that....go back and try again....that's just too far out!!!"

How dare we tamper with the very gifts of the Holy Spirit, the one who hovered on the waters when the earth was formless and void? Just who do we think we are?

The Unleavened Bread we have within us is Christ Himself. Galations 2:20-21 says
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. ²¹ I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”

I have written on Facebook this week that faith implies risk. In that risk we are weak, thrown upon God. if we try to remove the risk of faith we are like David wheeling God's Presence around in the form of the Ark of the Covenant towards Jerusalem in a new cart. The defined method for transporting the Ark is upon the shoulders of committed ones; ones risking their lives in some designated way.
Making themselves vulnerable that if God doesn't show up they are stuffed.

"some of you will never experience that revival you are after,because inwardly you have already made another decision. You simply refuse to put your hands down by your sides and take them off My Body. Kingdom symbiotics are that the Levites or ones who live by ministry live by donation at My hand regardless of how popular the message.
Secondly, those prophesying do not ask man for permission (which has the effect of) filtering My Word. Those words are to be judges by the Body.

The Kingdom is the risk of faith....if I don't show up...you're stuffed!!! The Ark of the Testimony is carried on the shoulders of those risking their lives, not in the new carts of human organisation."