Chag sameach Rosh Chodesh kol beit Yisra'el and Mishpachah Lev-Tsiyon and welcome to the first day of the tenth month of the biblical year.

Yahweh wasn't kidding us when He told us, on numerous occasions over the last year or two, that the invasion of the Courtyard of the Temple or Body of Messiah was taking place. Yesterday morning I was in open vision for some time, watching what was going on, and the thing that struck me the most was the sudden increase in witchcraft. By that I am not talking about classical, overt witchcraft, the kind the public mind imagines, with its potions and curses. In its broadest definition witchcraft may be said to be the practice of, and belief in, magical skills and abilities that are able to be exercised by individuals and certain social groups by the conscious or unconscious invocation of demons.

The use of magic and witchcraft is rampant in the Body of Messiah - and I don't just mean the secretive satanic activities conducted by the older denominations in the basements of churches and elsewhere - I am talking about the open, public use of these things heavily camoflaged with a Christian veneer. You don't have far to look to find it in operation. Charismatic Protestantanism is saturated with witchcraft. It's so bad and so deep that its practicioners have no idea what they are doing, can't see the contradictions between what they preach and teach and what the Bible says, and have no clue what the authentic Ruacha haQodesh (Holy Spirit) is because they are operating under the delusion of a counterfeit mediated by demons. The Word of Faith movement in Christianity, with its spoiled 'King's Kids' name-it-and-claim-it entitlement mentality and its blasphemous doctrines about Christ dying spiritually for us, and much more, has opened the floodgates to demonic infestation.

Now the reason I have been led to bring this up today is not because this is a new subject that you need to hear about but to warn you to check your old baggage. No, this is not an airport announcement to make sure you have left your bags unattended during which time a terrorist or drug-pusher might have implant something nasty in them. I am talking about the spiritual baggage that we all bring with us from our previous associations. You may be convinced that in accepting Yah'shua (Jesus) and becoming spiritually regenerated that you got a clean bill of spiritual health, and maybe you did. The problem, though, is that our thinking and feeling lives may bring over old patterns of thought which were birthed by false teaching and immersion in false spirits which get re-activated without our always being necessarily aware that that has happened.

A common way to open old doors, or even new ones if you haven't come across them before, is by listening to these witches and warlocks of the 'Faith' Movement to whom you may have been drawn by some of the apparently good things they teach and preach. Joyce Meyer, Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Fred Price, Paul Crouch, Kathryn Kuhlman, Joseph Prince, or Marilyn Hickey are some of the leading lights of this witchcraft in Christianity today. Once you start opening yourselves up to the true things they teach, you can soon find yourself in a passive, accepting spirit that may not only soak up false teachings like a sponge but - in many ways far, far more dangerous - you may end up soaking in the dangertous cocktail that is their spirit...and the spirits that control them.

This is what I saw early yesterday morning. I watched a demon being exposed and going back into hiding in one of the visions Yahweh showed me. It was a huge reptile-like creature that emerged out of a fire-filled pit. I understood that the pit was where it normally resides, and the fire was the passion it stirred up which is so attractive to people, especially those who are bored and are in search of some 'excitement'. Charismatic demons know how to turn these on, not just in the wild displays of false tongue-speaking and other manifestations, but in false teachings that exalt men and women as gods and goddesses. All of these passions have a common source as Paul warned:

"Those who belong to Messiah Yah'shua (Jesus) have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Ruach (Spirit), let us keep in step with the Ruach (Spirit)" (Gal.5:24-25, NIV).

If you are susceptibe to temptation and sin, this may not be as easy and straightforward to overcome as you think. I meet so many people who believe they are authentic believers led by the true Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) but who are not willing to consider what the Scriptures actually say. Listen to Paul's warning:

"For the mystery of Torahlessness (Lawlessness) is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the Torahless (lawless) one will be revealed, whom the Master (Yah'shua/Jesus) will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. The coming of the Torahless (Lawless) one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the emet (truth), that they might be saved. And for this reason Elohim (God) will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the emet (truth) but had pleasure in unrighteousness" (2 Thess.2:7-12, NKJV).

What is the issue here? What is it specifically that leads to Yahweh sending these rebels a "strong delusion"? What kind of emet (truth) is it that they are rejecting? Now in the general sense what Paul is warning the Thessalonians against is any teaching or practice that would lead a soul away from salvation - from trusting in Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ). He identifies Satan's agent - the "Lawless One" in most English translations - without saying who or what he or it is. It is not clear who this "man of Lawlessness" is though in terms of apocalyptic fulfilment this can only be Anti-Messiah or Antichrist at the very end time. However, what this passage is not saying is that there will only be Lawlessness, embodied by this man, at the very end time, but not before. Two thousand years ago the Apostle John warned:

"Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Anti-Messiah (Antichrist) is coming, even now many anti-Messiahs (antichrists) have come" (1 John 2:18, NIV).

Yes, there is a final, big-time Anti-Messiah or Antichrist, but in the meantime there will be lots and lots of little anti-Messiahs and antichrists seeking to destroy the testimony and salvation of true believers. What's important for us to realise is the nature of the strong delusion that allows these imposters to come to the fore and deceive so many millions - the Joyce Meyers, Kenneth Hagins, Kenneth Copelands, Benny Hinns, Fred Prices, Paul Crouchs, Kathryn Kuhlmans, Joseph Princes, Marilyn Hickeys and many, many others, whom Satan has used as channels to infest the Outer Court of the Temple. What is it that they all have in common? They are all Lawless - they are all Torah-less - they reject a substantial number of the mitzvot (commandments).

OK, you may argue, but what about all the non-Charismatic Torah-rejecting folk? Well, many of them at least adhere to true doctrine about Christ - they are not blaspheming Him in the way charismatics are. They are not Torahless in that respect, but in other ways. People break different sets of mitzvot (commandments) and suffer the penalties of that disobedience - Yahweh punishes them when they know the emet (truth) and defiantly reject it (because of their traditions, ministerial offices, or whatever) and the Enemy harrasses them, due to the legal rights they have to do so because of disobedience, when they break the mitzvot (commandments) in ignorance because they have been lied to and haven't checked up the emet (truth) of the Davar (Word).

Now let me return to that serpent or reptile who had come out of the fierey pit. It came out because it was exposed - when a demon is exposed it must reveal itself. Then the one who is afflicted by the demon, and has exposed it, has to make a choice: to repudiate the grounds for that demon harrassing that person's life by ceasing to be disobedient or carrying on as before. I don't know who the person was whose demon I was observing, or perhaps it was just a general instruction from Yahweh to me about principles, but once the demon realised that its ground was not being challenged, it crawled straight back into that pit and its fire.

Now this beast was huge - at least four or five times my body mass, I would estimate. I was looking at it right up close - it was no more than inches away from me. As it entered into the pit, I caught its tail and then, in Yah'shua's (Jesus) Name, I threw it out, and as I spoke these words, I saw myself swinging this monster by the tail above my head and then hurling it into an inky dark Abyss. It weighed almost nothing, illustrating the powerless of the devil, however strong it might appear to be, once the believer confesses sin, renounces it, and then uses the toqef (authority) Yah'shua has given him as a believer, to cast the harrassing spirit out.

I saw many more spirits and I'll mention one other. It looked like one of those spiney lizards, was much smaller in size than the previous one, and it was trying to stare me down in some way. I asked Yahweh what this was and he opened another vision and I saw into the mouth of someone who was speaking evil. I was taken into the mouth of this person and the gums were all swollen and bleeding, the teeth disproportionately large, decaying and asymmetrical - it was a revolting sight. Specifically, the evil being spoken was false doctrines about Yah'shua (Jesus) - the denial of His Deity (a big problem in many messianic congregations but also elsewhere in various other cults), the modern Gnostic blasphemy that He spiritually died in hell and that he drunk the cup of the whore of Babylon (two name who of the monstrous lies of the Word of Faith movement), and all that denies the Atonement.

I saw, either before or afterwards, I can't remember now, a vision of a friend of mine who over the last year or two has entirely walked away from the Biblical emunah (faith), now denies the Atonement, the Deity of Messiah, and has accused Yahweh our Heavenly Father or the most horrendous wickedness, becoming a shamanist slanderer. This was the first time I had ever seen him in a vision. He was completely bald, his complexion a blackish-brown (he is Caucasian), his lips pursed, his face blank, hostile and lifeless. Like I said last Sabbath, people who once seemed 'strong' on the emunah (faith) are now falling away like flies, and I suspect, given what Yahweh was showing me yesterday, that this is because of unresolved baggage from the past.

When you are attracted emotionally to something that is false, even though your head knows better, it is because there is a demon sitting in the fiery pit of some unresolved passions. To put it bluntly, it's an old anti-Messiah or antichrist spirit still resident in your soul. You need to renounce these lies, seize those serpents by their tails, and hurl them into ther Abyss in Yah'shua's (Jesus) Name.

We bring a lot of junk with us from our cultural upbringing. In the West, the demons of anti-family, anti-heterosexuality, ultra- or Third Wave feminism, for example, are rampant, and relationships are completely messed up. In Africa, where there is great awareness of the supernatural owing to generations of witchcraft, different kinds of baggage comes with new converts.

Dr.Tokunboh Adeyemo, from the Evangelical Church of West Africa in Nigeria, illustrates this problem in his opus magnum in a discussion about dreams:

"Across Africa it is...believed that serious dreams are a means of communication between the world of the spirit and the spirit world of the ancestors, divinites and the High God. The living communicate with their ancestors through sacrifices and divination, and the latter respond through dreams and visions, and sometimes through mediums." [1]

It has always been easy for me to talk about the supernatural to African brethren but hard to sceptical Westerners. The supernatural for Africans is natural but to materialistic Westerners it is unnatural. Whereas scepticism hampers the Western man, it is most definitely a liability when it comes to Elohim (God). There are far more atheists in Europe than Africa. But there is a reverse side to this as well. Africans, because they are so comfortable with the supernatural, tend not to be so discriminating between that which is from Yahweh and that which is from dark spirits. Why? Because of the cultural baggage they bring with them to their Christian faith. This is in part why, I suspect, the Word of Faith charismatic movement has grown explosively on the African continent with its promise of health and wealth in an impoverished and diseased area of the globe. Here the Western believer, because of his tradition of scepticism, tends to test rather more thoroughly, though I do have to say that the gap between the two is rapidly narrowing.

Tokunboh Adeyemo tells the story of an African monarch who, because of a dream, accepted Christianity into his court and nation:

"In the late 19th century, King Mswati I of Swaziland dreamed of a foreign guest arriving, holding a scroll and a round metal disc. The scroll was interpreted as a Bible and the disc as a coin. On waking, the king advised his subjects to welcome the guest and accept the book, which would bring peace and prosperity to the nation. But they should reject the coin, which would bring misery and greed. Soon after this, white missionaries from South Africa came to Swaziland to plant churches. Today, more than 83 per cent of Swaziland's population claim to be Christian." [2]

Well, we all know that Yahweh uses dreams to reveal Himself and quite clearly El Elyon (the Most High) did so with King Mswati I. But not all dreams are from Elohim (God). Most simply reflect our state of mind at any particular time and a good many of these include demonic interference, deception and oppression. Adeyemo correctly notes:

"Many African indigenous churches originated in the dreams of their founders. Some claim that bizzare doctrines, liturgies and practices were revealed in dreams. Regardless of how successful such groups are (Dt.13:1-2), their practices must be judged by whether they are consistent with or contradict the Bible." [3].

In the same way there are tendencies and imbalances between African and European approaches, we have exactly the same tension in the Evangelical Movement between charismatics and non-charismatics. I talked a bit about this in my article, Cessationism: The Witness of a Continuationist. In Pentecostal and Charismatic circles, there is a correct theological understanding that the spiritual gifts did not cease after the apostles but very poor discernment of the spirits. By contrast, the cessationists (and in particular, Baptists) have a better grasp of what those gifts actually were historically because as a rule they have a better understanding of the Scriptures which they have studied more thooughly, but their fear of becoming channels for false spirits, which has made them sceptical in a healthy way prevents them from embracing heresy through false manifestations, has served them well. The pentecostals and charismatics are often even more lawless than the cessationists, a reason why I would recommend becoming a Baptist given a straight choice between them and the charismatics. Yet we cannot bury our heads in the sand and deny that the gifts are for all time - all of them.

With the flood of false spirits now let loose in the world I will still say it is probably safer to be a Baptist than a Pentecostal or Charismatic. However, we must be open to what Yahweh's is doing spiritually with the gifts whilst having a solid grasp of Scripture so that we can test and discern every manifestation. Now I can tell you that after yesterday I becan to seriously ask questions as to whether I might have any old baggage from my previous religion. I am not saying I have found any (yet) but I am not willing not to test myself carefully. I cannot afford to be led astray. None of us can. So I would urge every one of you, particulary if you come from an 'iffy' background spiritually-speaking, to honestly ask Yahweh to reveal through the Ruach (Spirit) anything He wants you to deal with, and if you find anything, to attack the problem immediately and with a determination to be clean.

My previous religion was very much into revelation and new scripture, although it became cessationist in that area a long time ago, probably because none of its subsequent leaders ever possessed the kind of charisma that their founder did. I absolutely believe in continuous revelation because it is Scriptural but I know of the immense dangers that belief poses. That is why we take a Protestant Canon-only stance on the Bible [4], not because we don't believe that Yahweh can't reveal other Scriptures but because there are so many false ones in circulation, both modern and ancient, and Satan can not only waste our time as we hunt through them in search of scraps of emet (truth) but also because I frankly do not think that discernment generally is very good in the Body of Messiah. There are groups in the messianic movement, as you know, who, wanting to be seen as 'prophetic' like the original apostles (often for recruitment purposes), have taken it upon themselves to expand the Bible canon to include many corrupt pseudepigrapha like the Book of Jasher and Books of Enoch along with some outright frauds like the Book of Mormon! [5] I have seen so many believers waylaid by these and lose their focus on those Scriptures we know to be true. Some have even lost their emunah (faith) and salvation altogether.

I would like to respectfully suggest that now, of all times, is not the time to go messing around with dubious extra-Biblical scriptures. New ones, like the fake Gospel of Judas, are popping up all the time, and I don't doubt more will surface to confuse believers not solidly founded on what Yahweh has already revealed. The false Gnostic Nag Hammadi scriptures caused a furor when they first surfaced and have waylaid many liberalised believers since.

I could go on but we would never end. Instead let me share a vision that Yahweh gave to me five days ago. Interestingly, I was asking Yahweh a personal baggage-related question and for the help to know how to fix it. Discovering that there is a problem is only the first step - we must not walk away from it, smug that we have had a revelation. Then we need to make a decision to do whatever it might take it to be permanently quit of the problem and, where necessary, be healed of it. This is one of those puzzles that I both love and hate - hate because it makes me work hard, love because you never forget after you have worked hard for something.

I saw the word 'BETH' but with the 'T' extended to form a Cross and the 'H' represented as a Hebrew Menorah:

I knew immediately that the word was the Anglicised version of the Hebrew word bayit, beit or beyit which is both the word for 'House' (or 'Temple') as well as the Hebrew letter of the same name which in the older Paleo-Hebrew was a glyph depicting a Tent:

Specifically, the ancient pictograph of beth depicts the entrance or door to the house or tent and therefore can be used to represent the word 'in':

What is this cryptic revelation saying? Quite simply, that the solution or 'way in' to this problem consists of two elements:

• 1. Going through the Entrance to the Cross of Messiah by being in Him and He in us; and
• 2. By living the 'Menorah' or 'Torah Lifestyle' as represented by the divine tavnith (pattern) of the Seven Festivals of Yahweh.

From Messiah and onto Torah

It sounds ludicrously obvious, doesn't it, but this is to be our tent, house, tabernacle, temple or beth - we have to enter into a relationship with Messiah by dying to self and the flesh and wholly relying or trusting in Him. Thereafter, to demonstrate our ahavah (love) to Him, we are to live the sevenfold Torah lifetyle (Jn.14:15) - its pattern, rhythm and harmony - because everything else is LAWLESSNESS, and lawlessness is of the Anti-Messiah (Antichrist).

Invasion of the Courtyard

And as I said at the beginning, lawlessness is in large measure the cause of the chaos and demonic infestation of the Body of Messiah as represented by the Invasion of the Courtyared, as prophesied in Scripture:

"Exclude the outer court; do not measure it, because it has been given to the Gentiles. They will trample on the holy city for 42 months" (Rev.11:2, NIV).

42 Months of Hell for the Disobedient

Although this prophecy points to the Final Great Tribulation yet to come in the future, we are getting a dress-rehearsal of it now. The Outer Court is that part of the Temple Complex excluding the Tent of Meeting (where those who have grounded their emunah (faith) properly by covenant and obedience reside) - the Courtyard is the habitation of lawless believers who are not permitted into the Tabernacle- or Temple-proper because of their disobedience and uncleanness. This therefore is that part of the Body of Messiah who, if they do not repent and obey the mitzvot (commandments), ceasing their lawlessness, will be buffetted and even killed in many cases while it is occupied by the "Gentiles" or unbelievers. In other words, those who have not consecrated and purified themselves have their spiritual protection removed from them and are harrassed, buffetted, oppressed and killed by enemies of the Cross for 42 months or 3˝ years. Therefore:

"Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for Elohim (God)" (2 Cor.7:1, NIV).

A Straightforward Choice

The choice whether to be Torah-compliant or lawless is the choice of every believer. Right now the earth is infested with demons along with the Outer Court of the Believers which is metaphorically being "trampled", but not the Tabernacle. Where you are and what you suffer or do not suffer is therefore your responsibility solely.

Externalisation of the Hierarchy

There really isn't much space for playing around now and it's going to get worse both in terms of the harrassment from the invisible powers as well as from those in the visible world. I hope no one in a Trump America or a Brexit UK is expecting a Beulaland to come along. As events unfold you will see the élitists becoming more and more visible and with them the iron fist of authoritarianism will become become more and more blatant. This is the time that occultist, Luciferian and founder of the Theosophical Society, Helena Petrovna Blavetsky, called the 'Externalisation of the Hierarchy'. As the masks come off, so the dark forces will incarnate with ever increasing brutality.

Conclusion

So many people are now locked up in false religion, blinded and deluded, with many of them thinking they are saved Christians and Messianics. Satan is delighted by religious people. Yahweh wants us to be men and women of, first, the Cross and, then, the Menorah. Let us come to Messiah with broken hearts and contrite spirits, receive Him fully, let Him cleanse out the inner man, and then let us walk the Torah-lifestyle. By this means we shall pass through this fire and come out of it at the other end metter men and women! Amen.

Endnotes