In the last issue of our series on Mystery Babylon and the New Jerusalem we looked at the major source of Babylon 's power over her slaves.  That source is MONEY.  It is without a doubt the single most important resource that the present religious Babylonian system has at its disposal to continue the diabolical raping and pillaging of the sincere, but gullible, Christian masses.  I cannot overstate the danger of this beguiling system that operates under the spirit of anti-christ and performs in the office of the false prophet of doom and despair.

The bible uses many names to reveal this false system and uses a type of terminology that layers the natures of this evil enemy into a chilling godhead.  In Rev. chapter 12 it is seen as a great, red dragon.  The dragon form is the father form of the godhead.  It is seen within the outer forms of the beast that follow, being the power behind the images of the beast.

Rev chapter 13 introduces a beast that rises from the sea, a symbol of dual humanity (calm one day, stormy the next; righteous one day, sinful the next; untrustworthy).  It has seven heads and ten horns and ten crowns, speaking of a terrifying unity in government and authority.  Upon the seven heads is written the name of blasphemy, which is the nature of the dragon.  In this particular verse the Greek word is #988 "Blasphen-tia" which is characterized as the worst kind of blasphemy, having to do with false witness. (The Church has performed the very worst sort of slander against God, declaring Him unable to save all of His creation and, in effect, making the death of Jesus of no account).  It is the nature of the dragon to bear false witness and to bear false tidings of the good news of the gospel.  The likeness of the beast is embodied in three flesh-eating beasts with great strength in dealing out death and rending its victims.  The most important thing to understand about this typology is that the form and structure is nothing in itself.  It derives all power and authority from the original nature of the dragon, which hides itself within the forms of the beast.

This is the MYSTERY of Babylon .  She operates much like the Christ.  Both are found in the hearts of men.  As much as Christ is not to be sought outside of His tabernacle, which we are, we should not be deceived into looking for the dragon outside of the tabernacle, which we are.  The basic root of all evil is in our house.  It is in our house that the man of sin dwells, not in demons, spirits, witches and the likes.  These are all forms of evil that are powerless without the nature of the dragon.  Eph. 6:12 "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world (age), against spiritual wickedness in high places." Paul is telling the church of Ephesus not to miss the mark when they go to war and be deceived into fighting empty shadows.

I am sure that some are going to read this and say that I must not believe in the devil.  Let me clarify my position on this issue.  I believe in the spirit of the devil, but I do not believe in the form of the devil.  In other words, I do not discount the fact that the devil is a lot like God in the sense that he can take on any form he so desires.  However, I refuse to wrestle with any form other than the one that I know has the true power, and that is not in flesh and blood but in nature and spirit.  Having said that, let me reiterate my prior statement.  The man of sin is in your house and is sitting in the temple of God as a god.  He would love for you to keep concerning yourself with his outward manifestations instead of seeing him where he truly is.  This is the greatest power of the serpent, to be able to disguise its tail as its head.  Think about it.  The dragon doesn't appear in the form that he was defeated in back in chapter 12.  He must now appear in another form.

The form he chooses is an imitation of the true Godhead.  The dragon, the first beast, and the second beast.  It is a frightening parallel of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.  The dragon is represented by the first beast who has no power in himself save what the dragon gives him.  Sound familiar?  The Son can do nothing of Himself but only speaks what He hears His Heavenly Father speak and only does what He sees His Heavenly Father do.  The third part of the unholy trinity is the second beast which has all the power of the first beast but also has the power to bring worship to the beast and hence to the dragon.  Sound familiar?  The Holy Spirit is given to bring us into worship and truth and to promote our servitude to Jesus Christ who acts as our mediator to the Father.  We are dealing with a nature that has been in the dragon since its creation in the form of the serpent in the garden.  Even then the serpent projects his fatal desire to be like God onto Eve and ultimately to Adam.  The nature stays hid in the form of greed, lust, power, idolatry, blasphemy and other things.

We arc entering a new dimension in God that will not leave us with a root of evil, but will change our vile root of corruption into a root of incorruptibility.  As long as this root remains we will listen to our name being sung in the mouths of God's people and we will desire to be gods.  As long as this root remains the ministry will listen to the voice of mammon instead of the voice of God.  True Sons will rise up in the day of God's power and they will "overcome him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death".  The dragon is going down!  His godhead will fall apart in the presence of the Corporate Son, as this company of warriors defeat the serpent by finding the head and cutting it off.  There has been a snake in the house, not in the fields and rocks, and the man of the house, the New Man from heaven, has a sword in his hand and he's going hunting!

The true power of the first beast and the second beast lies in their ability to deceive.  They are dual and by this duality they stay in position to deceive.  Sometimes God-like and sometimes beast-like.  Sometimes right on the mark in their divination and other times fleshly and cunning with wrong motives.  God is judging the false prophets who prophecy for hire and reward.  The duality must stop in the ministry of the gifts.

       Please don't take this statement wrong and go running with it to stir up conflict, but listen to my heart.  There is no place in the present order for ministry that carry on healing campaigns and so-called gifts of discernment just to fill the empty pews with a bunch of empty heads, so they can reap bigger offerings.  God will not be held hostage to a camal minded people that have to see a miracle before they will believe on Him.  This Present Truth order that we are breaking over into is not the order to bring Babylonian practices into.  Let every minister take care on how they move in this most sacred and holy order.  If you want your fortune told to you go to a fortune teller, I am sure they can work up enough of a psychic power to give you a few goose bumps and make you feel better about yourself, but woe unto the prophet of God that gives in to the carnal, immature desires of the people and that start to prophecy out of their own heart.

       This is not the order for us to bring the circus acts of the dragon system into the midst of the holy place.  Ministry, we are in the midst of a people that have been to hell and back, just to get to this Day.  They did not forsake all that the religious clowns had to offer them just to finally get to the mountain to find more clowns waiting for them!  Be silent all flesh!  If we can't fill our meeting places with people that are seeking after the truth and nature of the Mighty God, then let us keep the feast holy with the few that we have until the appointed Sons are gathered.  Stop trying to do it in your own strength.  Wait on the Lord, be still until you hear the wind of the spirit of God in the trees.  Let us deafen our ears to the inherent nature of the beast and take up our residence in heavenly places with Christ Jesus.

       At the appointed hour, in the acceptable time, in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, heaven will open and the ark will be seen in the temple.  Trumpets will sound, bells will ring, anthems will be played, creation will sing.  Alleluia, Salvation, and glory, and honor and power unto the Lord our God; Alleluia, Amen; for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.  Let us be glad and rejoice and give honor to him; for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.  And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.  And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed arc they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb, And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God.  So be it!

       I have no doubt that the present religious system is involved in this unholy trinity of dragon and beasts spoken of in Revelation Its specialty is to perform miracles and operate through a false anointing of psychic powers and divination that looks like the hand of God and hides the true nature of the beast.  I have been to services where the people were so enchanted by the dragon that the prophets would offer different prices on their prophecies.  I lie not.  They would announce that for an offering of $25 they would pray for someone in the congregation.  A line would form for the $25 prayer.  Then they would announce a $50 line for a prayer plus an autographed picture of the prophet.  Then they would announce the "blue light special" of the night.  For only $100 the prophet would not only pray for you, and give you his autographed picture, but would prophecy over you and guarantee a financial blessing upon you.

The people ate it up.  This particular church in Detroit didn't have an offering basket, they had the drummer do a drum roll and they rolled out a 50 gallon barrel!  I couldn't help humming under my breath as this spectacle unfolded before me, the old song, "roll out the barrel, we'll have a barrel of fun".  It was a circus, a side show, a carnival, not a church of the living God.  No wonder Jesus overturned some tables and drove the money-changers from the temple.  Carnival hawkers had taken it over!  Shame on the pastors and ministers and prophets for having the gall to merchandise the gospel, but double shame on the people of God for loving to have it so!

I hope you don't think this man-worship is just in the other orders, the Pentecostal churches and charismatic assemblies.  This is found even in our own crowd.  I have seen meetings where the word of God was being preached with power and truth and everyone is sitting like lumps on a log until the minister starts to enter a ministry of "call-out'.  All of a sudden everyone is on the edge of their seats and are fervently praying for God to speak to them through the prophet.  Shame on you!  Don't you know that when the word of God is being ministered through the anointing of life it doesn't get any more "personal" than that?  We put such a premium on a "personal word" received by a prophet.

Anymore, before I minister, I feel the need to tell the people in the congregation not to be disappointed if I don't move in the gifts of prophecy, but rather treat the preaching of the word as their prophecy.  That is really the biblical gift of prophecy.  It isn't to tell the future and to forecast someone's activities, but to preach the word with a prophetic understanding.  Each service is different and every gathering has its unique needs which demands the minister to throw their canned sermons out the window and preach prophetically, hitting the need of that particular gathering.  This is the "gift of prophecy".  It was never meant to be a side show like the charismatic movement has made it to be.  I am not against personal prophecy, in fact, I myself move in prophecy as the spirit leads.  The distinction needs to be made between the "gift" of prophecy and the "spirit' of prophecy.  The Spirit of prophecy is creative and sets the heavens in order.  It reveals the intents of the heart and remits wrong and establishes the right.  The "gift" of prophecy describes things, the "spirit" of prophecy changes things.  I just feel that the prophets who move in this fashion should take more responsibility in weaning the people of God off the milk of letting someone else hear God for them, and start to encourage the people of God to hear God for themselves.

If we don't, we are going to have a mess on our hands.  Our assemblies will be full of spiritually retarded believers, not able to think for themselves or dress themselves or feed themselves.  The visiting evangelist has to realize that when he spoils the congregation of the church he's preaching at by lining them all up and giving them prophecies that are projected to the prophet by the minds of those that want to receive them, then the pastor of that poor church has to spend the next month trying to get them to eat meat and vegetables instead of the candy that was stuffed into them.  If the prophet would allow it, the people will draw a prophecy from them every night and sometimes several times a night.  I have had people come through my prayer line when I moved in this manner and then after receiving what the Lord had for them they would get back in line to see if they could get some more.  The sorry thing about that is they didn't care if the words came from God or not, just so long as they received a word, any word.

       The modern church has made the people to be this weak.  I have had a lot of our prophets today tell me that they feel the need of the people so much in our services, and that they are starved for a "personal word ministry".  When my daughter Michelle was a little child she was always "starved" for sweets and candies.  If I gave in to her "starvation" every time she voiced it she would have been a basket case.  Today, she is a healthy woman with children of her own that are "starved” also.  As their "Paw-Paw" and "Nana", Charlotte and I have a tendency to help their starvation a little too much to suit Michelle.  We have to remind ourselves that it is extremely selfish of us to load the kids down with sweets while at our house and then pack them off to their mother who has to put up with a bunch of hyper kids climbing the walls.

       There is a great parallel here between the natural spoiling of a child and the spiritual spoiling of the child of God.  As a grandparent it is a tradition to spoil the grandchild and there is a reason for this tradition.  The spoiling endears the child to the grandparent and every grandparent wants to be special to their grands. It is a warm feeling to have your grands beg their parents to come stay at your house for the night.  Down deep inside we know the underlying motive here is not just because they love us so much, although they do, but because they know they can get away with murder at our house!  We let them get away with things that would have brought smoke and fire down on their mother or father when they lived at our house.  But we, as grandparents, have a great need to be loved by our children's children, and we will overlook false motives and the breaking of generational rules of the house and even the eventual frown and chiding of the parent in desperate hope that before the night is over we will be rewarded with 30 seconds of having small arms wrap themselves around our necks and having precious tiny lips pressing themselves to our cheeks and hear the whisper of a child's voice in our ear, "I love you".  No sweeter words will ever spoken.  It is intoxicating to us and we would cross rivers and oceans and endure dread warnings from our sons and daughters for the chance to do it again next time.

       It works the same way in the ministry.  We all want to be loved in a special way.  No one is loved by the child of God anymore than the prophet.  Why?  It could be because the prophets are giving the people only what THEY want and not what the Lord wants.  Be wary of the prophet that only gives good prophecies!  God is not always going to say "Well done thou good and faithful servant'.  Sometimes He is going to tell us to get our rear end in gear and get with the program or sit the next millennium out.  When is the last time you heard that given in a "personal word"?  It is an inherent weakness in every prophet to watch over.  Our word must be free from the psychic drawing of the congregation.

I have sat and watched ministry get drawn away from the word that God was speaking out of them into a word that was projected to them by the congregation.  If you stay tuned into the sound or pitch of the trueness of God's word, you can hear it change from a RING into a CLANG in the middle of one's ministry.  We must not underestimate the power of the carnal mind.  Thoughts have power and every oracle of God must shield themselves from this power.  Otherwise, we will be filled with a mixture of life and death and our word will lose its effectiveness.  Paul warns Timothy:

2 Tim   4:1-5

I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his

appearing and his kingdom;

Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the

time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves  teachers,

having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables. But watch thou in

all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry. (KJV)

Spoiling the child can get to be expensive.  Every gift given sets a new standard for love and each gift must get more outlandish and appeasing.  An old story is brought to mind about a man who found a small monkey that was cute and fun.  The monkey's favorite place to sit was on the man's shoulders and so he took the monkey with him every where he went, riding on his back.  The monkey didn't eat very much at first, and whenever he wanted something to eat he would playfully pull the man's hair or tap his head.  As time went by the little monkey turned out to be a baby gorilla and as the gorilla grew larger and stronger he also grew a bigger appetite.  Soon, the man was spending all of his day carrying this big gorilla on his back and looking for enough bananas to appease the animal.  Needless to say, the man had a very bald and lumpy head when he ran out of bananas!

So it is with those that choose to preach what the people want to hear and those that prophecy out of their own heart for a bigger following.  In the end, that thing that was cute and fun can become big and demanding, and the large friendly crowds can become hostile mobs if not given their quota of sweets.  Let us leave the table of the kings of the earth and let us eat the things of God.  The three Hebrew children forsook the wine and meat of Nebuchadnezzar and ate pulse (vegetables and seeds) and water and their countenance was fairer than the king's servants.

Get weaned off the prophets and workers of gifts and start to hear the voice of the turtledove in your own land.  Stop following the signs and let the signs follow you.  God hasn't brought you to this place to be like the other nations (orders) who want to have an image before them.  Our God is in each one of us in the same proportion.  No one has more of God or less of God.  That is a fabrication of the old order, meant to endear us to flesh and authorities of men.  God fills all things with Himself, all of Himself.  There is only one spirit of God, with many different applications and manifestations.  To one there is a gift to prophecy (preach), to another the gift to heal, to another the gift to teach, but all are manifestations of the exact same amount of God in each heart.  All of the gifts are in all of us.

       It is sad to say, but the working of the gifts of the spirit is one of the most deceiving instruments of the dragon system.  Tapping into mind control and flirting with mass hypnotism, the beast is performing miracles left and right and the people love to have it so.  No one wants to be told that God won't heal them, but the simple truth is that God is not going to heal every one that gets sick.  Some are going to be called home to be with the Lord.  Some are going to go through suffering and all the prayer in the world is not going to change their physical state of being.  The simple truth is, until the change takes place, some of us are going to go through the grave.

       I am sorry to say that the teachers and prophets of the orders of naming and claiming have made this life to be something that it is not meant to be.  Even our own order of immortality has corrupted the minds of the people to the extent that if we get a headache we wonder if God is still on the throne.  We all have some cups of our life that no prophet on earth can remove from us.  We must drink from the cup and then walk through it with our hands lifted up and our mouth filled with praise.  I'm telling you folks, God is wanting to show us a more excellent way!  I wish I could write to you and tell you that you will never get sick or that you will never lose your job or that no one you know will die, but I would be telling you a lie!  Get your hope higher than this present life!  There is a life to come!  For some they will go through the grave to get it, for others they will go through the death to themselves to get it, but either way it is through suffering.

       This is not a gloom and doom message, it is a wake up call to reality.  The prophet was only sent to one widow's house to raise that one son, but there were many more widows in the land with dying sons that never had the prophet darken their door!  Had God deserted them?  No!  He never said He would heal every widow's sick son.  But He did say He would never leave us nor forsake us!  He did say that He has gone to prepare a place for us, that where He is we may be also!  I can't promise you that you won't die or suffer hardships, but I can promise you that if you will praise Him in the midst of it all, there awaits you a crown of life and a joy and a peace that surpasses any emotion known to man.  This joy and peace will wipe away every pain and scar of your suffering.  Never again will a tear fall from your eye and your whole being will be embraced by a loving light that will surround you for eternity.  You will sing a song of the redeemed that even the angels of God will be envious to sing.  We will see our loved ones that have gone on to be with the Lord and we will have an eternity of fellowship with the host of heaven.

       I don't know what your life in this world will be like in the external, but I do know that deep inside of you there is a King sitting and He will not put so much on you that you will fall and not rise again.  Whatever your lot has been, whether pleasant or suffering, give God glory and let hope eternal rise in your heart.  A new day is at hand and regardless of our situation we have come to an inspired conclusion.  Whether full or empty, rich or poor, well or sickly, loved or abused, our God is worthy!  Let the prisoner proclaim Him to be worthy, let all that have suffered for His namesake shout He is worthy, let the forsaken and the oppressed cry it aloud, Our God Is Worthy!!

Your body can be ravaged by cancer or disease and you can be delivered from that body of corruption whether you ever get healed physically or not.  Come up hither dear one, ascend in the heavens and leave your body far behind, get lost in God, lock yourself away into His substance and make that eternity of suffering into a mere "moment of affliction".  This is what I can promise you.  If you start to focus on the Christ within you, and not wait for a prophet to come to your house, then you will find a blessed place in God, a refuge from the storm, a secret hiding place, that is in your midst every minute of every hour.

0h, my heart cries out for the suffering in the body of Christ!  Our message must carry the hope of something more than feeling good and being rich.  If you would care to come out of your ivory towers dear prophets, maybe you would notice that the majority of the people in our midst are not enjoying our little trip on this planet called earth.  For the majority of the people it is filled with heartache and trials and they see the ministry get up in their pulpits and tell them that it is all an illusion.  That if we just look in the mirror each morning and tell ourselves that we are healed and that we are whole then according to our tested formula we should feel better.  What the blind teachers have failed to realize  is that the majority of the people can't even make it to the bathroom mirror.  Some of them are bed-fast, racked with pain and have listened to your tapes and read your writings and they are still not healed.  As if this isn't bad enough, they are starting to feel that maybe God has something against them since you make it sound like everyone else is feeling wonderful and simply marvelous.

Most of the positive outlook preachers and teachers have no clue as to what it is like to just get through a day without feeling like you will die before you awake the next morning.  Most of your confession people are those that have never been sick a day of their life.  They have never known what it is like to be homeless and not know how you are going to get something to eat each day you awake.  Their biggest concern is whether to have bacon or sausage for breakfast .

I am speaking as frank as possible dear ones.  In our weekly services here in Dickson, TN, at The House Of The Lord Assembly, we have started a prayer list for anyone that has a need.  I will list just a few of the prayer requests that have been on it this month.  A seven year old boy in Oklahoma that has cancer in his knee, is going through chemotherapy and if not successful he will lose his leg.  A woman with cancer in NC.  A woman minister of kingdom truth in Florida diagnosed with multiple melanoma.  A baby in Florida due Nov 9 with possible spinal befida, parents are ministry of the kingdom message.  A woman in Calif with son on crack.  A man in PA. in hospital, drug overdose and alcoholic.  Many prayers for alcohol deliverance, drug deliverance, cancer, leukemia, financial needs, and it goes on and on.  The list is getting so large that we cannot do it all in our service anymore, but we will be making it available for our assembly to take it home on paper so they can pray over the needs during the week.

       I didn't even mention Bro.  Eby in Texas recovering from a painful neck surgery, or Bro.  Dale Davis in Cal. who is lying in a deep coma after having a massive heart attack after preaching in a service, or Bro.  Elton Weatherly who is lying in a hospital in Michigan after having a heart attack and then falling in the hospital room and breaking his fingers.  These are all men that have had a great impact on the people of God through their ministries.  It is a humbling thing to realize that regardless of our high and lofty revelations, we are all still susceptible to the same calamities that befall all other people.  The only ones that don't believe that, are those that haven't had anything happen to them yet.

       My wife, one of the greatest ministers of word and music that we have living today, in my humble and impartial opinion, is lying right now in my living room with a pain racked body unable to get through a single day without extreme pain in various parts of her body.  Why?  My only answer is that God wants to be glorified.  Let us remember, God doesn't glory in sickness, but He does glory when those that are sick, and broken, and put in impossible situations, can lift up their eyes in that impossibility and cry Our God Is Worthy!

       There is a difference between the act of praise and the act of worship, precious believer of God.  The act of praise is one that comes about by the lips and can indeed come from the heart.  It is a moment taken aside from all other activities to give God glory for what He has done.  Worship, however, is a word that originates from the word, "worthiness".  It is not a vocal praise or a time set aside to praise, it is a mind set, an abiding existence in truth, that truth being that God is worthy of our praise regardless of the state of our being.

       This is the most powerful, life-changing truth I have ever come into contact with.  It is this truth of true WORSHIP, the act of existing in His worthiness, and letting our walk, our demeanor, our carriage be such that neither sickness, nor death, nor hell, nor the grave, nor devils, nor principalities, nor famine, nor fear of our own life, nor anything in this life will deter us from our final and triumphant transformation.

       I'll never forget one night many years ago, when my wife, while preaching from a dimension of heavenly places, declared to an assembly her commitment to this word of life regardless of the obstacles placed in her way.  Her words were prophetic and carried a great weight with them, but they were words spoken out of an existence of worship.  We have thought about those words many times together over the years and we have never taken them back or wished they had never come.  She said simply and emphatically, "I will preach life if it kills me!".  It almost has!