Table
of Contents
Chapter 1: Let Us
Honor God's Holy Spirit
·
Signs and Wonders Do Not Determine
Truth
·
Mixture Produces Confusion and Division
·
The Identity of the Holy Spirit
Chapter 2:
Earthly, Soulish, Demonic
·
Understanding the Human Personality
·
From Rebellion to Salvation
·
Discerning Between Soul and Spirit
·
From Earthly to Soulish to Demonic
·
Is There a Way to Protect Ourselves?
·
Five Movements that Went Astray
Chapter 3: Four Safeguards
· No. 1: Humble Ourselves
· No. 2: Receive the Love of the Truth
· No. 3: Cultivate The Fear of the Lord
· No. 4: Make and Keep the Cross Central
Four
Safeguards
Our proclamation
this time is the last three verses of Psalm 19:
Who can understand his errors?
Cleanse me from secret faults.
Keep back Your servant also from presumptuous sins;
Let them not have dominion over me.
Then I shall be blameless,
And I shall be innocent of great transgression.
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight,
0 Lord, my strength and my Redeemer.
In
the first session I described what I consider to be a serious problem, and in the
second, I sought to give a scriptural explanation of how the problem arises. In
this final session I want to offer four scriptural safeguards to protect us
from such problems.
No. 1: Humble
Ourselves
The
first safeguard is contained in 1 Peter 5:5b-6
"God resists the proud,
But gives grace to the humble."
Therefore
humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due
time. . . .
I
believe the first essential requirement is that we humble ourselves. The
Bible says, God resists the proud. So, if we are trying to come into the
presence of God but we are proud, we may push but He pushes against us - and He
pushes harder than we can. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that God will make
us humble. God always puts the responsibility upon us to humble ourselves. It
is a decision we have to make. No one can make it for us. People can pray for
us and preach to us, but we have to make the decision to humble ourselves
under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt us in due time.
I
have already said that I believe pride is the greatest single problem, the most
common problem and the most destructive problem. We saw earlier that pride
goes before destruction. If we do not turn back from the way of pride, our
end will be destruction. However, I find a very helpful and inspiring passage
in Psalm 25:8-9:
Good and upright is the Lord;
Therefore He teaches sinners in the way.
The humble He guides in justice.
And the humble He teaches His way.
It
is the grace of the Lord that He is willing to teach us sinners at all. But God
enrolls His students, not by their intellectual qualifications, but by their
character. A lot of people may go to a Bible school or a seminary, or whatever
else, but never be enrolled in God's school, because God only enrolls the
humble. The humble He guides in justice ... the humble He teaches His way.
The
King James says, the meek. I find that meek has dropped out of
the modern translations. What is the difference between humble and meek?
As I see it, humble describes your inner attitude; meek describes
the way you express it. Perhaps we do not need the word meek very much
nowadays because there are very few people to whom it applies! There is usually
a reason when words drop out of contemporary usage.
No. 2:
Receive the Love of the Truth
The
next safeguard is in 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12:
The coming of the lawless one [the antichrist] is according to the
working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders ...
So
bear in mind that Satan is capable of producing power and signs and wonders. I
have frequently commented that one obvious place for the antichrist to arise
would be in the Charismatic movement, because most Charismatics seem to think
that anything supernatural must be from God. That is not so. Satan is capable
of great supernatural signs and wonders. So how do we protect ourselves? It
goes on:
... and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish.
because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
So,
what is our protection against deception? Receiving the love of the
truth. And again, it is something we must do for ourselves. God will
offer it to us; we have to receive it.
Now,
of those who do not receive the love of the truth, God says this:
And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they
should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the
truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
That
is a frightening verse. God will send them strong delusion. If God sends
you strong delusion, you will be deluded!
In
1994 - this is a personal, subjective comment - in Jerusalem I got up one
night to go to the bathroom and as I was walking back to my bed, God impressed
upon my mind, very clearly, that He had sent strong delusion to the Israeli
government then in power (elected in 1992). I think everything that has
happened since amply confirms that. It is a very significant statement because,
if God has sent strong delusion, it is useless to pray for such people not to
be deluded.
In
such a situation there are two ways that we can pray. First, that God will work
through the delusion to accomplish His purposes. (In the outcome, it seems that
one purpose was to set aside that government.) Second, that God will protect us
from coming under the delusion ourselves.
There
are two words that are used in a soulish way to manipulate people: one is peace;
the other is love. So, the people of the Middle East, and I think
probably the people of the world, are being manipulated by the offer of peace.
By implication, if you are against that, you are wicked. Obviously, anybody who
is against peace is a bad person. So you will feel guilty if you do not go
along with it.
But
there are conditions for peace. In Isaiah 48:22 the prophet says, There is
no peace for the wicked. And Romans 14:17 says, The
kingdom of God ... is
righteousness, peace and joy.... You cannot have peace apart from
righteousness. I meet many Christians who are seeking for joy. But if they do
not meet the condition of righteousness, joy is not available to them.
Politicians who use the word peace to manipulate people are deceiving
them, because peace will not come to the unrighteous.
The
other manipulating word is love, which is used in the church. They talk
a lot about the love of God: be loving, God is so loving, He is so kind. That
is all true, but God is also a very strict God. I have personally come to this
conclusion (on the basis of my own experience and observation of people close
to me): you cannot get away with anything with God. Nothing! You may think you
have gotten away with it, and God may indeed forgive you, but you may still
have to face the consequences. You see, God forgives but He does not
automatically release us from all the consequences of what we have done.
So don't
have any sentimental picture of God. He is not a Father Christmas, doling out
candy to little children. He is very just, very righteous, very loving - but,
in a sense, very severe. You cannot get away with anything with God. It is
better not to try!
I
feel that love is being used to manipulate people at the present time. People
are talking about the love of God and God is so loving - and it is all true.
But God's love is expressed in surprising ways. As I quoted earlier, Jesus said
to the church at Laodicea, "As
many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. "That is love. God is our Father
and He loves us, but He also disciplines us.
There
are two wrong ways of responding to the discipline of God. We will look in
Hebrews 12:5-7 for a moment. This is addressed to Christians:
You have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons:
"My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord,
Nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him;
For whom the Lord loves He chastens,
And scourges every son whom He receives.
If
you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there
whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all
have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons.
There
are two wrong ways of responding to God's chastening. First we are warned: Do
not despise the chastening of the Lord. Do not just shrug your shoulder and
say, "Well, so what?" My observation is that many Christians who have
become mature do not believe that God will discipline them any longer. The
truth is He never stops disciplining.
This
was brought home to me so vividly when I was reading the account of Moses. At
the age of eighty, God chose him, commissioned him to be the deliverer of Israel from Egypt and sent him
back to Egypt. But on the
way, the Lord met him and tried to kill him (Exodus 4:24-26).
Extraordinary!
Why?
Because he had not circumcised his son. He had disobeyed the sign of the
covenant that God had made with Abraham and his descendants. So God would rather
have seen Moses die than go through with his ministry in disobedience.
Sometimes we say, "Satan is resisting me." But often the truth of the
matter is, it is not Satan, it is God. God resists the proud, but gives
grace to the humble (1 Peter 5:5b).
The
other wrong reaction is to be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him.
Don't say, "This is more than I can take. God, why do You let this happen
to me? I can't stand this! I'm not going to take it." Those are the two
wrong reactions: to despise chastening or to be discouraged.
What
about the love of the truth? The Greek word for love there is the one we're all
familiar with: agape. It is a very strong word. It is the strongest word
for love in the Greek language. It does not mean just reading your Bible every
morning, or going to church and listening to sermons. It is a passionate
commitment to the truth of God. That is what we must cultivate if we are to
escape delusion. God will send strong delusion to those who have not
received the [agape] love of the truth. That means more than just having a
"quiet time" or reading your Bible at weekends. It is a passionate
commitment to the truth of God.
I
think I can say, without being boastful, God has given me that. I think God has
given me a passionate commitment to the truth. Every time I hear anything that
I do not feel is truth, there is something in me that rises up. God can do that
for you, too, but you have to let Him do it. That is the second safeguard: receive
the love of the truth.
No. 3:
Cultivate the Fear of the Lord
The
third safeguard is to cultivate the fear of the Lord. Many Christians
say there is no more fear in the Christian life, but that is not true. Certain
kinds of fear are excluded, but not all. I will give you a list of Scriptures
that Ruth and I have memorized: at least a dozen different passages about the
fear of the Lord. The promises are so exciting that I cannot understand why
anybody would not want the fear of the Lord.
Here
are some of them. Psalm 34:11-14:
Come, you children, listen to me;
I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
Who is the man who desires life,
And loves many days, that he may see good?
Keep your tongue from evil,
And your lips from speaking deceit.
Depart from evil and do good;
Seek peace and pursue it.
The
implication is that the fear of the Lord will cause God to give you many days
of good life. What is the first area that God deals with? The tongue. Keep
your tongue from evil ... your lips from speaking deceit.
Psalm
19:9:
The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever ...
The
fear of the Lord will never cease; it endures forever.
Job
28:28:
Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom,
And to depart from evil is understanding.
Notice
that the primary requirement for wisdom and understanding is not intellectual,
it is moral. It is to depart from evil. There are many clever fools
around.
Proverbs
8:13:
The fear of the Lord is to hate evil;
Pride and arrogance and the evil way
And the perverse mouth I hate.
Notice,
you cannot be neutral about evil if you have the fear of the Lord; you have to
hate it. And what is the first thing you hate? Pride. Arrogance.
Proverbs
9:10-11:
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
For by me your days will be multiplied,
And years of life will be added to you.
So,
you want a long life? Cultivate the fear of the Lord. However, it is not
enough to live long; it is possible to live long in misery. But in the fear
of the Lord, God offers us a long and blessed life.
Proverbs
14:26, 27:
In the fear of the Lord there is strong confidence,
And His children will have a place of refuge.
So
the fear of the Lord does not make you timid, it gives you strong confidence.
And it provides a place of refuge for your children, which in these
days, I think, is very important. And the next verse says:
The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life,
To avoid the snares of death.
That
is a very vivid picture. Satan has set snares of death. How can we avoid
them? Through the fear of the Lord.
Proverbs
19:23 is almost
incredible. I can hardly believe it, but it is in the Bible:
The fear of the Lord leads to life,
And he who has it will abide in satisfaction;
He will not be visited with evil.
How can
you turn down a promise like that? Abide in satisfaction. Not be visited
with evil. It doesn't necessarily mean you will have an easy life.
Proverbs
22:4:
By humility and the fear of the LORD
Are riches and honor and life.
You
will find that at least 50 percent of the time the fear of the Lord is directly
connected with life. It is one primary condition for a good life,
And
then, I think, most important of all is the prophetic picture of Messiah in
Isaiah 11:1-2.
There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse,
And a Branch shall grow out of his roots.
[All the New Testament Scriptures confirm that this is Jesus. Now, listen:]
The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him;
The Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
The Spirit of counsel and might,
The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.
It
is interesting to see that the Spirit that rests on Jesus is sevenfold - seven
is always the number of the Holy Spirit. It says in Revelation 4:5 that before
the throne of God there are seven lamps of fire which are the seven Spirits of
God.
Personally,
I understand this passage in Isaiah to reveal to us the seven spirits of God.
The first is the Spirit of the Lord: that is, the Spirit that speaks in the
first person as God. Then they all come after that in pairs:
the Spirit of wisdom and understanding;
the Spirit of counsel and might;
the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.
It
is important to see that knowledge must be balanced by the fear of the Lord -
because knowledge puffs up, but the fear of the Lord keeps us humble. It speaks
volumes to me that the Spirit of the fear of the Lord was resting upon Jesus.
Though He was the Son of God, He had the fear of the Lord; it rested upon Him.
It never lifted from Him.
Continuing
with the fear of the Lord: the fear of the Lord is a counterbalance to joy. It
is very important that when we get excited we are anchored by the fear of the
Lord. Again, I consider this a tremendous weakness in the Charismatic movement.
People get all excited and happy, clap their hands, dance around - which is
wonderful - but not without the fear of the Lord.
Psalm
2:11 says:
Serve the Lord with fear,
And rejoice with trembling.
That
may seem to be inconsistent, but it is the balance. You rejoice, but with
trembling. You stand in awe while you are rejoicing. This is carried over into
the New Testament where it describes the growth of the church in Acts 9:31:
Then the churches [or the church] throughout all Judea, Galilee. and Samaria had peace
and were edified [or built up]. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the
comfort of the Holy Spirit, they were multiplied.
Again,
notice the balance: the Holy Spirit comforts us, but we have to walk in the
fear of the Lord. We can be encouraged, we can be built up, but that must be
balanced by the fear of the Lord.
You
might say, "Well, Brother Prince. I've been redeemed. I'm a child of God.
Surely I don't need to fear God any more." On the contrary, you should
fear all the more because of the price that God paid to redeem you. That is
stated in 1 Peter 1:17-19.
And if you call on the Father, who without partiality judges
according to each one's work [and "each one" includes you and me],
conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay [or sojourning] here in
fear; knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver
or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but
with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without
spot.
So
the very fact that we have been redeemed is the reason to pass the time of our
sojourning here in fear - because God invested so much in us, He paid for us
with the blood of Christ. This leaves no room for flippancy, which is really a
denial of the fear of the Lord.
No. 4: Make and
Keep the Cross Central
Now,
the fourth and the final safeguard is: make and keep the cross central.
I looked at the example of Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5:
And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence
of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony [or the mystery] of God.
[You have to bear in mind that in that culture the highest achievement was
oratory. If you were anything, you were an excellent speaker. Otherwise you
were probably despised. So Paul, when he says. "I laid aside excellent
speech," in a sense was saying, "I'm not bowing to this
culture."] For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus
Christ and Him crucified. I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much
trembling.
I
pointed out in a previous meeting that God's strength is made perfect in
weakness. When we have all the strength we need of our own, we no longer need
God's strength. God has to bring us to the place where we do not have strength.
I have seen this in my own experience in ministry continually. If God is going
to use me in any significant way, He has to bring me to the place where I know
I cannot do it; to the place where I know I am totally dependent upon Him, that
I am weak. Then His strength is made perfect in my weakness.
Let me
say something else in this connection: I have discovered that the opportunities
to serve God seldom suit our convenience. Generally speaking, if God gives you
an opportunity to serve Him, it will be inconvenient in some way. That is to
test the sincerity of your motives.
But
if we want God's strength manifested in our lives, in our ministry, in our
congregations, we have to cultivate the fear of the Lord. We have to cultivate
a sense of dependence, an acknowledgment of our total dependence upon God.
This
is very personal, but every time before I preach I tell God, "I know I
don't have the ability. I'm totally dependent upon You. If You don't anoint me,
if You don't inspire me, if You don't strengthen me, I cannot do it."
Every now and then, I may stand up to preach and forget to do that. Then
mentally, in my mind, while I am preaching, I say, "Lord, please remember,
I'm dependent upon You. I cannot do it in my own strength."
Then
Paul goes on to say:
And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of
human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith
should not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
The
key to releasing the power of the Holy Spirit is to be focused on the cross.
There is a hymn that says,
When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of Glory died
My richest gain I count but loss
And pour contempt on all my pride.
When
we really see the cross, we have nothing to boast of.
It
is interesting that the original version of that hymn, which was written by an
Englishman, was:
When I survey the wondrous cross
Where the young Prince of Glory died.
The
writer was pointing out that Jesus was cut off in His prime. He died in His
very best age.
I
believe one of our greatest needs is to focus on the cross. I have seen people
become very ambitious, striving for success, wanting to build a large church or
ministry. Sometimes they succeed, but unless the whole message is focused on
the cross, they have only wood, hay and straw.
I am
reminded of a well-known English preacher of a previous generation, Charles
Spurgeon, a Baptist. He was continually emphasizing to his students the
importance of focusing on the cross. One day he said something like this:
"To preach the principles of the Christian life and make no mention of the
cross is like a drill sergeant giving orders to a squad of soldiers who have no
feet. They can hear his orders and understand him, but they lack the ability to
carry them out. Remember, it is only through the cross that we get the ability
to do what God tells us to do."
Now
let us turn again to the first five verses of 1 Corinthians chapter 2. These
have always been among my favorite verses because I came to the Lord
sovereignly from a background of Greek philosophy. When Paul speaks about
wisdom, as he does, he is talking about Greek philosophy, so I think I am
particularly able to appreciate the impact of what he says about wisdom.
We
need to understand when we read these verses that Paul is speaking about a
certain part of his ministry journey. In Acts chapter 17, he was in Athens, which was
the intellectual center, the university
city, of the ancient world. There he preached a
sermon unlike any other that is recorded. It was a somewhat intellectual
sermon. He adapted himself to his audience and even quoted from a Greek poet
(which I do not think he ever did at any other time). I wonder whether Paul was
really led by the Holy Spirit. At any rate, the results were disappointing.
Only a few people believed.
So,
Paul went on to Corinth. Now, Corinth was a port
city, somewhat like the major port cities of our present world - a very wicked
city, where every kind of sin flourished. Somewhere between Athens and Corinth, Paul made a
decision, which is recorded in these verses:
And, I brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence
of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the mystery of God. For I determined
not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. I was
with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my
preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration
of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men
but in the power of God.
So,
Paul made a revolutionary decision. He would not preach the kind of message in Corinth that he
preached in Athens. He said
something here which, for a Jew, is remarkable. He said, I determined not to
know anything. Basically, the Jews are people who know a lot and often
their confidence is in what they know.
What
an amazing statement! "I determined not to know anything. I'll forget
everything I've ever learned at the feet of Gemaliel, in all my studies -
forget it all! I'm only concerned with one thing: Jesus Christ - and not just
with Jesus Christ, but with Jesus Christ crucified - that is the center and the
focus of my message." And I believe it should be the center and the focus
of our message. If we ever get away from the cross as central, we are in
danger.
I
notice that Paul expected the demonstration of the Holy Spirit and power. I
find today in our contemporary church, if you preach about power, everybody
gets excited - and if you appeal for people who want to receive power, many
will come forward. Personally, I believe this emphasis on power can be
extremely dangerous. I have observed over a good many years that people who
focus on power end in trouble. They often end in error.
Power
is something that appeals to the natural man. Some psychologists have said that
the desire for power is the number one desire of the human personality. Paul
said, "I want power, but I want it on a different basis from that which
the world understands. I want to forget all my wisdom, all my knowledge, all my
theological qualifications and I want to focus on only one thing: Jesus Christ
crucified." And then he said, in effect, "When I do that, I can be
sure that the Holy Spirit will come in power."
Now
I will close with another of my favorite Scriptures, Galatians 6:14:
God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord
Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
Let
me just recapitulate my four suggested safeguards:
Number
1: Humble ourselves. In that passage Peter says, our adversary, the
devil, walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter
5:8). The devil is very powerful and very active. Any theology that tells you
differently is a deception.
I
was meditating on this yesterday evening. Suppose an announcement was made that
a lion was loose on the ground floor of this hotel, and you needed to get out.
I do not believe you would stroll through the lobby, humming a cheerful little
chorus. You would be very circumspect in making your exit. And you would be
very careful to close the door behind you.
That,
I believe, is a picture of how we need to conduct ourselves, because our
adversary, the devil, is walking about like a roaring lion. We cannot change
that. But do you know why lions roar? It is to terrify their prey, to paralyze
them. So, do not be paralyzed by the lion's roar. Be very cautious, but do not
give way to fear.
Number
2: Receive the love of the truth.
Number
3: Cultivate the fear of the Lord.
Number
4: Make and keep the cross central.
Finally,
let us quote Galatians 6:14 together. I don't expect you all to know it by
heart, so I'll say it phrase by phrase, and you say it after me.
God forbid that I should boast / except in the cross of our Lord
Jesus Christ / by whom the world is crucified to me / and I to the world. Amen.
copyright
© Derek Prince Ministries
Originally published July 1996
Revised and expanded November 1996
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