TODAY’S DEVOTION (WEDNESDAY 27TH April 2022)
“And behold, a man of God came out of Judah by the word of the LORD to Bethel. Jeroboam was standing by the altar to make offerings.
And the man cried against the altar by the word of the LORD and said, “O altar, altar, thus says the LORD: ‘Behold, a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name, and he shall sacrifice on you the priests of the high places who make offerings on you, and human bones shall be burned on you.’”
And he gave a sign the same day, saying, “This is the sign that the LORD has spoken: ‘Behold, the altar shall be torn down, and the ashes that are on it shall be poured out.’”
And when the king heard the saying of the man of God, which he cried against the altar at Bethel, Jeroboam stretched out his hand from the altar, saying, “Seize him.” And his hand, which he stretched out against him, dried up, so that he could not draw it back to himself.
The altar also was torn down, and the ashes poured out from the altar, according to the sign that the man of God had given by the word of the LORD. 1 Kings 13:1-5 ESV
WELCOME TO THE 117TH DAY OF OUR YEAR OF AMAZING GRACE
The LORD is faithful. This is the day He has made. We shall rejoice and be glad in it. For 117 Days we have slept and woke up peacefully. Though this may not be said of some people. It is not because we are better than they. It is because of God’s mercies that we are not consumed.
We thank God for the men who walked with Him and gave us Psalms to form some of our communication thoughts and dictions with GOD, especially dictions and thoughts on Thanksgiving, Praise and Worship.
Those who walk with the LORD in generation past have a way of shaping the faith of those who are walking with Him in generation present. Yes, because God is invisible just like our spirits are, we can only sense Him by His Spirit, through His words and the lives of those who walked with Him in time past.
The Bible says;
“One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts. On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate. They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds, and I will declare your greatness.” Psalm 145:4-6 ESV
As we look into what the generation of our Bible fathers did with God, and meditate on it, we begin to see the glorious splendor of His majesty and perceive the truths in His wondrous works.
As we read through and listen to them through the voice of our hearts the might of GOD’s awesome deeds that they experienced, and as we see through the greatness of Heaven that they saw and declare in their times, we come to realms of amazing lights that are capable of infusing us with amazing grace.
The kingdom pattern of having one generation declare His works to another has worked in one dispensation to another until it got to ours.
If you are sincere, you will realize that the only older generation we are to look unto today, in order to know the true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent is the generation of Apostle Paul in the BIBLE and the rest of them not the older generation of the ministers of our day.
Recently there was a meeting of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria somewhere in Nigeria. And what they were looking at is what they call “generational shift.”
THE TOPIC WAS GOOD BUT WHAT THE PEOPLE DID WAS BELOW THE QUALITY OF THE TOPIC.
I watched in amazement how younger ministers I thought know better laid down and wept in the pool of religion asking that the fathers forgive them for doing what Samuel did in his days, when he got the revelation of the decay in the life and ministry of Eli and screamed it out respectfully to him. I was shocked at the display of religion and manipulation of spirituality.
I said to myself, it is either this guys really insulted these fathers and are pleading on behalf of all the young ministers who insulted them, or they are just being stupid.
If they were stupid, then they acted stupid to get the crowd, wealth, and connections the fathers have, because Samuel never apologized to Eli after prophesying to him what the LORD said about the moral decay in his ministry. Sons do not apologize when the LORD use them to confront fathers who are destroying His kingdom the way Eli and his sons did, and failing to declare His true works to the next generation.
I saw a generation of younger ministers making the mistake of the young prophet from Judah in our devotional text (if you read the whole chapter), sitting down under the tree of a success in ministry that they are not satisfied with, and allowing the fathers to meet them there, like the Old prophet met the young prophet from Judah, to form an alliance that will destroy them at the end.
If you read the entire chapter of our devotional text, you will realize that after the alliance was formed, what happened was tragic. It became a fellowship that gave the young prophet over to the lions.
The seduction began with the old Prophet doing what look like “commending the young one for the exploits he did in the City.” He even lied to him like the fathers are lying today, saying “God said” while GOD never said. Its the same GOD told me that our fathers are saying today while from Biblical principles, God will never say the things they claim GOD is saying.
THE RESULT OF THEIR FELLOWSHIP AND ALLIANCE WAS TRAGEDY!
LIKE earlier stated, the younger prophet in the chapter of our devotional text was eaten by the lions. Some of these guys I saw, who laid down and displayed Biblical illiteracy, claiming to be weeping and repenting on behalf of the young generation, are heading for a time with the lions. Because they are making the mistakes of the Prophet of Judah.
I thank God for being warned about this many years ago by a man of God from the United States. The warnings of the LORD that came from His mouth has kept me all these years.
Samuel never desired the heritage of Eli and his son. He never desired the connections and crowd that Eli had built for years of ministry as a spiritual father. But these guys are desiring all that from our own generation of Eli and the Old prophet.
They love it when they stand in the shadows of these men that have become great and are treated as fathers, to speak. That is why they take photos with them, or do videos where they preached on their platforms or where they met in their young-prophet-old-prophet fellowship meetings and place on social media.
They talk gloriously about them simply because they want to stand on their shadows and be heard, instead of standing in the showdowns of the almighty and do what Samuel did in his days.
They seek an advantage because these men have quality men and women who give them so much money. The younger generation want to share in all that hence talking gloriously about them without knowing what the LORD said in the Holy Bible about them.
Some even conceive visions of their hearts about them and spew as a word from the LORD.
When a younger generation becomes desperate for the heritage of the Eli generation, or the heritage of the generation of the Old prophet, they die like the young prophet from Judah.
It is good to talk gloriously about someone like Apostle Paul but not someone like Eli who brought a dispensation of righteous priesthood to an end, just as many of these fathers are bringing a dispensation of righteousness and apostolic Christianity to an end, by enthroning Baal, Ashtoreth, and etc. and raising money making machines called churches, and calling the demon of deliverance God.
The word of the LORD said “One generation shall commend your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts” but the generation of the fathers we have today cannot do that.
So, to truly connect back to the works of God – I mean the true work, like how to lead the crucified life and be a pilgrim on earth and all that; we have to look back into the early Church. We have to look back to our apostolic fathers like Paul and what they taught, especially on matters of doctrine.
FOR 27 DAYS WE HAVE BEEN WITH THE CRY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT ON DOCTRINE, AND OF LATE THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST ON ETERNAL LIFE.
When looking for the doctrine of Christ, we have to look beyond the life and ministries of our current spiritual fathers, because if we do not, we will never see what the doctrine of Christ is. We have to look back to the early Church, to know what the doctrine of Christ is.
These men and women we took to be fathers and mothers of faith, have really been like Eli or the Old Prophet in God’s programs. Because they were the ones who taught us the doctrines of men, demons, and all the false doctrines we once took as true; works of deceiving spirits that have polluted Bethel and built the image of jealousy in the house of a jealous God.
They taught us how to use salt to pray, how to drink oil, give God money for miracles, how to pray with rods like magicians, how to incantate in prayers and how to do what witch doctors do to summon the supernatural. They could not teach us the doctrine of Christ so that we become Christlike that is why many of us enthrone sin above a life of holiness. We never even knew what the crucified life is.
I remember one of those we call father saying that when they started, they had no pattern to follow that was why they messed up.
Well, he was being truthful in a sense but not truthful in another. Because they had a pattern called Pa Elton to follow. Someone who was privy to all their meetings said they all rejected his warnings and went to establish their own patterns of ministry because of the money their anti-scriptural patterns were bringing
One of the many reasons why we see the younger ministers singing the praises of the Eli and Old prophets of our generation, is because many of them have uncommon access to the governments of nations and their leaders who go to them for spiritual succor and political gains, leaving great monies behind. It is only the government of Heaven they are having problem accessing in spirit and in truth. And the younger generation wants those access codes so that they too can use in accessing the governments of the nations.
TIME TO BEGIN TO LOOK AT THE ANCIENT LANDMARKS THAT OUR BIBLE FATHERS HAVE SET.
Time to stop drawing virtues from the Eli generation. Time to be separate from the Old Prophets and focus on the GOD who sent us to pull down the altars of Jeroboam and prophesy the rebirth of true Christianity typified in the Josiah generation.
A portion of our devotional text says;
And the man cried against the altar by the word of the LORD and said, “O altar, altar, thus says the LORD: ‘Behold, a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name, and he shall sacrifice on you the priests of the high places who make offerings on you, and human bones shall be burned on you.’”
And he gave a sign the same day, saying, “This is the sign that the LORD has spoken: ‘Behold, the altar shall be torn down, and the ashes that are on it shall be poured out.’” 1 Kings 13:2-3 ESV
Our job as patterned in Samuel and the young prophet from Judah is to stay clean from all the pollutions of the Eli generation and keep prophetic distance from the manipulations of the old prophet. We are to walk away from their shadows and learn to stand on the shadow of the almighty alone.
It may not be easy but it’s a necessity, because until we stand in the shadows of the almighty, we will not be able to fulfill the prophecy that is hanging on us. The altars of Jeroboam will remain on duty, and the Josiah generation will remain unborn.
THIS IS NOT MILK FOR BABIES, THIS IS STRONG MEAT FOR THE MATURE.
The message this morning is, if we are looking for righteousness or sound doctrine (the doctrine of Christ), there is a generation to look at and learn; the generation of the early Church. Not the present generation of spiritual fathers.
The generation of the early Church is the only generation that hold the pattern of how Jesus started His Church and the pattern of how He wants His Church to be in every generation. It is in the pattern they hold that we can find the authentic doctrine and accurate ways to lead the Christian life. People who look up to the famed fathers of this church generation will miss it big time.
Sadly, so many are looking up to them for patterns. But they do not know that they are seeing and copying the pattern of Eli and sons and the pattern of the Old Prophet who keyed into charismatic witchcraft and sorcery to make the young prophet enter into fellowship with him.
It is really messy down there.
There is a lot of witchcraft today in the church because of all that. Though many have become rich and great by the world standards because of that, but they are naked, poor, wretched, blind and insignificant in the sight of Christ.
In our quest for sound doctrine and the doctrine of eternal life, we must know where to look to, because we have very few fathers today who hold it today, in practice and in doctrine.
LET THIS SCRIPTURE BE AN ADDITIONAL MEDITATION FOR YOU TODAY
Now an old prophet lived in Bethel. And his sons came and told him all that the man of God had done that day in Bethel. They also told to their father the words that he had spoken to the king.
And their father said to them, “Which way did he go?” And his sons showed him the way that the man of God who came from Judah had gone.
And he said to his sons, “Saddle the donkey for me.” So they saddled the donkey for him and he mounted it. And he went after the man of God and found him sitting under an oak. And he said to him, “Are you the man of God who came from Judah?” And he said, “I am.”
Then he said to him, “Come home with me and eat bread.” And he said, “I may not return with you, or go in with you, neither will I eat bread nor drink water with you in this place, for it was said to me by the word of the LORD, ‘You shall neither eat bread nor drink water there, nor return by the way that you came.’”
And he said to him, “I also am a prophet as you are, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the LORD, saying, ‘Bring him back with you into your house that he may eat bread and drink water.’” But he lied to him. So he went back with him and ate bread in his house and drank water. 1 Kings 13: 11-19 ESV