TODAY’S DEVOTION (THURSDAY 27TH April 2023)
“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 SIGNS & WONDERS!
The LORD is faithful. This is the day He has made. We shall rejoice and be glad in it. Like He did for us last year, and the year before, we have slept and woke up peacefully for 117 days today. 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 what they experienced – the might of GOD’s awesome deeds; and listen with the voice of our hearts, and as we see through the greatness of Heaven that they saw and declare in their times, we come to realms of amazing lights, with capacity to infuse people with God’s 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 generation we are to look unto today, in other to know the true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent, is the generation of Apostle Paul and the rest of them.
About this time last year, 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. Now, because it has declined to the point of the dark prophetic similitude of handing over swords and all that, I feel we should revisit that meeting again.
IN THE MINDS OF MANY APOSTOLIC PEOPLE, WHAT THE PEOPLE DID IN THAT MEETING, WAS BELOW THE QUALITY OF THE TOPIC.
I watched in amazement how younger ministers I thought knew better, laid down on the floor to weep; propelled by a frenzy of religious display and desire to please bishops and pastors with greater following. Sadly, they wept asking that the fathers forgive them for doing in our days, what Samuel did in his days when he got the revelation of the decay in the life and ministry of Eli. 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.
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.
After that what happened? They formed a fellowship of eating and drinking – it’s like a fellowship of meeting to share the word.
The old Prophet was 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 from Biblical principles, God will never say the things they claim GOD is saying.
WHAT WAS THE RESULT OF THEIR FELLOWSHIP AND ALLIANCE? TRAGEDY!
The younger prophet in the chapter of our devotional text was eaten by the lions. Some of these guys who laid down and display 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 that day, has kept me from relating with the Old Prophets all these years. It has protected us from desiring the heritage of the Eli generation of our days!
It is important to note that Samuel never desired the heritage of Eli and his sons. 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 the generation of Eli and the Old prophet of our times.
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 shadow 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.
This erring younger generation, want to share in all that, hence talking gloriously about them, while the LORD is speaking ingloriously about the same people, according to scriptural findings. 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.
Is it not clear that most of these celebrated fathers, have brought the dispensation of Christlike purity, holiness, and righteousness that we saw in scriptures (in the early Church) to an end? Is it not evident that they have successfully brought a dispensation of apostolic Christianity to an end?
Is it not clear that they are 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.”
Sadly, the generation of fathers we have today cannot do this. 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, not the spiritual fathers of our age and time.
FRIEND, WE HAVE BEEN LOOKING AT THE DOCTRINE OF CHRIST ON ETERNAL LIFE.
If you want to know what the doctrine of Christ on any subject is, you have to look beyond the life and ministries of our current spiritual fathers, because if you do not, you will never know what it is. It is the early Church that has the revelation of what that doctrine is.
These men and women we take to be fathers 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, pray with rods like magicians, do incantation as 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 can 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 Pa Elton’s 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 erring 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 those nations.
TIME TO BEGIN TO LOOK AT THE ANCIENT LANDMARKS THAT OUR BIBLE FATHERS HAVE SET.
Time to stop drawing corrupted virtues from the Eli generation. Time to be separate from the Old Prophets and focus on the GOD, whose move is to pull down the altars of Jeroboam, and prophesy the rebirth of true Christianity as 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 success 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 shadow of the Almighty, we will not be able to fulfill the prophecy that is hanging on us. The altars or ministry structures 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 held, 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 all naked, poor, wretched, blind and insignificant in the judgment 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 who hold it today!
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