28 Oct 28, 2020 – SEVEN NOT NINE
In looking at the Fruit of the Spirit through Hebrew eyes, rather than Greek ones, some unexpected aspects turn up. First, if you look back over this series of posts, you’ll find that there are seven Fruit, not nine.
And the other surprising thing is that each of the Fruit is the maturing of particular “seeds” – some are obvious and some are not. Perhaps the biggest surprise to me so far has been the “seed” from which the Fruit of Gentleness grows. The Hebrew threw up one massive surprise. What is gentleness related to? Friendship and leadership. Who’d have thought? Yes, there are some expected things in the mix – humility and meekness – but friendship and leadership?! Isn’t that extraordinary? Because generally the world associates leadership with assertive behaviour that verges on dishonour, not with a humble gentleness that speaks honour to everyone.
3 Jan 2019 – BY THEIR FRUIT YOU SHALL KNOW THEM
Another thing Jesus didn’t say about His followers was this: “By their doctrinal purity, you will know them.”
Now don’t get me wrong. I think doctrine is very very important. And I think we should constantly be on the alert for false doctrine that leads people astray in the faith.
However Jesus was totally clear on this point. He said, “By their fruit…”
You know, it’s not having the right doctrine that saves us. The way some people judge others, you’d think it was. We’re not even saved by faith, despite the tendency of some writers and speakers to be loose enough in the way they express themselves to suggest this.
We’re saved by grace. Through faith.
That means it’s all of God – nothing to do with our level of faith. And grace shows itself in the fruit. Grace is consistently nuanced by the Greek descriptor, “poikilos”, meaning many-coloured, manifold, various, diverse – and what could be more diverse than
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control?
In many people’s eyes, doctrinal purity is so much more important than the fruit of the Spirit that they are willing to overlook a seriously ugly lifestyle in favour of theological accuracy.
Let me make this point once more: the ungodly powers who guard thresholds – spirits like Python and Leviathan, Rachab and Ziz – are completely indifferent to the accuracy of your beliefs. They not only believe in God too (James 2:19); the accuracy of their belief and what they know about Him is undoubtedly far greater than most of us will ever achieve in a lifetime.
But they don’t have a relationship.
And that’s what the fruit of the Spirit is all about – and why they are overcome by it – because it is evidence of covenant relationship with the Most High.
2 Jan 2019 – NOT BY YOUR GIFTS
Jesus didn’t ever say, “By their gifts, you will know them,” when He was talking about how to identify a disciple of His. He said, “By their fruit…”
That means by the evidence in our lives of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
In many people’s eyes, the gifts of the Spirit are so much more important than the fruit of the Spirit they are willing to overlook abuse from a leader because they’ve elevated the gifting to such high status.
Yet as I’ve worked with increasing numbers of people to help them over the thresholds into their calling, it isn’t the gifts that bring the breakthrough. It’s always the fruit.
The ungodly powers who guard thresholds – spirits like Python and Leviathan, Rachab and Ziz – are completely indifferent to your gifts. But the fruit… that’s a different matter entirely. With a basket of fruit in your hands as you approach the threshold, you might as well be toting a bag of spiritual grenades.
6 Oct 2020 – LACK OF FAITH? – NOT THAT SIMPLE
The default answer when we’re in trouble, looking for divine help and feeling that it isn’t forthcoming, is to think that we’re lacking in faith. This is, in fact, rarely the case. Most of us do indeed have the requisite mustard seed level of faith.
Now we can go wrong in two ways: we can try to increase our faith by various stratagems instead of simply holding on to the hem of Jesus’ garment and recognising that it’s His faith as He mediates for us before the Father that is all that’s necessary.
The second way we can go wrong is by trying to use faith as the weapon to overcome Python, Ziz, Leviathan (Resheph), Rachab and the other threshold guardians. Not one of them is impressed or deterred by our faith.
Python is overcome by love, Ziz by joy, Leviathan by peace (or more accurately “shalom”), Rachab by patience and so on. The fruit of the Spirit is vital in spiritual warfare.
Not only that, it’s a way of recognising those who truly believe in Jesus. We tend to discern other believers by gifts and talents but that, as Jesus points out, tells us everything about God’s grace and nothing whatsoever about the character of the recipient.
SEVERAL POSTS WITH SPECIFIC LILITH Q&A’S – –
18 Feb 2021 – JANISSARY & WAR AGAINST MOTHERS:
Question: Then I am assuming the other threshold guardian is Lilith, and the corresponding fruit of the spirit would be gentleness?
Anne: Yes, that’s right. I haven’t yet looked into the Hebrew nuances of gentleness, though, so I don’t know if there is a special way of looking at it that may be different to our present culture.
Question: In the book of Enoch..Lilith was the first humankind to rebel against God..is that correct, if I understood what i read? And she flew off?…she actually changed form?..how could she do that?
Anne: standard talent of a shapeshifter. In Norse culture, a shapeshifter/skinchanger is connected to the idea of a familiar spirit that attends to a family line.
19 May 2021 – COMPLICITY WITH BELIAL:
Question:. You don’t have much info out on Lilith. I’m curious about her…?
Anne: Working up to it! I think sometimes I’m avoiding it because of the necromancy aspect!
8 Oct 2022 – OUR FEELINGS POST:
Question: What might be the reason someone always uses the word “tired”, that’s drained, not foggy.
Anne: sounds like Lilith, the vampire spirit. Drains resurrection life.
AH Sep 3, 2020 NECROMANCY
When Jacob was talking to Joseph, he described his dream-vision of angels ascending and descending on a ladder between heaven and earth as happening at Luz. This town was the place that he renamed Bethel, the “house of God”. Abraham had lived there, Samuel was later to have a court there.
But things were to become unspeakably corrupt there. 42 boys were killed by a bear for mocking Elisha, the man who rebuilt Jericho came from there, Jeroboam set up a golden calf there – just as he set up one in Dan in northern Israel. By the time of Hosea, it was so corrupt the prophet referred to it constantly by the name of a nearby town, Beth Aven, “house of evil”.
It’s not enough simply to give a place (or a person) a new name: it’s important to deal with the layers created underneath that new name. Luz means “almond”, referring to the beautiful tree that marks the threshold between seasons as the first to “wake up” after the winter is over. However, Luz also means “twisted” and is related to nightfall (as a “twisting away of the light” similar to an almond demonstrating that a “twisting away of the winter”). It can also mean “deviant”, appropriate to the “twisted and perverse generation who lived there”. It is also just one poetic step away from the name of the night-demon, Lilith.
God wanted Abraham and Jacob and Samuel and those who came after them to redeem the name and bring it into alignment with “house of God”. But in time, the old idolatry returned with a vengeance. Luz-Bethel was in the territory of Benjamin and, like so many other towns there, it seems that the Benjaminites came to an accommodation with the spirits defiling the land. And in their particular territory, these were spirits of the underworld. It is no coincidence that Saul, the first king, is named for Sheol, the underworld, and that on the night before he died he tried necromancy to call up a spirit to consult.
In our world today, we are seeing increasing levels of necromancy. Of calling on the spirits of the dead. Of communing with them through ritual repetition of their names. Of looking for an inheritance or a mantle from some celebrated deceased person that we have no personal relationship with.
Believers and non-believers alike are dabbling with the underworld. And before we start praying for God to deal with the things non-believers are doing, we need to look at ourselves. We need to start with the House of God. Otherwise, we will call down further disaster on ourselves.
3 Mar 2022 – DRUNKEN AND MAKING JUDGEMENTS
We’re up to verse 7 of Isaiah 28 and things are starting to turn. Up to this point, Isaiah’s listeners could have taken solace in the fact he was talking about Ephraim – yep, those idiot apostates who worship at Shechem and won’t come to Jerusalem. Perverse and stupid drunks who can’t tell the difference between Moreh and Moriah.
But now Isaiah begins to get stuck into his compatriots in Jerusalem for much the same reason – drunkenness. The picture he builds is one of chaos (in preparation for a turn to order in a few verses), reeling and staggering. But I have to wonder about that word for “judgment” – it occurs only here and nowhere else in the Bible. And it has an odd look – as if perhaps the vampire spirit, Lilith, is part of the word. The one who sucks life out of her victims.
