Jerusalem Below!

By Pastor Bill Taylor

A publication of My Father's House, inc. Volume 8/Issue 12

Prophecy: Do they not have it backwards, who think My church must prove itself worthy of them; that she must meet their standards and expectations to be fit to enjoy their company. I tell you, it is as though the pot esteems himself above the potter. As though a man would say to God, “You are not worthy to fashion and form me; I am too good for your hands.” But I tell you that in My church I am the Potter and those that come to My church, they must be clay worthy of My Hands, worthy of My fashionings, worthy of My artistry; they must be the finest clay. I am turning around this wickedness where men think the church has to be worthy of them; I am turning it around for My church. If you are not worthy you will not get into My church, saith the Lord. For My Son has proven Himself to be worthy to be Lord, it is now up to you to prove yourself worthy to be His disciple, saith the Lord.

Prophecy: When I said where two or three are gathered in My name I am in the midst of them; does that mean I am a mere observer? A spectator? That I am just there to watch? Or am I a participant? Of course you know the answer.  I have come to participate; I have come to act and to do, and to demonstrate My presence in the midst of My people, and demonstrate My power, and demonstrate My glory on behalf of My people. And likewise, when I said that if you love Me, you will keep My commandments and I will come to you and I will sup with you, and My Father and I, we will dwell with you; are we there to be mere observers? Spectators? Are we just there to sit and watch? Absolutely not! We come to bring life into your dwelling place, light into your darkness, power into your weakness and wisdom and order into your confusion.  We come to help you, and to manifest grace on your behalf. And I say to you, the churches have apostatized in this day to the place they think I am only an observer, and they do not expect Me to participate. And I tell you, if I’m not participating, I am not there. And you, My people, you will demonstrate My presence by your faith in Me to act on your behalf, whether it is the Christ in you, or the Christ in the midst of the congregation. For I am a God of power and light and love and grace!  And I am a God who does!  And I do not sit idly by while others do, but I participate, I lead and empower My people! And you who have the faith to let Me participate, you are the sons of God. I say to you who have the faith that lets Me demonstrate My presence, you are the sons of God. And those who claim I am there, and never let Me move, or expect Me to act, I say they are liars. They are of their father the devil. And I say, their Christianity is a mockery and a pretense.  For I am the living God, and I will demonstrate that I am the living God, wherever there are a people who have faith in Me, saith the Lord.

Prophecy: Thus saith the Lord, My people are the sons of God, the children of the Jerusalem above, that are born not by the will of man but by the will of God; the children of promise; the true sons of Zion. They love Me more than life itself and they delight in Me and they delight to be with Me and near Me and they delight to please Me; and the things that others who claim to be My people call a burden, My true children call a joy. And the things that others who claim to be My people resent and fight against and do not want to do and make up excuses not to do, My true people do with a smile on their face and a praise in their mouth and a thankfulness to Me. And I tell you, it is not a mystery why My true people have light because My countenance is light. My face shines brighter than the sun and the moon and the stars. My face is light and when My children please Me I turn My face towards them and I shine upon them, saith the Lord; even as those who displease Me, I turn My face away and darkness covers them. And you can tell who are Mine and who are not by the light that shines upon them or the darkness that covers them saith the Lord. So do what pleases Me, and I’ll smile upon you and you’ll have all the light you need to walk as My true sons – for as you delight in Me, so do I delight in you and My delight in you is  truly a brilliant light upon you saith the Lord. (Prophecies delivered at "My Father's House") 

For it is written that Abraham had two sons: the one by a bondwoman, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and he of the freewoman through promise, for this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and corresponds to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children-- but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all. Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise. But, as he who was born according to the flesh then persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, even so it is now. (Gal 4:22,23,25,26,28,29) The Jerusalem below is a very important subject since it’s the Jerusalem below that we are in warfare against; it’s the Jerusalem below that is persecuting the prophets in Paul’s day and still persecutes the true Christians today. Now in the time Paul wrote this, he was speaking of the non Christian Jews as being the Jerusalem below.  “Abraham had two sons the one by a bondwoman the other by a freewoman. He who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh. He who was of the freewoman through promise.” (v22-23) We know the non-Christian Jews were not “born again” or born from above. They became religious through the flesh – by natural means like any Moslem, Hindu, or Buddhist does today. But real Christians are supernaturally converted by God in the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham that He would give him descendants as numerous as the stars. Then He brought him outside and said, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” (Gen15:5) This is very much connected to John 1 where it says the ones who are the children of God were born not of blood nor the will of the flesh or the will of man but of God. (vs 12-13) And the extraordinary difference between the one who is born of flesh and the one who is born of promise is the one who is born of promise is born of the will of God. He’s born supernaturally by the power of God because of God keeping His Word. And God doesn’t need the help of man to keep His Word. But the one who is born of the flesh is born of the efforts of man.

Now in every religion in the earth except Spiritual Christianity “believers” are born by the ways of man. And that means that in every religion in the earth except Spiritual Christianity the converts and devotees have become convinced in their mind that their religion is true because of arguments, reasonings, or following the dictates of their own hearts, or because it is the culture or tradition they’ve grown up in or something of that sort. Whereas, to be born from above is a work of God. It’s a supernatural work through the operation of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God on the heart and mind of the true believer. And we are seeing that it is very important to true Christianity that we can recognize when this supernatural work has actually taken place. Because the fact that in other religions in the world, people are taught to believe in false gods, fictions, legends, mythologies, foolish and superstitious ways by natural or carnal means indicates that people are also able to believe in the true God, and the true Christ through natural means, superstitiously, by the will of flesh also. Just as many others believe in false religions and demonic religions intellectually, so by using the same faculties as they would use to be a Buddhist, people can become a man made “Christian;” by the will of man, by the will of flesh and not born of the will of God. And this fleshly carnal Christianity is a contemporary equivalent in every way to what Paul is talking about concerning the Jerusalem below that is in bondage. And that is what he is describing when he says But he who was of the bondwoman was born according to the flesh... (Gal 4:23) There is a son of Abraham by the flesh; there’s a Christianity that is of the flesh and there is the true Christianity which is of the Spirit. and he of the freewoman through promise which things are symbolic. For these are the two covenants: the one from Mount Sinai, which gives birth to bondage, which is Hagar. (vs 24)

Now Jesus says, “If you abide in My Word you are My disciples indeed.” (John 8:31) To be a disciple of Jesus indeed means you are certainly not born of the flesh. He would never refer to somebody whose Christianity is of the flesh as one of His disciples indeed. So if you continue in My Word you are My disciple in truth and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. (vs 32) Thus a true believer that has come to know the truth and been set free has to be born of the Jerusalem above, and must be of the ones who are born of promise, and not born of the flesh, because those who are born of the flesh are in bondage not free:  for this Hagar (the bondwoman) is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to Jerusalem (below) which now is, and is in bondage with her children (Gal 4:24-25) So whatever is in bondage, particularly that form of Christianity which is of the flesh, corresponds to the Jerusalem below; man made religion. But Spiritual Christianity has to do with the Jerusalem above because we are headed for the New Jerusalem which is made by God. So there is a Jerusalem and a Christianity which is in bondage and that is the Jerusalem which is below “He who comes from above is above all; he who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of the earth. He who comes from heaven is above all. (John 3:31) but the Jerusalem above is free, which is the mother of us all. (Gal 4:26) Not the mother of everybody in the world but the mother of all us true believers in Christ’s true church; the true Spiritual brethren; the true disciples, the disciples indeed. Now just from these few words, we can determine that the Jerusalem that is below and is in bondage does not continue in the Word of God. If they continued in Jesus’ Word they would be free – but they don’t. And that’s why they’re in bondage. Churches who do not continue in Jesus’ Word have to be and are of the Jerusalem below. Without God’s Word they can be nothing else. You know what the scripture says about this  ...desire the pure milk of the Word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious. (1Pet 2:2-3) So if they do not desire the sincere milk of the Word that they may grow thereby, it is obvious they haven’t tasted that the Lord is gracious, therefore they are not born from above. Then obviously such people have a religion, a Christianity, that doesn’t come from actually meeting the Lord and being born again in the Lord. Jesus Himself says, “Why is it that you can’t hear My words?” “Because you are not (born) of God.” (John 8:43,47) And John says, “We are of God and those who are of God hear us.” (1John 4:6) He who is of God hears God’s Word therefore you don’t hear because you are not of God. (John 8:47)

So the Jerusalem below doesn’t really hear God’s Words; they are not really interested in God’s Word. They follow something different than God’s Words. Even when they claim to be obeying God’s Word they will always have a wrong interpretation of it – because not being of God they do not rightly interpret God’s Word. (2Thes 2:15) They’re in bondage, not free, because they do not follow God’s Words. “But this is what I commanded them, saying, ‘Obey My voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be My people. And walk in all the ways that I have commanded you, that it may be well with you.’ (Jer 7:23) What has Jesus commanded us? “Go into all the world and preach the gospel. (Mark 16:15) and make disciples of all the nations ...Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; (Matt 28:19-20) “Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but followed the counsels and the dictates of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward.” (Jer 7:24) And that is how it has been with the so-called churches of today.

Now some of the contemporary churches may have originated with a true move of the Spirit and they may have had real Spiritual leaders at one time. Consider the Methodist Church: Charles and John Wesley, its founders, were Spiritual men but somewhere along the line the people in the Methodist churches lost what Charles and John had and they began to go backwards. They started following their own ideas instead of the Word of God. Generations were born who were not becoming Methodist Christians because they were born from above. They were not becoming Christians because they had a heart for God and they had faith in God; they were a Methodist because their mother and father were Methodist; they became traditional Methodist not Spiritual Christians. And when they became traditional Methodist, not being born from above, they had not tasted and seen that the Lord was gracious, they did not have an appetite for the Word of God and because they were not born from above they would prefer their own ideas to the ideas of God as Jesus said “You’re not from above (John 8:23) therefore you can not hear the Words of God because you are not of God. He who is of God hears God’s Words.” (vs 47) Or he who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of the earth. (John 3:31) So you have a generation of Methodists who are not of God; they don’t hear God and they follow the dictates of their own heart.

Now among the first generation of Methodists many may have been born from above but little by little the next generation and the next after that becomes more and more earthly until presently all in the Methodist church are born from below. They are Methodist because of their minds, because of their traditions, because of their fathers. They are not Methodist because they’ve met God. And what happens in such a church is that they follow the dictates of their heart and flesh. They prefer their own ideas to God’s ideas. They have no appetite for the word of God. They are not really Jesus’ disciples. They do not have it in their heart to be His disciples indeed and to learn to know His Word and keep His Word. They are in bondage. They are not in liberty.  They are a false church instead of a true church. And the Jerusalem below is a manmade imitation of the true godly Jerusalem from above. She is a counterfeit. She puts on the appearance on the outside looking like she’s of God’s people but she doesn’t have what’s right inside; she doesn’t have the Spirit of Jesus Christ in the hearts of her members.

 The spirit of the Jerusalem below is illustrated very well in the Pharisees because the Pharisees are the ruling parties in the Jerusalem below in Jesus’ day and so as the ruling parties, they would be the ones who the majority of people imitates, follows and are taught by. And when Jesus defines the Pharisees in Matthew 23, you see one of the things that He says is “Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, (Methodist, Baptist, all of you from the Jerusalem below: Woe to all of you!) Hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, You put on a behavior that looks like you’re God’s people but inside you are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.” (vs 27) “...For you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self indulgence.” (vs 25) So on the outside they pretend to be a people who love God but inside they still love themselves; they’re still following the flesh. Ezekiel describes it this way, for with their mouth they show much love, but their hearts pursue their own gain. (Ezek 33:31) Going to church to them is like listening to a lovely song. They like to go there and be entertained by the singing, the pleasant voices, the playing of instruments, and they hear God’s Words but they do not do them. (vs 32) They have no heart to do God’s will and they really don’t have a hunger for God’s Words either.

Jerusalem below is also a suburb of Babylon. And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt. Where also our Lord was crucified. (Rev 11:8) The Jerusalem below is called Sodom and Egypt, because we know that the Lord was crucified in Jerusalem. Again the characteristic of the Jerusalem below is “ the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! (Matt 23:37) The Jerusalem below is not willing to listen to the prophets; they do not have a love for the things of God. On the outside they profess to know God; they give lip service to God. But inside they are pursuing their own gain. They’re still selfish. They’re still looking for their own self-advancement. And through out the gospels Jesus says that the Pharisees are covetous, lovers of money, and seeking for glory from men.

Well look around the churches today and what is the main problem with pastors in the churches? They want to have a big church, and they want to be successful in the eyes of men. That very desire to be successful in the eyes of men defines them as being of the Jerusalem below; earthly. They have their ambitions in this worldly life. They are seeking their own gain. They are not really seeking the kingdom of God, but they’re seeking their own success. Thousands of pastors are seeking to manage a large and successful church, to have prestige and a good income, and most people think it’s normal. But the fact is such pastors are defining themselves as not being from the Jerusalem above. If you are born from the Jerusalem above you are laying your life down, you’re not seeking your own gain. As children of Jerusalem above, we do what the Lord tells us even if we lose everything for doing it because we are not after our own gain, we are after the gain of the kingdom of God, we are after the glory and gain of Jesus. We’ve died to this world. We’ve died to our ambitions and such as that. Revelation 11 says that the prophets are killed in the same place as Jesus was killed; Jerusalem. But in Chapter 18 it speaks about Babylon “And in her was found the blood of prophets and saints, and of all who were slain on the earth.”(vs 24) Not everybody that was slain on the earth was slain in Jerusalem below but everybody that was slain on the earth was slain in Babylon; so Jerusalem below is a suburb of Babylon; absolutely. That defines Jerusalem below as being of the world, but it, like the Pharisees, puts on a religious garment while inside it still has the spirit of the world. The people who have that spirit of the world inside, they are still the killers of Christ; they are still enemies of the cross; they still have their belly as their god. (Phil 3:19)

In spite of the fact that they put on a facade of believing in God; in spite of the fact that they love to say their sins are forgiven at the cross and such as that, they’re enemies of the cross because they will not allow the cross to crucify their body of sin and put to death the sin nature in them. Jesus says “Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. (Matt 5:48) But they say, “Nobody can be perfect.” Peter says, but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, (1Pet 1:15) But these people argue with Jesus and argue with God. “Only Jesus can be like God” they say. Paul says, Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. (Col 1:28) But they say “we’re just sinners saved by grace.” Jude says, Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, (Jude 1:24) but these wicked false believers, Baptist and such who do not know Jesus or the scriptures, become argumentative whenever anyone preaches what the Word of God says about perfecting the saints, because they know they are sinners and they do not have the faith to overcome sin and they want to continue enjoying their unrighteousness while they feel “saved by grace.”

So they reject the truth and the true brethren who preach the truth in favor of a lie that makes them feel comfortable and they say to those who speak the truth in love, “Do you think you’re perfect? Who do you think you are?” The truth is Jesus is perfect and if Jesus is in the true believer Jesus can make the believer perfect – “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. (Gal 2:20) And those who refuse to believe that are arguing with God, not man and they are defending their unbelief, not faith. They love the flesh. They want to continue in the flesh and so they are enemies to the crucifying power of the cross to put to death the sin in the flesh. So they have developed a Jerusalem below, which allows the flesh to function in a religious fashion, pretending to be saved, pretending to be of God while actually their religious flesh is at enmity with God.

For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life. And who is sufficient for these things? (2Cor 2:15-16) So where a truly Spiritual Christian comes into the presence of a people who are putting on a religious outside while they are actually in the flesh on the inside, that true Christian is going to be a savor of death to those false Christians who are perishing; just as we are a savor of life to those who are truly being saved. And those false believers who are in the flesh and still operate in the spirit of the world, selfishness, and these things that have to do with the old nature; those false Christians are going to try to crucify the real Christian because real Christians are those who crucify the flesh and are a testimony to the necessity that all true believers must crucify the flesh For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. (Rom 8:13) So there can be no compatibility between those who operate in the flesh and want to stay in the flesh versus those who are in the Spirit and who put to death the flesh and the deeds of the body by the Spirit. Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously?” (James 4:5) There can be no compatibility between them. They are absolute vicious enemies to one another. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish. (Gal 5:17) So, the flesh is at enmity with God and the Jerusalem below is at enmity with God. God does not run the Jerusalem below. Jesus is not its head. Man runs the Jerusalem below, and not in the way God would have it. Man runs it in the way flesh would have it; pretending to serve God, but serving in the flesh instead of crucifying the flesh and serving in the Spirit. They answered and said to Him, “Abraham is our father.” Jesus said to them, “If you were Abraham’s children, you would do the works of Abraham. “But now you seek to kill Me, a Man who has told you the truth which I heard from God. Abraham did not do this. “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. (John 8:39,40,44)

Concerning the Jerusalem below; in spite of the fact that they’re acting religious outside, inside they’re still full of selfishness, fleshly ambitions, pride, greed and covetousness and plans for their own advancement, seeking their own gain. And whatever gets in the way of that is an enemy to them. Whereas true Christians are preaching that you have to put all that to death and get into the Spiritual work of God and serve the Lord. But they don’t want that. And He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again. (2Cor 5:15) True Christianity would put to death the very thing they’re living for, loving, dreaming of, wanting to attain to, working to attain to and they are not willing to let go of those things. Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, also heard all these things, and they derided Him. (Luke 16:14) So they become enemies that will persecute the Spiritual Christian and search for reasons to try to find fault with Spiritual Christianity. Look at how the Pharisees continually searched for reasons to accuse Jesus. So they watched Him, and sent spies who pretended to be righteous, that they might seize on His words, in order to deliver Him to the power and the authority of the governor. (Luke 20:20) And if you are a true Christian Jesus says they will do the same to you.

“If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. “If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. “Remember the Word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My Word, they will keep yours also. (John 15:18-20) Look at how they continually turn away from the Word of God. And He said to them, “All too well you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition. “For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘He who curses father or mother, let him be put to death.’ “But you say, ‘If a man says to his father or mother, “Whatever profit you might have received from me is Corban”--’ (that is, a gift to God), “then you no longer let him do anything for his father or his mother, “making the Word of God of no effect through your tradition which you have handed down. And many such things you do.” (Mark 7:9-13) These people are not interested in what the Word of God says. They have their own ideas of how they want to serve God; ways like corban; ways that make the Word of God of no effect. Look at the contemporary churches today. In every issue of “The Glory of His Grace” God gives us the truths of His Word which expose the fact that most churches today are the Jerusalem below, Pharisees, fleshly; a brood of vipers. A brood of vipers is a place where snakes have laid their eggs and the eggs have hatched. Snakes are lies. They are deceptions. And the churches around us are full of lies and deceptions.

For example, the Bible teaches us to speak the truth in love but Jerusalem below “Christians” do not speak the truth in love and they ignore the sin in their brethren because they “don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings” when in actuality they are cowardly avoiding the personal discomfort of possibly becoming involved in a conflict. So they do not “turn a sinner from the error of his way and save a soul from death.” (James 5:20) And they justify themselves by making up a doctrine that says it is mean or judgmental to expose somebody’s sin. And that it is “Christian love” to ignore a brother’s sin. And so they disobey God and their hearts are hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. But they think they’re fulfilling the Scriptures when they pretend to love one another by not “hurting feelings,” by not rebuking sin; with their mouth they pretend to love but their heart is after their own gain. (Ezek 33:31) in this case “comfort.” Well they pretend to love God and they pretend they love each other but they’re really following the path that is most comfortable and preferable to themselves and not picking up the cross. And they do it their own way because they won’t lay their lives down for one another. By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. (1John 3:16) And instead of laying their lives down for one another what they will do is they will make up excuses for not laying their lives down for one another and they will pass those excuses around the church and pat everybody in the church on the back and say you are a good Christian when you’re not laying your lives down for one another. And a “mean” Christian if you do.

One of their common lies is “Hate sin but love the sinner” but you see how do they interpret love the sinner? They say, “love the sinner means be nice to him and don’t offend him by rebuking his sin.” Well here’s the problem with that; being nice to the sinner in that way means you’re not helping him to avoid hell and so you are treating him as though you hate him because what good is it to love somebody in such a way as it destroys them. Whereas God’s instruction to us is that we’re supposed to speak the truth in love to the sinner. “He who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins.” (James 5:20) Now love covers a multitude of sins. Turning a sinner from the error of his way is love. To turn a sinner from the error of his way doesn’t mean you pat him on the back and tell him you love him while he continues in his sin and you ignore it. It means you do everything possible to get him to repent of his sin. And to do that you have to stand up and be willing to face a conflict with the sinner in order to turn him away from his sin. And the cowardice in most churches and Christians today is they don’t want to do that and so they avoid conflict by pretending they love one another which really means they are cowards and they love themselves and they love their own comforts and they don’t want to be put in a position of having to stand up for righteousness and then they excuse their sin by saying, “Hate sin but love the sinner” and it’s just a deceiving platitude that they use as a fig leaf to cover their own wickedness. And the wickedness that they are covering is they do not hate sin because if they hated sin they would help to get that sinner out of sin! If they hated sin they would hate their own carnal lives! And they would crucify the sin in their own lives if they hated sin, “You who love the Lord, hate evil!” (Ps. 97:10)

Well what is evil? Sin is evil! The flesh is evil. Hate the flesh. Don’t pamper it. Don’t make excuses for it. Put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit. But instead of doing that what these churches are doing is they are pampering the flesh. They are saying we love you even though you are a sinner and God loves you even though you keep sinning. That is not love because love would turn the sinner from his sin and save the sinner. And in order to be the kind of person who can do that first you must crucify your flesh, and overcome sin yourself. Just as Jesus says, “I sanctify Myself that I may sanctify them.” (John 17:19) And the churches instead of doing that they make up these pet phrases like “don’t judge” and they pass them around as excuses for doing nothing and then claim that they are doing the will of God when it is a flagrant lie. They do not hate sin and they do not love the sinner but they lie about it. And the lie excuses the fact that they do not deal with the sinner in the way God requires. And if a true Christian comes in and deals with the sinner properly and tries to get him to repent they accuse him of not loving, or “judging.” And it is terribly evil to interpret one verse in such a way that it prevents people from obeying another verse. Such as using “don’t judge” (Matt 7:1) to tell people not to “reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering.” (2Tim 4:2) This is doing violence to God’s Word and it is using God’s own Word against Himself, when you use one verse against another. And that means you’re a sinner who needs to be ashamed, wrongly dividing the Word of God. (2Tim 2:15) And that means you’re a judge with evil thoughts (James 4:11) and a heretic, to be cast away from and shunned by the real brethren. (Titus 3:10,11)

The false church thinks that loving somebody is to make that person feel comfortable. Whereas to God, loving someone is to save them from their sin, even if you have to make them feel uncomfortable. And as we have been showing, speaking the truth in love means bringing people to the knowledge of their sin, of their need for righteousness and of the judgment to come and how if they don’t get out of their sin and get into righteousness they will be destroyed in the judgment to come. And every real preacher in the Bible does that. None of them says, “We love you and God loves you” to unrepentant sinners. Only false prophets preach that. None of the true prophets preach like that because the love of God is not to make people comfortable while they are sinning. It’s to bring them to repentance. And that means if you must scare them, if you need to shame them, if you have to humble them, if you can only save them out of their sin by fear then you do it because that’s what love does. Love saves them. And on some have compassion, making a distinction; but others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh. (Jude 22-23) Some save with fear and that’s love to do that. And the ones that you save with fear are the ones that are hard to save. The ones that are humbled and broken you can save with compassion but there are not many of that kind around these days. We are in a place where Americans are like the Cretans, “they are lazy gluttons and they need to be rebuked sharply,” (Titus 1:12,13) because they do not listen very well to the things of God. They don’t have a heart for the things of God.

The truth is God hates sin and God hates the sinner. The boastful shall not stand in Your sight; you hate all workers of iniquity. God is a just judge, and God is angry with the wicked every day. The LORD tests the righteous, but the wicked and the one who loves violence His soul hates. I have hated the assembly of evildoers, and will not sit with the wicked. “All their wickedness is in Gilgal, for there I hated them. Because of the evil of their deeds I will drive them from My house; I will love them no more. (Ps 5:5; 7:11; 11:5; 26:5 Hosea 9:15) The fact that God hates sinners doesn’t mean that He isn’t patient with them. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. (2Pet 3:9) For God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. “For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies,” says the Lord GOD. “Therefore turn and live!” (Ezek 18:32) But He loves to see a sinner repent. “Likewise, I say to you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” (Luke 15:10) But if the sinner does not repent, But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who “will render to each one according to his deeds” (Rom 2:5-6) and God is a just judge, and God is angry with the wicked every day. If he does not turn back, he will sharpen His sword; he bends His bow and makes it ready. He also prepares for Himself instruments of death; he makes His arrows into fiery shafts. (Ps 7:11-13)

So you can see it is a great lie to say that God loves sinners in such a way as to make the sinner feel comfortable in his sin as though he is in no danger from God’s wrath. The truth is the sinner is in grave danger and that is why he needs to repent and be saved. And if you love him you will tell him that. When Jesus tells us to “love our enemies and do good to them who despitefully use us.” (Matt 5:44) He doesn’t mean to “love sinners” in such a way as to condone their sin or not warn them of the danger they are in. But He says, “vengeance is Mine” (Rom 12:19) And God will take vengeance upon them if they don’t repent. And we are not to deprive Him of that privilege, but neither are we to love the sinner in such a way as to encourage their sin or cause them to feel they need not fear God! And Jehu… said to King Jehoshaphat, “Should you help the wicked and love those who hate the LORD? Therefore the wrath of the LORD is upon you. (2Chr 19:2)

Now, that is just one more example of the many lies and doctrines of demons that have been hatched and are running rampant in the false churches. Where people are saying, “love the sinner, hate the sin,” “don’t judge” and such as that when what they should have been doing is standing up for righteousness and speaking the truth in love. But instead they are claiming they’re speaking love when they say they love the sinner but in reality they don’t love. They’re not laying their lives down for one another. In most churches the people are like strangers to one another; uninvolved in each other’s lives, and they don’t even know how to pray for one another. Most “believers” and even preachers do not know what needs to be done to make somebody into a Christlike Christian. They are not interested in these things and are certainly not seeking them. Such churches are broods of vipers making excuses for not being Christlike Christians and claiming that they’re saved anyway and God loves them anyway and coming up with all kinds of things which cause them to think they’re fulfilling God’s Word because “we say we love you” when in fact they are doing the opposite of what God is commanding, which is to turn a sinner from the error of his ways; and to speak the truth in love which means to tell somebody what they are going to face in the judgment if they don’t straighten up and repent. Show them what God really says about their perilous condition.

And to speak the truth in love means you must have the Spirit of Truth in you who is going to convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgment. (John 16:8) And if you’re doing that, that’s the evidence that you have the Spirit of Truth and the Spirit of love and Christ is really in you because you are speaking the truth in love. But to continually tell people “we love you and God loves you” when it doesn’t convict them of sin, doesn’t convict them of righteousness, and doesn’t convict them of judgment, is proof positive that those who do this not only do not have the Holy Spirit but they are actually working against His purposes. They scatter. They do not gather. They are working in the spirit of the false prophet who is giving people false comforts when they should be repenting.

The false prophet is characterized by saying “peace and safety” to a people that are headed for judgment and should be repenting. (2Thess 2:3) By comforting people that God is trying to cause to repent and loving them with a worldly and false love and saying peace and safety to them, instead of warning them of the judgment to come, the false prophet destroys souls, he doesn’t save them. I used to believe that the churches were being led astray by preachers who were false prophets. But God has now shown me that virtually everybody in the false church is a false prophet. Even the pew sitters are false prophets. Their entire congregations are filled with falsehoods and all the people are speaking falsehoods to one another. They are all thinking that the way to love each other is to tell each other comfortable compliments that make everybody feel like everyone’s ok with God when they are not. And that is the very mission of the false prophet, to comfort people that God is trying to bring to repentance, so they do not feel convicted and repent. Whereas a true prophet has the mission to uncover iniquity, to open up the eyes of the people who are in sin so that they can repent and get out of that sin. “I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran. I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in My counsel, and had caused My people to hear My words, then they would have turned them from their evil way and from the evil of their doings. (Jer 23:21-22)

And in the true church the members provoke one another to love and good works. (Heb 10:24) But in the Jerusalem below, the man made fleshly churches of today, they think it’s their mission to make everyone feel content in lukewarmness. “So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth. (Rev 3:16) And it’s their mission to cause people to not fear God or His Word. They are making up excuses for inactivity, (we’re saved by faith not works) excuses for their sins, (we’re all just sinners saved by grace) excuses for their carnality (God knows our heart) and making each other feel comfortable in a place of not doing the will of God instead of provoking one another to do the will of God. That’s the characteristic of the Jerusalem below because what’s inside of them is not a heart that wants to do the will of God. To have a heart for God you have to be born from above and they are not born from above. They still have a heart that pursues their own gain and their own comfort so they want to get together with other people who are of a similar heart and who will help them pursue their own gain and won’t get in the way of that, and will help them feel “saved” while doing that.

Now what happens when a real Christian gets into their midst is that the real Christian gets in the way, becomes a stumbling block, because he tries to provoke them to love and good works, to real righteousness. To really save people the real Christian starts saying things those born of the flesh don’t want to hear and that upsets them. And so they become the persecutors of the real Christian. Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise. But, as he who was born according to the flesh then persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, even so it is now. (Gal 4:28,29)  Because that flesh is still selfish and it doesn’t want anything to do with anybody who is like God, who exposes and convicts them of their true unrighteous nature, which to them is a very uncomfortable thing. So we are the fragrance of life to those who are being saved and the fragrance of death to those who are perishing (2Cor 2:15,16) And the Jerusalem below is perishing. Nevertheless what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the freewoman.” (Gal 4:30) There is no inheritance to the Jerusalem below. There’s no inheritance to Christians who are born of the flesh and not of God. There is no Heaven to those who were born Methodist or Baptist or Catholic, because their parents were Methodist, Baptists or Catholics, but they didn’t get born again by having a meeting with God, where a true faith in God causes them to become a new creation, supernaturally by the power of God. (Col 2:12)

 So in the Jerusalem below we have a religious people who are fooling themselves into thinking they’re saved by their religion when they have not had the transforming work inside of them of being born again by the Spirit of God. And that’s the state of the majority of professing Christians today. As it was the state of the Jews when Paul wrote, But it is not that the Word of God has taken no effect. For they are not all Israel who are of Israel. So they’re not all Christians who say they are Christians either. Nor are they all children because they are the seed of Abraham; but “In Isaac your seed shall be called.” That is, those who are the children of the flesh, are not the children of God; but the children of the promise are counted as the seed. (Rom 9:6-8)

 So to be a real Christian has to come from a supernatural work of God in fulfilling His promise to Abraham, Christ and His Church. And to be born again from above requires the believer to hear God’s Word of salvation and mix it with faith. For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. (Heb 4:2) “Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but followed the counsels and the dictates of their evil hearts, and went backward and not forward. (Jer 7:24) For this reason eventually the Jerusalem below will be destroyed. As an example, again the Methodist Church began in holiness but when generations of Methodists are born in the flesh who do not get born again supernaturally in the Spirit soon the church is filled with fleshly believers and becomes the epitome of the Jerusalem below; an imitation, a counterfeit of God’s church. That counterfeit is very dangerous because it fools people who don’t know better into thinking that they can go there to find God when God isn’t there. The people won’t find salvation there because there is no supernatural work to change you into the Son of God going on there; it’s a very dangerous trap that may deceive you into thinking you’re saved when you are lost. And what has happened in such churches was not caused by an immediate degeneration but by a process of degeneration. From generation to generation the people go backwards not forwards. In Jerusalem below churches, you can see the decline over a period of decades – they become less and less holy, less and less serious about the things of God, more and more worldly. This is an irrefutable evidence that Christ is not working in them. The work has ceased, the Spirit has departed, and what was left of their Spiritual habits are dying out. But in a real church such as “My Father’s House” it is visible from week to week that the saints are making Spiritual progress. We are going forwards and not backwards; greater faith, greater Spirituality, greater knowledge of God because “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free” is true because we are continuing in the Word and because God keeps His Word and to the Spiritual our salvation is as a light that shines more and more to the perfect day. (Prov 4:18)

 In God’s real Church there is a visible Spiritual growth. “To Him who has more will be given.” (Matt 25:29) But in the church that stops listening to the Word of God, what happens? Well they don’t stop listening to it all at once, but when the carnal take over they start listening to some things from man and there’s a gradual deterioration, where you can see they are going backwards. “To him who has not even what he has will be taken away.” (Matt 25:29b) So that if you look at the Methodist Church today you can see that she’s been on a downhill slide for many years and she has slidden a long way back in the last hundred years. Whereas if she were a Spiritual church she should have been moving upwards in faith and becoming more and more Spiritual. Almost every church we see, every denomination in this world, every one of them is sliding down. Nobody can argue against this. Every one of them is going down. And the reason is because they are not continuing in God’s Word! And they are all in bondage and they are getting into greater bondage because they are following the dictates of their own hearts, because they are elevating the wisdom of man above the wisdom of God, because they do not have faith in God’s Word because they are not born of God, and they do not hear the Words of God. And so if you can look at a church denomination and see that they used to be more spiritual than they are now you better run from that church because you are in Babylon. You are in the Jerusalem below, and you are not going to get to heaven by following a people that are headed to hell because they are on the downward slide, which shows they are headed towards the place that they belong to as Judas went to the place where he belongs to. (Acts 1:25) And it’s obvious they’re not going up; from faith to faith and glory to glory. But they’re going from sin to sin.

Now in that downhill slide, God doesn’t destroy them immediately. You can see this in Genesis where God says “in the fourth generation they shall return here, your people, the descendants of Abraham for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” (Gen 15:16) The Amorites are on a downhill slide and in the fourth generation the Amorites will have slidden so far downhill, that they will have to be destroyed. In Abraham’s day they are wicked enough that Abraham is afraid to call his wife his wife because he fears there’s enough lust in these people that they might try to kill him for her. And Abimelech was unrighteous enough that he wanted every pretty woman in his territory, but not yet unrighteous enough to kill for her. (Gen 20) But the Amorites are going to keep sliding down and by the time that Moses and Joshua returned to Canaan there was incest, bestiality and such things like that. God said because of this the land would vomit them out. They had grown worse and worse. The Amorites, and the people in the land of Canaan were on a downhill slide to utter destruction.

Now every time there’s a revival, there is something in the nature of an interruption of the downhill slide. And you can see that in Jonah going to Nineveh. The Ninevites are going to be destroyed because their iniquity is about to be fulfilled but God sends them a revival and instead of being destroyed they get to go on a little longer. But a hundred years later they have returned to their wickedness and they are destroyed. What the revival does is, it delays the destruction; it interrupts but it doesn’t stop the downhill slide. It only suspends, or delays it momentarily. The same thing has been going on in the churches today. Revivals have been a temporary ceasing of the downhill slide but after the revival the people go back to their downhill slide again. And the only exception to that is the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem. And the reason for that is in the day of Pentecost in Jerusalem, God started a new work. The Jews are going downhill but God breaks off a piece and makes them into His true Spiritual church, and they begin an upward move towards perfection in Christ. But the path of the just is like the shining sun, that shines ever brighter unto the perfect day. (Prov 4:18) And the true Church and the true believers go from faith to faith from glory to glory always into the higher calling of Christ Jesus. (Phil 3:14) But the Jews keep going downhill until as a nation they’re destroyed. And this shows us, even revival in the denominations will not stop them from being destroyed. If they even get a revival, it will only cause their judgment to be delayed. And if you don’t want to be destroyed do not be a part of that group that’s going to be judged. Because if for some reason you stay in it even though there’s a revival, the seeds of that carnal Jerusalem below are still there and it’s just like cutting the branches of evil off the bad tree but you still haven’t fixed what’s wrong inside of them and they just start growing new branches of evil; new branches of flesh. And the cutting off makes it a little slower for that flesh to manifest. But you haven’t changed what’s growing there. In order to get into the group that’s going up you have to get out of the group that’s going down. And God will hold you responsible for the church you chose to be a part of. And you won’t get to Heaven in a church that is of the flesh. (Gal 4:29,30)

 And that’s why true Christianity is not born according to the flesh; it’s born from above; it is a different thing. It is not a reforming of the flesh. It is not a correction of the flesh. It is a destruction of the flesh and it is a birth into the Spirit of Christ. And it is a new creation. And the new creation is headed upwards. Whereas the old creation is headed down. And true Christianity is a breaking away from the old creation, the Jerusalem below and that religion which is in bondage. And it is being made a part of the new creation, and the Spiritual Christianity in which there’s liberty.

So you can see that very plainly in all these verses that talk about the liberty in the Spirit. Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. (2Cor 3:17) There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. (Rom 8:1-2) The freedom that we have is such as Paul says, “All things are lawful but they’re not all expedient.” (1Cor 10:23) but if they are helpful to God’s cause they are lawful. So we’ve been set free from the law and we’re not in bondage to the law. And we’re not in bondage to sin. You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free but he who is in sin is a slave to sin. (John 8:32;Rom 6:6) Nor are we slaves to the passions of the flesh. Those who are of Christ have crucified the flesh with it’s passions and it’s desires. (Gal 5:24) The Spiritual Christian is in freedom but he has to maintain his freedom by maintaining his Spirituality.

Now in his first letter to the Corinthian church Paul has heard about an unrepentant sinner in the church and He says In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, Why? Because we can’t have sins of the flesh in God’s Spiritual church. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? (1Cor 5:6) Don’t you know when you let flesh into the church, when you accept as brethren “believers” who are not born from above, you’re going to destroy the church because that fleshly Jerusalem below type Christianity will wrestle against the Spirit until it takes your church over. And then you’ll just be a bunch of people who make up excuses for why you don’t do the will of God; why you won’t stand up and turn a sinner from the error of his way because “You love him to much to hurt his feelings,” or why you won’t go on to perfection because “nobody’s perfect.”

 In my lifetime, every church I’ve ever seen except “My Father’s House” is in the Jerusalem below. As it is written: “There is none righteous, no, not one; There is none who understands; there is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside; they have together become unprofitable; there is none who does good, no, not one.” “Their throat is an open tomb; with their tongues they have practiced deceit;” “The poison of asps is under their lips”; “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.” “Their feet are swift to shed blood; Destruction and misery are in their ways; And the way of peace they have not known.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Rom 3:10-18) They’ve all fallen. They’re all corrupted. They’ve all let flesh take over. They’ve all begun some time ago to listen to the dictates of their hearts instead of listening to the Word of God. They don’t think God’s Word is important anymore. They don’t love it. They don’t hunger for it. They’re not free; they’re in bondage. They’re not saved. They’re headed for destruction. Even if such “Christians” get a “revival” all it’s doing is delaying their destruction. If their “revival” doesn’t make them get born of the Spirit and start loving the Word of God and obeying the Word of God, if they go back into their old churches then they’re going to go down again because those old churches are still serving the flesh. The only way to get into real salvation is to purge out that old leaven and be a new lump.

And that’s what God did in Christianity in the beginning. He did not change Judaism. He started a new work. And He took a remnant out of the Jews to start that new work and you know what’s really interesting about this, in a very short period of time that Jewish remnant wasn’t really Jewish anymore. Go to Acts chapter 15 and look at the problems the early church was having with Judaism. Because the Judaism was not purged out they were still arguing about circumcision and trying to enforce the Jewish law on the Gentile Christians and things like that and they had some severe struggles because even though Jesus had warned the Apostles “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.” (Mark 8:15) Pharisees had come into the church in a way that was not Spiritual. They came in bringing their Phariseeism with them and that began to infect the church in Jerusalem and then attacked the Gentile churches and Paul had to fight against it. And the only way to really get a new lump and get rid of that Phariseeism was in the Gentile churches. The Gentile churches didn’t have the Phariseeism. And so God moved away from the Jewish church. He started in the Jewish community; He started His church with the Jews but within a few years there wasn’t much of a Jewish church left; it was all Gentile.

By 70AD most of the Jews were destroyed. And the Jewish culture as it had been was over. And the Christian Jews who had survived the destruction of the Jewish culture, and the destruction of Jerusalem, these Christian Jews had more in common, and more to fellowship about with the Gentile Christians than they had with the cultural Jews. In other words they didn’t feel comfortable trying to fellowship with unsaved Jews, they would rather fellowship with Greek or Roman Christians. They would rather be with the Gentile Christians than the unsaved Jews because the Gentile Christians were truly their brethren. And so the Jewish Christians pretty much got combined together with the Gentile church, which was then both, Jew and Gentile, but the Jewish church as it began disappeared. For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. (Eph 2:14-16)

So the church is neither Jewish in culture nor gentile in culture but a new culture, a Spiritual culture in Christ. Because that is the way God needed to do it if He didn’t want the church to degenerate and start going downhill again. The Jerusalem below had to be destroyed so they would on the one hand stop persecuting the Spiritual church and the other hand stop infiltrating and trying to corrupt the church with their flesh. For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. (Jude 4) You ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion does not come from Him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. (Gal 5:7-9) If God was to keep the church on an uphill path, he needed to keep them Spiritual. And if He’s going to keep the church Spiritual He needs to keep out those people who were just born of flesh thinking that they’re a Christian because they grow up in a Christian house or those who had an intellectual conversion without a supernatural change of heart. He needed to keep the traditions of the Jews out. He needed to get rid of all that stuff and start a new lump. And the way God has to work these days is the same way.

The Jerusalem below today is the Christianity that is born of flesh, not just Judaism. And a Spiritual Christian cannot go back into one of these fleshly churches even if they have a revival. The fact is a few years after the revival they will be back to thinking their own thoughts, coming up with their own ideas, taking back the old traditions and corban that they had from before and their downhill slide will be even worse than before. “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. “Then he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. “Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first. So shall it also be with this wicked generation.” (Matt 12:43-45) Now the ministry of “flesh” is on a downhill slide; passing away. But if the ministry of death, written and engraved on stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of the glory of his countenance, which glory was passing away, (2Cor 3:7) But the ministry of the Spirit is ascending; an upward call to increasing glory. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord. (2Cor 3:18) I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Phil 3:14) Flesh is of the earth and it gravitates back toward the earth from which it came. (Gen 3:19) But the born again spirit is from God and it strives within the believer to lift us up into the Heavenlies, it strives to return to God from which it came. Therefore only Spiritual Christianity will get you to Heaven. Flesh will take you down ultimately to hell. And if you want to get into the upward side purge out the old leaven and start a new lump. (1Cor 5:7) Purge out the leaven. Even coming out from the fleshly churches as we have at “My Father’s House” and starting a new lump we still had to have God purge us of many of these old and insane ideas: the falsehoods, lies and superstitions that run rampant in the fleshly church; Jerusalem below.

Now how much harder is it going to be to get cleaned if you’re still sitting in one of those fleshly churches, wallowing in the mire of their foolish and demonic doctrines? You see, to get into the ascending glory, the upward call of Christ, you must “Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you.” (2Cor 6:17) and separate yourself from all these lies and excuses and ideas like “Love the sinner but hate the sin” which translates into do nothing about a sinner who’s in sin because you don’t want to offend him, or “nobody’s perfect” when it’s used as an excuse to refuse to repent of your wrong doing and never go on to perfection in Christ. Or “don’t judge” when it’s used to prevent you from “testing to see who is of God and who isn’t.” “I know your works, your labor, your patience, and that you cannot bear those who are evil. And you have tested those who say they are apostles and are not, and have found them liars; (Rev 2:2) You see, Jesus expects us to “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. (Matt 7:15) and But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner-- not even to eat with such a person. (1Cor 5:11) He forbids us to even eat with a “believer” that is a sinner and we must be able to “examine” the sinner to obey Christ in these things. So when so-called “Christians” say “don’t judge” in such a way as to forbid “testing” to see what is good, (1Thes 5:21) they show themselves enemies to God and His Word and His true church. The Jerusalem below is filled with fancy words, fancy arguments that explain away a behavior that is abhorrent to God and is disobedient to God and make it seem like it is righteousness. Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! (Isa 5:20) “For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men-- the washing of pitchers and cups, and many other such things you do.” (Mark 7:8) And that’s what makes them a brood of vipers because they are filled with such things; saying they love one another and using that as an excuse to not rebuke, to not reprove, to not provoke one another to love and good works; they do not stand up for truth and the Word of God. “For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes in His own glory, and in His Father’s, and of the holy angels. (Luke 9:26)

For whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives.” (Heb 12:6) “To scourge” does not mean to slap lightly the hand. It means to bloody the back as with cat of nine tails. The Lord will do severe hurt to your flesh in order to get you to be holy. though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. (Heb 5:8) If God used suffering to perfect Jesus, He will certainly use suffering to perfect you. He’s willing to do that and He says He scourges every son, meaning that every one of you will be seriously chastened before you are perfected Spiritually, before you are perfected in righteousness. Now if the churches around us won’t endure chastening then they are not the Spiritual church; they are Jerusalem below, not above. 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. (Heb 12:7-8)

The word “disciple” comes from the same root as the word “discipline”. Christ’s true disciples are those that are being or have been disciplined. Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Heb 12:11) Only those who have been properly disciplined have entered into true righteousness. And you can see this does not speak of a merely imputed righteousness; discipline affects behavior to cause you to behave righteously. Do not withhold correction from a child, for if you beat him with a rod, he will not die. You shall beat him with a rod, and deliver his soul from hell. (Prov 23:13-14)

Many false Christians complain that we true Christians make Christianity too hard. The problem isn’t that Christianity has been too hard; the real problem is that contemporary Christianity hasn’t been nearly hard enough. God has to be very hard on flesh if He is to straighten His children out and get them to behave righteously. Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind, for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, (1Pet 4:1) Again this has nothing to do with imputed righteousness. It has to do with behaving righteously because that’s what chastening does, it changes behavior. You don’t need to chasten if you are only going to impute righteousness. And God is willing to chasten very, very hard and not be concerned that  “You’re going to drive him away from God” “You’re going to make him feel like he’s not saved” “You’re going to ruin his salvation because you have been so hard on him.” I dealt with a man recently who claims he likes our books but he doesn’t like it when I say that Baptists are not real Christians and God gave him a real scourging! Jesus had me expose his sin and self-righteousness as sharply as I have ever seen it done to anybody. You see the very thing that offends him about me is the very thing that demonstrates that Christ is in me. “As He is so are we in this world” (1John 4:17) Jesus exposed the sins of the Pharisees and showed that they were headed to hell because of their false religion “woe unto you scribes and Pharisees.” (Matt 23:13-25) And Christ in me today is exposing the false religion of the Baptists and those like them.

For example, Peter says, add to your faith virtue, and knowledge, and brotherly kindness and love, to make your calling and election sure. (2Pet 1:5-10) Yet the Baptists say they are already secure and can’t lose their salvation. They are calling Peter a liar and making the Word of God of no effect, when they say you can’t lose your salvation. Because to believe that you must believe Peter is a liar when he says you need to add these things to your faith to make your salvation sure. So those who hear the Baptist lies think they do not have to add to their faith virtue etc. to become established in salvation. Thus they will not make their calling and election sure. Thus they will be lost because of the lies of the Baptists who do not know Jesus and argue with the Word of God, and many such things they do. “Making the word of God of no effect through your tradition which you have handed down. And many such things you do.” (Mark 7:13) So it offends this man’s self-righteous idea of “being nice” when I speak against the false religions of our time which is the very thing Jesus does in His time. So it is Christ in me he is offended with, just like the Pharisees are offended with Jesus healing on the Sabbath because it violates their self-righteous interpretation of the law. So this man has a self-righteous interpretation of “love” that says “don’t speak critically of anyone.” But he didn’t get this from God.

Jesus speaks critically of the Pharisees. And today are we not to speak critically of Jim Jones, and Muslims who murder – even the world criticizes such dangers. But we must also warn people that there is no salvation in Hinduism, Buddhism, or any false religion? Jesus died in vain if Muslims can be saved by Allah! And Catholics are not “born again” so they cannot be saved. And Baptists are not born again, though they profess to be, they lie, because he who is born of God hears God’s Word and they don’t hear God’s Words. (John 8:47) So they are not of God. And they are just like the people in, “When they set their threshold by My threshold, and their doorpost by My doorpost, with a wall between them and Me, they defiled My holy name by the abominations which they committed… “Son of man, describe the temple to the house of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities; and let them measure the pattern. (Ezek 43:8-10) They build a false church in place of the true so people trying to get to God enter the false church and are lost. “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. (Matt 23:13) So Jesus exposes them in His day and Jesus in me exposes them today. That we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, (Eph 4:14) And so the very thing that I am doing and Christ in me is doing to save men’s souls, is the thing that offends these false self-righteous Christians who in their arrogance do not know Christ but they think I am the one that doesn’t know Him, yet I do know Him. His sheep know His voice. And I am in Him. But they do not know His voice and in their false Christianity, their intellectual pride and man-made rules and religion they fight against Christ Himself. Jesus didn’t coddle Pharisees. He shamed them, embarrassed them and exposed them. “And when He said these things, all His adversaries were put to shame.” (Luke 13:17)

So concerning this man who is offended with my criticisms of the false Christians like the Baptists, if I don’t expose him strongly, if I pat him on the back and let him think he’s not arrogant, he’s not proud, he’s not wrong, when he’s coming against someone who has been a real Christian many years longer than him and who truly knows God, the God this man only pretends to know, and he criticizes a true apostle when he hypocritically says don’t criticize false Christians and he doesn’t know what he’s talking about and I have proven it from the Scriptures – if you don’t rebuke him so sharply that he can’t lift his head up for seven weeks then he’s going to walk away full of pride, thinking he can boss pastors around and self-righteously thinking he’s one of God’s greatest emissaries when he is not even saved. This testimony is true. Therefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith, (Titus 1:13) But if I expose him strongly and he sees his sin and repents in true humility then God will take care of him. God will pick him up. If he’s wounded deeply enough that he learns from his hurt not to do this anymore he might become a decent Christian.

The problem isn’t that we’ve been hitting too hard – we haven’t hit hard enough! People are still in their sins because they have been patted on the back instead of scourged! If they are to become real Christians God must scourge them to get the sin out of them. He’s going to deliver their souls from death by making them hurt so bad because of their sin that they can’t get up very quickly and when they do they’re going to get up humbly and they will never do that sin again. For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death. (2Cor 7:10) It’s an interesting thing that all around us the churches are saying be nicer and God is telling me be harder. And I’m telling you the truth is these “nice” churches don’t know God. They are opposite to God. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. (Rom 8:7) For the flesh lusts against the Spirit… and they are contrary to one another. (Gal 5:17) Instead of patronizing them a real Christian would rebuke the Baptists for their heresies and refuse to associate with them until they repent.

Spiritual Christians are on an uphill journey and the Jerusalem below is on a downhill path. They are following a love demon to hell and we’re following the Holy Spirit to heaven. And we are speaking the truth in love and they are pretending to love when they lie. And they are not speaking the truth at all. And they do not know the ways of God and their churches have become broods of vipers. You’d better not go to one of these churches if you want to be saved.  Because these churches are leading people in the wrong direction; they are actually making them two fold more a child of hell. (Matt 23:15) They are not teaching them to know God, but they are teaching them to fight against God and His Word and His true ways in Christ. The leaders in these churches have made a profession out of pretending to know a God they don’t know. And they are not born again from above themselves and cannot save anybody for they aren’t saved themselves.

In the Jerusalem above God appoints leaders. And no man takes this honor to himself, but he who is called by God, just as Aaron was. (Heb 5:4) No man can call himself to a leadership position in Christ’s church. Therefore He says: “When He ascended on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men.” And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers. (Eph 4:8,11) No man can appoint the true church’s pastor apart from God, because Jesus gives the leaders as gifts to His church. So they must be appointed and called by Jesus to hold a position in Christ’s church. If men are appointing themselves or other men they are in the Jerusalem below. He made shrines on the high places, and made priests from every class of people, who were not of the sons of Levi. (1King 12:31) And “Have you not cast out the priests of the LORD, the sons of Aaron, and the Levites, and made for yourselves priests, like the peoples of other lands, so that whoever comes to consecrate himself with a young bull and seven rams may be a priest of things that are not gods? (2Chr 13:9) So men who pay tuition, go to seminary, purchase a manmade diploma, these Doctors of theology etc. are all from the manmade Jerusalem below. Church leaders from above are taught by Christ and they know God’s Word. But the people in these false churches do not know or love the Word of God and they are in bondage. And they persecute the ones who are Spiritual. And they are the Jerusalem that killed Jesus and they are the Jerusalem that has killed all the prophets, that great city which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt where also our Lord was crucified. (Rev 11:8) And they are still persecuting the Spiritual brethren today because inside they are filled with covetousness and desires for their own gain and the lust of the flesh and pursuing their own comforts and interests. And they are covering their inner corruptions with filthy rags of self-righteousness (Isa 64:6) while pretending to be people of God on the outside. They have the same sickness as the Pharisees of old.

 But God’s church is a Spiritual church, born from above. And the Spiritual church is the one He’s building here at “My Father’s House.” The Jerusalem above which is the mother of us all does not mean she’s the mother of everyone who claims to be a believer. But she is the mother of us all who are the true believers, Christ’s true church, who are really born again. And Jesus is powerfully revealing to us the ways of His Spirit and they are always contrary to the ways of that false and fleshly church around us. And it is not to be a surprise to us anymore that their ways are contrary to us and we to them. This is the reason God has called us out. We are not to be surprised by their behavior because they are of the Jerusalem below and their father is the devil. Everything they do is backwards from the way God does it. Therefore we seem backwards to them. They seem backwards to us. The pertinent question is which of us really is of God? And the answer can be seen in the direction each is going. I know the direction we’re going and I can see the direction they’re going. And they’re going not from glory to glory and from faith to faith but from deception to deception, on a downhill slide into more and more worldliness. Every decade you can see them become more like the world. Whereas everyday you can see us become less like the world and more like Jesus. There is no doubt which church is which.

A Prayer

Father we thank you for meeting with us and taking us deeper into Your awesome truths concerning the battle that the spiritual church fights against the fleshly church in this world and how serious that battle is and how clearly the lines are drawn to those of us O’ Lord who can see it. And how very much we ask for your grace to give us the victory in this battle and to keep us aware even here in this church, of how easy it is to fall into just pretending to be a Christian outside when inside it’s not the glory of God that you’re after but your own interests. And once that happens it isn’t the Word of God you listen to but you start listening to the dictates of your own heart. And when that happens you’re sliding down, you’re going backwards instead of forwards. But, Lord, fill us with love for Your Word and keep our hearts right towards You and cause us to not seek our own will but to lay our lives down to accomplish Your will and to want You in our lives more than our daily bread and butter. And to love You so much Lord, that we would forsake everything to do Your will, and keep the real thing inside of us, that Spirit of Christ who comes from heaven and lifts us up and causes us to go from faith to faith, from glory to glory. And we thank you so much that we know that in this church at “My Father’s House” you are giving us that very grace because this church is heading upwards, from faith to faith and glory to glory. Increase us in that grace O’ Lord, to Your everlasting glory. Amen.

 Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind; and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you. (Phil 3:12-15)

 Prophecy: Why is it that the contemporary churches are not growing spiritually? Why is it that you can look at them ten years ago and you can look at them twenty years ago and you can see that they are not growing more Christ like and that in fact they are dying? The answer is simple. They have not received My Word. Why is it that My Word works effectually but they have not grown? It is because they have not received My Word which makes the true believer grow up in Christ. And I tell you that My true people grow! My people grow leaps and bounds! My people have received the milk of My Word, My people have heard My Spirit and they have mixed faith with My Word therefore it works effectually in them. And you My church at “My Father’s House,” My Word is working effectually in you and you have seen the growth and concerning your growth I am not done by any means. And just as I have fed you in the beginning I am feeding you now, and I will not stop and if you don’t stop your growth will increase, your progress will be seen because you have received My Word, you have eaten of My Word and it has been the joy of your heart and thus you grow because you have heard and you received and you have accepted My Word as it is; every thing, not picking and choosing but taking all that My Word says, as it is the whole truth. And know of a certainty that you will be awesomely blessed because My whole truth is in you, so saith the Lord.

Prophecy: Those who are wise in their own conceits are trying to save themselves by the power of their own intellect. They are trying to save themselves by their own wisdom and they do err greatly. For no man can come to Me except through the Son and only the Son can reveal the Father. And it is not through your intellect; it is through My revelation and My grace that you will be saved. And that is why you must humble yourself and ask of Me so that I will teach you. And those who think they know so much will find out in all they knew they did not know Me. And in not knowing Me they never found salvation, saith the Lord. And those who did not know how to find salvation except to ask of Me will find that that is all they needed to do, was ask of Me and in Me they will have found the salvation they are looking for, saith the Lord.

Prophecy: My people, you have sung praises unto My name and you have acknowledged My power and My glory, My awesomeness, and you have described My magnificence. And I tell you I am all that and more! And holy and glorious and powerful!  But My children, I desire that you have a full measure of My glory. For it is written that the one who builds the house has greater glory than the house. And I am the wise master builder who builds the house in this place, inside of you in this congregation.  And I ask you; am I somebody who will just build an ordinary house? Or am I a God who will build an awesome and glorious and marvelous house? And My people, you as a congregation and individuals, are that house. And I am creating a marvelous house in which you will also receive glory.  And I refer to the power of My glory being built up in this place. My power, My strength and My right hand, going forth here in this place to heal the sick, to free the oppressed. And the supernatural workings of My hand will work in you, because I am the God who builds the house in you. And I will not build something small, or something that could be disdained or dishonored, but something that will be honored. My people, I tell you these things because you are the testimony of Me by what I create in you, and you are certifying to My greatness and My power, and I will build something awesome in this place. And I also tell you this, that the churches at large who have tried to build a house by themselves and have thrown away My Word; their house looks stupid and it looks ridiculous!  Their commode sits in the living room, their roof is on the floor and their shingles are put on the windows because they have not My Word nor My Spirit. But you My people, are building the house of My glory and it will be built properly and therein will be the demonstration of all that I am, saith the Lord.

Prophecy: It is written saith the Lord, those who I predestine, I call. And those who I call, I justify and make righteous. And those who I make righteous, I glorify. And that unless this is done in each and every individual, you are not My elect, you are not My people.  And unless what is written of My people is fulfilled in a people, they are by no means My people. And I tell you, that what I have written, I will fulfill in each and every one of My people. And do not be as those around you; who claim they are My people by a standard not of Me that they themselves have raised. And they claim they are My people based on their own word that they have brought forth apart from Me, and they are not My people. But to be Mine you must gain for yourselves the testimony that I say My true people will be given. And My people, you I have predestined, because you I have called. And you that I have called, I am making righteous and I am giving you a testimony. And those whom I have made righteous, I will also glorify. And each and every one of you who are Mine will gain a testimony, and this church will have a glorious testimony, even as it has already begun. And those around you who have been looking to be My people, and those elect will see your testimony that I have given you according to My Word, and they will say, “Let it be so in me as well.” And they will come to you and be made a people; called, made righteous, and glorified, saith the Lord. And that is all I will have in this place. And as I am doing all these things, and I have begun and have even completed much of what I have said; yet still, I will more awesomely glorify My house, saith the Lord, because I have called her, I have chosen her, I have made her righteous and now I will mightily glorify her and fulfill all that is written of her, saith the Lord. (Prophecies delivered at "My Father's House")

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