If I appear to be somewhat occupied with a narrow thematic band these days it is because Yahweh is laying a particularly heavy burden upon my heart to communicate a vital message to the Messianic Community. For it seems to have escaped almost everybody - believer and unbeliever alike - that the Most High is in the business of establishing reality whilst Satan is anxious to create illusion on as large a scale as possible. In doing this, the enemy cuts away our ground of reality and is thus more able to manipulate us to dance to his tune instead of the Maker's.

Make-believe, rôle-playing, and anything that denies our purpose, or the path of salvation we need to be on, plays heavily into the hands of the Adversary. Millions of Christians dance to the tune of charismata and believe they are following the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit), and millions more believe that just because their lives are quiet and undisturbed that all is well with their spirituality. A false sense of security is, however, a hallmark of the devil. The spiritual anaesthetisation of believers is his surest way of preventing them from making trouble in the establishment of his kingdom. The art of enchantment is Satan's way, but grounding people in reality is the way of Yahweh-Elohim.

I am sure you have, with millions of children the world over, enjoyed playing with sand. We have a sandpit at the back of our house where our children have spent hundreds of happy hours building castles, roads, and all kinds of imaginary things. We quite rightly protect our little ones from many of the harsh realities of the world until their personalities are sufficiently developed, and their moral characters are strong enough, to meet the truth of life's toughness. If we are wise we prepare them from when they are young but never in a way that would circumvent the innocence, joyfulness and simplicity of childhood. Far too many children are denied this and grow up cold and uncaring because of the necessity to survive as adults. Robbing children of their childhood is one of Satan's goals too.

You cannot, as Yah'shua (Jesus) illustrated so clearly in His parable of the wise and foolish men, build a house on sand. For a human life to be strong and capable of weathering the worst that the elements can throw at it, it must be built on rock. Norway and Sweden, which are countries largely made of solid rock with a thin layer of soil underneath, builds its houses on firm foundations. Where I come from in England, however, we are cursed in this respect by clay soils on which we are forced to build our houses, and must pay the price with shifting foundations leading to expensive subsidence repair work.

Anyone who has lived near a desert knows how the sands shift with the wind, and if you have lived by the sea you with know how the currents and waves do the same to the sandy bottom. I distinctly remembering as a boy, having as I did a great love for physical geography, wondering how on earth one could map the sea bottom in detail as everything seemed to change all the time. I well remember my frustration in my attempt to capture an illusive eel in a particular rock pool whose shape changed with each tide. No sooner had I mapped the place out in my mind and considered all the eel's possible hiding places, than everything would change the next day. The shifting topography enabled that eel to successfully conceal itself and just elude capture for there was never enough time between tides to fully explore that large rock pool. From this childhood game I was to learn a valuable lesson: Satan's most powerful weapon against mankind, enabling him to remain concealed, is to change the spiritual and psychic landscape of the human mind in such a way that he the more easily remains hidden. By manipulating the landscape of our minds, the devil remains sufficiently well hidden to be able to build his strongholds. Present him with a solid foundation of rock and he has no means of shifting shapes and no place to hide. And that rock is the Rock of Reality, Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ).

But, you may ask, what on earth is 'reality'? And are we not supposed to have a gift for imagination? The answer to the second question is, yes, Yahweh has given us the gift of imagination with which we can be creative but he has forbidden that we live in it. Life can only be lived to the full and in a way that brings us deep satisfaction when we are able to see things as they really are. Those who live in fantasy worlds of their own making, or of the devil's making, do not cope well in either the real world of mortality or in the world that is to come because they lack the proper mental tools to interact lovingly and intelligently with it.

A place where I have learned much about reality and fantasy is in the dream state where we are forced to focus during a few hours of sleep on the 'reality' of our inner world. Here we are able to see whether our inner world corresponds to the outer world of wakefulness or not, and if it does not, then we are living disjunctive and inharmonious lives where reality and fantasy conflict.

I think you will all agree that there is nothing quite as frustrating as someone you know - and especially someone you love - totally misunderstanding and misreading you. You live in your reality but they live in their fantasy, imagining things about you that are totally untrue. People's views of us are therefore often formed not by reality but by vivid imagination. They paint pictures of people in their own minds which make them feel comfortable with their own inner worlds, for it is a truth that nobody likes their inner security - be it built upon truth or lies - to be disturbed by someone living in reality. Psychologists will tell you of the many mechanisms we humans employ to make untruth more comfortable for ourselves by living in denial.

I was first alerted to the possible delusions of the dream state not by some wild and fantastic adventure - those kinds of dreams are so obviously not grounded in reality because when we awake we know for sure we have not, for example, been chased by dinosaurs in real life but have in truth simply processed a film like Jurassic Park which we have seen - but by something infinitely more subtle. But before I talk about those - for this is where demons love to hide - let me talk about the more obvious ones, and to challenge everyone to consider just how good for them movies like Jurassic Park really are. For a young mind which finds distinguishing between reality and fantasy difficult, there can be no doubt whatsoever that such films are harmful. We all know - or ought to know (if only we would admit it) - that violent films viewed by weak or young minds programs those minds to rôle-play, and to live out what they have seen to one degree or another in real life. Some of the senseless violence we hear of, or may even have experienced first hand, stems very often from such rôle-playing.

When we watch movies we are living in a world of make-believe and fantasy. Very often the worlds portrayed in them are so brilliantly constructed on film that we prefer them to the harsh realities of the outside world. When this starts to happen, we are on the slippery slope that leads to the steady loss of reality and a retreat into a world of illusion. How many children do you know who, having watched a Superman movie, have then gone off and pretended to be Superman, sometimes seriously injuring themselves? I remember how shocked I was watching a couple of my own sons once abandon all reason and what they had been taught and start jumping off high places in the hope, each time, of getting once step closer to real flight, all because of what they had seen in a film. Children imitate what they see and hear. As such, then, the world of make-believe can become very, very dangerous. Physical injuries caused by trying to imitate a super-hero are one thing, but when people watch occult supernatural movies, very real damage begins to happen as alien life forms invisibly begin to slip into our minds and being.

I remember a dream I had many years ago in which, whilst asleep, I thought I was in North Africa. The beaches were golden and lovely, the sun was hot, the climate what I had been used to in the Far East and which deep down I, then living in England, really missed. To be quite honest with you, that dream was where I wanted to be, and because it corresponded to my inner desires, I was not able to discern - until I awoke - that I had been dreaming. I did not enjoy the harsh reality of waking on a dark, cold, damp winter's morning. I wanted to go back. And that is what I did. I went back to sleep and found myself back in North Africa and to a dream that contained many of the childish elements of my ideal world. Lovely whitewashed colonial houses and inside every child's dream - a pot of gold. The place was safe, luxurious, and comfortable in every way. It was by a tropical sea which I have always loved. I couldn't have been happier. And yet for some reason in the dream I looked down at the sand I was standing on with my bare feet and noticed that it wasn't sand at all - it was something else - something artificial like the Styrofoam used in packing boxes. It was light and airy. It wasn't 'real sand' after all.

You have no idea how shocked I was from that experience. As a result I began to look at dreams with a more objective eye and over the years have come to understand a great deal how they work. The 'solid reality' turned out to be as solid as a beam of light because that is what they are, in fact, made of. Like the pixels on a computer screen, the world we 'see' inside is, in fact, built of psychic particles which are alive and mobile. Like particles of dust rushing around on the surface of a liquid, or micro-organisms swimming around in a drop of water, what we 'see' in our dream state is actually a kind of theatre of light or the motion of biological holograms. It is real in its own way but has no objective connection to physical reality or, for that matter, to the reality of what I call the First Heaven.

A word of explanation is required here so that I am not misunderstand each other. The Bible speaks of Three Heavens and the apostle Paul says he travelled to the third one (2 Cor.12:2). The First Heaven is our physical atmosphere. The Second Heaven is the invisible psychic realm. And the Third Heaven is the spiritual kingdom of Yahweh-Elohim. Demons inhabit the First and Second Heavens (Eph.2:2) for now, until they are purged at the end of the age and they are returned to the dominion of Yahweh. Here, in this vast world of psychic or astral phenomena, Satan and his army of demons weave their complex webs of illusion and invite humans to play in them, offering them a 'counter-reality' - a place to fantasise in illusory happiness or in abject terror. Here countless humans over countless centuries have been creating with their psychic energies all their imaginary paradises and hells. In these mental shells of their imagination, which are as alive as your physical bodies are, demons have entered, reshaped and redesigned the theatre of both the individual and collective mind and made a playing ground for themselves to trick, to treat, and to torture. Here, in this world, when we are apart from Christ, we process our thoughts and feelings and live out our dreams.

Because the Second Heaven is currently under demonic occupation, Yahweh-Elohim has forbidden us to use our supernatural psychic powers. As biologists will tell you, most of our brain area is inactive. It has been 'closed down' by order of Heaven for our own safety until the Millennial Age when it may be opened again. Satan has, by every means - subtle and not so subtle - sought to reopen it so that he can tap our psychic energy (called Kundalini or serpent energy) which he and his demons use to feed on and so stay alive. Being as he is impatient and lustful for power, he robs this energy from us by getting us to commit sin, the more diabolical the better because of copious quantities of psychic energy are released as a result. Murder and sexual immorality release this parasitised energy rather like a deep wound causes the physical body to copiously bleed (life-energy is in blood - Lev.17:11).

Over the years, as I have 'watched' myself in my dream state and asked Yah'shua (Jesus) to keep me aware and to be in control, I have found the boundary between being awake and asleep gradually disappear. Whilst I am usually not conscious of my physical surroundings when I am asleep, I am invariably aware that I am dreaming - and that it is not physically 'real'. Sometimes, though, when my mind has not been in spiritual things, or I have allowed myself to be tempted by ungodly thoughts like doubt or fear, I have lost that awareness and strange things have happened. It happened this morning which is why I am writing this.

I was, in my dream, in a European city that I have never visited but have always passionately wanted to. I have dreamed about it many times in the past and each time I have checked the dream content with the real place with pictures in books, the two have fundamentally contradicted one another, and I have quickly understood that this was just a mental construction of how I imagined the place would look like. I have also had 'guides' in the dream showing me around and apparently possessing local knowledge and authority. I am sure you have guessed already 'who' these were.

Well, I was back there again, only someone I knew well was living there and showing me around. Though in my awake state I know this person lives somewhere entirely different, in the dream I did not bother to challenge this lie because that was where I wanted to be and I was more than happy to be shown around by someone I knew and trusted reasonably well. The story line was good even though many of the scenes in the dream were 'vague' and not properly filled out, like stage sets which the producer didn't think were important enough to put much time and effort into preparing. Obviously the stage-managers of this dream didn't think it was worth their while making any great effort in giving substance to a scene they presumed I would quickly pass through without giving it much attention. They were half right - I was suspicious but was too lazy to really stop and figure it out, as I ordinarily would have done in a more collected presence of mind. So I let it pass.

It was not until we sat on the ground to have a picnic that I noticed everything was wrong. As I felt the ground with my hands I noticed that it felt rubbery. I pressed it - it wasn't earth at all but something else, even though it was pretending to be. Now in such situations when I become aware that I have been deceived, I notice that the stage props which make up the dream set start shifting shape, and the impermanent and illusory quality of it all is immediately manifested. And at this stage the people in the dreams often turn out to be demons mimicking the characters, some of whom I know in real life but who predictably weren't 100% authentic in the dream. For one thing you must realise about demons is that whilst they are masters at deception they are unable to faithfully reproduce anything truthful because it is so utterly contrary to their nature, and they compulsively have to insert a lie in some place. In addition, I believe, Yahweh compels them in some way to leave a clue of their deception so that His children cam find them out. I have been able to unmask them so many times in dreams that I have come to learn where they deliberately insert their deception and it is always - though not necessarily exclusively - in the ground. By this I mean they will deceive in other areas as well but they ALWAYS deceive when it comes to the ground in dreams. It happened on my 'sandy beach' and it happened in this dream in my 'earthy soil', for they were neither sand not soil, but a poor imitation.

I am quite sure they are forced to do this because they are not able to successfully duplicate the ground of reality. They are sandy shape-shifters whereas Christ is rock-solid. What Yahweh builds is permanent. His Word never returns to Him void (Is.55:11). All was decided long before we were created. And whilst Satan may think that he has the world under his thumb and total control, in truth Yahweh, being all-knowing, anticipated his every move and is simply nudging history in the direction He wants it to go. Satan may think that he has sovereignty (and to us in the middle of it, it often looks as though he has) but in truth he can no more control the destiny of the world than an injured fly can prevent a student from completing his university education. Yahweh will crush Satan at the foreordained moment as a child swats an irritating fly when he has had enough of it.

There are, as you must have guessed by now, different types of dream state: there are those which are subject to the false 'laws' of the Second Heaven and those which are subject to the reality and eternal laws of the Third. And the Third Heaven is the ultimate reality because it is the abode of the Person of the Ultimate Reality, Yahweh-Elohim, Himself.

There may therefore be said to be three realities, one of which is not supposed to be operational - there is the reality of the Kingdom of (the Third) Heaven, there is the closed down reality of the Second Astral or Psychic Heaven (because it is the domain of illusion and untruth for now), and there is the reality of our Physical World, and specifically the atmosphere in which we live and breathe. It therefore follows that in spite of what we see with our physical eyes we will not have a grasp on ultimate reality unless we are properly connected to the Third Heaven and are disconnected from Satan's shadowy realm.

We are all free agents and we can choose Satan's reality of Yahweh's. Satan's 'reality' is just a theatre production of illusion. He shows people things he has spun in it and promises them, much as Hitler promised Chamberlain, "peace in our time". Victims of Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) and practitioners of the occult and false religion are often given quite spectacular shows and are promised that they will inherit satanic paradises based on carnal lust. But they are just images without substance. Satan has nothing except death and pain to offer. He, too, lives in his own illusion - the ultimate illusion, in fact - his belief that he can remove God and take over his throne. Or at least one part of him has to believe that otherwise he would go inside, for he has known since Calvary that he is defeated.

So how do we shift out the false ground and bring in the rocky one? By accepting Yah'shua as your Lord (Master) and Saviour (Deliverer), getting deliverance ministry to remove the satanic influences in your life and to dismantle all the false structures in your mind, and obeying the commandments. You can only live in the ultimate reality by living in the Kingdom of Heaven, and you can only live in the Kingdom of Heaven by living the lifestyle that you were created to live and which is natural to your spiritual system. Realigning your psychic system may take time as the changes required will be radical and the old carnal system may bitterly resist it, disliking change as it always does. To achieve this change becomes a combination of willpower and the supernatural assistance of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit).

What, then, does the ground which is the Rock of Christ consist of? Of what is the rock a metaphor? Firstly, it is the Person of Yah'shua (Jesus) Himself and in particular His Divinity and Resurrection Power. This Power is identified by the presence in our lives of Divine Love, and Divine Love is identified by our spontaneous and natural love of, and obedience to, the Two Great Commandments: to love Yahweh-Elohim with all our might, mind, strength and soul, and to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. That we are doing these things is identified and confirmed by our natural and spontaneous obedience to, and love of, the Ten Commandments, which establish in critical areas our relationship with Yahweh and our relationship to our neighbour. And finally, these Ten Commandments themselves are amplified and confirmed by our obedience to the rest of the mitzvot, the detailed aspects of the Ten Commandments. The lifestyle that naturally follows from obedience to these commandments is the evidence that we are build on the Rock and that we therefore have the true ground of reality. Resistance to any of these commandments is evidence that we are not yet firmly grounded and are still open to the deception of Satan's theatre. They therefore become the means by which we are able to identify the ground we are supposed to stand on, from (for example) abstaining from sexual intercourse during menstruation, observing Yahweh's Festivals, and to having the ultimate quality of godliness, which is a deep and abiding divine love in our hearts, remembering that that quality of godliness is confirmed or denied by all the other things we do.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that Satan does everything in his power to convince the children of God not to obey the commandments. His excuses are legion, one of the most popular of which is that the Law (Torah) has been done away with and that all we need do is follow our hearts, lying to us all the way and making us believe we are fully sanctified and under the continual guidance of the Ruach (Spirit) in all things even when it is plain that there yet remain huge sin issues in our lives, and the carnal man is undefeated and uncrucified.

Being grounded in reality means, amongst other things, divesting ourselves of one of the great church-based illusions ever, which maintains you are always saved once you have accepted Christ no matter what you subsequently so. There are so many false doctrines in Christendom which have to be cut out if reality is to prevail and Satan's deceptions are to be rooted out of our system. Doctrine is important which is why Yah'shua (Jesus) only ever did what His Father told Him to do.

You will be surprised upon a closer and more honest inspection of your life just how sandy some of your foundation is. The fact that you wilfully - and sometimes ignorantly - ignore the commandments is proof of the illusions that steer your life. Why do you think Christians grow lazy and complacent? Why do they do the things they know they are not supposed to be doing? What is it that makes them comfortable in their illusions? Simply and brutally stated, that comfort is caused by demonic enchantments. And the Enemy is expert at making Yahweh's disturbance in life - especially disturbance that will lead to repentance and a change in life direction - appear to be negative and therefore bad, and thus persuade you to stay exactly where you are in the pool of spiritual stagnation which is Satan's world. Test it for yourself. Any personal 'revelation' or 'feeling' or 'guidance' which leads you away from what you are supposed to be doing is from the devil no matter how 'innocent' and 'harmless' you may believe it is. In truth, he is leading you by your nose. And if you are responsible for others in your life - as a parent, minister or other person of responsibility - then, if they respect and follow you, you are leading them into demonic delusion too and you will be accountable.

The real enemy is not annoying preachers like myself telling you things you don't want to hear because they are disturbing your comfort zones or shaking your illusions about life and reality but the enemy within who is holding you bound. Save yourself and your loved ones before it is too late! The demonic delusion and enchantment is growing stronger and stronger every day in the world and it is becoming harder and harder to get out of it the more dependent on the world system and psychic delusion you become, that give you the imaginary stability in your life. Repent! Change direction! Make right what you have done wrong and swallow your pride. Walk in faith and not the flesh. Accept your stripes with grace and know that they are given in love by a gracious Saviour and are for your good.

There is one further thing that you need to know too, and if this won't wake you out of your sense of complacency, nothing will:

"The coming of the lawless [Torahless, commandmentless] one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason Elohim (God) will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness" (2 Thess.2:9-12, NKJV).

Please note the components of this revelation very carefully: those who deny the necessity of obedience to Torah or the commandments are opening themselves up to strong delusion through power, signs, and lying wonders through unrighteous deception because they are spiritually dying. Because of these things - YAHWEH HIMSELF will in addition send them a strong delusion - and why? So that they do not believe the truth whilst being wrongly motivated in the heart. For it is never enough to believe with your mind - only those who LOVE THE TRUTH are they who will make the necessary changes in mind, heart, and behaviour. It is, you see, possible to convince an evil man by some supernatural miracles of Yahweh that is greater in power than Satan but unless the man first of all loves the truth in his heart above all else, his 'conversion' will be carnal and not spiritual, and Yahweh does not want such numbered amongst His people, because they will continue to be a corrupting and therefore a satanic influence by virtue of their impure hearts. The Israelites were converted in this manner by Yahweh's incredible interventions in the Exodus but still they could not enter the Promised Land until their evil hearts had been purged as well.

So look to your heart honestly and critically ask yourself: DO I LOVE THE TRUTH above my own life? If you do not, and you are simply waiting for signs and wonders before you will move yourself off your spot, then Yahweh will not give you any but will send you a strong delusion to prevent you from being numbered with the Redeemed of Zion, in the manner in which He hardened Pharaoh's heart.

There really is only one question that those who truly desire to be grounded in reality have to ask themselves in all soberness and in fear: will they seek and obey the truth no matter the cost, even if their whole being revolts at it because it has been patterned for so long after the evil one? How much are you willing to suffer for the truth that you might save your soul? What you willing to forfeit that you might be delivered? How long will you live the lie that you are being shepherded by Yahweh when it is your own lusts? For it is written:

"For the idols [demons] speak delusion; the diviners envision [imagine] lies, and tell false [psychic-derived] dreams; they comfort in vain. Therefore the people went their way like sheep; they are in trouble because there is no shepherd" (Zech.10:2, NKJV).

When Yah'shua (Jesus) declared that he had not come to bring peace but a sword (Mt.10:34-39) He was not only referring to physical members of our own families, but also all those thought-patterns and feelings which have become mothers and fathers to our theology and philosophy which oppose the truth and believe a lie. We have to do war with them until we have overcome! This is as true for SRA victims as anyone else caught up in delusions. Lie-based concepts and desires, because they are driven by demons, never yield themselves without a fight - until the demons behind them have been exposed and cast out. No amount of self-justification or rationalising will remove them!

What, then, must you do? Do what Yahweh tells you to do in His Word! All of it and not just what churches and preachers have told you. And anything which contradicts it - including 'personal revelations' or 'feelings' - must be unceremoniously thrown out as though they were the plague, for they are not founded on Yahweh's reality. The longer you retain them, the stronger they will become, and the greater will be your battle to be rid of them. And remember, if your decision is to do nothing because you want and like things the way they are, then consider the possibility that perhaps you love the lie more than the truth - and if that is your state, then terrible is your condition, for Yahweh will send you a strong delusion so that you remain in it, and so receive your just reward and punishment amongst the wilful unbelievers who likewise have no love of the truth.

The message which I preach may seem harsh but it is not nearly as harsh as the judgement which comes to those who choose to believe and cling to their illusions, because to choose an illusion is to choose Satan. Please consider these things soberly. Choose reality and ground yourself in it. Choose the Ultimate Reality and ground yourself in Him. View yourself as He views you and do something about anything that doesn't agree with His standards at once. Your eternal future rests upon it.

Last updated on 27 July 2004

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