There is nothing more inhuman than to be raised or brought up without Christ. What do I mean by that? Quite simply, that the power which is Yah'shua (Jesus) - His resurrection power - is the sole integrating principle in the Cosmos. The power that was able to restore a decomposing corpse following crucifixion, and transform it into an immortal being full of glory and suffused with eternity, is the power that causes all things to adhere and function in a smooth integrated process in the universe, both that which is mortal and (especially) that which is immortal.
I was not brought up in a Christian home but in what I would call a 'Formalistic' philosophy. I was trained to react to different situations in different ways and to treat different people in different ways. There were rules and protocols - ways to be 'nice', ways to react to 'bad' people, ways to behave in sickness and in health, ways to deal with adversity as well as good times. In short, I was programmed to reflect the programming of my own parents, and in particular my mother, who was my primary 'programmer', as is true of most of us. I was expected to do certain things in certain ways, treat different kinds of people in different ways, adhere to sets of goals, and basically follow complicated sets of rules that had no real connectivity or integration principle. Ever new sets of rules appeared making life very complicated at times, and frequently contradictory. Some were insane, like not letting on when you were ill but maintaining a stiff upper lip and acting as though everything were well, especially if you were out with other people. One was never supposed to acknowledge pain but to some how mentally defy it.
Even if you were not brought up in a formalist home as I was, you will have been trained - albeit subconsciously - in a similar way. A person who does not have Christ is by definition and unintegrated person because there is no harmonious thread joining the parts of their behaviour together. Instead what results is people trained to wear numerous masks in order, supposedly, to 'cope', 'survive', and to 'progress' in society. Most people wear them. Most people are a mass of mutliple, disconnected, 'faces'.
You know this is so by simply observing a person when he is with different people. To one kind of person he is submissive, respectful, and full of smiles, but to another angry, rude, discourteous and domineering. It is as though people 'change personality' as they wander in and out of different relationships with others. Such a person may be described as having 'many faces' because they present a different 'face' or facet of themselves when they are with different people. For most it is all subconscious, pre-programmed behaviour requiring little conscious effort. It's just something you 'do' given a set of different circumstances. But it isn't real - it's an illusion constructed on a foundation of mutliple lies that fragments the personality into different parts that play different rôles. And for each lie, there is a demonic element that puts the soul into further bondage.
If you think I am talking about Multiple Personality Syndrome (MPD), I am not. In MPD, these 'faces' are created by trauma and become almost totally disconnected from the other 'selves'. What I am describing is more akin to schizophrenia though this has it's own unique base of formation and symptoms. However, it's not schizophrenia. What I am talking about is so 'natural' that it would best be described as the natural condition of all those who have not been raised in Christ. What I am describing is truly the 'natural' or 'carnal' man. And it's a living hell, made more accute when Yah'shua (Jesus) first enters your life and reveals how unnatural the whole set-up is, challenges you to let go of it all, and allow Him to effect a miraculous transformation
The natural man growing up around other natural men (and women) learns through programming to 'adapt' to the many different 'faces' of the individuals around him. He learns to keep his distance when a certain 'face' manifests in a friend, or when to draw close when an 'accepting' face is turned towards him. Not surprisingly, neurosis becomes, in time, a 'natural' way of being as we learn to 'cope' with the multi-faced and yet disjunctive sides of the people we know. It is a very energy-draining way to live to be sure because such a life is full of constant uncertainty. You never quite know what's coming next, never know what to 'be' in advance, and there is this subconscious terror that one day you may meet a 'face' and not have the programming to accommodate it in a way that is non-threatening to your sense of safety or well-being.
As I said, I was brought up in a highly moral formalist way. I was taught manners and 'correct' ways to behave with people. I was taught to look down on those who had not thus been brought up as being 'uncouth' or 'uncivilised'. The solution to society's ills, I was taught, was to teach others to behave in the way I had been. And whilst it is true that a person 'brought up' to be civilised is, in a way, a safer one to be around than someone brought up to do whatever they want (because of the self-restraints against evil they have), yet that safety was only illusiory. And so it was that Yahweh thrust me together with a wife brought up in exactly the opposite way to myself - me the strict formalist and she a virtual anarchist, and each believing the other had been brought up in the most 'loving' and 'correct' way. Each could marshall 'facts' about the superiority of each other's system and yet each of us was, in truth, living in spiritual poverty. Both of us were playing complicated games. The one (myself) taught the absolute necessity of complicated sets of rules in order to maintain order in life and the other (my wife) that spontaneity was the only way to be 'free' and 'happy'. Both were half-truths, and since half-truths are probably worse than outright lies, both were satanic and destructive because both were man-made systems that did not need God, and both led to dysfunction of the soul. Every soul raised without Christ is somewhere on a spectrum between these two poles of the natural man where there are as many 'social rules' to be found as there are people.
By worldly standards, my wife and I are the most mismatched people imaginable. Different and 'incompatible' signs of the Zodiac, born in radically different cultures, raised to be totally different people and yet nominally Christian. We both used the language of Scripture but our ways of life were poles apart. Each was attracted to the other because we saw in each other's respective 'systems' things that were defective in our own. My soul hungered for the spontaneity of my wife's world, and her's for the order and discipline in mine. Fortunately, we both had met Yah'shua (Jesus) at some ground level so there was a common base to build upon but the tensions caused by our totally different upbringings initially made for much sorrow at times. It was, however, in the divine providence of things that we meet and marry as the reader will by now have guessed. For what usually happens is that in seeking mates we look for those whose complex system of social rules most closely match our own, recognising that there will be areas of difference where we must simply adapt (husband to wife, or wife to husband) or invent a new set of rules to compensate for the disparity. Such, I was to learn, was simply all carnal.
The secret to happiness and freedom from demons is a life totally surrendered to Yah'shua (Jesus). This is not, moreover, some nice abstract principle or merely words we parrot in order to make ourselves out to be 'true Christians'. Surrendering to Yah'shua (Jesus) means, if we have not been brought up the biblical way, totally yielding our parents' upbringing to Him and allowing Him to totally re-form us. Indeed, it surprises most Christians to learn that the Bible contains a precise map or blueprint of how we are supposed to 'be' when we yield to Him. The whole way of life is laid out, not merely morally and ethically (which most Christians are able to grasp), but in our religious habits also. He has designed, in short, an entire way of life and being such that when we are properly submitted to Him, we are all basically living the same kind of lifestyle so that if, for example, a man from America meets a woman from Nepal raised the Biblical way, there will be no 'culture clash' because the culture will be one and the same. That 'culture' is one that is rooted in the same wholeness, oneness, and harmony. That 'culture' follows the same calendar of Yahweh's appointments or Moedim, not simply as compulsory outward observances, but spontenaously as a result of true integration in the Messianic Life Principle.
People often come to this ministry asking for help because they hear voices in their heads. They have either heard from the secular psychologists that this is merely disconnected aspects of self or from radical Christians that they are demons. Either way, they are disturbed and want help. Both are, in fact, correct. The 'voices' in our heads are both fragmented parts of the self and the whisperings of demons, because fragmentation only occurs when we believe lies about the way we are supposed to be (whether by passive training or by traumatic abuse) and create a new 'face' or (in the case of trauma) alter or subpersonality. (Indeed it surprises former MPD's who have been delivered and integrated that they still have these 'faces' or 'dispositions' to do things in different and contrary ways, and that the demonic still harrasses them).
A recent bout of illness which has brought me to my knees physically has enabled me to look more deeply into myself and discover the reality of our programming. We are all brainwashed - not just those in the so-called 'cults', because we have all been programmed to 'behave' acccording to the expectations of parents, peers, and society in general. This brainwashing fragments us and makes us unreal - inhuman - whilst at the same time often passing itself off as 'enlightened'. Satan is always coming up with new brainwashing ideas, never called 'brainwashing' as such (of course), in order to create more ingenious dissociated and confused human beings that he can confuse and break. His goal is to make everyone his own separate universe, disconnected from all the others, each bearing his own 'truth', each his own 'god' or 'goddess', and each very definitely disconnected from Christ. He has numerous prepackaged philosophies by which he accomplishes this, aided and abetted by the false programming of parents, which he can exploit by exposing as fraudulent, hypocritical, or 'psychologicall damaging', setting one inhuman system off against the other ('good cop/bad cop'), whilst constantly pushing more and more in the direction of inhumanity and dysfunction. We live in one of the most dysfunctional generations ever. He has successfully toppled my generation of 'formalists', replacing it with my wife's generation of 'anarchists', playing both devilish systems off against the other by appealing to 'idealism', and leading inexorably to more chaos, confusion and dysfunction.
The solution, trite though it may sound at first, is 'Christ' - not as some abstract concept belonging to religious myth but as the liberating and harmononising power of Christian life. Of course, Satan has presented other religious and non-religious 'saviour' powers to us too, each with a messianic hope. Communism was one of the atheistic ones, the New Age and raw Satanism being two others, Satanism being his true colours, devoid of most of the pretense and hypocrisy of the others, and his ultimate manifestation. Quite naturally it is into raw satanism that the world is currently plummeting, and every system - social, political and religious - is on the same track leading straight into hell.
Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) is, in truth, the only true 'humanist', by which I mean it is only through Him that we can become fully human. The God-Man is perfectly God and perfectly human, and it is his perfect humanity we are supposed to imitate. All the rest is inhuman and inhumane. All the rest leads to artificiality, pretence, inner division and fragmentation, lawlessness, formalism, legalism, and ... demonisation. In Yah'shua (Jesus) - in substance and not just in word (dysfunctional people can use the language of the Christian faith too) - we are able to find our true humanity and become whole, because only He possesses the power to repair and restore us. His Torah or Law is the measuring rod of where we are in that process of repair and restoration as well as being the natural lifestyle that repaired and restored people are called to live as New Covenant Israel.
Whilst wracked in pain trying to understand the origins of my poor health, I prayed to Yahweh to reveal to me the brutal truth of my situation, so that I could effect a permanent repentance and break the annual cycle of illness that brings me to a grinding halt. As I was thus praying, Satan personally appeared to me standing on a circular stage-like area, and dressed in a burgundy-red robe. He looked perfectly 'normal' though I knew exactly who he was. I also knew what his real self looked like. As I was there, bearing my agony as best I could, I became aware that he was offering me relief from my suffering if I would fall down and worship him. Now you must realise that I had been in agony for some 8 or 9 hours, unable to find relief through medication, and was tottering on the verge of getting my wife to drive me into hospital as I had the day before when suffering the same torture. And I'll admit that the offer was tempting, just as I suppose Jacob's bowl of porridge was to Esau who returned home ravenous. I understood then why so many people fall for Satan's seducation, for he never presents his true self (people would flee from him as from the plague seeing who he really is), only some appealing 'bowl of porridge' to make life easier. And Satan can and does offer pain relief. I knew it through my encounters with SRA clients, many of whom had been tricked into demonic contracts to get pain relief. Not that the demons 'take' pain away - you'll not find a demon alive willing to suffer a single iota of pain for another, but they know how to numb and transfer it. They have various devices - disconnecting the heart from the body, rewiring the neuronal system, transferring the pain to a deliberately fragmented part of the self, and so on. So I knew what was 'on offer' beforehand. And knowing the horrendous cruelties that Satan's minions inflict on their victims, I could readily sympathise with those SRA's who choose a moment's relief and pay the demons' price (like relinquishing free agency to them 20 years hence). However, I also knew the terrible price they paid, resulting (not surprsingly) in more suffering and demonisation.
So I rejected Satan's offer, saying I preferred the pain-in-truth to his falsely-called 'remedy'. Indeed, I was in such despair that I was ready to choose death if that were the only alternative to taking Satan's path. The vision of Satan disappeared and I was again left to deal with my pain. And about an hour later, after I had wrestled again with my motives ... and tried more pain killers (only to hack them up) ... the pain suddenly lifted.
From that moment onwards I became accutely aware of both myself and of Yahweh. I sensed that I was in His presence and could hear His voice. It's not often I get such an audience but this was one of them. He gave me some very precise instructions of what I was to do over the next few days, including a message for my wife. And then he showed me a list in vision of about 15-20 character 'faces' that I have with which I had been programmed in my upbringing, and behind them a 'remedy' for each. I don't remember the names that He used but I was soon to start confronting some of them in some intensive dreams that same night. The ones I saw were all 'coping mechanisms' to deal with pain, mostly psychological, and which we all use in varying ways in life to cope with (for instance) psychic abuse. In one dream I was shown two men, Laurel and Hardy like figures, whose 'function' was to present a 'humorous' face to the outside world when psychic abuse became too great.
A lot of the forms of humour that we are familiar with emerged after social traumas such as the two World Wars. The First World War traumatised millions of people and following the 1918 armistice we find a new kind of humour appearing like the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, and others, in which we are invited to throw caution to the wind and have a good laugh. Now it is true that a good laugh is a great panacea to the soul but sometimes - rather too often, I regret - we are persuaded to buy into lies in order to numb our senses to the reality of pain in our lives. The same thing happened after the Second World War. We often hide behind humour, some of it less than godly. But because it seems to 'work', we take it. This is not such a good idea, however, if underneath the soul is left traumatised and reaching it becomes harder.
Well, I had my own 'Laurel and Hardy' types within me - a couple of silly 'faces' - which I had co-opted to deal with emotionally abusive people. I had learned through observation what a power humour can be. In particular, I recall a couple who had a very bad marriage relationship. Th wife was bossy and controlling, the husband weak and placid. I could see the agony in his face when his wife started attacking him and felt his pain. But he had a way of 'deactivating' his wife which always worked, and it stuck with me. He was an accomplished pianist and whenever his wife got into a rage he would start playing Music Hall type piano rolls which, in the Silent Movie era, represented exciting drama. Picture if you will then this angry wife coming at him, the husband playing this exaggerated dramatic music, and the wife breaking down in laughter. She just couldn't remain serious. Now for years I thought this was brilliant and used it to 'protect' myself against abusive persons, especially Jezebellic-type women. It almost always worked a treat. But what I failed to realise was that it was not only failing to solve problems but had become an escape route for me in dealing with such people. I was using similar techniques to avoid emotional pain.
In the dream I met these two comic 'faces' of mine and befriended them. I told them about the Gospel and invited them to be baptised. Gone was their goofy behaviour and suddenly they were warm, human, sober and normal. They were consumed with gratitude that they no longer had to act anymore in order to appease their audiences - it was a touching experience as two 'faces' vanished from my life for ever that one night.
During the dream a third 'face', running away from the police, and constantly changing disguises, weaved his way in and out of the drama of the two comedians, but it was evidently not his time. His disguises were brilliant, but not brilliant enough, for he was always detected and had to run again.
Now this is something we all try at one time or another. We try to live a lie, knowing what the truth is, and desperately evading detection. We try to camoflage but are always detected. The fact is, the redeemed part of us which is in Yah'shua (Jesus) 'knows' what is going on, but the 'face' nevertheless seeks to maintain his independent existence. He doesn't want to be caught and expends considerable energy maintaining his masquerade and keeping on the run. You experience this with people whom you may confront on some lie in their life. They wriggle and squirm, offering 'explanations' which they know you won't believe but which they vainly hope you will. So they run and hide, until they are confronted again. Of course, such antics are fuelled by demons who are there in the first place because some part of yourself chooses to believe in a lie. But once the lie is exposed and repudiated, the demons can be quietly dismissed.
Two days ago, on the first day of my agony, I confronted such a demon. He was mocking me, saying something to the effect: "I hate those who try to run away from pain." It was a demon behind one of my 'stiff-upper-lip, I'll-not-admit-I-have-pain' faces such as I had been taught in my formalist upbringing. Yet I was in pain, and trying to deny it merely strengthened the demon. So I confessed I was in pain, embraced the pain, and gave it to Yah'shua (Jesus), He didn't take it immediately, at least not before I had learned some important lessons, and then I was able to safely expell the demon without risk of its returning.
That night I dreamed about a couple of my friends who were trapped in 'faces' of their own - indeed I was in open revelation most of the night. Because they had been adjudged 'failures' by their peers, for not being successful in career and socially generally, they had sought solutions involving appeasement by making themselves martyrs and earning 'respect' that way. One of them would give everything he had away, not because he was necessarily generous, but because he was hoping to be loved and respected in return. But his dysfunctional behaviour earned him anything but love and respect. The people happily (and greedily) accepted his lavish gifts but were soon gone after he had no more to give. His dysfunction had, moreoever, led him into New Age thinking and a desperate quest to explain why he was a misfit. In the end, the demons convinced him that he was the reincarnation of a 'bad' man paying off bad karma. So he bought into that lie and became progressively more delusional, the demons showing him fantastic (but false) visions of a New Agey world. Though he believed in Christ, it was a New Age vegetarian Christ who was a reincarnation of great masters of the past. The Bible contradicted all of this and so, in the end, he was forced to reject it as 'corrupt' and find some other 'gospel' (The Gospel of the Holy Twelve) that would 'fit in' with his distorted view of life. He found it and tried to 'sell' it to me. In time its fraudulence was exposed but he still continued believing what he did. There was no real structure to his belief system, just a conviction that he was 'right' based on the narcoticising effect of his demons which he, quite naturally, believed was the 'Holy Spirit', as so many do who buy into lies. He remains poor, unmarried and delusional, regarded as eccentric by those who know him, and unable to form any meaningful relationships with others. The demons have made sure of that. But the bottom line is his own choice to believe in a number of destructive lies about himself, others and Christ.
In my dream he was living in an office. It looked like an ordinary bed-sitter with all the usual facilities but at 5 pm, when the office closed, he had to leave, and could not come back until the next morning. His 'reality' was in the wrong place, his 'home' not really a home at all, but something he had to 'earn' as one who goes to work each day from 9 to 5. I was there visiting him but at 5 we were all unceremoniously escorted out by the company's watchman before he locked up. This was a symbolic representation of his 'restlessness', his inability to settle anywhere, because he was trying to put down his roots in unreality. The sense of 'belonging' (home) is not something we should have to 'earn', for if you try to, you are always turfed out in the end. Our 'belonging' comes only in being owned by Christ, and in being owned by Him, by becoming a part of His Messianic Bride, the Church, and its fellowship. If we try to 'belong' to society by trying to 'earn' a place there, we will be constantly disappointed. Society and its man-made rules chop and change all the time. All the 'rules' I learned as a youngster and, 30 years on, totally invalid now, because a new set has evolved. To 'belong' you have to imitate people are themselves lost and seeking to be loved, and so the cycle of desparately hoping to 'belong' simply goes around in full circle. New rules are invented to replace the old ones that have apparently failed (like sexual immorality for chastity), until they prove to be a failure, and yet more are invented ... until you end up in Satanism.
Salvation is not something you can 'earn'. You don't need to prove anything in order to 'belong', just surrender to the Master. We 'belong' in His safety, love and care by simply relinquishing the whole satanic system of trying to earn love and respect through man-made rules. However, surrendering to the Master, Yah'shua (Jesus), doesn't suddenly mean that you can live a rule-free life, as many coming to Him believe, mistaking Christian 'freedom' for a kind of childish anarchy. The real universe - the human universe - the Universe governed by Yahweh-Elohim, is precisely structured with laws, and it is these laws which Satan and his hosts are constantly trying to persuade us to disobey in order to gain legal control over us. Yahweh's Laws are our hedge of protection against the enemy. They are not, however, like the man-made rules which bring only frustration and disillusionment. These laws are embedded in a matrix of love, truth and honesty - they are like the garden path that leads us past the weeds and thistles instead of the man-made paths which is infested with them. In Yahweh's Kingdom, and on His road, we can walk barefoot in our innocence because there is no rock on which to strike our foot, no thistle to hurt. In Satan's, with its ever twisting ways and byways, there are shap rocks to trip over, stinging nettles and thistles, forcing us to wear thick boots for protection - the dullness of a heart layered over with various protective devices.
My other friend - who did not go the way of the New Age man - was also living in an office. He, by contrast, is a Bible-believing Christian yet still trapped in the thinking patterns of the first man, with whom he had had a long acquaintance and friendship before meeting me. The difference between the two rooms, however, is that he had a computer with which to communicate with me, representing the degree of spiritual interface that we enjoy, whereas the other man did not. Unlike my New Age friend, he is growing and progressing and heading towards a solution to his problems, as his 'faces' are exposed and he seeks reality. Now he is even more anxious for deliverance ministry for he sees a light at the end of the tunnel. He could have chosen to go the way of the New Age man, but he chose Yahweh. He has chosen to expose all lies and be healed.
