"Examine yourselves (your nefeshot/souls) as to whether you are in the emunah (faith). Test yourselves (your nefeshot/souls). Do you not know yourselves, that Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) is in you? -- unless indeed you are disqualified (contemptible - HRV; reprobate and unapproved - OJB)" (2 Cor.13:5, NKJV).

Shabbat shalom kol beit Yisra'el and may the grace of our Master Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) be with you all. The spring festivals are over, including the late ones graciously given by Yahweh in this the second month for those who, because of unforseen circumstances, could not attend the main Passover Season. We are gathered here rather like Noah and his family awaiting for the storm to break and yet were are not idle, or ought not to be, because in our care are many souls who may be anxious, unsure and afraid.

Today's passage is an invitation to every soul to carefully examine his or her nefesh or soul and in a way that will certainly surprise those who believe the 'once saved, always saved' doctrine. We are invited to examine ourselves to determine whether we are in the emunah (faith) or not. Before a storm such as a flood or an economic catastrophe breaks, those called by Yah had better make sure they are ready, in the ark, before the door is closed. That means, practically-speaking, that we are supposed to always be prepared.

"Do you not know yourselves?" the apostle asks. "Do you not know your nefeshot (souls), that Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) is IN you?" This is a serious, existential question - not a theoretical, theological question based on a mental formula like the 'sinner's prayer'? Do you know, for sure, that Yah'shua (Jesus) is actually alive and functioning in your nefesh (soul)? This is the question that is being asked. For as Paul goes on to say - "unless indeed you are disqualified" or as other versions put it, "unless you are contemptitble" or "reprobate and unapproved". For no matter what you say you are, if He is not within you, no matter what Christian or Messianic label you wear, if He is not in you - which is the only thing that matters - then you are doomed to suffer outside that ark of salvation along with the reprobate, the contemptible and the disqualified nefeshot (souls) of Noah's days whose cries for deliverance came to late and were of no avail.

The world crises continue to get worse, with two regions in East Ukraine declaring independence and Ukrainian nazis, openly and unashamedly backed by our corrupt Western governments, continuing to stir up trouble. With the USA and Russia already engaged in economic warfare and the dollar under even greater pressure as Russia dumps it altogether, Russia and China draw ever closer together, and the economic meltdown may come sooner rather than later.

Yahweh has told me nothing more about that other than to keep repeating the same message until those who are supposed to be on this ark are on it, knowing themselves to be approved, because they know that Yah'shua (Jesus) is in them. Nothing ever matters more than knowing that Yah'shua (Jesus) is IN you for real, both generally and in crises such as the ones we face now. So I have no 'new' revelation to add in terms of what everyone is called to do and how they are to respond to the call to repent and get on board other than to urge you not to waste time, even as Paul counselled in these two passages given to different congregations:

"Walk in wisdom toward those who are outside, redeeming the time. Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one" (Col.4:5-6, NKJV)

"See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of Yahweh is" (Eph.5:15-17, NKJV).

How are you redeeming the time? How should you make good use of it? Other than to keep making physical preparations, nothing is more important that to know that Yah'shua (Jesus) is in you, guiding you, teaching you, comforting you, directing your daily steps, because this is not a good time to be rudderless. Only a fool would try to navigate a boat through rocky waters without a map, a compass and a rudder, so all the skills of spiritual seamanship must be brought to bear. All who name the Name and love the Torah are being called to the ark of physical and spiritual safety but all must have the Captain of their Nefeshot (Souls) at the helm of their beings. And once aboard the ark, they must come under strict discipline as true talmidim (disciples), sumbitting to the order of the ark and to its captains appointed by Yahweh. Once on board we are directed to make proper use of the time that Yahweh has given to us to serve Him and not ourselves by making good use of it - walking in wisdom, walking circumspectly, being wise and not foolish and understanding the will of Yahweh right now because the days are evil.

If the chief object is to have Yah'shua (Jesus) IN us, then it follows, does it not, that we have to have the enemy of our nefeshot (souls) outside us and far away. And that's the problem, isn't it? Last night and this morning I was up three times wrestling over the davar (word) that Yahweh wanted me to give to you today, for those both here in this assembly and those abroad in Africa and elsewhere who have been called to this ark. Already, some weeks ago now, He said most emphatically to me to "get the evil out of your house". Can you conceive of Noah's ark containing even one of those reprobate, evil scoffers? Can you imagine the effect of that one nefesh (soul) would have been during the ark's long float? Can you imagine the contention, the arguments over toqef (authority), the attempts to undermine Noah and to persuade his sons and their wives to turn against that ark's captain? Can you imagine what that spirit of Satan would have done to the good order of the animals on board? There would have been open mutiny and chaos. The animals would have gone crazy and many probably would have died. Therefore the evil must be cast out of the House of Elohim (God).

This morning as I was praying the Ruach (Spirit) kept saying, over and over again, to get the spirit of witchcraft out of that House. The Ruach (Spirit) was so insistent that I was plunged headlong into prayer and as I was praying against this spirit I kept on seeing what looked like pine needles being shorn off a tree. They were coming off by the bucketfull. Yahweh's word to everyone individually is to now - immediately and without delay - to GET THE EVIL OUT OF YOUR HOUSE - YOUR NEFESH, YOUR SOUL. You can't take it with you on the ark because Yahweh will shut the door on you when you attempt to board it. So whatever issues you have been struggling with that you have refused to deal with, for whatever reason, you must deal with now.

Now the spirit of witchcraft is not simply to engage in occult activity as satanists, devil-worshippers, Wiccans and others are wont to do, though that is a large part of it. The spirit of witchcraft is the attempt to influence people and events that does not involve trusting in Yahweh to do all the moving. And there are, unfortunately, because they have been trained to do it, many believers who engage in witchcraft thinking it is the Besorah (Gospel) without always knowing what they are doing.

You will recall that the Egyptian sorcerers copied Moses in turning rods into serpents, in turning water into blood, and in producing frogs. In other words, they were able to duplicate nearly all the miracles done by Yahweh through Moses and Aaron. There was only one miracle they failed to reproduce, and does anyone remember what that was? They were incapable of producing LICE and they were themselves incapacitated by the boils.

I want you to seriously and soberly consider that the devil, like those Egyptians in Egypt, is able to duplicate in believers many of the effects of the Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit). Feeling 'good' is duplicatable by the Enemy. Do you disbelieve that? Then consider all the people - including ourselves - who have 'felt good' about things that turned out to be manifestly false. Who has not been charmed by someone who was a devil? Who has not also felt 'bad' about something that was good and actually sent by Yahweh? Yahweh makes us feel good about right things and also makes us feel bad about wrong things - the Enemy is able to produce the exact same feelings by warning us against the good and encouraging us to embrace what is wrong. Feelings are not reliable barometers of emet (truth) - if they were, we would be in paradise already. Demons know how to work on our feelings and lead us astray and they do that because they have successfully managed to steal on board our nefeshot (souls) as stowaways by convincing us that they were Elohim (God). We have believed a lie, for whatever reason. Emotional sensitivity is not a de facto spiritual discernment device because you can be sensitive to all the wrong spiritual impulses. Anyone who has had any experience of deliverance work will know this.

So why were those Egyptian magicians unable to duplicate the miracle of the outbreak of lice? Why that creature specifically? Because they are incapable of imitating themselves since they are what they are! What are lice? They are parasites! They require a host on which they must feed in order to live. They want something for nothing and they are willing to steal it if they can. They are a perfect picture of demons who parasitise their human hosts, feeding off the psychic energy released by them because of their ungodly, anti-Torah deeds.

Now as it happens, while I was praying against the spirit of witchcraft this morning, I saw a vision of a very large brown flea. Now the flea, like the lice, is a parasite, but unlike the lice it is a fast mover, hopping around so as to avoid detection and capture. There are demons precisely like that and when they operate in people, those people are constantly trying to 'hop about' or re-manoeuver in order not to be detected. They will guard their human hunting ground - their food store - in whatever way they can, which is why they protest so vehemently when they are cast out, holding on tightly to their hosts, trying desperately to persuade their hosts that they are the 'good guy'. That is why in deliverance there is often a great struggle.

Jacob had to struggle with the Malakh Yahweh ('Angel of the Lord', Yah'shua/Jesus) and would not quit the fight until he had got his blessing. What was that blessing? To overcome the spirit of deception for the name Jacob, as you know, means 'deceiver' or 'supplanter' for you will recall he stole his brother's birthright by deception with the connivance of his mother, Rebekah. Jacob was in a battle to overcome not just this devilish tendency in himself but his whole fallen human carnal Adamic nature. Only when he had done that - by refusing to quit the struggle, by refusing to give in any longer to those carnal urges to be a deceptive parasite, did he finally overcome and receive the new name, Israel, which means 'ruling with El (God)'. You don't overcome without struggle. You don't overcome without pain. You don't overcome without some sort of injury as a reminder of the battle you won, just as Yah'shua (Jesus) retains the scars in his hands, feet and side of His battle at Calvary. You will recall Jacob dislocated his thigh and had a limp thereafter as a memorial to his struggle.

If you're serious about removing the spirit of witchcraft from your house - whether it be your own nefesh (soul), your family or local congregation (or indeed association of congregations), then you have got to be serious about deliverance as Jacob was. You have to overcome your fear, whatever it may be, and simply trust the Elohim (God) of Jacob so that you too can become an Israel - an overcomer. Do you want to know what it is like to have Yah'shua (Jesus) IN you? This is how, because only the overcomers have and retain Yah'shua (Jesus)! You may have had Him once before and lost Him because you refused to overcome, and wondered subsequently why you have experienced such desolation, why you have wasted so much time doing useless and irrelevent things in order to maintain the status quo of the demonic set-up in you because that is where you thought you got your safety and security from. Now that mindset is every parasite's dream come true!

Many people refuse to believe that they have a witchcraft or demon problem because, they rationalise, they are not fully possessed. They observe that they basically are quite 'decent' so they cannot possibly be occupied by an enemy spirit. But that's the whole point, especially about lice. Lice don't kill you. For you see, this category of demon never takes more from its host than either can handle because to do so would be to destroy its own livelihood. Did you know that the louse actually changes its DNA to accommodate that of its host, to assure itself of a life-long relationship? That's right - the louse takes on its host's characteristics - the personality of the human host - and it does so in order that it might not be detected by the host! Devilishly clever!

Please learn this lesson well. Demons, once they get access to your soul, adapt their nature and behaviour to yours so that you think that they are you. They are expert at doing this. They can't do it perfectly but they can do it 99% of the time so you'd never know they were there. Only once they are detected do they start wriggling around, and guess what the host thinks and does when that smart demon starts responding that way? The host - you - starts wriggling uncomfortably around too because you have assumed the identity of the demon and think that it is you who are in danger! And it's precisely at this point that you absolutely can not trust your feelings, you can not trust your bodily reactions - the pain and discomfort. We are programmed to respond to pain by avoiding it but in this case you have to see through the illusion. It is precisely here that emunah (faith) must kick in and override physical and emotional feelings, and if you don't have any because you were never born again, or because you walked away from your salvation, or because the demons numbed your heart, then you will flee and persecute whoever it was who was trying to help you, through prayer and counselling, for example.

Lice will suck you dry but not enough to kill you. When a demon is parasitising you, you are constantly trying to keep your head above water, trying to cope, trying to manage. Its presence will affect your health, your emotions, your thoughts - everything - making you a pale reflection of your true self.

So, yes, we are to fight overt witchcraft right now, and there is much of that going on in the world and being directed against believers in the form of curses, but by far the greatest danger and need lies within. But you can't fix this half-heartedly, you can't seek deliverance with a Plan B in mind - an escape route. You have to seek deliverance in the same way you would seek an ark, convinced finally that if you don't you will be swept away in a deluge. Do you suppose that any of those nefeshot (souls) in Noah's day had their own boats standing by, just in case? And even in the unlikelihood that they did, do you think any one of them would have survived? Plan B's have no place in the true Besorah (Gospel) of Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ): you're either fully in or fully out. Plan B's have no place in a true, everlasting marriage either - you're either hitched for eternity or you're already planning a way out. The two are actually extraordinarily like one another. Playing around with Plan B's is in any case worse than Russian roulette - it's gambling of the most dangerous kind! Yet you'd be surprised by just how many believers resort to it both for their own nefeshot (souls) as well as for the congregations they attach themselves to.

You can't have Messiah within you unless all your actions are with eternity in mind. You can't have Yah'shua (Jesus) IN you unless you are committed to overcoming 100% no matter what the cost, you are committed to your marriage 100% no matter what the cost, you are committed to your local fellowship 100% no matter what the cost. You can never do anything half-heartedly IN Yah'shua (Jesus)! You're either in or out. And if you're only half-way in, the emet (truth) is you're already out. And that ought to be a red flag about where Yah'shua (Jesus) is relative to your soul.

Now I had planned to share with you a vision of the future of this Work and what we would be doing in the days ahead, and about the harvest to come, but I have been told to withhold it because dealing with the lice problem - the problem of evil in our houses - is infinitely more important. There is no happy future while the evil is allowed to linger. The penalty for witchcraft in the Tanakh (Old Testament) was, as you know, execution because it was - and still remains - a very grievous sin. It's deadly. Do you not suppose, then, that willingly retaining demons is no less a capitol offence against Yahweh? And isn't the spiritual death and suffering these enemies of our nefeshot (souls) not concrete evidence of that? How easily we rationalise our bondage by claiming it is a heavenly test, or a heavenly refinement, of something permitted like Paul's 'thorn in the side'? How tragic to believe this if the oppsosite is true? How disasterous if what we think the permissive will of Heaven is, in actual fact, what is keeping us off that Ark of Salvation altogether!

Now I don't care what devices any of us may use to justify keeping those spiritual lice on board. What I care about now is to find a willingness to be determined enough to get this evil out of our houses no matter what the cost! If none of us do it, there will be no Sukkot (Tabernacles) endowment for this part of the Body of Messiah, and if only some of do it then those who have not will be burned as they flee. And remember, this is not the Final Judgment, but the penultimate judgment that is coming, but it will be with fire, as was prophesied, just like the final one. Fire will come out of the mouths of Yahweh's witnesses (Rev.11:5) and from heaven (Rev.20:9). So make no mistake about it - the Mishpat Yahweh is by FIRE. It will be no less effective or final than the drowning by water of Noah's Judgment.

All of this is a serious call to prayer - fervent prayer, salvational prayer, deliverance prayer. Every Plan B will fail. You're either in or you're out. If you want to leave, we will bless you on your way. If you want to remain, then you have to come under proper captaincy. Yah'shua (Jesus) wants all of you, not the occasional pizza-slice off your nefesh (soul) and time. Of course I realise there are those who still refuse to believe collapse is imminent and that is because they don't want to believe, no matter what the evidence, because they don't want to face the loss of their comfort zones. Many still trust in their governments which is like trusting in lice to see you right. They won't.

Two days ago I sawed off the top of that pine tree that fell in our garden next to the Stone Altar and since then my family and I have been stripping it bare and chopping it up. As I sawed it off, I prayed to Yahweh that not only would He now fell those enemies of ours seeking our personal destruction and the destruction of this ministry for the sake of the salvation of nefeshot (souls) but I also prayed that He would do the same for any lurking enemies within. My sawing up the tree became a physical representation of what I was praying for. Those of you familiar with prophetic methodology will understand why.

Today is the fifth sabbath of the Omer Count as we make our way toward Shavu'ot (Weeks) to renew our covenants covenants. There are 3 sabbaths and 50 days to go. I cannot stress the great importance of the coming Shavu'ot (Weeks) for those committed to being on the ark as the nations come under judgment. Indeed the metaphorical 'rain' - this time fire - has already begun as you will see from the chart below [1]:

Whether the flood tanvnith plays out in the same way remains to be seen as events unfold but you should at the very least be aware of the correspondences. Obviously water doesn't behave in the same way water does and if there is a correspondence between the flood waters rising and the 'heat' of the fire of the crises rising then it may well be that the collapse has actually already begun and will reach its completion in mid-June leaving us about a year to survive until a new beginning can be made. At this stage this is just speculation, though, and things may not play out this way. Of one thing there is no doubt, though, and that the bubble will burst and there will be worldwide economic collapse resulting in the virtual erasure (99%) of all paper and electronic money (fiat currency).

While I was showering this morning and in deep prayer against the spirit of witchcraft, I saw an open vision of a Man-Child, shining in a brilliant white light, standing before me and slowly drifting toward me. This I shall speak more of another time as events unfold in the world other than to quickly remind you now of its reference in Scripture:

"Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a garland of twelve stars. Then being with child, she cried out in labour and in pain to give birth. And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great, fiery red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. His tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born. She bore a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And her Child was caught up to Elohim (God) and His throne. Then the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by Elohim (God), that they should feed her there one thousand two hundred and sixty days" (Rev.12:1-6, NKJV).

Brethren and sisters, as critical events unfold before our eyes, we have to be in a state of perpetual readiness to do what our Master wants but first - and I can't emphasise this enough - we have got to get every last vestige of witchcraft out of our lives, families and fellowships. This requires especial diligence on the part of husbands, fathers and pastors. There must be ongoing and constant prayer against this spirit which seeks to smother the coming Sukkot Anointing which the Enemy greatly fears. You will see astonishing things happen as the Enemy is outmatched at his every turn to bring about his evil designs. Remember what I said to you some years ago about the centre of London - the City of London - the very hive of evil in the world. You will see fire coming down from heaven amongst other things. In the meantime, be faithful and diligent and lift up your hearts and voices to El Elyon, the Most High, as never before. Amen.

Endnotes

[1] Adjustments have been made allowing for the fact that in the time before the flood there were exactly 30 days in each month and always only 12 months a year. Some of the dates days in the chart may therefore be 1-2 days off