Chag sameach Sukkot mishpachah and welcome to the second day of the Feast of Tabernacles. I think most of us are more or less back to normal after our 4 a.m rising two nights ago when we witnessed the blood red moon. I'm afraid my pictures of it were not good but I felt I should share at least one of them for the record (see below).

At the assembly yesterday I also shared the picture of an extraordinary 'UFO' that in its head vaguely resembles a tapeworm though I have to say in all my years of recording UFO phenomena I have never seen anything like it. (You can see a picture of it here). I have thought a great deal about it over the last 24 hours and still believe this could have been the enemy being cast out of the heavenlies down to the earth to execute Yahweh's dress rehearsal judgment of the nations. We shall see. The New World Order has been proclaimed at the United Nations as Yahweh showed me in vision when I preached to you at Shabbat Shuvah.

I didn't mention to you yesterday that two nights ago the veil between the world of spirits was extremely thin and I was watching for some time dozens of deceased people wandering around in the bedroom. I have seen this many times in the past. I realise this causes Seventh-Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, a lot of Messianics and those who come from the cluster of Armstrongite Churches of God to blow a fuse because their theology teaches that the dead are either asleep or have ceased to exist save in the memory of Elohim (God). People of this soul-sleeping belief system are going to have a really, really hard time dealing with reality as the boundaries between the different worlds of spirit are lowered because they will assume that when they see these things that these are all demons. And that is a reason Yahweh has led me over the years to do extensive Scriptural exegesis as well as to show me in vision the reality. Indeed, the second big article I ever wrote was on the soul and one of the first things >Yahweh showed me was that I had a spirit and that it was not just an impersonal 'breath of Elohim (God)'. Ignorance of who you are and what you are after death has not only caused great confusion over the centuries, and particularly the last two, but it will sabotage the equipping of the qadoshim (saints, set-apart ones) as they come face-to-face with all kinds of spiritual phenomena which they will not otherwise be equipped to deal with.

In the vision I saw these disembodied spirits were dressed up in the clothes of the 18th and 19th centuries and most seemed to have been ordinary people. I am assuming they were once Swedes though I can't be certain of that. They were, however, clearly unsaved because they were quite aimless, like coralled animals not knowing what to do or where to go. They were not talking with one another - I am not even sure they were aware of one another, actually, something I have noticed many times before. One thing I noticed especially was that their teeth were so rotten so I can only imagine what the condition their mouths were when they were alive without modern dentistry and with poor diets.

The spirit world is physically in the same place as we are but in a different dimension. Though I could see them they could not see me. What I was seeing was what scripture calls spirit "prison" (1 Pet.3:19, NIV), a place that separates the wicked and unsaved from the saved who are in a division of the spirit world called Paradise (Lk.23:43; 2 Cor.12:4; Rev.2:7). This is not the same as hell.

Now you might think this subject an odd one to open the second say of Sukkot (Tabernacles) and I agree with you. But then this is not like any Sukkot we have ever observed. None of the moedim (appointments) have been this year. Part of the problem we face - if not the major part of the problem - is that Yahweh is shifting our awareness or consciousness into a new reality. We have to be taken out of the box where we have been mentally imprisoned over the last aeon and be made aware of the dimensions that make up the createde order. I woke up this morning with the same question I had a couple of days ago: "Where do we go now, Master?" I did not see a vision this time in response to my question. Instead I was left with a sense of immense dissatisfaction with the way my life has been up to now and with this great hunger for a new revelation and a new perception of reality.

One thing I have come to clearly understand - and it's something Yahweh showed me very clearly yesterday afternoon as I was reading - is that we cannot make this new transition until everything we want becomes what He wants. I suppose that as a pastor with nearly 20 years' experience behind me there is one valuable lesson I have learned that I want to share with you. Spurgeon once remarked:

"One crushing stroke has sometimes laid the minister very low. The brother most relied on becomes a traitor...Ten years of toil do not take so much life out of us as we lose in a few hours by Ahithophel the traitor, or Demas the apostate" [1].

This I can testify of most emphatically though when you have been betrayed you have no energy left. You may not ever have been a pastor but you may have been betrayed and know something of what I mean. Maybe you were betrayed by a spouse that led to divorce, leaving you a single parent. That is devastating. Or maybe you have lost children too. I have been deserted by three wives so I know exactly what you have gone through. Each time knocked my heart into the dust. I have had brethren who were my closest confidants, my best friends, do a 180 degree turn and betray me. Each of those was was devastiting too. However, as a pastor, you cannot go and hide in a cave for a few years to nurse your wounds. The very next sabbath or Bible study group you have to get up in the pulpit and preach! Not only that, you must die to your own need and continue draw souls to Messiah in the Ruach (Spirit)! And do to that, there can't be an 'I' with its sorrows because the self must hide in Yah'shua (Jesus) so that Yah'shua (Jesus) lives and shines through you as otherwise you become a useless minister. A minister absorbed with his own sorrows is a useless one. He has been neutralised. At the same time he cannot allow himself to go cold out of bitterness for then he becomes a dead minister and Yah'shua (Jesus) cannot use him either.

I am not claiming I was wholly successful in this. And indeed I am not saying a pastor should be singled our for especial sympathy. By no means. Those of you who are not pastors who have been through divorce or experienced the death of a companion or have lost a son or daughter to death, illness, some pagan religion or atheism have no lesser struggles. And even though you may not have a pulpit to ascend every week, if you are true to your profession of emunah (faith) and want to keep serving the Master, you cannot run and hide or allow bitterness to enter into you or else you too will die - you will perish in your heart. Pastors and non-pastors alike face exactly the same choice - to numb down the soul or to remain crucified in Messiah.

Preaching in an atmosphere that is not receptive because everyone is asleep - or preaching in an atmosphere that is outright hostile - is a horrible experience for a pastor. It's like trying to climb the vertical side of a cliff. As you pour your heart out to a congregation, having devoted many hours of study, prayer and preparation to your sermon, it feels like your whole energy is being sucked into a large hole in the ground. It is the same if you are married to someone who does not love you or if you are working for someone who does not appreciate your sacrifices. I used to work from 8 in the morning until often 9 at night, doing the job of two people, and never got a word of appreciation from my boss, let alone financial renumeration. But she knew I needed the work, as I did, and so exploited me.

There are many things in this world that can drain the very life out of us. To be reminded week in and week out that many people in your congregation consider your preaching of the ahavah (love) and grace (undeserved loving-kindness) of Yahweh is hypocricy on your part not only pushes a preacher into deep introspection but oftentimes drives him to the cliff-edge of self-extinction - not suicide but something much more complex. What happens at that cliff's edge is that you no longer know who you are any more because of the way your enemies are defining you with a self-appointed authority and claims to a knowledge about you - your motives and the way you tick - that they absolutely do not possess. But you can't tell them that, or indeed anyone else, because only you and Yahweh know who you really are. And what begins as a searching introspection to check out whether you really are guilty of what you have been accused of - for the sake of holiness, humility and staying right with Yahweh - becomes, if I can borrow John Piper's words, "a carnival of mirrors in your soul. You look into one and you're short and fat; you look into another and you're tall and lanky; you look into another and you're upside down. Then the horrible feeling begins to break over you that you don't know who you are anymore. The center is not holding. If the center doesn't hold - if there is no fixed 'I' able to relate to the fixed 'Thou' (namely Elohim/God), who is supposed to preach next [Sabbath]?" [2].

When the apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:10, "By the grace of Elohim, I am what I am", he was saying something utterly essential for the survival of preachers in adversity. If, by grace, the identitty of the 'I' - the 'I' created by Yahweh and united to His Son, but still a human 'I' - if that doesn't hold, there will be no more authentic preaching because there is no longer an authentic preacher. When the 'I' is gone, there is only a "collection of echoes" [3].

The thing is, brethren and sisters, this is not only true for the preacher it is true for every believer because every believer is called to be a witness, and you cannot be a witness if you don't know who you are, because then there is nothing that can abide in Messiah, enabling Him to witness through you. We are not in the business of Buddhism which teaches the annihilation of the ego - Yah forbid! The ego is essential. If you destroy it, you are a shadow and the image of Yahweh's creation has been defaced. The ego is important which is why every child muct be allowed to have one. You can't surrender anything to Yah'shua (Jesus) if you don't gave an ego to surrender! The development of self and of personality is essential to the Christian or Messianic life - it is religions like Marxism, Islam and Buddhism that seek its annihilation for the sake of the collective.

And whilst, as we know, Israel is a corporate identity that we must acquire from Shavu'ot (Weeks) onwards when we take our vows of Torah-obedience and identify ourselves with messianic Israel (in effect, becoming spiritual adults in accepting collective responsibility, as parents do of their children), becoming that uniplural, composite Bride that is the apex of the festivals - Sukkot (Tabernacles) - if you don't have that ego, self or identity, then any kind of corporatisation of identity becomes a tyrrany such as we are seeing exercised in the Middle East, or historically in the Catholic Inquisition, or in movements like communism, fascism and nazism. Our emunah (faith) begins with a self cherished by Yahweh and by those who love us (especially by parents) that must mature into being surrendered - not destroyed - to Messiah so that Messiah can live through that self. And for so many people coming to salvation, the first thing that must be recovered is that 'I', that 'me', that 'self'. And that is what deliverance is all about. We can't stay delivered as an 'I' because the destiny of the human soul is to also - simultaneously - become a 'we' - a corporate unity in Messiah. This is the Besorah (Gospel) and we must never lose its focus.

Now I did not share all the trials and tribulations that true pastors must learn to pass through in order to gain your sympathy for I know only too well that there are many of you who have been through no less tribulation and more. In a way, the pastor is blessed, because if he is to survive as a pastor he must navigate through such trials in order to retain his anointing of the Ruach (Spirit). Yahweh has done extraordinary miracles in my live in enabling me to continue preaching, witnessing and writing when I was completely broken in my spirit and in my health. He has used that pain and enabled me to ride on it rather than be driven by it. I did not learn it all at once. Indeed, yesterday afternoon was a bit of a liberation for me because in reading of Spurgeon's trials I was able to equate - find someone who understood - even though he is long dead and gone. Spurgeon enabled me to articulate in words what I have only previously been able to experience in feelings. He overcame, as we may all overcome - and must overcome in order to be fully anointed in the Sukkot outpouring - if we are first, driven by a desire to fulfil our calling in life from Yahweh, second, by emet (truth), third, by faithfulness to the Bible, fourth, by having a desire to win souls, and fifth, be driven by true doctrine.

Now you may think true doctrine to, perhaps, not be so important, but a true preacher knows that while men go on preaching false doctrine, they can witness as much as they like about deepening the spiritual life, but they will fail in it. I think this realisation, more than anything else, is what drove me out of Messianic Judaism and its Messianic Israelite and Nazarene Judaism spin-offs, because I saw how false doctrine prevents the bringing forth of the fruits that are clearly of salvation and which are essential to spiritual chayim (life). I hasten to add that I did not abandon Torah, just the sterile arrogance, mean-spiritedness, pettiness, childishness and sometimes downright nastiness that prevails in so many messianic circles. There was more spiritual substance in some lawless evangelical quarters than in messianic ones, which is not of course to say that evangelical Christianity doesn't have its issues too, because it does.

Spurgeon once said that "satisfaction with results will be the [death] knell of progress. No man is good who thinks that he cannot be better. He has no holiness who thinks that he is holy enough" [4]. I stand before you extremely dissastisfied with myself today. I have a hunger for something that I know I do not have, but I cannot put my finger on it, let alone articulate it for you this morning. I hope you feel it too.

We are not done. Indeed, we have barely begun in what Yahweh has called us to. And we have for sure not fully understood even though He has been dropping giant hints before our noses. We are still thinking in the ways of the churches and messianic assemblies but we have passed between those now [5] and we are facing completely new spiritual terrain, terrain that no history book can describe for us because no man has walked on it yet. The greater divines of old like Spurgeon cannot help us even though they can equip us as far as they themselves were able to tread. "Where do we go from here, Master?" must be the earnest question on everyone's lips, and. whilst remaining hidden in Messiah and carrying our Bibles and taking our experiences with us, we must now be prepared to let go of all the old baggage if we are going to be willing to carry the new load. Whatever plans we may have had, thinking they were Yahweh's when they were our own, must now be laid aside, because we have to come with empty hands. And we shall do this, Yah willing, and receive what he wants to give us this Sukkot, is my prayer in Yah'shua's Name, Amen.

Comments from Readers

[1] "Thank you Pastor Christopher, a timely and to-the-point message. More than once I've been a wounded soldier and I agree it can be devastating. Only by being in Christ can we overcome and survive these tribulations. Self pity in these instances is the last place we would want to find ourselves in. Regardless of falling many times, we must get up and keep going" (FS, Netherlands, 29 September 2015).

Endnotes