Shabbat shalom kol beit Yisra'el and mishpachah. Welcome in the Name of "He [who] is the image of Elohim (god), the invisible one, the firstborn of all creation...[the] firstborn from realms of the dead...who gave Himself for our sins, to rescue us from the present evil...to whom be glory to the æons (ages) of the æons (ages)" (Col.1:15,18b; Gal.1:4-5, KNT), from whom we seek mercy, grace, shalom (peace) and healing in this sabbath gathering.

I wanted to do something a little different and unusual today, and that is for us to pay tribute to our roots and to give thanks to Yahweh for those roots, for it was by His sovereign design that He caused us all to be born where we were born, amongst whom we were born, and in this particular segment of what has been a very long and complex æon or age. Our beginnings were not a matter of randomness or chance even if it appears at first sight that we arrived on planet earth with the particular genetic mix that we have because Mum and Dad, driven by love, hormones, the weather, or whatever, suddenly discovered - to their joy or consternation - that we had arrived. As far as our parents were concerned, some of us were planned and others were, well, not. Indeed we might have completely upset their plans! Either way, Yahweh allocated our spirits to those newly created zygotes for purposes we have spent - or will spend - trying to figure out why. Some of those beginnings were happy, some utterly miserable, but either way there was some sort of purpose.

Before we are plunge into the new biblical year and all the enormous changes that will face us, which again we can choose to respond to in recognition of Yahweh's providence or not, I believe we will first be laying a good foundation if we right from the start give thanks for our beginnings - our appearings - here on earth. Are any of you familiar with the TV series, Naked and Afraid? In each episode a man and a woman are dropped naked onto an island or the middle of a jungle or somewhere where they have to survive for 28 days with nothing but their skins and a knife, and with that they have to make clothes for themselves, build a shelter, find water and hunt for food. Quite a few people fail to complete this 'obstacle course' - they get injured, sick, hungry, or whatever, but those who make it usually have a great sense of satisfaction afterwards. The contestants who participate know exactly why they are there. First they made the choice to participate, and second, they knew the hazzards that were involved. Their participation was always a matter of free-will. For those who take part in Naked and Afraid it's a game; and whilst they have no idea what unforseen challenges they will have to face, they all know why they are there.

99.9999999 per cent of people say they have no idea why they are here on earth. The evolutionists and atheists tell them it's all random, a matter of chance, and that some people are dealt good 'hands' and others bad...again by chance, and we have to simply struggle to survive, and many of us fail. Then there are the religious folks. The determinists say that 'God' made His inscrutible dermination beforehand and we had no say in the matter whatsoever. Indeed the more extreme Calvinists claim that their 'God' made an advance decision as to who would be saved and who would be damned in all eternity but I think most of us who recognise that the Creator is a loving Father know that such an answer to the age-old question, 'Why are we here?' is wholly unsatisfactory. We're here because, like the contestants in Naked and Afraid, we agreed to be, and that we made this choice in a prior or pre-existence. Yahweh told the navi (prophet) Jeremiah that they had a relationship before he was even conceived in his mother's womb:

"I knew you (had a relationship with you) before I formed you in your mother's womb. Before you were [even] born I set you apart and anointed you as My spokesman to the world" (Jer.1:4, NLT).

And Jeremiah, the humble and modest man that he was, like all of Yahweh's servants, replied in horror: "'O Yahweh my Sovereign (King), I can't speak for You! I'm too young!'" (v.6, NLT). And so it seems to us whenever we are placed in changed circumstances that we feel helpless, unequipped, naked, with no more than one or two simple tools like a hunting knife to see us through. Thank Elohim (God) that we are born as babies and not adults because I think we'd throw a fit at the contrast between our heavenly home and this one. Instead He births us into this world utterly dependent on our mothers and fathers, unable to communicate very well, with so much to learn, yet nevertheless with an assigned task from Heaven. And the tools we need for the task assigned us are, in part, acquired from the environment in which we are placed, just as the jungle in which the contestants in Naked and Afraid supplies all they need too. But we have to work hard to obtain them.

Today I want to give thanks for my Anglican upbringing. There is great wisdom in that Church and the culture that nourished it. For you it may have been in any number of different birth circumstances, from Communist to Moslem to Satanist to Animist to Liberal homes. All of our circumstances are unique and even if we had all been born in identical circumstances we would soon have diverged based on the individual choices we make. I don't know why I was blessed to be born in a Moslem country in an Anglican bubble only to be thrust into the insanity that was the hippie revolution that has evolved into the post-modernist chaos and madness that we have today. I just know - now - that there was a purpose and a struggle. Life was not meant to be a piece of cake, and even though good parents do their best to shield their children, sooner or later they must face the brutality of the real world on their own. That's the cosmic Naked and Afraid set-up that Yahweh has permitted. And why has He permitted it? Because it is the only way that authentic love can grow and multiply. And since love is the 'main thing' - the real purpose for existence...the reason why we were created in the first place...let me jump into the deep end first before I conclude with my own Anglican story.

I am going to start today by rebuking Christians and Messianics who have started imitating the 'woke' culture that grew out of the hippie movement of the 1960's and has created such utter chaos and misery in the world, because until we get our own house in order we are never going to be called to minister in the true Ruach Elohim (Spirit of God). I'll be more specific: my target is the Anglican or Episcopalian hierarchy, led by the 'woke' Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Wellby, who is responsible for millions of souls in his denomination worldwide. What I say is to him and all those like him.

Stop throwing out 'wokese' words of love when the 'love' of which you speak is the kind thrown out by the world. That kind of 'love' is so far removed from the ahavah (love) and chesed (mercy) that Christ is and represents. Biblical, covenant-love is not emotionalism. Emotionalism is supposed to be a response to covenant-love - it isn't love itself. It isn't what you start with to get love. Love begins with emet (truth), the truth of the Besorah (Gospel). Stop all the fake, manufactured emotionalism that leads nobody to Christ and just entertains people, making them believe how 'with it' and how 'woke' they are. And stop putting on this pretend 'diffidence', this pretend 'shyness', and this pretend 'modesty', whilst knocking or demeaning Gospel teachings in order to be 'with it' and 'flow' with the world. All that is called 'virtue signalling' - it isn't real, it isn't true, it isn't love at all.

The new definition of Yahweh's love in the liberalised churches is 'virtue signalling', what Harris Wittels more accurately calls 'humblebrag'. It's quite simply the desire to show support for a cause without actually acting to support the cause in question, so there's no cost involve on the part of these 'woke' Anglicans and other liberal Christians. Virtue signalling is basically a form of pride - a smugness and false sense of power or superiority that comes from selling out your soul in order to be socially acceptable to the crowd, like feigned or fake outrage. Don't do it.

Sixty-five years ago the Anglican Church was still basically conservative and the basic, orthodox faith was being taught. I grew up in an island of Anglicanism in the Parish of St.Mary's Church, Kuala Lumpur, in the sea of a Moslem country that is now Malaysia, whose national animal is the splendid though nearly extinct tiger, our own 'king of the jungle'. My uncles (one of whom was my godfather) were both Scottish Presbyterians, one of whom was irreligious (and rather too fond of the whisky bottle) but the other was a serious-minded, hard-working Calvinist in the tradition of John Knox, for whom I had enormous respect. He would become a second father to me when I was abroad in boarding school in England. Accordingly he had a major impact on my life, encouraged me in many areas of life, and taught me discipline in a firm but loving way. Both my uncles knew what suffering was like as both had been Japanese prisoners-of-war. The first wife of my Presbyterian uncle died shortly after being released from a Japanese POW camp. They were all brutally treated. I grew up listening to their wartime stories. Our friends were Chinese (who were mostly Buddhists, though one or two were Christian), Indians (Hindus and Sikhs), Malays (Moslems), Dutch, Australian, and Portuguese for the most part. Those of English origin were all Anglican (Episcopalian in America), at least culturally. And I would at length be sent to a couple of Anglican boarding schools.

I didn't realise until quite recently, in fact, how Anglican (with a dollop of Presbyterianism) I was, not so much my thinking (which has evolved enormously over half a century) but in my psyche. And even though, to my knowledge, none of my family or circle of friends were what one could call 'evangelical' (as none were particularly religious), they were nevertheless immmersed, more by 'fate' than by choice, in the Anglican culture. Yahweh wanted me in that particular spiritual 'cheese dip' for reasons I am only now slowly beginning to appreciate and understand as the likes of David Starkey, and others like him, have educated me more fully in my heritage. Maybe Yahweh wanted you in the 'cheese dip' of Pentecostalism, Messianic Judaism, Methodism, Catholicism, or whatever denomination and culture you were born into, but in that 'dip' He wanted you to, as it were, 'flavour' your soul. Now, of course, even our spiritual 'flavour' changes over time, and I'll admit I have been influenced and changed by the liberal ex-Lutheran societies that Norway and Sweden are (I call them 'ex-Lutheran' because Martin Luther wouldn't recongise them as Christian any more), where I have lived for over 30 years, and that's, apparently, the way Yahweh intended it, just as He intended Moses to be flavoured by the 'cheese dips' of aristocratic Egypt and then peasant Midian for 80 years in total before propelling him into the Sinai wilderness at the head of an uncooperative and ungrateful mob.

As some of you know, the Anglican Church I grew up in is now going through an existential crisis, and when denominations or even local congregations go through crises threatening their continuing existence, unless that denomination is wholly ripened in sin and apostacy and ready for extinction, Yahweh will always raise up a small remnant of dedicated believers to man the spirital front lines and to engage in spiritual warfare to preserve the good in those denominations which He has cultivated over the centuries. And what's consistently true, I have observed, is that when Remnanteers get into fighting mode, even if they're doctrinally off here or there, they are forced into ever great submission to our Heavenly Father, and it's then not long before the workings of the Ruach (Spirit) becomes highly evident in their lives. This is especially true of the Anglican and Episcopalian Communion which is currently rent by apostacy and division, and totally infested with the demons of the age.

One in every three Anglican bishops is, according to one reliable statistic, homosexual or lesbian, nearly all of them are liberal politically, a great many do not even believe in the existence of Elohim (God), and probably no more than 3 or 4 are actually what one might call 'orthodox-evangelical', and when these retire, they are unlikely to be replaced by fellow conservatives. The institution will then have expired as a useful tool in the hands of Elohim (God) and the surviving orthodox Anglicans will have to become congregationalists, or break away and ordain their own bishops. I have been listening to orthodox Anglicans for hours these past weeks, and they have such sweet, kindly souls that are built on the rock of Christ. And once the current Queen dies, who is the head of the Church of England, I suspect there will be a constitutional crisis leading to the complete collapse of the Anglican institution which is already teetering on the brink. I find this overwhelmingly sad because the Anglican Church, in spite of its bizzare origins in the adulteries of King Henry VIII, has, overall, up until the 1960's when it started going into terminal decline, been a power for much good at home and abroad over the centuries since the 1500's, and was an expression of all that was once good and noble about England. It produced the influential King James Bible, for one thing. I have often wondered why Yahweh ordained that I should be brought up in such an environment which I initially hated but which in later years I have come to deeply respect and appreciate. Many therefrom have become my respected tutors in so many ways.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I have been following three Anglican/Episcopalian clerics in particular with eager interest, not so much because that is the tradition I grew up in (though I have a 'natural', historical interest anyway) but because the dire state of their church has forced them onto their knees and to seek the face of Elohim (God) as only crises can prompt, and I want to know about Yahweh's remnant everywhere. And some of the things they have been saying have astonished and delighted me because it is abundantly plain that the Ruach Elohim (Spirit of God) is in them, a reason I keep coming back to listen to them.

When one of them (a former bishop) the other day started talking about an experience he had had with the spirit of Lilith, my ears pricked up because this is not a term one usually hears outside of some pentecostal or charismatic deliverance circles. And the interesting thing was, he knew what he was talking about through personal experience. Indeed, Yahweh had spoken to him in a prophetic dream and, coming from a retired Anglican Bishop, given how liberal nearly all of them are now, as I have just said, that's quite remarkable.

In the dream the Ruach (Spirit) identified the spirit that was behind one of the aggressive feministic clergy who admitted that her motive for seeking ordination was 'revenge against patriarchy', not service to Elohim (God). This led him to quite sponatenously pray for her while she was standing right in front of him, and all he could say with the authority he knew he had in Christ even more astonished by what then happened than by the Bishop's audacity because she became suddenly transformed. She described what happened as like coming out of a long sleep or coma and it was evident to the Bishop that she was her natural, sweet-natured self. The aggressive, hostile, arrogant spirit of Lilith was gone. The Bishop hadn't even understood what exactly he was praying against initially but the woman was delivered, as much to her surprise as his, and it was as though, like I said, a new person had arisen out of the dark spiritual fog.

Those of you who have been around a while know that we learned most of our lessons in deliverance about 20 years ago, so this was all familiar territory to me. And if ever the decline of the West as a whole could be attributed to one particular demonic power - the entity that is ripping apart the Anglican communion as with other communions like the Lutherans in Europe - I would say - without reservation or hestitation - that this was, and is, the spirit of Lilith. I invite you to study our website on this dark entity if this is new to you because I firmly believe there is great advantage to having a concrete handle when you are dealing with the Enemy. And as an ex-soldier myself, 'Know your Enemy' was a given. Of course there are all kinds of dark powers in operation, as there always have been, and you can learn about these on our Deliverance website, but I do not think it would be a mistake to denominate this particular period of time as the 'Age of Lilith'. It is beyond question the ruling demon that controls the country I presently live in. (When I was broadcasting this live, the Media provider immediately cut out at this point in my sermon and I had to rebroadcast the remaining two paragraphs later. I have experienced dark spirits doing this online in the past when they are being exposed).

So why am I, a Messianic Evangelical, talking to you today about the Anglican Church? Partly to give thanks and to recognise how Yahweh is not at all limited in His operations by people and institutions who have things wrong with them doctrinally or personally, so long as they adhere to the apostolic fundamentals of the faith. Second, to help us understand who we are and why, because whatever it is you grew up in is an important reference point enabling you to steer your way through the spiritual journey you are now on. All of us in this assembly have different reference points, spiritually different cultural 'oceans' in which we swam as youngsters, the spiritual 'cheese dips' in which we were dipped that gave us our initial flavouring, that shaped our psyches. Our people in our MLT assembly here today come from Baptist, Lutheran, Charismatic, Pentecostal, and Latter Day Saint backgrounds, but also many others who are currently elsewhere. One of our people even trained to be a Lutheran priest! It's like we all appeared in different paintings by different artists - some by Van Gough, some by Michaelangelo, some by Reubens, some by Boticelli, some by Constable - and then we all hopped onto this new canvass, splashing onto its edges something of the substance of our respective backgrounds. And then, as each of us left our old 'cheese dips' behind, the old phronema's of our former upbringings, and met on the blank canvass in the middle, so the Master Artist started shaping a new Work, the Messianic Evangelical work. We still have the messy edges, our old natures, on the periphery, reminding us where we came from, our Old Creation natures. Spiritually, mine was Anglican, with one or two Restoration and Baptist diversions along the way. But now we are in a new composition, a new centre. The messy edges remind us where we came from and Yahweh wants to remind us not to go back there, to that old chaos.

My point is this. Your history matters, you were not accidentally born anywhere. Yahweh will, in time, show you why if you're still not sure once sufficient years have lapsed and you have a big enough field of perspective to look back at. In the meantime, let us give thanks for our beginnings, whatever suffering and difficulties there may have been there, whether self-made by unwise choices or unavoidable because of the people around us. There's always a mixture of both. Remember, we agreed to all of this before we came here, even if we were probably not told the details. That's why, I personally believe, we're humans and malakim (angels) are malakim (angels). There is a wise purpose in all of this, just as there is for us being born in the 20th and 21st centures. Yahweh's message to you is clear: make peace with your past, recognise that it is past, that nothing new can come of returning to it, and that all that now matters is the present and what's coming. Forgive all that was painful in your past, both people and events - let them go, don't keep on reliving them, for we are the servants of a Saviour who is The Eternal I AM, not the 'I was'. With that in mind, have a great sabbath, in Yah'shua's (Jesus') Name. Amen.

Comments from Readers

[1] "Amen!!!!! Glory...speak" (AD, USA, 4 March 2020)

Further Reading

[1] See my life story in A Glimpse into Heaven