The Daily Word of Righteousness

The Antichrist Spirit, #2

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:1,2—NIV)

The Charismatic movement, with its unprecedented spiritual knowledge and possession of the gifts and ministries of the Holy Spirit, is at a crossroads today. On every side we are hearing: "Go forth and deliver a lost and dying world from the bondages of Satan." Most of the time this voice is not the Lord's. It is our own personal ambition coupled with the spirit of Humanism.

The emphasis of the Bible is on the needs of Christ, not the needs of people. Until we hear from the Lord and do what He desires we are being driven by the spirit of Antichrist, even though we are healing the sick and working other miracles.

If you were the boss of a company, how would you like it if the employees made up their own minds what was good for the company and charged forth according to their own wisdom and desires before you told them what to do? You wouldn't like it at all! You might have a marketing strategy worked out in your mind, based on information not available to your office staff, that you were ready to put into effect. Their efforts destroyed any chance of your strategy being successful.

So it is with the Lord Jesus Christ. He knows exactly what He is doing. When we tell everyone to "go forth and minister to a lost and dying world" it is the same as a group of clerks in a large corporation going out according to their own notions and trying to promote the company.

What we should be exhorting the saints to do is to pray constantly to Christ, presenting their bodies as living sacrifices to God that they might determine His will.

For two thousand years the Christian world, for the most part, has been performing the work of the Kingdom by using the Antichrist spirit. This is why we have the abundance of competing denominations. This is why the denominations do not always exude the fragrance of Christ. They are "doing their own thing."

To attempt to exhort a major denomination to stop until the leaders really have heard from God would be like stepping in front of a bullet train on its way to its destination. You aren't going to accomplish much.

All this time the God of Heaven has permitted the self-willed Christian works (many of which have accomplished much good in the world and in the Kingdom of God) to continue under the headship of man.

But we are in a new day. The tares of satanic wickedness are coming to maturity. The same is to be true of the wheat of Christ. God intends to confront Satan. The Holy Spirit shall confront the False Prophet. Christ shall confront Antichrist.

To be continued.