www.kingdomsendingcenter.org ohmint@gmail.com
June 7, 2017
Dear Friends,
Here's an article I just finished writing. Would love your thoughts, and always welcome your prayers.
CUTTING OFF GOLIATH’S HEAD
I was recently given a word that God wanted me to go after Goliath’s head. My understanding of what this means has been developing over the past few months. Here is what I’m discerning at this point.
MEANING OF “THE HEAD”
The head represents many things, but the primary meaning, I believe, is how we think about things. To me it represents the thoughts that the enemy has placed in our own minds to keep us in bondage and defeat. For Israel, they were convinced that they had no chance to defeat the Philistines, and they were filled with fear that they would become their slaves, because Goliath was too big a challenge for them.
The “head” also represents the command center. The way we think controls our actions. The head dictates what we say, where we go, and what we do. Thus, it’s so very important that we think God’s thoughts as opposed to the thoughts the enemy wants us to believe.
HEADS OF THE SEVEN MOUNTAINS
While meditating on this concept, it occurred to me that I could go after the chief lies perpetrated by our enemy on each of the seven mountains of society. While that would be interesting and applicable for many, I know that God has clearly called me to three of these mountains and that’s the focus He has had me on for some time. Let’s deal first with the biggest for me as a traveling minister and author of Christian books. That would be the Religion (Church and Kingdom) Mountain. After that, we’ll address the Big Lie on the Education Mountain and finally, the Big Lie on the Government Mountain.
I. THE BIGGEST AND MOST DESTRUCTIVE LIE THE CHURCH BELIEVES
There is one lie that has two parts, which keeps the church from experiencing God’s victory and power. Jesus prayed that we would all be one, so that the world would believe that the Father had sent Him. Logically then, when we are not one, the world does not easily believe that Jesus is God’s Son, sent to the world to redeem them, and bring them into a personal relationship with their Heavenly Father.
- The first part of the lie is that we must accept divisions and denominations as the normal. They have been with us all our lives back through many generations. It’s hopeless to think that we can ever be in unity again like the early church.
- The second part of the lie is that we can pursue unity through compromising our doctrines and practices, so as to be less offensive. Instead of producing true unity, this only weakens us and, although some practical benefits might occur, we’ll never have the true unity that God intended us to have.
God has given me a major charge since my youth (which was a few years back) to teach and preach on the importance of true and biblical unity. This was confirmed when James Goll, not knowing anything about our ministry, spoke at the conference we hosted in Illinois. While he was preaching, he came down to where I was sitting and began to pound my chest, saying, “John 17, John 17, John 17. You’re called to bring unity in the body of Christ.” After the meeting, I told him that I had already written two books on unity. They were my first book and my seventh book. Instantly, he responded. One, seven – seventeen – John 17. It blew me away, but I know God had confirmed my calling.
Thus, God has called me to decapitate the lie that says we can’t be in unity and the lie that says we must compromise truth and righteousness to achieve unity. What then is the truth that can decapitate this lie?
First, we must recognize the source of disunity. I discuss this in more detail in GOD’S FAVORITE NUMBER – my second book on unity, which replaced my first book – HEAL YOUR BODY, LORD. Disunity is caused primarily not by a difference in our intellectual understanding of doctrine, but rather by pride in our doctrines and our incredible desire to be right, rather than to be one. It’s man’s ego that most hinders unity, not his intellect. So how then do we practically pursue true unity?
Jesus gave us the secret to unity in John 17, verse 22: “And the glory which You gave Me, I have given them, that they may be one just as we are one.” If we can understand what Jesus was saying here, we can properly pursue the path to the unity that He sought for us.
Adam and Eve were clothed in God’s glory in the Garden of Eden. Created in the image of God, they were clothed, like Him, in His glory. With sin came their awareness of their nakedness, causing them to cover themselves with fig leaves. Ever since that day, men and women have been trying to cover up their loss of God’s glory with earthly glory, such as fame, power and wealth. However, there seems to never be enough to go around and we all look for ways to restore the glory that will cover the nakedness of our souls. The subtle warfare and competition over the little available glory results in great disunity.
Jesus declared in John 17:22 that He was giving His disciples the same glory the Father had given Him so that they could experience the same kind of unity that He had with His Father in Heaven. This is an incredible statement. The way to access this unity then, is to fully access the glory that Jesus gave His disciples. In His glory, we live in another dimension, where His heart and mind are imparted to us and we see one another with His eyes. But most of all we all see Him, and our focus is not on ourselves but on Him. This was the source of unity of the early church, right after Jesus departed, and it will be ours as well as we get closer and closer to His appearing.
I find five times in John 17 that Jesus prayed for unity. I find five times in the first five chapters of the fifth book of the New Testament that the disciples were in unity. Five is the number for grace and without God’s grace we will never have unity. God gives grace to the humble (James 4:7). It was humility in the disciples, after their failure at the cross that brought them into unity in the Upper Room, even before the Day of Pentecost. Humility is a very highly underrated Kingdom commodity. I’d like to humbly (LOL) recommend our book, HUMILITY AND HOW I ALMOST ACHIEVED IT.
God will give us the choice to humble ourselves or let Him humble us, but we will be humbled, because He wants to give us more grace and He will operate according to His own holy Word. At times, He will sovereignly reveal His glory and bathe us in it to bring us into that unity, but I believe that He will do whatever it takes to bring us into unity because He loves us and He wants the world to believe in Him as a consequence of our unity.
How does that work? People will believe in Jesus when we are in unity because we will once again have the power and authority of the early church, only at a greater level. This will be the impetus or driving force of the coming great revival harvest.
II. THE BIG LIE ON THE EDUCATION MOUNTAIN
The Big Lie on the mountain of education is the Theory of Evolution, with all its diabolical and devastating implications. God has been putting this strongly on my heart for some time now. I haven’t written any books on this subject, but I’ve been getting the urge to do so in recent months.
This humongous lie, taught as fact in most government schools, has contributed to so many evils in our society – the most destructive of which is the loss of faith in God by so many millions of younger adults and children. The eternal consequences are beyond our ability to imagine.
Another obvious evil which this lie has encouraged is that of abortion. Without God in the picture, life has little or no value. A woman and her doctor can decide whether that baby will be more of a problem than an asset. If there is no God, there are no eternal consequences; the child has no eternal soul, and therefore it is not a big deal to kill it and perhaps have another one later when it’s more convenient.
Other evils advanced by this lie include teen pregnancies, suicides, drunkenness, drug abuse, crimes of all kinds and all kinds of corruption, including in government.
But how can we go for Goliath’s head when it comes to this gigantic deception that has such a stranglehold on our education system? I believe God is giving us a two-fold approach to this. David took out Goliath in two steps. First the stone to the forehead and secondly the sword to the neck.
- The forehead is a thin skeletal protection to the brain. David used a small stone, but it had a powerful impact and knocked the giant down. We have some wonderful resources put out by Creation Scientists, that can put doubts in the minds of people who believe in evolution. I saw that happen in the community where I ran a Christian school in the church I pastored. I published a critique of evolution in our local paper and a local high school science teacher lost a night of sleep because of it. I’m sure it raised questions in the minds of others as well. We need to make use of these resources, including some great documentary movies that have been produced. In addition, we can raise the obvious questions about how unreasonable it is to believe that so much beauty and order and intricate design, such as DNA, atoms, elements, reproductive processes, etc., all came about by accidents, not to mention how the materials came into being that provided the resources for the original “Big Bang” to happen.
- But how will we put the sword to the neck of this lie of evolution and really cut off its head? The Sword of the Spirit is The Word of God. Too many times we use God’s Word as a sword of the flesh to prove our points, but when we allow the Holy Spirit to inspire His Word and demonstrate His power and love through signs and wonders and gifts of the Holy Spirit, we can decapitate this terrible lie. When people see the miracles, they will believe in their Creator and reject the lie of evolution. I’ve seen non-believers become believers when they received a miracle in their own bodies. I also did extensive biblical research for my book, “SIGNS AND WONDERS – TO SEEK OR NOT TO SEEK.” In that research, I discovered that over 90% of all conversions in Scripture happened because of something supernatural taking place. We must pursue God’s glory through humility, in order to receive God’s grace (Charis) to operate His gifts of grace (Charisma), so that people will believe in Jesus and reject the godless theory of evolution.
III. THE BIG LIE ON THE GOVERNMENT MOUNTAIN
There is probably no bigger lie related to government than the lie that it is our ultimate source for everything we need. It is our security and our daily bread. This lie is called the Sennacherib spirit in my book, A MANDATE TO LAUGH. This book exposes the subtle spirit of slavery creeping in, making us satisfied just to have a little security, versus the threat of losing everything. We won’t go into detail with it here, but this lie is also so deeply entrenched in our culture that taking it on is a very dangerous and arduous task. It makes one a target by people who have become very dependent on government help. Naturally they fear the loss of income or medical care, etc., and who could blame them. What then is the answer and how can we cut the head off this monstrous, gigantic Goliath.
This lie crept in little by little, as government grew and became more involved in the life and culture of its citizens, replacing the responsibilities of families and churches. Taking care of the poor (welfare) and education are two primary examples. These were responsibilities of churches in every early American community. When government, with its deep pocket resources, offered to take them over from the churches, it seemed like a great deal to them. And besides, the education and welfare were still being run by good people. Christianity and patriotism were still taught in the early public schools, but over time, that all changed and today, we have a national disaster on our hands, with the loss of even our freedom of speech and religion on school campuses.
It took about two hundred years of gradual change to get to where we are today, but I believe restoration can come much more quickly. I believe God will do a quick work, raising up the church to once again fulfill its earthly mandate. Although we live for eternity, not for this earth, we are called to rule and reign here until He returns, and we have a responsibility to bring truth and justice to those who live on this earth.
My personal mandate is also two-fold in beheading this giant. First, I want to live as much as possible by faith in God and as little as possible by dependence on our government and its various agencies. As a ministry team, my wife and I keep our needs to ourselves, to keep the testimony that God does provide for us and we have never had to ask anyone for help to meet our personal needs. God uses people, but they give when they feel led, and the timing has been miraculous on so many occasions. Shedding our dependence on government takes faith and that is something that we, in western nations, have in very short supply. I wrote the book, FAITH ON FIRE, to combat the structures of unbelief that have been built into us growing up in our western society.
Secondly, God has called me to make people aware of the dangers of allowing this giant to keep us in bondage to our own governments. At the same time, I want to stir up the church to radically change the way it perceives its role regarding government dependency. I’d like to see churches take on more and more responsibilities in the area of welfare and education, even where the government is duplicating these services. I’ve helped to start three different Christian schools in churches and the long-term results have been very rewarding.
The big surge in overcoming government dependence will come with the coming great transfer of wealth to fund the great harvest of souls on the earth. These are biblical promises and I believe we will see this coming at the same time as a great spiritual revival with signs, wonders and miracles, and hundreds of millions of souls saved in a short period of time. I wrote a prophetic book regarding these events called, THE ULTIMATE CONVERGENCE.
(Note: All our books can be downloaded for free on several e-readers.)
FINALLY:
The three BIG LIES mentioned here are very interrelated, but all need to be tackled individually. I don’t want to just knock these giants down to get up later and resume their activities. I want to completely behead them through the power of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. If anyone wants to join me, I would be so encouraged. If you want to discuss any particular point, I’d be honored to interact with you.
God bless you, and love to all.
Ben R Peters