Post by LDM on May 4, 2010 14:27:54 GMT -5
By Art Katz
Read the book on-line here: www.fireonthealtar.com/books/Art%20Katz/The%20Anatomy%20of%20Deception.pdf
In an age of darkness and seduction, Art seeks to identify the quintessential elements that influence God’s people toward a susceptibility for deceptive and spurious things. With “signs and wonders” becoming more and more prevalent, the ability to discern between those that are false and lying and those that are true is of paramount importance.
Excerpt:
"Is there something grievously wrong with me that prevents me from entering into the spirit of general merriment that has prevailed in these meetings?" I went on to read in the Scriptures where Moses was coming down Mount Sinai with the tablets of the law only to hear a noise, which was not the noise of battle or the noise of victory, but the noise of singing. I went on to say that I had the impression it was this kind of noise that characterized the previous night, and it had much to do with that earlier event of men and women, too impatient to wait for Moses to come down from the Mount with the true thing. Instead, they simulated something like it-a golden calf, a substitute-and danced and pranced around it.
Can you imagine how these words were going forth? Even as I had been walking up to the platform, I heard one of the so-called prophecies in which the speaker was saying, "I, the Lord, have been with you this weekend; I have given you my Spirit and I am going to do this and I am going to do that. . ." But for me it was leaden and without life, and so I said, "It seems that my condition is so bad that I have no witness to the authenticity of these prophecies, and I wonder indeed whether it is not some kind of idiosyncratic thing, where I am some kind of character who always seems to find a negative thing. But if my condition is somehow an expression of the heartbeat of God, we might well ask whether functions such as this are not some kind of massive deception into which we have been inducted unwarily. Just because the sermons have been rich and suggestive, and we have been impressed with the three or four thousand people who have gathered here, and our hearts have panted after true unity in the Body of Christ, we need to consider whether we have been too quick and willing to call this "unity" when, in fact, it is not. As we explore that, maybe we need also to ask about the validity of the whole charismatic phenomenon, whether we in fact have an authentic baptism in the Holy Spirit, and indeed whether we have been born again of the Spirit. Or have we been, from beginning to end, inducted into one of the most colossal deceptions that has ever been perpetrated in the religious world and all history?"
Those were the kinds of questions that I raised, and then invited as many as would, to come to the session where I was to speak on the spirit of truth. There was a cry from my heart for something authentic to take place, that we should not settle for and be satisfied with a plastic counterfeit kind of charismatica, when the
cry of God is for authenticity in the earth. Plastic is not a comely substance anyway, but a plastic Kingdom is a tragedy of such proportions that I could break down and weep. For the Kingdom of God to be plastic, subject to pressures and influences to accommodate and suit the needs of men, is inconceivable. We need
to be alerted to the kinds of end-time deceptions that will come in the spirit of antichrist ("instead of" or "appearing as Christ").
This booklet is intended to examine the spirit or anatomy of deception, of the things that are plastic, false, artificial, synthetic, imitative, counterfeit, spurious, feigned and pretended.
We want a pseudo-resurrection without the ignominy and pain of the Cross. But it is only out of the ultimate agony and devastation of the Cross that ultimate glory comes. Are we lovers of the Cross? Do we love the splinters and the blood and the gore? Do we recognize that there is a cross for us to bear, and it is to this suffering that we are called, and that the resolution of the issue will not be far from us if we seek the things that are authentic and true? Do we have the discernment to distinguish the authentic from the counterfeit? Are we so habituated to success, and so desirous of seeing some visible effect of power that we are not too discriminating so long as we 'get it,' somehow? We want the excitement; we want the titillation; we want the appearance of power; we want to succeed, because the possibility of failure is a form of death we are not willing to bear, thus avoiding the Cross. We ought rather to ask ourselves what is success as God defines it?
If we move into the realm of what is false, synthetic, humanly contrived and not the operation of the Spirit, we can move very easily from the charismatic to the demonic. We cannot tell the difference between the hunger for God and the hunger for experience. If we have a real hunger for God, we do not have to go to places where 'signs and wonders' abound. Last Days' deceptions are related to an inadequate view of God by which we interpret the 'blessing' or seeming power as being the evidence of God as we know Him, but the true knowledge of God would have made no room for that kind of understanding, or even the desire for these phenomena in the form in which they have been manifested. The pattern of Acts, chapter 13, shows a very different context: the demonstration of power as the provision of God to demonstrate the authority of His messengers when they were opposed by powers of darkness in the fulfillment of their mission, as opposed to the 'power' demonstrated in auditoriums to Christians who are looking for excitement, or help for their own bodies. This apostolic model is the one that we more rightly ought to look for and expect, indeed, will be the only one effective in the Last Days' final confrontation with those same powers.
Manifestation phenomena are already perplexing the Church, with many asking, "Is it God?" People seem to receive benefit; they are delivered from hang-ups and depression; marriages are reconciled; people are restored to the faith. There is much evidence of 'good' things, but when the Last Days' deceptions come, of which we have been warned, will they not come with 'good' things? Can we tell the difference between the true and the false, especially when we want so much to be blessed and to have an experience and be
relieved of our hang-ups and depressions? How discriminating are we about the source from which the 'blessing' comes? How do we tell whether something is of God, or a contrary spirit who is able to lift the depression that he may well have inflicted in the first place? Here is the key: our authentic knowledge of God, not as we thought Him to be, but as He, in fact, is.
Read the book on-line here: www.fireonthealtar.com/books/Art%20Katz/The%20Anatomy%20of%20Deception.pdf
In an age of darkness and seduction, Art seeks to identify the quintessential elements that influence God’s people toward a susceptibility for deceptive and spurious things. With “signs and wonders” becoming more and more prevalent, the ability to discern between those that are false and lying and those that are true is of paramount importance.
Excerpt:
"Is there something grievously wrong with me that prevents me from entering into the spirit of general merriment that has prevailed in these meetings?" I went on to read in the Scriptures where Moses was coming down Mount Sinai with the tablets of the law only to hear a noise, which was not the noise of battle or the noise of victory, but the noise of singing. I went on to say that I had the impression it was this kind of noise that characterized the previous night, and it had much to do with that earlier event of men and women, too impatient to wait for Moses to come down from the Mount with the true thing. Instead, they simulated something like it-a golden calf, a substitute-and danced and pranced around it.
Can you imagine how these words were going forth? Even as I had been walking up to the platform, I heard one of the so-called prophecies in which the speaker was saying, "I, the Lord, have been with you this weekend; I have given you my Spirit and I am going to do this and I am going to do that. . ." But for me it was leaden and without life, and so I said, "It seems that my condition is so bad that I have no witness to the authenticity of these prophecies, and I wonder indeed whether it is not some kind of idiosyncratic thing, where I am some kind of character who always seems to find a negative thing. But if my condition is somehow an expression of the heartbeat of God, we might well ask whether functions such as this are not some kind of massive deception into which we have been inducted unwarily. Just because the sermons have been rich and suggestive, and we have been impressed with the three or four thousand people who have gathered here, and our hearts have panted after true unity in the Body of Christ, we need to consider whether we have been too quick and willing to call this "unity" when, in fact, it is not. As we explore that, maybe we need also to ask about the validity of the whole charismatic phenomenon, whether we in fact have an authentic baptism in the Holy Spirit, and indeed whether we have been born again of the Spirit. Or have we been, from beginning to end, inducted into one of the most colossal deceptions that has ever been perpetrated in the religious world and all history?"
Those were the kinds of questions that I raised, and then invited as many as would, to come to the session where I was to speak on the spirit of truth. There was a cry from my heart for something authentic to take place, that we should not settle for and be satisfied with a plastic counterfeit kind of charismatica, when the
cry of God is for authenticity in the earth. Plastic is not a comely substance anyway, but a plastic Kingdom is a tragedy of such proportions that I could break down and weep. For the Kingdom of God to be plastic, subject to pressures and influences to accommodate and suit the needs of men, is inconceivable. We need
to be alerted to the kinds of end-time deceptions that will come in the spirit of antichrist ("instead of" or "appearing as Christ").
This booklet is intended to examine the spirit or anatomy of deception, of the things that are plastic, false, artificial, synthetic, imitative, counterfeit, spurious, feigned and pretended.
We want a pseudo-resurrection without the ignominy and pain of the Cross. But it is only out of the ultimate agony and devastation of the Cross that ultimate glory comes. Are we lovers of the Cross? Do we love the splinters and the blood and the gore? Do we recognize that there is a cross for us to bear, and it is to this suffering that we are called, and that the resolution of the issue will not be far from us if we seek the things that are authentic and true? Do we have the discernment to distinguish the authentic from the counterfeit? Are we so habituated to success, and so desirous of seeing some visible effect of power that we are not too discriminating so long as we 'get it,' somehow? We want the excitement; we want the titillation; we want the appearance of power; we want to succeed, because the possibility of failure is a form of death we are not willing to bear, thus avoiding the Cross. We ought rather to ask ourselves what is success as God defines it?
If we move into the realm of what is false, synthetic, humanly contrived and not the operation of the Spirit, we can move very easily from the charismatic to the demonic. We cannot tell the difference between the hunger for God and the hunger for experience. If we have a real hunger for God, we do not have to go to places where 'signs and wonders' abound. Last Days' deceptions are related to an inadequate view of God by which we interpret the 'blessing' or seeming power as being the evidence of God as we know Him, but the true knowledge of God would have made no room for that kind of understanding, or even the desire for these phenomena in the form in which they have been manifested. The pattern of Acts, chapter 13, shows a very different context: the demonstration of power as the provision of God to demonstrate the authority of His messengers when they were opposed by powers of darkness in the fulfillment of their mission, as opposed to the 'power' demonstrated in auditoriums to Christians who are looking for excitement, or help for their own bodies. This apostolic model is the one that we more rightly ought to look for and expect, indeed, will be the only one effective in the Last Days' final confrontation with those same powers.
Manifestation phenomena are already perplexing the Church, with many asking, "Is it God?" People seem to receive benefit; they are delivered from hang-ups and depression; marriages are reconciled; people are restored to the faith. There is much evidence of 'good' things, but when the Last Days' deceptions come, of which we have been warned, will they not come with 'good' things? Can we tell the difference between the true and the false, especially when we want so much to be blessed and to have an experience and be
relieved of our hang-ups and depressions? How discriminating are we about the source from which the 'blessing' comes? How do we tell whether something is of God, or a contrary spirit who is able to lift the depression that he may well have inflicted in the first place? Here is the key: our authentic knowledge of God, not as we thought Him to be, but as He, in fact, is.