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A Tale Of Two Cities
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Mystery Babylon & The
New Jerusalem
Part 2
Gen 12:1-8
1 Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get
thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto
a land that I will shew thee:
2 And I will make of thee a great nation,
and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:
3 And I will bless them that bless thee,
and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be
blessed.,
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So Abram departed, as the LORD had
spoken unto him; and Lot went with him: and Abram was seventy and five years
old when he departed out of Haran.
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And Abram took Sarai his wife, and
Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and
the souls that they had gotten in Haran; and they went forth to go into the
land of Canaan; and into the land of Canaan they came.
6 And Abram passed through the land unto
the place, of Sichem, unto the plain of Moreh. And the Canaanite was then in the
land.
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And the LORD appeared unto Abram, and
said, Unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar
unto the LORD, who appeared unto him.
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And he removed -from thence unto a
mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the
west, and Hai on the east: and there he builded an altar unto the LORD, and
called upon the name of the LORD. (KJV)
In this study of the two cities, Mystery
Babylon and New Jerusalem, we are going to be looking at their parallel
destinies in God's plan of the ages. In the last issue we attempted to describe
the mirror-image countenance they share in the bible and the prophetic
utterances written therein. We described how it is virtually impossible to
separate them from each other in the plan of God since they are antithetical to
each other. As much as darkness is forever linked and connected to light,
(indeed, darkness provides a contrast of background to light that "illuminates"
it's brilliance, such as stars appearing in the night sky) even so Babylon
provides the New Jerusalem with a perfect contrast and can give us an even
greater understanding of the brilliant glory that God has ordained for this
great city.
In this issue we would like to address
the question, "What is Babylonian and what is New Jerusalem?" in terms of our
walk and practices. This will be a very difficult and complex question and we
may not have all the answers, but perhaps God will allow us to stir up your pure
mind and give you a view into my own personal questions concerning this dilemma.
Over the years I have sat and heard many
messages preached on the evil of Babylonian practices by Kingdom word ministries
and much doomsday warnings have been written on paper, enough, so that one may
get the idea that Babylon is in everything. We pray that we can grasp what God
wants us to be made aware of as being of Babylon versus what is Kingdom. The
fact of the matter is, the two are at times hard to distinguish from one
another. They are very much intertwined into our past theologies and even in our
present ways of doing things.
In the above scripture we find Abram, a
man who is a Babylonian and who has a genealogy of Babylon in his family, being
told by Jehovah that if he will get out of his country, Babylon, and leave his
kindred and his father's house, that Jehovah will lead him into a land where He
will make of Abram a great nation. Abram originally came from Ur, a city in the
lower southern region of what we know to be Babylon. He then moved to Haran in
the northern region, and after hearing the promise of Jehovah he ultimately
journeys into the land of Canaan, the land of promise. Take note that Abram is
of the culture and religious practices of Babylon when Jehovah reveals Himself
to him. This is why Abram is the Father of faith. He enters into covenant with
this strange God and believes Him to be the true God. Abram is the first man
termed a "Hebrew", which in the original language means "one who crosses the
river", in this case the Euphrates river which Abram crossed in leaving his
Babylonian heritage. We all today must "cross the river", the border line that
divides us from our Babylonian past and gives us access to the land of God's
covenant's of promise. We must be "Hebrew” in our walk, willing to leave all
that we have known and experienced up to this point and cross over the border
headed to heaven on high.
Let me remind you that our roots are in
Babylon. We all were made in weakness, corruptible in nature, fashioned with a
sin consciousness, pagan in our worship. A true Hebrew is one that is brought
out of the house of flesh and rebirthed into the house of Christ, who is our
true Hebrew, having crossed from death to life. We are on the journey into the
promises of God and we have received a commandment from our Father to come out
of her and to be not a partaker of her sins. If we do, then like Abram we will
get a more excellent name. His Babylonian name of Abram means High or Exalted
Father. His Hebrew name of Abraham means Father of A Multitude! Notice that God
didn't give him an entirely different name as He did for Jacob, but He took that
which was Babylonian and added His blessings to it. Abram was a title of Father
but as you know, Abram was childless. We don't want empty titles! If we have
titles may God give us His blessings and bring to us the substance that the
titles represent. I want Isaac! Sarah may laugh and Abram may fall on his face
giggling at the thought of an old man and woman having a son, but God will
perform His word if we leave our former country and come into the land of
promise.
Now, we can do any number of things to
keep us out of the seducing power of this great whore, Mystery Babylon. One of
the things we can do is to throw everything out that has the slightest chance of
being from that spirit of Babylon, as many have done in the past history of this
word of the Kingdom. This includes: throwing the bible away; stop having
services in a church building and have them in homes, so as to remove the
physical image of a babylonian architecture, i.e. Steeples, pews, pulpit, altar,
stained glass windows, etc.; operate as a group of believers but without the
titles of Babylon such as Pastor, Bishop, Elder, etc. with each member of the
group equal in authority and responsibility; conduct all meetings without the
presence of babylonian traditions, such as offerings, prophecy, prayer, speaking
in tongues, or preaching in some cases, with some even outlawing singing and
praising in the spirit; seat the people in a circle or some other geometric
design other than the babylonian square with rows of people facing the front, so
as to allow each member not to feel subject to the speaker or lower in stature,
but able to look each other in the eye rather than the back of the head; create
an unstructured, open atmosphere where anyone can speak on any subject at any
time for any reason for as long as they want.
I am sure there are some of our readers
that think some of these items are put in jest, but I assure you that I know
groups that have been so fearful of operating in babylonian traditions that they
have done all that I have listed and more. Some have taken the final step and
ceased to meet at all, preferring to serve God alone and at home, becoming an
island to themselves, secure in the knowledge that they are free of babylonian
influence. My heart goes out to our brothers and sisters that have taken this
path of elimination, out of fear of being in a death grip of man-made religion.
I can sympathize with them, since I believe we all must face our fears
concerning this reality.
To be quite honest, we all know that the
King James Version Bible is filled with Babylonian phrases of a God that is dual
in nature and carries on a love-hate relationship with His creation. After all,
it wasn't even written until the year 1611 a.d. and we know that King James was
undoubtedly influential in its translation and who knows what amount of error is
contained in each word translated from the Hebrew and the Greek into the King's
English. If this isn't enough to have to bear, we find ourselves still
prophesying in "thees" and "thous" and "shalts" and "wilts", knowing that God
isn't limited to the Old English speech. Sound familiar? We have all done it in
the past, and some still do it even today. The point I would like to make is, I
still feel a flow of life regardless of the form of wording, or the traditional
raising of the voice in volume, even when in a small room in an intimate circle
of believers that could hear you whisper let alone shout at them at the top of
your lungs. The form and practice of delivering the word of God may be
Babylonian in origin, but not necessarily Babylonian in the nature of the word.
We all have some aspect of Babylon in us. In other words, we have left Babylon
but has Babylon left us?
It can get even closer to home. There are
some ministry that I would characterize as preaching a word of the Kingdom with
an old Pentecostal methodology. Their word is on target but the methods they
employ to preach it are, in my opinion, Babylonian. What to do? Quit
fellowshipping them? Write them off as old order? I think this would be
incredibly arrogant on my part and yours. The fact of the matter is that I love
the ministry and desire to see us all flow in the river of God together. So I
will choose to hold them up before the Lord until the word that comes from their
mouth corrects their tactics.
Lest anyone should think that I don't
recognize my own Babylonian ways, let me relate to you a present correction I am
concentrating on, which is just one of a multitude of others. When I was in the
beginning of my ministry, just starting to learn to yield to the spirit of God
to speak through me, I picked up some bad habits. I was saved in a "holy-roller"
Pentecostal church in Ecorse, Michigan on September 5, 1965. The pastor of the
church was a sweet old preacher lady, Sister Magee. The congregation consisted
of five elderly women and a young girl my own age, which was 15 at the time.
Sister Magee had been faithful to this small feminine congregation for many
years. None of the women could get their husbands or sons into the church, so
they sort of got the impression that God had quit saving the male gender and was
only able to touch the heart of five elderly woman and one semi-saved young
girl. You can imagine their shock and joy when I arrived. Never mind that I was
an ignorant young boy that had more problems than an individual has a right to
have, or that I was the child of an atheistic mother and an alcoholic, catholic
father, all they cared about was that I was of the male species, and bless God
maybe there was hope for their pitiful, no good husbands after all!
What followed over the years was as good
a testimony of the keeping power of the spirit of God as you will ever hear. How
God was able to do all that He wanted to do in my life to bring me to this
present day out of my beginnings is a true wonder. Each night, before the
service was over, the dear sisters would place me in the center of the church
aisle and they would lay hands upon me, as if I was some holy point of contact
to the soul of their dastardly husbands, and I would stand in proxy for their
husband's salvation. I felt an awesome sense of responsibility for the
sinfulness of these men, as though I was some sort of quirk of God's grace, and
I somehow ended up saved when these other men continued in their destiny toward
hell. The trick of it all was that these dear faithful sisters wouldn't let go
of praying for me until I gave some sort of a sign that God had indeed heard
their cry, and they had made a firm contact with the black heart of their men
folk. At first, I had absolutely no trouble giving them this assurance, since I
was new born and very much ready for whatever God had for me, and plus the guilt
I felt over my good fortune and the bad fortune of the men. The standard sign of
release in this particular church was a typical Pentecostal explosion, complete
with gyrations of the arms and legs and jumping up and down very vigorously,
which invariably ended up in the kicking over of a few chairs because of the
close proximity of the small church. So, each night at the end of the service I
would get prayed for and sure enough, the chairs would go flying and the women
would hurry home to see if their husbands had thrown up all the beer and whiskey
they drank that night.
Each night, I faithfully stood in the gap
for my fellow men, dutifully kicking chairs and flailing under the power so new
to me. But then something frightening happened. I started losing my freshness
and exuberance as I matured under the hand of the Lord and it was getting harder
and harder for me to break through into this type of release. I had found the
Lord in my own private time of worship to be more than just a jump and a holler,
but He was also able to touch me in quiet ways. So, the nightly prayers got to
the point where the dear sisters thought they were discerning a quenching of the
standard sign of release, (i.e. overturned chairs, gyrations, etc.) so they
commenced to giving me some extra-curricular activity along with their prayers,
such as grabbing my head in a death grip and shaking it like one of their
tambourines on a real fast song, or putting their hands on my back and patting
me until, supposing my spirit to be bound up by the devil, they would be near
knocking the breath out of me trying to give their prayers more power and
authority by the beating of my back. Whew! It was like playing football at
church! They eventually gave up on me after about 6 months and released me out
of my calling of being the last great hope for their stubborn, vile husbands. I
think about those poor men even today. By the way, I must confess that during
those 6 months there were many nights, while in the death grip of prayer, that I
may have experienced an involuntary knee jerk reaction and kicked over a few
chairs on my own so I could get home and do my homework, but God seemed to look
the other way, as I am sure He sympathized with my plight.
I stayed at this little garage-sized
church for 3 years until God finally delivered me. Our services were seven
nights a week, two on Sunday. The only time I ever saw another male species walk
through the door of the church was when we would have a guest preacher. Most of
them took their teeth out before they preached and screamed and hollered until
they got into a rythm of grunting and breathing between each word, sort of like,
" And, uh, I, uh, want, uh, to tell you, uh, that, uh, hell, uh, is, uh, the
sinners, uh, reward, uh.". It is really amazing how adept one can get on picking
out the words in that type of delivery after a while, much like trying to
decipher the talk back and forth between the truckers on the CB radio. After a
while, you get used to it and it doesn't seem odd. Amazingly, there were things
accomplished in my life, such as speaking with tongues, prophecy, and healings,
that remain a vital part of my life even today. I learned to look past the
obvious fleshly antics and hear the sound within the sound coming from the
Father. This has been a great key for me through the years. Don't let the antics
of flesh, which is just the bottle that contains the wine, keep you from tasting
of the goodness of the Lord, because there comes a day when the new wine gets a
new container!
I still have some of the old Babylonian
ways in me from my beginnings. When I preach I say the word "hallelujah" much
too often as a fill-in word waiting for the spirit to give me the next word, as
I preach for the most part extemporaneously. This was brought to my attention
years ago when I was preaching on the radio and we only had a 15 minute
broadcast. Time was precious, so from the sign-on to the sign-off I would go
like a house on fire trying to say as much as I could about God before my time
was up. One day, a man came up to me that had been listening to our broadcast
and said, "You know brother Bobby, if you wouldn't say 'hallelujah' every other
word you could get a lot more preaching done!". I still catch myself doing that,
and I recognize it as a Babylonian trait, and am working at it and getting
better, at least I hope so.
There are other things that I have
trouble labeling pure Babylonian. For instance, the way that we minister and
hold services. We know that there is coming a more excellent way of doing them,
but I would hesitate in calling them strictly Babylonian. Some methods and
traits of our services and ministry have been structured by God as a transition
process that gets you from one area to another. We will be seeing this in the
further studies on "The Two Cities". The period between the passing away of the
old and the rising of the new can be a very trying time for us. We are all
anxious to see the fullness of God demonstrated through a people with no taint
and without religious trappings. We groan at the show-time atmosphere of the
American Church system and we all wonder how God could do anything with these
vipers that disguise themselves as bearers of the truth and caring shepherds of
the sheep, when we readily see that they misrepresent God's nature and plan for
His creation.
We all want to be free from the system of
religion, but we need to know where man ends and God begins. In other words, if
we are to go under the surgical knife of God, as He cuts away from us the cancer
of Babylon, we must know when to stop cutting. Otherwise we cut some of the
vital parts off along with the diseased parts. As it is, we have all gone
through surgeries of the spirit where some things were removed from our body by
God, only to be reinstated at another time. When a natural surgeon operates upon
a cancerous section of our body, he must decide how much is to be removed. There
is a decision made that creates a "margin of safety", which is the amount of
good body part that must be sacrificed with the known diseased part.
I had a personal experience with this a
number of years ago. Paul Demoret, a wonderful minister of this word and a very
close friend of ours asked me to take him to the hospital in Nashville to get a
small skin cancer taken off the top of his head. Now, I hope I can say this
delicately, but Paul's head is a little thin of hair on top, God having finished
counting the hair of his head some years ago and then He started counting
backwards! Paul is a very particular man concerning his appearance, always
dresses very nice and neat and he voiced to me his concern of how the top of his
head would look after the surgery. I assured him it was just a tiny spot and he
wouldn't even know it was cut upon.
When he came out of the hospital, after a
number of hours, I was a little worried. He was wearing a baseball cap the
hospital gave him to wear and he seemed in good spirits so I put my worries
aside and we started home. I asked him how his head felt and he said it felt a
little tight in his scalp, but it didn't hurt. He then asked me to look under
the cap and let him know how his head looked. When he took his cap off, I almost
wrecked the car! A huge horseshoe wound covered the top of his head, with
swollen stitches and red puffy flesh around it. It looked like they performed
brain surgery! I stifled a scream and Paul asked me again how it looked. I
didn't have the guts to tell him he was going to be deformed for the rest of his
life, so I told him it looked fine, maybe a little larger than I was expecting.
Hoo Boy. I advised him to wait until we got him home, and we would set him down
in a chair and hold a mirror for him to see for himself. I have to give my
friend credit. He didn't faint or even cry one tear when he saw the wound with
his own eyes. The close of this story is a happy one. Paul has a perfect looking
head, with no sign of the wound, the body having reinstated the good flesh
sacrificed with the bad. We must know that surgery, whether in the natural or in
the spirit, has a specific measurement of cutting, and to go beyond that is not
in our best interest. Even so, if we are patient, the wound is healed and those
things removed are restored.
Patience! 0 how that word irks me
sometimes. It means to wait for something. Not give up on it, not throw it all
out and do your own thing and declare "to hell with you". Out of all of the
present religious games that are being played out on the stage of the
fundamental religious system, there is a plan working. We must believe God is
able to do what He says He can do. Who can hold Him back? Who, I say, can tie
His hands and make Him non-effective in the affairs of men? In men I see nothing
but trouble, greed, self exaltation, violence, hypocrisy, lying, deceiving,
backstabbing, flesh. Let me say this though, in the midst of it all, if you look
with the eyes of the spirit, and if you listen very circumspectly with the ears
of the spirit, you will see hope and hear victory. Nothing can drown out the
voice of God when He truly speaks. I have heard Him speak through the lips of a
jackass, and I have seen Him in the midst of the clowns of religion. He is God!
He is not confounded by Babylon, so why are we? We must stop letting Babylon
dictate to us what we can believe for and what we cannot. John looked through
the eyes of the spirit and saw something both filthy and wonderful, a whore and
a bride, a mother of harlots and a mother of the free. What we must never forget
is that he did not allow the sickening sight of Mystery Babylon to blind him
from viewing the splendor of The New Jerusalem. Patience! If you have seen the
shameful nakedness of Babylon parading herself in the midst of the people then
know that it is a guarantee that you will see the righteous, chaste bride of
Christ make a triumphant entrance into our midst. If you have seen the murderer
and the thief parade in the midst of the congregation with their polluted
ointment full of flies, then look up, for it is a guarantee that there is rising
up a priesthood and kingship that will bring honor and honesty and holiness to
the people of Zion. Look Up! Don't let Babylon make you shut your eyes in
disgust and then miss out on the greatest vision of beauty that you will ever
see. Look past the Beast and see the Beauty.
Rev. 21:1-3
1 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth:
for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more
sea.
2 And I John saw the holy city, new
Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for
her husband.
3 And I heard a great voice out of heaven
saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them,
and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their
God! (KJV)
By Robert D. Torango |