When the Light in you turns into Darkness

We all went to a ministry event this weekend and it was … awful.

It was supposed to be a ‘thanksgiving’ service to God, which here means usually a church anniversary or some other yearly community celebration to give thanks to God for his goodness. Yet here was a group of people used to the presence and power of God in their meetings before … but who now have become reduced to a religious mixture of polluted ambition. The key guest was the town mayor, an unsaved sinful man, who after giving a political ‘to-do’ list of his upcoming projects was then seated in the seat of honor in the sanctuary by the altar to be fed as the guest of honor. He had so many demons circling around him one of our young kids could not enter the church hall during the meal without wanting to vomit! She had seen angels the night before in an impromptu worship jam session with the youth, but this next day during the main meeting she saw so many dark demons around this honored guest she was both scared and nauseous!

We had some warning but it was not shared to me in time or in clarity to prevent us from attending, but maybe going to see things first hand was also God’s plan.

You see, some of our older kids had previously attended a country-wide coordinated day of worship a few weeks ago but when they got to the remote venue for that satellite service the Lord said instead of pure devoted worship to God, it had become nothing more than people looking for recognition. The best part of this worship service was the scenic ride back home it seems. God then warned one of our older kids who was there that the upcoming ‘thanksgiving’ we were also invited to was going to be the exact same thing. Not worship but seeking recognition from Man.

Additionally, a prophecy about this community we had heard a few years prior was that one of the family leaders, mentioned by name, was going to rise to prominence in this community and lead them into a community-wide shipwreck! This prophet saw the community drowning under his leadership and guidance … but then the people would be rescued by a different family leader, an ex-worship leader, who would then rise again to leadership and lead many of them (but maybe not all of them) back to safety in the Lord. I can’t list all of the sins and sicknesses, mental illnesses sexual sins and religious fake blindness that was on display at this recent event, both visible in the spirit and also obvious to natural eyes, partly because I don’t want to merely complain about problems but want to focus on solutions, but also because it is just so disturbing to me to see this once-spiritual community fall so far down back into the flesh’s corrupted version of powerless hypocrisy that it makes me sick to talk about it.

But I will say that when we first got to the evening service before the day of the main service I saw PRIDE like a cloud over the worship team. This was causing a schism in how people were being treated and how resources, honor and opportunities were being distributed within the community. There was a ‘have’s’ group in pride over the ‘have-not’s.’ God told me they have basically no idea what they are doing … so sad after so many years in the ministry to arrive at this dead end!

But God also said that I am called to be a part of this community and I do belong here. God had asked me to search them out a few years ago and led me right to their camp and called me to minister to them to help relieve their hardships and train them in the ways of the Kingdom of God. They are however being very, “Stubborn, stubborn, stubborn!” as he told Ann at this time. And the pollution in their worship made her physically sick and God said to leave, to walk away and get some distance so we can pray and understand. Ann was so shaken she wanted to leave and just go home right away but God said not to run away.

So we prayed and rested and I bought some soft drinks. I wanted some water but the 1-Peso water dispenser, so common here in the Philippines, was broken. The shopkeeper offered me some bottled water instead and God said, “DO NOT ACCEPT what he is offering you.” I felt like it had a greater meaning than just receiving this bottled water from the shop keeper.

Meanwhile Ann was asking God what happened to her and why was she physically so sick, but he just laughed! She prayed again and again saw Father and Jesus both just laughing. It seems they were pouring out a Double Anointing on her, something he prophesied to us over the last few weeks he would soon do. It seems that this greater anointing was so new and sudden and unexpected and being suddenly in the presence of the spiritual pollution we walked into that she may have gotten overwhelmed … and instead of standing on a chair and loudly calling down a holy purifying fire to purge the sin and mixture from the deceived leadership, which is what I would have done, and maybe why God didn’t give me that anointing … she instead got sick and wanted to run.

God reassured Ann that I would be with her to back her up and take care of her, which it was nice for God to say that about me! But we did soon go back home, leaving many of our kids to have an overnight camp as planned, and we praying for their protection and came back the next day for the main thanksgiving service.

God had told me it was going to be a hard day already so I prepared myself but when the main service began and the Holy Spirit’s presence was intangible, insubstantial, practically non-existent! Well, I began to get upset. Why waste my time and the time and effort of a few hundred community and family members with this charade?

One man who is largely anti-Holy Spirit was loudly praying and his face looked like he was blind. He looked like there was a covering of blindness over his entire face. He was mimicking the way people act and sound who are being led by the Anointing when they pray! He was copying what he has seen anointed people say and do! But he was blind and it was fake. Pray for this poor man.

That’s when they called up the Mayor to speak and he promised so make a new school and emergency shelter and help invest more money into the rural town’s infrastructure needs. All good things I’m sure. Thank God for it. But you cannot pretend this has anything to do with the ministry of the Holy Spirit. To not discern this and mix these two things would bring a polluting corruption into what needs to be a pure devotion to the Lord in sincerity and singleness of mind.

Jesus said, “The lamp of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is the darkness! (Mat 6:22-23)

Mixture, being double minded, believing Godliness is a means to financial gain and popularity among Man will lead people into … spiritual shipwreck. We were seeing this play out before our very eyes!

Then they asked us, as ‘special guests,’ to sit in the church sanctuary to be fed, along with all the pastors and leaders, while the regular people sat outside or in the corners to eat. I refused flat out. I am not a fake and WE ARE ALL guests here, not just me and Ann and the mayor and the other ‘pastors’. I finally had to go inside to get food, which I said I was not hungry for but Ann pulled me inside so as to at least not cause a scene. That’s when I saw the Mayor sitting in the prominent seat in the sanctuary by the altar, and there was a homosexual spirit visible on him and his entourage were all being served as honored unsaved guests inside the worship hall during a feast to honor God, and I said … “Oh, I forgot my glasses! I can’t see the food! Let me go and get it!” And I politely ducked out, ‘not accepting what they offered me,’ not spiritually and also including lunch.

Some of our kids are new Christians and one of them, once we got back home, was beginning to manifest a serious demonic problem she is struggling with. Others were acting prideful and rude. The ‘ministry’ at this church was so lacking in the presence of God that it was actually doing harm to several of our weaker children.

When the meal was done most everyone just went home but there was going to be more entertainment and performances for the rest of the afternoon. We also thankfully left and we praying for the next few days for protection, purification of ourselves and our kids, and for understanding of God’s will going forward.

Driving home God told me to smile … I was so disturbing to see a spirit-filled community collapse into such a pollution mixture, serious sin and demonic manifestations and not sorrow and humility but pride and celebration!

I had no discernable reason why I should smile. I wanted to cry! But maybe things were not as bad as they looked? And I am sure God has a plan in response, he prophetically said so already!

And ok, I know covid lockdowns have been hard on many communities who have not been able to maintain their communal worship and community ministry activities over this time, but what I saw here was not this, it was ambition, pride, man-pleasing, pollution and faking the Holy Spirit’s presence … it had devolved into raw religious fakery, pretense and sin.

Like I said I won’t mention the sexual sins, sicknesses and other problems that are manifesting because I know we all struggle and this is not the main issue. People struggle, which is why we need strong Spirit-filled leaders who can usher us into the Actual Presence of God which is what cures us, what enlightens us, what empowers us not to sin and what makes us both highly skilled but also very humble. He gives us feet like a deer to walk on the heights and not stumble! But when his Light is no longer actually flowing from within the leaders then all they have left is doctrines, ambitions and a rule of false religious authority and pride. How great is such darkness!

This is so bad because you must understand this community is called by God to help lead the revival in this area but they have really fallen into the trap of pleasing man and outward religion instead. They had begun so well … but look how far they have fallen!

Verses that come to mind are hard verses that people no longer have the will to listen to:

Jude 1:12-16
1:12 These are they who are hidden rocks in your love-feasts when they feast with you, shepherds that without fear feed themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn leaves without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots;
1:13 Wild waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the blackness of darkness hath been reserved forever.
1:14 And to these also Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, Behold, the Lord came with ten thousands of his holy ones,
1:15 to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their works of ungodliness which they have ungodly wrought, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.
1:16 These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their lusts (and their mouth speaketh great swelling words), showing respect of persons for the sake of advantage.

And 2 Peter 2:17-20 …
2:17 These are springs without water, and mists driven by a storm; for whom the blackness of darkness hath been reserved.
2:18 For, uttering great swelling words of vanity, they entice in the lusts of the flesh, by lasciviousness, those who are just escaping from them that live in error;
2:19 promising them liberty, while they themselves are bondservants of corruption; for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he also brought into bondage.
2:20 For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome, the last state is become worse with them than the first.

Only the power of God in the Holy Spirit can prevail. We MUST be ministers IN and BY the power of the presence of God. Nothing else can heal, change, set free, purify, enlighten and empower his people. If people BEGIN ministering in the power of the Holy Spirit and then fall away to go back to using religious positions as authority, favors of Man for advancement, and entertainment instead of ministry of the Holy Spirit to attempt to build up a church community, it will all fail and do so in the worst possible way.

In 2 Timothy 3:1-5 we are warned about those who do this and are told to walk away from these powerless ‘ministries’, which can offer no ‘ministry’ at all as only the Holy Spirit can ‘minister’ or ‘serve’ the needs of God’s people:

3:5 holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof: from these also turn away.

I must guard myself and my kids from becoming infected from any of this pollution that God was so clear to warn us about! And I pray that I ‘do not accept anything they are offering me,’ meaning this deceptive mixture of carnal thinking and religious pride and hypocrisy! But before showing me these things God also told me I belong here. I am sent to such as these to help them. It is the sick who need a doctor! And this was also the prophecy just a few years ago, that one leader by name was going to rise to prominence and lead the community into a shipwreck, drowning many of them. But the previous worship leader would then be used by God to rescue them. There is hope and we pray the rescue can begin immediately!

Please pray for this community and for us who are sent to help them find and serve in the Calling of God chosen for them to walk in. We appreciate your prayers!