John Burton, a contributing author to Charisma magazine, has fallen into the trap of mistaking spiritual experiences with true faith

Every human being has spiritual experiences and many call these experiences God-inspired because the grace of God does visit every soul to awaken it. But the truth is, when the experience does not lead a person into a covenant relationship with God the experience is bent to give witness to self, to gauge one’s progression with his own unique signature gifts. So, did he profit by the experience? No!

You might be thinking that these “spiritual experiences” are all stepping stones to God’s will being played out in your life, but the will of God is Jesus Christ and you need divinely appointed apostolic stewardship to direct faith into Him – His knowledge, tools, and priesthood.

Many ministers, like Burton, believe that they are operating in the spiritual realm simply because they pray in tongues, or they have seen or experienced miracles, or have written about the prophetic, yet they have no priesthood. Are they living in the spiritual realm – in Christ? No.

By replacing the tools of Jesus with his own signature gifts, he has denied the life of Christ. The spiritual experiences, which he claims to have had are not the due process of our cycles of growth, nor the excellency of His knowledge. The circumcision of the Spirit is not taking place.

Burton’s faith has no mobility so he looks for mobility in the fleshly realm. He calls the high notes of careerism the grace of God, which is to bring the glory of God down to the level of man to obtain the trophies of this world. Burton teaches that believers should  put legs to their prophecy, which is to say that prophecy has been broken from the Godhead to prophesy the hopes and dreams of the kingdom of the flesh. That’s a polluted priesthood.

Don’t do that! Even though you acknowledge that your moral code, signature gifts, and God-Code is an imprint of God within your soul, it is NOT your strength and therefore you cannot love God with these tokens. God restricted salvation to Jesus Christ – He is your strength and therefore He gives you new tokens every day and these are the things you are to use to love God and to build His kingdom.

True faith reflects Jesus’ likeness and the strength of His tokens whereby your soul continually increases with His substance. Faith comes to substance, but the aspiration comes to ashes. Now the choice God lays before each believer is clear.

We hear it said repeatedly by ministers that we, as believes, cannot possibly judge who is saved and who is not saved, or discern the true gospel from the false gospel, or separate the strength of the moral code from the strength of Christ. This mindset is not from God, but from the devil. The devil wants the church to remain ignorant of the truth, and thus without sight. The devil wants you to find life and strength in yourself.

1 John 3:10,
“In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.”

In this verse God shows the importance of contrasting and comparing the source of light and the source of darkness. The source is important. God is the source of light and the devil is the source of a darkened perspective, whereas the life of Christ is replaced by the light of one’s signature abilities and skills. That perception is the curse of false knowledge that you are now being redeemed from.

Light and darkness is first seen in the knowledge one embraces. This is because it is by knowledge that God determines whether or not the face of Christ is being seen and reciprocated.

False knowledge is evil and possesses death. Evil has to do with the path knowledge takes, severed from the Godhead to find virtue in the powers God granted to the soul, to call that your light and the strength of Christ. Death has to do with working with that knowledge – it produces fruits of iniquity, which the conscience reflects. We’re talking here about the defiled conscience that cannot reciprocate to God. And now your soul is famished, and so is the land.

Life has to do with the power that works with the tokens that reflect Christ. Your faith is made compete in Him – in His tokens.

Apostle John further talks about the children of God manifesting charity towards the brethren, and thus fulfilling God’s command to express Christ in the spiritual sacrifices we offer. We are to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, which means that we are to express faith in Him for the substance of our soul, which power is a virtue of Christ we accept as our life.

So then, the children of God are manifested by the expression of Christ, which we do in our priesthood, not by opening up new business ventures.