The Anointing Bridges the Common way of thinking, and He uses a strange thing for a sign, that we might wonder and begin to follow after the anointing as the sign manifests Christ.

Our first example is spittle. When it is released from an unsanctified vessel it is considered unclean, but when used for a sign for healing it is sanctified, as God bridges the common to the spiritual.

Numbers 12:14
“And the Lord said unto Moses, If her father had but spit in her face, should she not be ashamed seven days? let her be shut out from the camp seven days, and after that let her be received in again.”

Deuteronomy 25:9
“Then shall his brother’s wife come unto him in the presence of the elders, and loose his shoe from off his foot, and spit in his face, and shall answer and say, So shall it be done unto that man that will not build up his brother’s house.”

In the old testament examples above God addresses the image of man, which bears shame because it reflects the knowledge and kingdom of darkness. God then used the same sign and placed it under the unction of the anointing. When Jesus spit, He brought healing, bridging the shame of Adam.

1 John 2:20
“But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.”

Mark 7:33
“And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue.”

Mark 8:23
“And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought.”

Here we witness that Jesus’ spit was sanctified (as Abraham cutting of the flesh for circumcision was not a mutilation, but rather a sign to build, though strange to the common thinking). Jesus was instructing His disciples that He, as the Anointed One, is the Anointing and that He came to bridge the common to the spiritual.

Unction: The action of anointing someone with oil or ointment as a religious rite or as a symbol. (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com)

Holy oil was first mixed according to God’s specifications and then smeared or rubbed onto “the tip of Aaron’s right ear, and upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the great toe of his right foot” to sanctify the priesthood (Lev 8:23)

The holy anointing oil was also applied or rubbed onto the tabernacle and all the articles and vessels of the tabernacle, including the ark of the covenant. (Ex 30:23-30).

Jesus’ disciples saw Him “put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue” and “spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw ought.” They understood by His teaching what He was proclaiming by this act. Jesus was reversing the sign of the curse by placing the sign in Himself. What the law condemned, faith justified.

God uses symbolism that might seem strange to us, rather than the familiar, to teach us to follow the sign of His anointing. When believers define faith according to the things that are familiar to them, they refuse the tokens they think are strange to them.

When a minister says that God wants them to be wealthy, that message is familiar to them, and multitudes will follow the teaching to get something from God.

When a minister says that God wants them to be victorious in all things, that message is also very familiar to the aspiration of man, and many will follow that teaching to get something from God.

Another example might be when ministers claim that a certain oil or piece of cloth contains healing properties, or that when you partake of physical communion that something spiritual will happen to you.

These are not the true signs of the anointing. These are not the strange signs of God. These are the lengths people will go to, to get something from God. That’s not faith at all.

When God established His covenant with Abraham, His strange sign was the circumcision of all the males. Genesis 17:10, “This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised.”

The gods of other nations required no such thing that the true God required of Abraham. When Abraham’s neighbours and business contacts heard about this they said, “You serve a strange God, Abraham. He requires you to mutilate yourself.” But this was not a mutilation. The sign of the gift of Christ was in it, as we see later when Jesus provides Himself as the token of circumcision through the baptism of the Holy Spirit, again bridging the common to the spiritual (Rom 2:29).

The sign and promise of forgiveness and healing was placed in another strange symbol, when Moses commanded the children of Israel to look to the serpent-pole for healing.

Numbers 21:4-9
⁴  And they journeyed from mount Hor by the way of the Red sea, to compass the land of Edom: and the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way.

⁵ And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread.

⁶ And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died.

⁷ Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee; pray unto the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people.

⁸ And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.

⁹ And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.

God put the sign of Abraham’s faith in the pole. The snake shows that his circumcision was for faith to bring healing to those that believe. The knowledge of the world is poison to the soul, and only a supernatural token can reverse the curse, as Jesus being crucified was to remove the yoke of Satan on the heart.

Moses is the sign of stewardship and new beginning for the people. He held the pole, and as long as the people heeded his instructed and looked towards God through this sign, they were healed. 

Isaiah 28:21 
“For the Lord shall rise up as in mount Perazim, he shall be wroth as in the valley of Gibeon, that he may do his work, his strange work; and bring to pass his act, his strange act.”

God’s strange sign for the church today is the return to apostolic stewardship and priesthood, to thus honour God with the tokens of Christ. When a believer refuses to function in the priesthood of Christ, the believer becomes immobilized in his faith and stumbles; for he refuses contact.

Today, as physical circumcision has become part of society in many places around the world, it is viewed as a social act by man. The adversary is thus attempting to remove the strangeness this act held for Abraham and the faith that God was developing with it as a sign of Christ to come.

As God restored the apostles’ calling to the church He also announced the mating season had begun. As truth was restored and the priesthood of the saints restored, the Anointed One provided spiritual contact with us through His tools to bring many sons and daughters into glory.

John 9:5-7
5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. 

6 When he had thus spoken, he spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. 

7And said unto him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, (which is by interpretation, Sent.) He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.

Jesus made clay with his spittle to thus reverse the curse by contact with Himself, giving the blind man a condition of washing to restore his sight. We also take that which proceeds from Christ (stewardship and priesthood) to anoint ourselves (dust) to receive our sight.

God provides a covenant for our confidence. With each challenge Sarah faced she yielded to grace, and she received more grace. It was after she accepted the strange signs from the Lord, God, that God gave life to her womb.

1 Peter 3:6
“Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.”

So, believers today must prepare their hearts as did Sarah. Let’s take a look at the challenges God set before Sarah, which grew as her confidence grew. God did not begin with the revelation He gave to Abraham to sacrifice her son, Isaac. That challenge came at the end after many growing seasons.

1. Following Abraham from Syria (Gen 12:1-5)

2. Taken into Pharaoh’s house (Gen 12:13-20; ch 21)

3. Lot separates from Abraham (Gen 13:7-14)

4. Lot taken captive; war; revelation from Melchizedek (Gen 14)

5. Hagar (Gen 16 & 22)

6. Covenant of circumcision (Gen 17)

7. Sacrifice of Isaac (Gen 22)

Genesis 17:14-16

¹⁴ And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant.

¹⁵ And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be.

¹⁶ And I will bless her, and give thee a son also of her: yea, I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of people shall be of her.

This was a great challenge to Sarah for reflection. She had to accept the idea of Abraham’s circumcision, which was strange and awkward for any god to ask, and was  mocked by the wicked and sinners.

When the skin is removed through circumcision (as a symbol), as the snake sheds his skin, a new people will be born.  Faith removes the testimony of Satan in the flesh. The Lord God will begin a new people and build a new house by the strange anointing.

God’s placed a strange sign in Adam and Eve for us to behold Jesus Christ. 

2 Enoch 30:18 and 31:1

God said, “And I took his last word and I called her name Mother, that is to say Euva.”

In this verse God was explaining a mystery to Enoch. And I took Adam’s last word (the letter ’M’) and I called Eve’s name Mother.

31:1 God says, “ADAM-Mother; earthly and life.”

God’s Instruction to Moses confirms the I AM.

Exodus 3:14 
And God said unto Moses, I Am That I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

God says “I AM”

Let’s look at the letters A and M

ADAM + Mother  =  A and M or AM

Meaning being I (God) AM your new beginning (Adam) and destiny (Mother=Holy city). So God preaches Jesus Christ in the symbols of the letter of Adam’s name, and then He fulfilled it as the second Adam (Rom 5:14-15).

As Abraham and Sarah represented this mystery to begin a new people through covenant, whereas the anointing represents God in the flesh. Abraham looked for a city whose builder and maker is God, “For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” (Hebrews 11:10)

Again through Jeremiah the anointing selects a strange sign.

Jeremiah 30:5-7
5 For thus saith the Lord; We have heard a voice of trembling, of fear, and not of peace.

6 Ask ye now, and see whether a man doth travail with child? wherefore do I see every man with his hands on his loins, as a woman in travail, and all faces are turned into paleness?

7 Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble, but he shall be saved out of it.

Believers must continue to view God’s ways from the mountain of the anointing and not fall under the shadow of Gibeon. In the midst of great turmoil and upheaval of the earth, God is birthing a new people to Himself through the sign of stewardship, placing His anointing upon him.

Jesus said, “Remember Lot’s wife” (Luke 17:32). Lot’s wife is the very opposite of Sarah. Lot’s wife was not a woman of faith, but simply rode on Lot’s coattails to reap the benefits of his relationship with Abraham. She was along for the ride and received the benefits of Lot’s faith, but did not accept the challenges, nor did she accept the strange signs as Sarah did. 

When the challenges and conflict grew, the faith of Lot’s wife did not. She was only looking for a way out, a way to prosper, a way to get ahead, a way to preserve what she had. When God gave a commandment to Lot and his wife to flee their home and not to look back, Lot’s wife looked back (favouring the familiar ties), and she became a pillar of salt.

Leaving Haran with Abraham’s nephew, Lot, she also faced the same afflictions as Sarah, but she did not benefit by the same faith. We see the same example in Joab. He was a relative of David and, therefore, endured the same hardships as David, fleeing from Saul and doing battle with the Philistines; yet Joab was not a man of faith.

Believers today who follow the negative examples of Lot’s wife and Joab are riding the coattails of faith in the history of biblical events. Just because they endure persecution and oppression does not mean they possess true faith. Each time God placed a challenge for them in the anointing, they refused the sign and chose rather to reflect upon familiar things (as Lot’s wife), rather than the revelation of grace.

As it was in the days of Lot and Noah, so it is today. The events of each day continued to appear normal for Lot and Noah.  Oppression, wealth, and religion were the topics of the day, which are the same topics of our news each today.

God always challenged each generation with stewards of grace up to the time of each consummation, to bring all things to a conclusion (the flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah).

God has always performed strange tasks through His selected stewards, as Apostle Paul wrote saying, “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets.” (Hebrews 1:1)

God thus keeps faith in the anointing rather than in the letter of man’s tradition. By these things God introduces His new thought and brings separation for cleansing, as we read about in the lives of Lot’s wife and Joab.