You might wonder why God allows Satan to disguise himself in a religious culture that counterfeits His truth. For instance, ministers who claim to believe in a Jesus-centered faith, but deny His covenant. That is one example of the serpent disguising his deception to pass himself off as the bearer of Jesus’ good news.

In truth, it is not possible to be Jesus-centered without having your faith centered or joined to Jesus’ covenant where God initiates and sustains our reciprocation, making spiritual growth and transformation possible. When your faith is missing all of the things that God placed in Jesus’ covenant, a self-serving faith is being taught – and that is the serpent in disguise.

It’s become popular for ministers to sidestep Jesus’ covenant by claiming to open their hearts to the gifts through which the power of the Holy Spirit is experienced, namely miracles, healing, prayer, prophecy, and tongues.

But seeing that these gifts are taken out of Jesus’ covenant house and placed in independent ministry houses, the gifts are no longer sanctified, but used to express one’s own ideas about prophecy, tongues, miracles and healing, and prayer.

Ministers assume that just because they believe in the sovereign will of God to distribute His gifts to the body, that the gifts and power of God are still sanctified when taken outside of Jesus’ covenant. God spoke about this misguided mindset through His Prophet Haggai.

Haggai 2:12
If one bear holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and with his skirt do touch bread, or pottage, or wine, or oil, or any meat, shall it be holy? And the priests answered and said, No.

There was no doubt that God had intended that the things of His covenant be regarded as holy. But misguided priests thought that as long as they held onto what was holy, that whatever they touched was also holy. In other words, they could use the things of God in their own way and it would not matter. But they were wrong and God said so.

The same thing is happening today. There’s an expectation among ministers that if they read something in the Bible and act on it, like teaching how to prophesy because it’s in the Bible, or teaching how to pray fervently for miracles, or praying in tongues because they read it in the Bible, that God will follow through and they would have an encounter with Him.

While prophecy is true, God designed an effect with prophecy and while tongues is true, God designed an effect with tongues. God planned to personally oversee prophecy and tongues and therefore He placed them both in the priesthood of the believer and gave these functions a foundational knowledge that He placed in the hands of the apostles to hand to the people for their own stewardship of His grace.

Once the calling of the apostle was misapplied to organizational structures and assigned to those who fathered others in false knowledge, and pioneered movements that did not restore the church to Jesus’ covenant, God’s intelligent design for your faith to mirror Christ was denied.

We said earlier that it is not possible to be Jesus-centered without having your faith centered or joined to Jesus’ covenant. When ministers claim they are Jesus-centered, but take prophecy and tongues out of Jesus’ covenant, they untethered these things from the power of God. Another power (seducing spirits) takes these things and works with the wisdom of man and his religious aspirations.

What is done with them is unclean. And this is also something God is working to get across to misguided ministers. Let’s read on in verse 13 where we see how the Prophet Haggai continues on as the voice of the Lord, speaking reproof of truth.

Haggai 2:13
Then said Haggai, If one that is unclean by a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean? And the priests answered and said, It shall be unclean.

We witness God addressing a difference of reasoning through the Prophet Haggai that the priests and the people were blind to and so it is today. People think that if they reason with the scriptures they’re reasoning with God, but something important is being overlooked.

When you untether the scriptures from Jesus’ covenant, you reason the scriptures according to the struggles you see in yourself and the struggles you see in the world. Your reasoning has changed.

Anytime you change your reasoning from Jesus’ covenant to apply scripture to yourself and your struggles you are representing yourself before the throne of God, meaning that Jesus is not mediating on your behalf. Jesus will only mediate on our behalf when the roots of our faith are fully planted in Him – in His covenant, stewardship, and priesthood.

We can see why God says that a person is unclean by the dead knowledge they preach or heard preached by apologists, scholars, theologians, and misguided Bible enthusiasts who say that Jesus’ covenant is not for today.

When an unclean person touches tongues and touches prophecy and touches the gifts and prayer, shall these things be unclean? God’s teaching point stands out – yes, these things that God intended for good are now unclean. What God meant for a blessing is used against Him and the vessel that does such a thing is unclean.

Haggai :14
Then answered Haggai, and said, So is this people, and so is this nation before me, saith the Lord; and so is every work of their hands; and that which they offer there is unclean.

You might say, “That’s not me because I didn’t mean it that way; that was not in my mind to do; that was not my intention.”

No one sets out to intentionally become the standard bearer of false knowledge and mouthpiece of the wrong kingdom. That’s why God opened this new season that He calls the Second 8th Week of righteousness to manifest the restoration of Jesus’ covenant faith through His true apostles.

As God sets the contrast between His truth and Satan’s unclean knowledge, He’s teaching the importance of His apostolic governance. Without His apostles, the scriptures are contrived to address the questions the natural man creates for himself as his logic begs to be fed. And the contrived answers are priced double.

In other words, many books are written to address man’s questions when he is separated from God and His covenant. There is a heavy price to pay as one labors with each answer contrived by the logic of man.

I remember a divine dream and prophecy God gave me in 1984 where He addressed this. Those who appointed themselves as leaders of the church set up shop so to speak.

I awoke at 6 AM weeping and travailing in the Spirit. I could feel a powerful presence of God. In this dream Jesus was dressed as an ordinary man in the street clothes of the time. As He walked from place to place, I walked with Him and saw what He saw. People did not recognize Him as the Son of God and mistreated Him. In one instance He went into a store. When He walked in, everyone walked out.

A man said to Jesus, “It will cost you 25 cents to ask me a question and 50 cents to get an answer.”

There were many rooms of pleasure in a house that represented the church. In each room we visited people were ridiculing Jesus. Then He changed His form into that of the Son of God. There was a brightness beyond description and I could not look at Him. His angel declared to all, “Bow the knee, He is the Son of God.”

Jesus showed me that the road to eternal life had become the road to death. I wept at what I saw and asked the Lord what He would have me to do. I awoke from the divine dream, asking this question. The Lord said, “Tell them I am come to bring life. I am come to bring them out of darkness.”

A prophecy followed concerning that state of the church 40 years ago, which today has not changed as we see ministry leaders trying to reverse engineer the calling of the apostle to fit it within the very system God is calling them out of.

Instead of accepting the apostles Jesus sent and accepting God’s call to return to His covenant knowledge and priesthood, they describe an apostle according to the defining features of their own ministry. You might have heard a few of these misguided definitions.

– An apostle is a church planter.
– An apostle births a movement.
– An apostle pioneers new works.
– An apostle is some sort of spiritual father to someone.

This is not the role of an apostle. These are all efforts to reform the church independent of God. Ministers today whitewash these failed efforts by pointing out how their prayers for revival should count for something and speak to the heart of the matter – getting souls saved! But in truth, their revivals are not bringing souls into God’s kingdom.

I want to share a portion of the prophecy that followed the divine dream I received, whereas the Lord said:

“Abominations reside within My house and its inhabitants practice them skillfully.
What are these idols that you adhere to, to hear My words saith the Lord? My servant whom I sent reports, Yea My Spirit makes search, and declares that My people seduce the innocent and takes delight in her whoredoms and thinks as the fool thinks, saith the Lord.

For you take the simple-minded in your craftiness and you drink of the table of the uncircumcised. Shall you direct My ways, saith the Lord? Are you My counselor that I wait at your gates to receive your wisdom? You build and rejoice as those that defile themselves with strong drink and you roll in your own vomit proudly.

I have searched and the witness is true. The harvest of your labors is vain and those that you have gathered into your barn the rodent devours, and those that escape the rodents, the mildew devours, and those that escape the mildew you devour with your labors of your business.

What are these things unto Me, saith the Lord, when your fruit is as the wild trees which the frost has damaged? My ways are not hid, but you grope for the Me as the blind the wall.

Also, My servant says that you have chosen you a leader and made him your king. Even when your mouths I have filled, you declare another whom I have not chosen.

Are you angry at Me because I tell you the truth? Will you indeed turn your nose in innocence? You violate My ordinances and scribble laws that are foreign to Me, and say, ‘The Lord says’ when I was unaware of your doings. You measure Me according to the measure of a man whom I have created and you have lost yourselves in your labors.

The ways old have you carefully preserved and the traditions of the past you purchase and display as a store displays its wares. But I will buy none of your wares, for they be traditions of treachery and blood and strifes, as a cloth that is dyed to suit its bearer.

The Spirit says that you look for vices that fill the soul as a man draws his last breath. You seek these things from afar and commune with those that do the same. But I AM He that stands near and not afar off and you regard My presents as offensive.

But every knee shall bow to the Son of God. For the way of life has become the road to death to many that pass by the way. Yea the road is full of carcasses. My way is life. Turn not aside at the cries of the disobedience that consume your soul with delights. Walk in My ways, for I am come to bring life. I am come to bring you out of darkness, saith the Lord.”

This new apostolic season is the time of temptation for the church. God allows Satan to promote counterfeit options to weed out the believers that follow the voices of seducing spirits who speak through a person’s religious aspirations.

Did you know: Many run to the scriptures to defend their position, but they are simply using scripture to project an outcome with their imagination. This is how Satan challenged Jesus when He was on earth – with scripture – but Jesus did not consent to the serpent’s disguise.

From the beginning, Satan challenged God to rival Him and His plan, but God used Satan’s provocation to give the angels of heaven their first discernment project to observe good and evil.

Revelation 20:3
And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.

Jesus selected Judas Iscariot with that same pattern in mind for His apostles. Although Judas was one of the 12, he built his own concepts about what he thought Jesus would do or should do. Judas projected an outcome with his imagination about how God’s kingdom on earth would be formed once Jesus released His power and subdued the earth. Every time Judas heard the words of the Master, he built his own independent ministry in his mind. Jesus’ words were food for Judas’ imagination.

The same thing is happening today as ministers imagine what it would take to preach their gospel to today’s world. How can they ignite hearts to pray? How can they stir hearts to awaken to righteousness? How should God’s kingdom be built on earth?

The words they find in the Bible are food for their imagination. A belief in the gifts of the Spirit, the move of the Spirit, and God’s sovereign will, these things act as a shield for their conscience to hide behind.

Demons of philosophies mold the sinner’s perception by using their own realities to build spiritual ideas about their version of God and His kingdom and what glorifies Him. Seducing spirits take the form of a witness that sets before the wicked a logic that flatters them.

Their feelings and passions chain the heart to this false witness to shield their guilt from God even as Adam and Eve also sought to hide among the trees as God entered the Garden.

Genesis 3:8
And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.

What was agreeable to the imagination about the great possibilities of being a god would mean to adventure beyond the present restrictions. Satan’s temptation to them is the same he offers today. Just accept the evil knowledge I give you and you will rule your world.

For Adam and Eve, eating the fruit the serpent offered did not require faith. Just as today, partaking of false knowledge requires no responsibility to Jesus’ covenant, but offers many opportunities to be entertained.

Genesis 3:13
And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.

God only has the power to save, heal, and deliver our soul, but He provided a new covenant in Jesus for us to access all of His spiritual tools beginning with the apostolic calling which Jesus selected to teach His doctrine, to teach man how to reason with Him based on what He has initiated for our contact with Him.