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Questions & Answers

Dog-eating bears

First posted: August 26, 2005

 

Question

A visitor asked us about a dream that another sister (whom we shall call "Ms. D") recently had. In the dream, Ms. D was allowing a bear to eat one of her dogs. To Ms. D, her dogs are like her children. The question, therefore, is,

What are dog-eating bears? 

 

 

Answer

The bear

In order to understand this dream, we must first understand the spiritual meaning of "bears". The bear is related to three different spirits:

 

  1. It is related to the Amorite spirit of self-exaltation, since Amorites are "tall and strong" (Amos 2:9), and the bear is a large and strong creature.

     

  2. It is related to the Hittite spirit of terror, since bears are terror-inspiring creatures. Bears hibernate in caves, which correlates with Sheol; as we have said before, Sheol is a cave of Hittite terror and torment.

     

  3. It is related to the Canaanite spirit, since Canaanites are related to "people-pleasing" dogs in Scripture, and bears have behavioral traits that are very similar to dogs': they like to rummage through garbage and they eat just about anything. Before they grow up to be "Amoritely fierce" and "Hittitely terrorizing", bears are "cute and cuddly" cubs that evoke emotions similar to those evoked by cute little dogs. The Canaanite spirit is a spirit that emphasizes the pleasures of "soul communion", and bears definitely evoke a desire for "soul communion" with them when they are small. This is the reason why the most popular stuffed animal is the "teddy bear".

 

If you revisit the "triangle of evil", you will notice that the bear encompasses the 3 spirits on the left edge of the triangle.

 

In short, bears represent Amorite-Hittite kings who like to...

  1. ...possess and control others

  2. ...intimidate people into obeying them

  3. ...use the "cuteness" of soul communion as a tool to manipulate naive "children" before gripping them under their control 

 

Many bears do not attack you if you "play dead", which is a figure of how spiritual "bears" do not attack you as long as you die to your prophetic calling in life. Amorites are selfishly competitive by nature, and they become jealous of people who rise up and threaten their popularity and power. Anytime they see anyone grow "too much", they quickly send their "secret service" (the Hittites) to intimidate that person and silence him or her. If the person yields to the Hittite intimidation and acts "dead", the bear will walk away. Bears silence people by banishing them to "spiritual Sheols".


Dogs

In Ms. D's dream, she was allowing the bear to eat one of her dogs, which are like children to her. Dogs represent people with God's Spirit of Service who have gone "Canaanite". Therefore, the dogs in the dream speak of believers under Ms. D's care who have been trained by the surrounding atmosphere to be "pastor pleasers". It is unfortunate, but many believers in the Church have been trained into thinking that their service to God is equivalent to serving the pastor and the ministries in their local congregation. These believers, who have an endowment of God's Spirit of Service, have a fervent desire to serve, but that desire is directed away from serving God and directed towards serving "ministers". When we are operating in God's Spirit of Service, we will serve people, but we will serve all people (not just the so-called "ministers"), and we will serve them because we see the God-potential in each one of them.

 

In many believers, the Spirit of Service gets misdirected in such a way that they see themselves as insignificant little servants who contribute a "grain of sand" in the large beach of "religious activities". They turn into tail-wagging "dogs" (spiritually speaking) who will do anything to please the "ministers". By doing so, they sacrifice their spiritual potential for the sake of the "ministers" and the "congregation". When this happens, their spiritual value rises and falls with the success or failure of the congregation and the "ministers", and they become the "ministers"' permanent slaves.

 

Callings for lunch

"Bear ministers" don't care about the prophetic potential of the believers within their sphere of influence. All they care about is aggrandizing themselves, and they are happy when a believer places him or herself at their total disposal; they then proceed to eat up the believer's prophetic potential, and they move on to their next victim. This "eating up" is done by enveloping the believer in two types of activities:

 

  1. Purposeless Hittite activities that look and feel "spiritual" but serve no true prophetic purpose.

     

  2. A great number of human activities with a great deal of Canaanite soul interaction that make the believer think that he or she is serving the Lord when he or she is actually serving the earthly purposes of "ministers" and their human little kingdoms.

     

This is the reason why Ms. D saw the bear eating one of her dogs.


Facing the bear

There are two things that the Lord is telling Ms. D. First, she must stand up to the bear and snatch her spiritual children away from it, and second, she must help the believers under her care to see themselves as God's lambs rather than the bear's dogs.

 

"34And David said unto Saul, Thy servant kept his father’s sheep, and there came a lion, and a bear, and took a lamb out of the flock: 35And I went out after him, and smote him, and delivered it out of his mouth: and when he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him, and slew him. 36Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear: and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, seeing he hath defied the armies of the living God." (1 Samuel 17:34-36)


David was willing to sacrifice his life in order to save the life of one lamb. He saw so much value in each sheep that he considered that one sheep was worth risking his life over. He did not say, "Oh, well, that's the way life goes; easy comes, easy goes; that sheep is replaceable". The sheep were not even David's (they were his father's), which means that David was not interested in rescuing the lamb out of selfish reasons.

 

In the same way, the Father has given each one of us a group of people who fall within our sphere of influence and for whom we must be willing to fight against Amorite-Jebusite lions and against Amorite-Hittite bears. We must value their prophetic calling and be willing to selflessly sacrifice ourselves so that that prophetic calling is not lost.

 

Amorites never give up without a fight. They are strong-willed people who will only be defeated if someone stronger rises up to challenge them and snatch their "spoils" away from them, and their "spoils" happen to include God's people:

 

"21When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace: 22But when a stronger than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils." (Luke 11:21-22)

 

Dogs to men

Besides facing the bear head on, the second thing that Ms. D must do is help her spiritual children not to see themselves the way Hazael saw himself:

 

"And Hazael said, But what, is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing? And Elisha answered, The LORD hath shewed me that thou shalt be king over Syria" (2 Kings 8:13)

 

Like Elisha, we must all help the Hazaels around us to see the awesome spiritual potential that God sees in them. We must help unleash the prophetic potential in each believer around us. We must help them not to see themselves as "dogs" and "servants of men" but rather as God's lambs.

 

As we have said before, the word "lamb" (arnion in Greek) is used by the Lord to refer to believers who will manifest the Lord's Glory and Power. Outside of John 21:15, where it is applied to us, the word arnion is used in the book of Revelation to refer to the "Lamb of God". As we have said before, the Lord's words in John 21:15-17 reveal that there are three levels of pastoring. The highest level, "level-3 pastoring", sees the "Lamb of God" (the arnion) inside each believer. Level-2 pastors sees believers as semi-independent "teenagers" who will never be able to live fully independent of them. Level-1 pastors (the lowest level of pastoring) see believers as nothing more than dependent little sheep who will never amount to much in the spirit realm and who are so insignificant that they can only "contribute" in the spirit realm when bunched up in "large numbers" under the covering of the "revered ministers". Congregations possessed by bear "ministers" operate at level-1 pastoring.

 

In order to help her spiritual children change from "dogs" to "lambs", Ms. D may also want to consider what David did for Mephibosheth, who had a very low image of himself:

 

"5Then king David sent, and fetched him out of the house of Machir, the son of Ammiel, from Lodebar. 6Now when Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, was come unto David, he fell on his face, and did reverence. And David said, Mephibosheth. And he answered, Behold thy servant! 7And David said unto him, Fear not: for I will surely shew thee kindness for Jonathan thy father’s sake, and will restore thee all the land of Saul thy father; and thou shalt eat bread at my table continually. 8And he bowed himself, and said, What is thy servant, that thou shouldest look upon such a dead dog as I am?" (2 Samuel 9:5-8)


As we have said before, Mephibosheth was crippled by his nurse at the age of 5, which is a figure of how ministers spiritually cripple God's children, turning them into believers who are permanently dependent on them. Just like David, Ms. D must work to restore the Mephibosheths around her and help them to walk in the judging and conquering authority that God has endowed each one of us with.

 

To help her spiritual children, Ms. D must make them aware of the fact that their value is derived from God and not from any "minister" or "ministry". Believers must be willing to heed God's red-horse shout and go out into the "uncovered" wilderness of prophetic impartation where our only covering is God Himself.

 

As we grow in our "lamb" nature, we begin to grow in the "latter Adam" nature that God has placed in us. The word "Adam" literally means "man" in Hebrew. Therefore, as the "Lamb of God" is manifested in us, the "Son of Man" in us is revealed.

 

"44Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh. 45Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season? 46Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. 47Verily I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his goods. 48But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; 49And shall begin to smite his fellowservants, and to eat and drink with the drunken; 50The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, 51And shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." (Matthew 24:44-51)