Audio first posted: October 24, 2026
Below is a machine-generated transcript of the The just shall live by faith - Part 4 audio word, with a few minor manual edits. At the bottom, after the transcript, is a machine-generated summary of the transcript.
| Hello, in this audio word, we'd like to continue meditating on | |
| the principle of the just shall live by faith. We saw that the Lord mentions that in Galatians 3:11. And because of that, we meditated on chapter 3 of Galatians. But the Lord also mentions that phrase in Habakkuk chapter 2. So that's why we have been in that chapter meditating on | |
| what the Lord means when he calls us to live by faith and that out of that faith flows justice. And we were seeing that in Habakkuk 2 there are five woes and each woe is related to each of the five spirits | |
| that come from the distortion of the five endowments. In other words, the five endowments of Ephesians 4:11 are apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher. And when the apostle goes bad, then the Jebusite spirit emerges. When the prophet goes bad, the Hittite spirit emerges. When the evangelist goes bad, the Amorite spirit emerges. | |
| And when the pastor goes bad, the Canaanite spirit emerges. And when the teacher goes bad, the Girgashite spirit emerges. And | |
| When any of those endowments go bad, it's because the soul has decided to take dominion over the spirit. And we've been seeing that that's where living by faith comes in. When you live by faith, you are trusting the promise of God that a new spirit man is inside of you. And you connect to that spirit man. You make a decision by faith. You decide to be in the spirit. | |
| And that automatically begins to change everything that you produce in your actions. And that's how life and justice flow out of you. | |
| It's a decision by faith that you make and you enter into the state of being in the spirit. And that means that the spirit will be king and the soul will be subservient to the spirit. So when the soul wants to exalt itself, as it says in Habakkuk 2:4, when it says his soul is lifted up, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him. That's when the five endowments, | |
| become misused and um and so the Lord is showing what happens when your soul is exalted when you're when you're not living by faith and the five woes that come from that uh so it's almost as if the Lord is showing uh this is what you look like when your soul is exalted um above the spirit uh you start behaving like this and um | |
| With each endowment, there's a woe associated to it. And the more I've been meditating on it, reading the chapter, it feels like the Lord is in a way kind of painting a portrait of how pathetic it is when our soul is exalted and misuses either of the five endowments. | |
| So it's almost as if the Lord is saying, this is what you look like, how pathetic you are, so that we won't fall into that. And so that also we can recognize those who are misusing the endowments and we can judge them in the spirit using these woes. | |
| So, for example, if someone is using the evangelistic endowment, then we can pronounce in prayer this woe against that person. And that woe will hit that person and confront that person to either wake up and submit to the Spirit or... | |
| kind of add judgments to that person until that person is fully defeated or destroyed. And I say destroyed, it could be figuratively or literally. So that's what the woes are for. | |
| It's to expose what it is to not live by faith, to have the soul be exalted over the spirit, and to also use these woes in prayer, because the ultimate goal is to end the dominion of the soul on earth so that the spirit of God may be king. And that's what faith is about. Faith is, as we shared before, if you read Habakkuk 2, which talks about the Joshua lived by faith, | |
| You'll see that God is not talking about using your faith to get things from God, to get blessings from God, which is what the matriarchal church, the Christian matriarchal church teaches people. The church system teaches people to use faith to get things because everything is from a pastoral mindset, provision. Provision for your needs. Everything is about your needs. | |
| Instead of being about the expansion of God's kingship, seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these other things shall be added unto you. So God, when you're living in faith, in true faith, the focus will be to end the dominion of the soul so that God's kingship can be manifested, the kingship of God's spirit. | |
| So that's the mindset of a person who's really living by faith, as Habakkuk 2:4 and Galatians 3:11 say. So we've seen the first two woes. And if the Lord allows it, we may go into the third woe in this recording. But I felt prompted of the Lord to say, | |
| I believe it's of the Lord, to go back to the first two woes and say a couple of things there that we may not have said in a complete way, things that might have been missing that we may need to add to complete the thought, shall we say. | |
| So we saw that the first woe, and that starts in Habakkuk 2:6, is pointing to someone who is misusing the evangelistic endowment. In other words, what it looks like when the soul uses the evangelistic endowment without submitting to the spirit. And we'll read it again very quickly. | |
| It says, Woe to him, I'm reading from the middle of verse 6 of Habakkuk 2. So it says, Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his, how long? And to him that laideth himself with thick clay. And then verse 7, Shall they not rise up certainly that shall bite thee, and awake that shall vex thee, and thou shalt be for booties unto them? | |
| Verse 8, Because thou hast spoiled many nations, all the remnant of the people shall spoil thee, because of man's blood, and for the violence of the land, of the city, and of all that dwell therein. | |
| So one thing we wanted to share that it's like a thought that the Lord deposited in my heart a few days ago. And I hadn't really seen it that way. And when I saw it, I said, oh, wow, yeah, that makes sense. And it's when at the end of verse six, when it says in the King James and to him that laid himself with thick clay, as we saw before, the | |
| That's a mistranslation. For example, if you look at the ESV, the English Standard Version, it says in Habakkuk 2:6, | |
| So that's what it really says. And I'll be frank, I have no idea why the King James monks translated that as thick clay. I have no idea. | |
| But I think the problem is they didn't understand. The word pledges didn't seem to make sense to them there. So that's why they had to maneuver that word in Hebrew until it made some sort of sense to them. And because there's a spiritual principle there that's not evident. | |
| Because why would it say, and you load yourself up with pledges? Because if you read the beginning of the verse, the first part of the verse, it really doesn't seem to go together. It says, woe to him that increases that which is not his, how long? And to him that loads himself with pledges. | |
| But if he's increasing with what is not his own, how is he getting into debt because the pledge | |
| This part kind of points to someone getting into debt. If you're acquiring stuff that is not yours, how are you accumulating debt? You would think that if you have more, then you owe other people less. So that's why it doesn't make a lot of sense if you read it like that. But then... | |
| We gave you the example of, for example, right now, at the time of this recording, there's a lot of | |
| of debt that's being piled up in the American economy and the world economy in general, you could say, but in particular, the American economy, because of all the foolish investment that's being done in AI, all the venture capitalists and banks and all these institutions, all these people are pouring money into AI and | |
| And the AI companies are accumulating an extraordinary amount of debt because they have an evangelistic calling or feeling that they have of taking over the world. They want to conquer the world. And they're doing it in an unrighteous way. And as they are doing it, they're accumulating debt. And it was going to come back to bite them. Just as it says in Habakkuk 2:7, Shall they not rise up suddenly that shall bite thee? | |
| So it will literally come back to bite them. And so that's an example of someone who's trying to conquer more than what is righteous or just or doing it in a wrong way. And we talked about Napoleon, how he... | |
| The evangelistic endowment becomes this thing where you just want to conquer more and more and more and more. And because of that, you stretch yourself too thin and you end up being defeated and owing because you... | |
| You went beyond your ability or your means because you were doing it in an unrighteous way. So that's a way of discerning what the Lord is – of interpreting what the Lord is saying there. But there's – it's like the Lord said, there's something deeper that I have there. This is the thought that came to my heart, and I believe it's of the Lord. | |
| And it's like the Lord reminded me of something that we had said before in a video recording on BitChute. And I went to look it up. I think it's Song of Songs, chapter 3, verses 6 through 11, part 89. | |
| And in that recording, so it's part 89 of the Song of Songs 3:6 through 11 series that we have been recording in these last few weeks and months at the time of this recording. And there the Lord had us meditate on Acts chapter 20, verse 4. So I'm just going to go read it very quickly. Let's see if I can... | |
| Pull it up here. So I'm going to the Blue Letter Bible website, the website we use all the time. So Acts 20, verse 4. Sorry, it says, And there accompanied him into Asias, Sopater of Berea, and of the Thessalonians, Aristarchus, and Secundus, and Gaius of Derbe, and Timotheus, and of Asias, Tychicus, and Trophimus. | |
| So these are people who are accompanying Paul. And when you read it, usually you just go, oh, it's a whole bunch of people. And you just read past it and kind of don't think too much of it. | |
| of it and keep going because usually if you're just reading the Bible for quote, information, quote unquote, human information, all these names are going to seem very meaningless. But if you know that each word is breathed and inspired by the Spirit of God, and it is God speaking these words out, you know each word has significance. And that's when you realize, oh, God is trying to say something here. And | |
| And you start counting and you go, oh, there's seven names. So you go, oh, so it's something pointing to seven of something else. And usually, I wouldn't dare say always, but usually if there are seven things being listed, there's a good chance that they're connected to the seven spirits of God or the seven evil spirits. So as it turns out, they are connected to the seven spirits of God. And the... | |
| the name Aristarchus, uh, is connected, uh, to the spirit of God, uh, that, uh, from where the evangelistic endowment comes, uh, the spirit of Pergamos. And, um, that, um, and we saw when we were looking at this verse that Aristarchus, uh, uh, means best ruler and, uh, and, uh, | |
| as we were meditating on it, it became evident that someone is a best ruler when he puts people, the people that he rules over first. That's why here in the verse it says, at the beginning it says, so it says name and from where? | |
| And then it says, and of the Thessalonians, Aristarchus and Secundus. So it says, so in other words, the Lord could have said, Aristarchus of Thessalonica. But no, God said the Thessalonians first, and then Aristarchus. And Aristarchus literally means the best ruler or the best leader or something to that effect. And... | |
| So God is saying the best rulers are those who put the people they rule over first. That's why the Thessalonians are mentioned first. And it's also interesting, it doesn't say Thessalonica. It doesn't mention the city, but the people of the city. So that's why it says, and of the Thessalonians, Aristarchus, instead of saying Aristarchus of Thessalonica. So God is saying a good king, a good evangelistic person, | |
| is someone who puts the people, he exercises kingship over first. They come first. That's why they are mentioned before the name Aristarchus. And so it's like you have a debt towards the people that God gives you kingship over to care for them and to put them first. It's like you owe them that. | |
| in the spirit, if that makes sense. When you're manifesting the evangelistic endowment in the spirit, you will be aware that you owe them your best, that you owe them putting their interests first, that you're not there to be served by them. | |
| to abuse your kingship, to take advantage of the power and the authority of your kingship to get things from them, that you're there to bless them. And that's the best ruler, the Aristarchus. And that's when you're exercising the evangelistic endowment in the spirit. | |
| And when that hit my heart, I said, oh, that's it. That's what the Lord is referring to when he says that in Habakkuk 2:6, woe to him who loads himself with pledges, with debt, like promising. And they don't realize that they're doing it, but whenever they start exercising the evangelistic endowment, they have a debt obligation. | |
| I don't know if the word is serving, but the debt of caring for the people that they rule over. So in the measure that they don't do that, they are in debt with God and with the people that they rule over, if that makes sense. And that's the debt that they begin to accumulate. | |
| Because God says, if you are going to exercise the evangelistic endowment, if you live by faith, you're going to always care about the people that you have authority over and put them first. And you have that debt. It's like you have this responsibility, this debt towards them. And if you don't fulfill that debt, then you start owing God and owing the people. | |
| Even if you think that you are getting away with things as a king, domineering over people and controlling them and all that, you don't realize you're accumulating debt because you owe them to serve them and to bless them and to care for them. So that's what the Lord is saying about the evangelistic endowment and what happens when you use it in the soul and not the spirit. | |
| So that was one thing. And the other thing that the Lord wanted us to mention, well, | |
| In fact, this was something that just came to my heart as we were reading Habakkuk 2:6 through 8 a moment ago. I hadn't realized that, but in verse 8, and we may have mentioned this before, I don't recall, when it says, because thou hast spoiled many nations, all the remnant of the people shall spoil thee. And it's interesting that God phrases it like that, all the remnant of the people shall spoil thee. | |
| So I believe in my heart that the Lord is saying, you as an unrighteous Amorite king, you know, in other words, someone who misuses the evangelistic endowment because they are ruled, they allow the soul to misuse it. | |
| You may come and spoil many nations and do a lot of damage and plunder and take from people and run them over. But God is saying there will always be a remnant. You may want to wipe them out. But when you're an evangelistic, an Amorite king, there will always be a remnant. | |
| that you will never be able to destroy like a seed of righteousness amongst the people that you are plundering that you will never be able to destroy. And that little remnant, that indestructible remnant of the people will spoil you. You've been spoiling, taking and plundering from people. | |
| But there always will be a remnant that you cannot destroy that will rise up and eventually spoil you. And that's almost like a promise from God. It will happen because when you're not in the spirit, you don't have the authority to destroy the remnant, if that makes sense. There's always this little remnant seed that will never be able to be destroyed. | |
| because you're not a righteous king. You're not exercising the evangelistic endowment in righteousness. And then like an example you could say would be like the Roman emperors who tried to | |
| to destroy Christianity, but they never could, they were never able to. And even though it was a weak group of people that didn't have political power or military power or anything, mighty as those emperors were, they were unable to destroy the remnant and eventually the remnant took them over. | |
| even though it was a remnant with a lot of flaws, eventually a remnant that had a lot of issues and that were living in the soul and not the spirit, but there was enough righteousness in that remnant of people, especially those who weren't righteous in the spirit, that eventually they conquered the Roman Empire instead of the Roman Empire exterminating them. | |
| Because even though the church was falling into the matriarchal spirit, there was always a remnant of righteous people, the people who were willing to suffer in the spirit and not let the enemy devastate them. Okay. | |
| So that was a couple of things that I believe the Lord wanted us to talk about from the first woe. And one was the thing about you having a debt towards the people that you rule over. And the second thing that I didn't realize until now, that there's this small remnant that the Amorites can never destroy. | |
| And it will come back eventually to defeat them. Okay. And the other thing that we wanted to share is about the second woe. And we already said this to a certain extent, I believe. But I think that we need to... | |
| emphasize it a little better. I believe we didn't say it quite right the first time. So we'll share this thought again in a little more detail. So in the second woe, we saw that it's a woe against those who use the prophetic endowment in the soul and not the spirit. And we saw that it | |
| For example, that second woe starts with, in verse nine, woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness to his house. | |
| that he may set his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the power of evil. And we saw the word evil was translated from Ra, which means Girgashite troubles and Girgashite vexation, that sort of thing. But it was interesting that the beginning of the verse when it says, Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness. The word evil there is also the word Ra. | |
| And we saw that covetousness were translated from batsa and betsa in Hebrew. And we saw that batsa and betsa points to the prophetic. And ra points to the Girgashite spirit, which is like the antithesis of the prophetic. So there's like an apparent contradiction there. But what that bears out is that when you're using the prophetic endowment in the soul, you end up living a self-contradictory life. | |
| So you're pretending to be the opposite of a Girgashite and you're falling precisely into the very thing that you are trying to be the opposite of, if that makes sense. So it's like the Lord is saying when the prophetic endowment is misused, it gets unrighteously mingled with the Girgashite spirit. | |
| And when you're operating in the prophetic endowment, you're supposedly operating in the lofty realm of the spirit, flying high above the trappings of earthliness. But when you're in the soul, that prophetic endowment becomes this very nasty mingling of high, lofty things with very Girgashite earthly things. | |
| And that's what is so repulsive about the prophetic endowment when it's used in the soul. It is this very kind of a weird mixture of two things that are contradicting each other. | |
| And it's almost as if that has to do with why the Lord says in the next verse, in verse 10, Habakkuk 2, thou hast consulted shame to thy house by cutting off many people and has sinned against thy soul. And it's kind of a very peculiar way of saying it. You sin, not sinning against others, you sin against your own soul. And it does say soul in Hebrew, nephesh. | |
| So what is it referring to? It's saying that you claim to be caring about the invisible part of yourself, but you don't realize that by misusing the prophetic endowment, instead of honoring the invisible part of yourself, your soul, you're actually sinning against it. | |
| So it kind of reinforces that a prophet who is in the soul is like self-contradictory. Instead of helping its own soul or exalting or enabling its own soul and blessing it, it's sinning against it. Instead of living in the spirit, it's being very Girgashite. Instead of being up high above the earthliness, it's being very earthly. | |
| um, it's mingling two things that don't go together. It's like an internal contradiction. And, um, and, and you end up sitting against your own soul. And that also goes with, um, something that I think we said in passing, um, | |
| And it was when we were looking at the appearances of Batza and Betza in other verses of Scripture. Those two words appear together in only six verses. | |
| The last verse is Habakkuk 2:9. But we saw that the second time that those two words are used together, batsa and betsa, is Proverbs 15:27. It says, He that is greedy of gain, batsa betsa. | |
| So it says troubles his own house. So it's again that same thing of like you doing harm to yourself, self-inflicted harm. You're sinning against your own soul. You're troubling your own house. | |
| So it is bringing damage to yourself. And I believe it's connected to how when you misuse the prophetic endowment, when your soul is using it and not your spirit, that you are living a contradiction and you're doing harm to yourself. | |
| Because that's naturally people tend to help themselves, you know, even if it. | |
| Even if it's at the expense of others, the natural instinct is to bless yourself. So this is kind of like the very opposite of it. It goes against the natural in a sense, if that makes sense. | |
| Um, and, uh, and, and there's something interesting here also, uh, when it says, uh, at the end, he that hateth gifts shall live. Why does it say it like that? And, uh, as I was meditating on that, um, I felt prompted to search, uh, to see how this verse is this first, uh, Proverbs 15:27, uh, is, um, is translated in other versions. So, um, | |
| Let me see if I'm going to go to the English Standard Version. And there it says, whoever is greedy for unjust gain troubles his own household, but he who hates bribes will live. So they translated it as bribes. And I believe the word in Hebrew was matan or something. Let me just confirm that. Let's see the word for bribes. Oh, matanah. | |
| Matanah. And that word literally means gift. For example, the name Matthew, I believe the mat part in Matthew comes from matanah, which means gift. So Matthew means gift of God or something to that effect. And I believe we've seen this word before. It's also connected to, I think, Nathan. Nathan. | |
| I could be wrong on that, but the thing is that I've seen this word before and it is literally the word gift. So the King James is technically correct. That's the correct translation. But when I saw the word bribe in the English Standard Version, it kind of gave me a little more understanding. | |
| And I praise of the Lord. It's almost as if to say, what is a bribe? It's when you get something for nothing, and when you do that, you pervert justice. | |
| And that's what the Lord is talking about, that when you're using the prophetic endowment in the soul, what you're trying to do, as we were sharing before, is to bypass the process. | |
| You know, just like a thief who robs a bank or whatever is trying to escape from the drudgery of earthly existence, of earthly work by gaming the system, by going around the process instead of working hard. | |
| or asking God for help and all that, they want an easy out, so they go rob a bank. So it's trying to bypass the process. | |
| So what the Lord is saying in Proverbs 15:27 is when you have the prophetic endowment and you use it in the soul, you will be trying to bypass the process because you don't want the drudgery of the natural. But someone who is in the spirit, who's living by faith, | |
| will hate gifts and then live. And what does that mean? It says, I don't want something for nothing. That's kind of what is kind of being implied there. Hating gifts, it doesn't mean that you hate the gifts of God or something. It's saying, I don't want to be given something as a gift that bypasses the process. I don't want something for nothing. I'm not looking for something that's too good to be true. | |
| I will hate that sort of thing and therefore I will live. I will not be trapped by it and I will live. That's what the Lord is saying there. And also like people who are very prophetic but who are in the soul, they become obsessed with spiritual gifts. | |
| With exercising spiritual gifts because it's always a way of bypassing the natural and getting things without going through the normal process or the natural process. And that's not that that's necessarily wrong, but they become obsessed with that. | |
| And they love gifts, but they love them in the soul, if that makes sense. And because of that, they get trapped by them because the gifts of God become just a means to an end. They become tools to get what their soul wants, easy money, easy success. | |
| Instead of. Producing the righteousness of God. And that becomes a trap. And they are killed by that. And they sin against their own souls. So yeah. So I know those are simple thoughts. But I believe the Lord. I felt this need. This burden to share that. And. | |
| There were also a couple of things that we wanted to mention here about Batza Betza. So I'm going to go back. Let's see here. The Lord had me write something down here on a piece of paper. And I'll be frank, I have no idea why I wrote this, but let me go there. | |
| I wrote Proverbs 11:29. So I'm just going to go there and the judge shall live by faith. So by faith, I pray I'll see what's going on here. Oh, there we go. Now I understand. Yes, what happened was... | |
| In that verse that says, you know, Proverbs 15:27, he that is greedy of gain, he that is batsa betsa, troubleth his own house, but he that hateth gifts shall live. It's like I felt the Lord prompting me to look at verses that have the word troubleth. | |
| and house, but in the Hebrew. And that's how I, yeah, that's how we arrived at Proverbs 11:29. So what happens is the word troubleth was translated from the Hebrew word akar. And the word house was translated from bet or bait, you know, like, like Bethlehem, | |
| That B-E-T-H at the beginning, that means house. So that's the word basically where house is translated from in that verse, Proverbs 15:27. But as it turns out... | |
| There are five verses in scripture that have the two words, akar and beth, you know, trouble and house. The verb to trouble and house. And the first verse is Proverbs 11:29. It says, He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind, and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart. | |
| So he that troubleth, he that achar, his own house, his own bet, shall inherit the wind, and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart. So it's basically saying the wind, obviously in this context, is like something negative. It is something that... | |
| When it says inherit the wind, it's like saying you inherit nothing. You can't capture the wind. You can't own the wind. And so it's kind of like saying you're left empty-handed. And that's what the Lord is saying about the prophetic endowment when it's misused. You're left empty-handed. You inherit the wind. You inherit nothing of substance. | |
| You may get something quickly, but you don't get anything of substance. And then it says, and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart. And when I read that, it kind of like, I don't know, broke my heart a bit. It just felt like a deep sadness because it's almost like it portrayed how the prophetic endowment is so pathetic. | |
| when it's not used, when it's used by the soul. Because it says, and the fool shall be a servant to the wise of heart. Wise makes you think of the apostolic endowment of wisdom and judgments. And the word heart makes you think of the evangelistic endowment because that's the endowment most directly connected to the heart. | |
| So someone who is wise of heart is someone who has a combination of the apostolic and evangelistic endowments. And God is saying that those who misuse the prophetic become a servant to those who have the apostolic and the evangelistic endowment. So... | |
| And that has a lot of meanings. But I felt like the Lord was showing how pathetic the prophetic endowment becomes. You know, there are three male endowments, apostle, prophet, evangelist. And the prophet kind of like... | |
| relishes the fact that it is male in the sense that it's an endowment that is proactive, that goes out, as opposed to being female, which is receptive. It's not reactive, it's proactive. The prophetic is very proactive, very male in that sense. | |
| And God is saying that endowment becomes so pathetic that it becomes subservient to the other two. Subservient in a bad way. It becomes like inferior when compared to the other two male endowments, the apostolic and the evangelistic. I hope it's making sense. It's like when you're acting in the prophetic, you're using your prophetic endowment, but it's in the soul. Then you | |
| You don't have any wisdom substance, any apostolic substance, and you don't have any evangelistic substance. The evangelist is the one who conquers and inherits. And God just said, you will inherit the wind. You will inherit nothingness. It will just go through your hands like air, and you will not own anything. | |
| So the prophetic cannot conquer when it's in the soul, cannot conquer anything. It doesn't acquire, it may feel like it got something, but it's just wind. And then it disappears because, uh, um, the prophetic is operating in the spiritual realm, but there is no substance there because it's not operating in the spirit. It's in the soul. So you become pathetic, uh, | |
| You don't conquer anything of substance. And when people evaluate the substance of your being, they'll find nothing. Because the apostolic endowment is the endowment that is connected to the essence of things. And when they check your essence, they'll say, oh, there's nothing. This is meaningless. This is empty. | |
| Um, so, so that's what you become when you misuse the prophetic endowment in the soul. Uh, you will not have any apostolic substance. You will not have any evangelistic conquest or dominion or inheritance, nothing. You will inherit the wind, uh, and you will sin against your own soul and you'll trouble your own house. Um, I, I, I pray that makes sense. Uh, and, um, | |
| And there are three other verses that have the word achar or trouble in house, bet. Well, actually, one is Genesis 34:30, but I don't feel the prompting to read it. I could be wrong, but maybe we'll just read it very quickly. It says, and Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, ye have troubled, ye have achar'd, | |
| me to make me to stink among the inhabitants of the land among the Canaanites and the Perizzites and I being few in number they shall gather themselves together against me and slay me and I shall be destroyed I and my house | |
| So Jacob was resenting Simeon and Levi for taking revenge against the Hivites because one of the prince of the Hivites, and I forget his name, he had raped Dinah, their sister. | |
| the daughter of Jacob and the sister of Simeon and Levi. And Jacob did nothing. And Simeon and Levi decided to take revenge and they tricked the Hivites into circumcising themselves. And then when they were recovering from the circumcision, they slaughtered them. And Jacob was angry at them for having done that. | |
| And yes, both people are at fault there. Jacob, for not doing anything, his daughter had just been raped and he didn't do anything. He was too cowardly to do anything about it. And Simeon and Levi were wrong as well because they decided to use trickery and not go through the process of judgments in God to do justice on behalf of their sister, Dinah. | |
| So they used the holy things of God to exact their revenge in the soul, not the spirit. Because they told the Hivites to circumcise themselves, to join themselves to the family of Jacob. And the Hivites agreed. So circumcision was just like a covenant with God. | |
| And that became like a tool. They used something holy and spiritual to do something very much in the flesh, if that makes sense. So they were tampering with things of the spirit, but they did it in an unrighteous way as a way to get a quick advantage on the enemy and killing them. | |
| Instead of saying, Lord, our sister has been violated, help us, give us a way to do it in your spirit, in justice, in the justice of God, of you, Father, so that this unrighteous deed will not go unpunished on earth. They didn't do it like that. They wanted the cheap way out, the cheap way around, and that's what caused trouble to their own house. | |
| Just the very same principle that is in Proverbs 11:29 and Proverbs 15:27. So then another verse that has both words, a car, trouble, and house, bet, is 1 Kings 18:18. | |
| And it says, And he answered, I have not troubled Israel, but thou and thy father's house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Balaam or Baalim or Baals. And this is 1 Kings 18 is the famous chapter where Elijah battles the prophets of Baal. | |
| as you may recall. The words that we just read are from Ahab. So I'll read verse... | |
| I'll read from verse 15. 1 Kings 18, verse 15. And Elijah said, As the Lord of hosts liveth before whom I stand, I will surely shoot myself unto him today. Verse 16. So Obadiah went to meet Ahab and told him, and Ahab went to meet Elijah. Verse 17. And it came to pass when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, Art thou he that troubleth Israel? Verse 18. And he answered, | |
| Okay, so this is Elijah saying, and he answered, I have not troubled Israel, but thou and thy father's house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Balaam or Balim. So Elijah is saying to Ahab, you have troubled your own house because you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord. In other words, you have bypassed the processes of God. | |
| You want the shortcut. You want the easy way around things, like a bank robber trying to get money the easy way. So it all reinforces everything we've been saying, that God has been saying in all these verses. | |
| Uh, and, uh, and then it, it says, you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and you have followed Balaam. So, uh, and, and, and, and what is this chapter about the prophets, you know, the prophet of God, Elijah against the prophets of, of Baal, uh, of Baal. Uh, so that again, reinforces the connection of all of these things of this woe in Habakkuk to the prophetic endowment, the misuse of the prophetic endowment, um, | |
| Okay, so, and then the fifth verse that has the two words, akar and bet, trouble and house, is Proverbs 15:6. It says, in the house of the righteous is much treasure, in the bet of the righteous is much treasure, but in the revenues of the wicked is trouble, akar. | |
| So, again, the same principle. If you're living in righteousness, there's going to be a lot of treasure, a lot of substance, a lot of apostolic wisdom substance. And there's going to be evangelistic conquest, like a real evangelistic conquest, not air, not wind. | |
| But it says, but in the revenues of the wicked is a car. So there's going to be trouble if you try to get things in unrighteousness. | |
| bypassing the process. And the prophetic endowment is quick to do that. And that's the thing. When you have the prophetic endowment, you have this natural tendency to not be trapped by Girgashite methods, by the way everybody else does it. You try to go past that. | |
| It's like a natural tendency that God puts in you. But if your soul is in control, then it will misuse that inclination. And you think you're getting away. Oh, no, I'm not going to let myself be entrapped by the methods of man. And you end up accumulating or trying to get things outside of the righteous process of God. | |
| if that makes sense. And an example, it came to my heart shortly before this recording, and I feel like the Lord put it in my heart because of a video I was watching. And in the video, they talked a little bit about some artists, some music, I forget what group it was, a musical group from years ago. And they were talking about how the members of the group | |
| would do drugs and things like that. And then that made me think of like how in the 60s and early 70s, a lot of musicians would get into drugs. And the excuse was that drugs were a way to kind of liberate your creativity and you'd create this music that was made possible by drugs. | |
| And that to me, it's like the Lord said, that's an example of the prophetic endowment being used by the soul in trying to find an easy way out of things. And so the prophetic, it's like, yes, maybe the drugs loosened them in some way and helped them, and I say that in quotes, to produce a certain kind of music that they would not have produced otherwise. | |
| But it's like God was saying no. If they had operated in the spirit, yes, it might have taken a bit longer, but the music that they would have produced would have been as creative, if not more, and it would have had a substance that it never had because they acquired that music through drugs. | |
| if that makes sense. They would have been able to have the same creativity. It would have taken a bit longer. They've been able to have the same type of creative music, but not just the same type. It would have been even deeper with an apostolic substance that would have changed people's lives in a good way, in righteousness. It would have conquered things evangelistically in the spirit. | |
| And so that's what they were missing. So what we've been looking at right now have been the five appearances of | |
| the five verses that have the two words akar and bet together, the word trouble and house. And I'll just go through them very quickly. Proverbs 11:29. He that troubleth, he that akar, his own house, his own bet, shall inherit the wind, and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart, to the apostolic wisdom, and to the evangelistic heart. So it's talking about you will not have apostolic substance in you | |
| You will not have evangelistic conquest in you. All you'll be able to do is inherit the wind and nothing else. It's just fluff. It just comes and goes. And that's what happened to a lot of people who got into drugs in the music industry back in the 60s and 70s. They got into drugs and just destroyed their lives and they became nothing and then they got nothing out of it. | |
| Then Proverbs 15:27 says, He that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house, a car his own bet. But he that hateth gifts shall live. So in other words, you hate getting something for nothing, hate that principle, and you will not misuse the gifts of God if you're in the Spirit, if you live by faith, and then you shall live. | |
| and you will not bring trouble to your own house. And then the next verse, the other verse that we saw was Genesis 34:30, the one that talks about Jacob complaining to Simeon and Levi about them causing him trouble to his house because of what they did in revenge against those who raped his daughter. | |
| And then 1 Kings 18:18, the one that's the verse that says, and he answered, I have not troubled. I have not a car Israel. That was Elijah speaking, but thou and thy father's house and speaking to Ahab and thy father's house. That would be bet thy father's bet. | |
| in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Balaam, Baalim. So it's saying... | |
| Again, the thing, you've bypassed the processes. You have forsaken the commandments. You want the easy way to get what you want. It's misusing the prophetic. And this is a chapter that is the battle of a righteous prophet against unrighteous prophets of Baal. It says again, the use or misuse of the prophetic endowment. | |
| And then Proverbs 15:6 is the other verse we saw. It says in the house, in the bet of the righteous is much treasure, but in the revenues of the wicked is trouble or a car. So again, it's that thing that when you do it in righteousness, there is substance to it and it will be a substance that will not kind of escape your hands like water going through your fingers, if that makes sense. | |
| But if you are not doing it in righteousness, then your revenues will just cause you trouble, will just invite travail. It's like you open doors to spirits because you're operating in the prophetic. You're operating in a lot of spiritual stuff. And as you do these things that bypass the righteousness of God, you, without realizing it, draw in a lot of troubling spirits into your life and into your soul. | |
| You know, that's what happens with people who engage in witchcraft and all that. You know, they ask for something and they get it for free, you know, get it quickly. And they think they got away with it, but they open a door. Yeah, they got what they asked for. They got it very quickly. But with that came a lot of trouble and then a curse on their family and in their homes and everything. | |
| And this happens very literally, you know, with people who engage in witchcraft and Dalian, those things, you know, dark arts and stuff like that. Their houses become cursed. Their lives become full of turmoil and weird accidents and horrible deaths and things like that. So it's the consequence of... | |
| because you opened the door to spirits. You were dabbling in things of the spirit, so then you opened the door for these spirits to come in because you asked for something quick without going through the process of God. | |
| So that's what that second woe in Habakkuk is talking about. And when you misuse the prophetic endowment that way, you're not living by faith. You're not living in the spirit. And you will have consequences. And it's pathetic. I pray that sticks in your heart and in my heart. | |
| how God is showing how pathetic it is to live in the soul, to misuse the, so far we've seen, the evangelistic and the prophetic endowment in the soul. And it's interesting, those are the two grace endowments, as we've shared on the website many times. The two grace endowments are prophet and evangelist. Prophet is spiritual grace. Evangelist is natural grace. | |
| So God mentions the two grace endowments first because they are the ones that get misused the fastest by the soul when you're not living by faith. | |
| And in fact, when you're misusing these endowments, it's because you have lack of faith. The prophetic endowment, it tries to cut corners. It's basically saying, I don't trust, I don't have faith in the judgments of God, in the justice of God, in the righteousness of God. That's just too much work. It's not worth it. I don't believe, I don't have faith in going through the process of God. And the evangelist also, when he... | |
| exercises the evangelistic endowment in the soul he's showing lack of faith because he thinks that if he does not conquer for himself he's not going to get anything from God and God has said if you believe in me with me you have everything it's like you don't trust God oh no I don't think God | |
| is going to give me everything or that God's going to share with me. So I'm going to get things on my own. It's like you don't believe God. You don't have faith in what he said. And when you think, oh, I can defeat God and defeat his remnant and wipe it out. And God says, no, you will never wipe out my remnant. The remnant will come back and bite you at the end and will spoil you. | |
| But when you are not trusting God, you don't have faith in God, you think, oh, no, I can defeat the remnant. God says no. And you will eventually find yourself admitting that you were wrong. Look at Hitler. Look at Napoleon. Look at all these men who misused the evangelistic endowment that they had and thought they could – | |
| Hitler thought that he could overcome England. And England had a righteous remnant spirit in it. And no matter how hard he tried, how many times he bombed London and did all these things, he was never able to squash that remnant that was in England. | |
| And that was the source of his demise. And then that remnant anointing was the thing that brought America into World War II and helped to defeat Hitler because Hitler thought he could wipe out the remnant. Okay. Even though also, in another sense, he was also carrying out the judgment of God against the Jewish people. | |
| as God had declared in Deuteronomy 28 and 29. And once the judgment was complete, then God stopped him and said, okay, this is it. But Hitler, if it had been up to him, he would have continued on and on. Okay. So now I believe we'll go into the next woe. | |
| The next woe in Habakkuk starts in verse 12. It says, Habakkuk 2:12, Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood and establisheth a city by iniquity. | |
| Verse 13, Behold, is it not of the Lord of hosts that the people shall labor in the very fire and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity? Verse 14, For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. So the question would be, what endowment is being misused here? What endowment is the woe against? And... | |
| If you read like the first verse of that woe, verse 12, Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood and establisheth a city by iniquity. When you see establishing, that immediately points to the apostolic endowment. Because as we've shared so many times, the apostolic endowment is the one that establishes foundations. | |
| It's the endowment that establishes principles, wisdom principles, laws. So it is very foundational. It's very establishing. It establishes frameworks. So when you see establishing, okay, apostolic. And also when it says with blood, | |
| That kind of reinforces the connection to the apostolic because the apostolic, when it goes bad, it becomes Jebusite. And the Jebusite spirit is the spirit of murder. It's the spirit that does judgments because the apostolic does judgments. The Jebusite also does judgments. The difference is the apostolic in the spirit does judgments in righteousness. So it kills. And judgments kill. So it's doing, quote, killing people. | |
| In righteousness. The Jebusite spirit is also doing judgments. It's also killing. But it's killing in unrighteousness. So it sheds blood. Innocent blood. Because it punishes people it shouldn't punish. Punishes them in the wrong way. So it's shedding blood. So the thing is building a town with blood. Oh, murderers. Oh, Jebusites. Jebusites. | |
| Unrighteous judgments. Oh, and then it kind of makes sense when it says establishing a city by iniquity. It's establishing things, foundations, but it's establishing them in iniquity. And we'll see a little more what that means. We don't have much understanding, but the little we have we'll share in a short while. But the thing is that... | |
| the first part of the verse, when it says build a town with blood, that for some reason prompted me to kind of do a search on those two, on two words there. So let me see if I can do it again. So the word town was translated from ear. | |
| In Hebrew, and ir literally can mean city or village. It's a place, a location, you know, where a group of people live. So then, and the word blood was translated from the Hebrew word dam, D-A-M. So the two words in Hebrew there for town and blood are ir and dam. | |
| And so I felt this need to do a search on those two words in Hebrew. Um, and, and I, I found it very interesting because, um, the, the, uh, like the first verse that I saw that had, um, um, uh, those two words together is, um, Numbers 35:25, um, | |
| And so we'll go to that chapter right now. So I'm clicking here in the Blue Letter Bible to go to that verse, Numbers 35, verse 25. But to kind of understand what that verse says, we have to read a few verses earlier. So let's start in verse, let's see, where should we start? | |
| Yeah, let's start reading from verse 16. It's kind of a long read, but we'll try to go through it quickly. It says, And if he smite him with an instrument of iron so that he die, he's a murderer. The murderer shall surely be put to death. And if he smite him with throwing a stone wherewith he may die and he die, he's a murderer. The murderer shall surely be put to death. Or if he smite him with a hand, weapon of wood, | |
| wherewith he may die and he died. He's a murderer. The murderer shall surely be put to death. So it's like three ways of killing someone with an instrument of iron, throwing a stone and, um, smiting the person with a hand weapon of wood. So, uh, yeah, instrument of iron, a wooden weapon and a stone. Um, | |
| And now I'm wondering what that all means spiritually. But it's three types of murder, three spiritual types of murder. And God is saying it's murder and you shall judge that. But then verse 19 says, The revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer. Where he meeteth him, he shall slay him. | |
| And that's a very interesting phrase. The revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer. When he meeteth him, he shall slay him. And I think this is like in the context of, for example, if someone kills a family member, then someone in the family can rise up to avenge that murder. | |
| And I think that's what it's referring to. And I could be wrong on that. In verse 19, the revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer. When he meeteth him, he shall slay him. So God says, you know, I allow justice to be done. And I allow this avenger to rise up and do the judgment. So then verse 20 says, but if he thrust him of hatred or hurl at him by laying of weight that he die, | |
| or in enmity smite him with his hand that he die, he that smote him shall surely be put to death, for he is a murderer. The revenger of blood shall slay the murderer when he meeteth him." | |
| So if I'm understanding correctly, it's saying that if the revenger of blood does it just out of hatred or hurls at him by laying of weight that he die, in other words, using trickery, then that will itself become murder. That's what I'm understanding. So in other words, if you're going to avenge that death, you have to do it. | |
| the right way you have to confront the person and slay the person uh so it says the revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer when he meeteth him he shall slay him that that's verse 19 of Numbers 35 so um so that's uh so it has to be done the right way in an open way not through like uh laying of weight like oh wait you know waiting in the back in the background and um and killing them um | |
| and not doing it out of just emotion, fleshly emotion, but it says, but if you thrust him of hatred, | |
| then that's not right. So then the avenger becomes a murderer himself and he deserves to be avenged by someone else. I mean, that's what I'm understanding unless I'm completely misinterpreting the passage here. But then verse 22 says, but if he thrust him suddenly without enmity or have cast upon him anything without laying of weight, | |
| or with any stone wherewith a man may die, seeing him not, and cast it upon him that he die, and was not his enemy, neither sought his harm, then the congregation shall judge between the slayer and the revenger of blood according to these judgments. So let's read verse 22 and 23 again. But if he thrust him suddenly without enmity... | |
| or have cast upon him anything without laying of weight, or with any stone wherewith a man may die, seeing him not, and cast it upon him that he die, and was not his enemy, neither sought his harm, then the congregation shall judge between the slayer and the revenger of blood according to these judgments. And then verse 25 says, And the congregation shall deliver the slayer out of the hand of the revenger of blood, | |
| and the congregation shall restore him to the city of his refuge, whither he was fled, and he shall abide in it unto the death of the high priest, which was anointed with the holy oil. So the congregation shall deliver the slayer out of the hand of the revenger of blood, | |
| and the congregation shall restore him to the city of his refuge, whither he was fled, and he shall abide in it unto the death of the high priest, which was anointed with the holy oil. So basically, the Lord is talking about accidental deaths. That's basically what... | |
| I'm understanding here. So verse 22, but if he thrust him suddenly without enmity. So in other words, I don't know, something happened. He didn't mean to do it. There was no enmity. In other words, there was no malice. And the person killed the other person by accident. | |
| Maybe if I read from the English Standard Version, it becomes clearer. I'm going to read verse 22. But if he pushed him suddenly without enmity, or hurled anything on him without lying in wait, and verse 23, or used a stone that could cause death, and without seeing him, dropped it on him. And it's like, well, you'd be dropping a stone in... | |
| I don't know, but this is the principle, or used a stone that could cause death and without seeing him dropped it on him so that he died, though he was not his enemy and did not seek his harm. Then verse 24, then the congregation shall judge between the manslayer and the avenger of blood in accordance with these rules. And then verse 25, and the congregation shall rescue the manslayer from the hand of the avenger of blood and the congregation shall restore him to his city of refuge. | |
| to which he has fled, and he shall live in it until the death of the high priest who was anointed with the holy oil. So God is saying, if someone kills someone else by accident, and I know each of these things has a significance, and I wish my understanding was a little clearer, was a little better in the spirit as to the meaning of each thing. But in general, we can say, you know, you killed someone by accident. | |
| You didn't mean it. It wasn't on purpose. You dropped a stone. I don't know why you were dropping stones from your balcony. Who knows? And you didn't see someone was, you know, walking, walking, you know, down there and the stone falls on the guy's head and the person dies. | |
| You didn't mean to do it. So then God says, well, then there has to be a protection so that there won't be any unrighteous vengeance on you because of what you did, because you didn't mean to do it. So there's going to be the city of refuge that you can go to and flee so that you will be protected from any avenger, any member of the family of the person who died coming after you. | |
| But then there's a very interesting clause there. I'm going to be reading from the ESV because it's easier to read, at least to me. So it says, And he shall live in that city of refuge, in it, until the death of what? The high priest who was anointed with the holy oil. And you go, what? Like, what does the high priest who was anointed with the holy oil have to do with anything? | |
| Why is that important? Why does the person who goes... You know, we understand the concept of the city of refuge to avoid prevention, the flesh, and all that. Okay, that's very clear. But why is that person conscribed, forced to stay inside the city of refuge until the death of the high priest who was anointed with the holy oil? Why? | |
| And I asked the Lord about this, and I said, Lord, why? Why would they need to wait until the death of the high priest? And it's interesting because in verse 26 it says, But if the manslayer shall at any time go beyond the boundaries of his city of refuge to which he fled, and the avenger, verse 27, And the avenger of blood finds him outside the boundaries of his city of refuge, and the avenger of blood kills the manslayer, he shall not be guilty of blood. So God says, | |
| even if it was by accident, but he gets out of the city of refuge before the death of the high priest anointed with the holy oil, then he's fair game and he can be killed by the avenger of blood. But why? It's such a strange rule, but there's a spiritual principle there. And so the Lord is saying, | |
| And notice the emphasis. God says the high priest was anointed with the holy oil. What does anointing point to? The prophetic endowment. | |
| Holy oil points to the prophetic endowment. Oil is prophetic. Anointing is prophetic. And holy is prophetic. As we've shared so many times on the Shema Elam website, holy is connected to apostolic and prophetic, but most directly to the prophetic. That's why when God says the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is eminently prophetic. So... | |
| So all of that points to the prophetic. Why is that important? Because it points to the problem of killing someone by accident. Imagine this example. I don't know, I just find it... Maybe this is morbid humor on my part, but I just find it funny, the thing about... | |
| someone dropping a stone on someone else without seeing him. It's like, why, why are you dropping stones? You know, uh, but, um, uh, but imagine this example, for some reason, you're, uh, you, you know, you're on your balcony and you, you have some excess stones in your apartment, in your flat that you need to, uh, dump. So you, you take the stones and you, you just let them fall off the belt, uh, you know, off the balcony. | |
| to the ground, but you don't see that someone was walking down there and the stone falls on them and they die. You didn't mean to do it. Maybe your angle of vision was blocked by some plant or something. Who knows? And you couldn't see that someone was walking down there and you drop the stone and the person dies. And the question is... | |
| What happened there? Now think about it. Let's say you're a Christian and this happens to you. What do you think that says about you? Just think about it. What do you think that says about you? And now let's assume, for example, just to get that out of the equation because it would complicate things. Let's say that that person... | |
| had done something against God and the stone dropping thing was a way of God judging that person and killing them because maybe they blasphemed against him or something. And you kind of became the inadvertent instrument of justice there. But that's a kind of, I don't believe in my heart, that's what God is talking about here. This is you being, you not knowing what you were doing | |
| And you kill someone who shouldn't have been killed. So if you're a Christian and this happens to you, what would be your thinking process? I mean, what happened? And I'll share what I would think if, God forbid, this happened to me. I would think there's something wrong. | |
| there was something wrong with me that day on that moment that I dropped that stone at the exact time when this person was walking by downstairs down on the ground level and died because the stone fell on him. I would say there's something wrong with me. And you say, why? Well, you didn't know. Yeah, that's true. But see... | |
| It would be completely innocent, and I would feel no guilt. Well, I'd feel bad, but I'd feel no moral guilt at all if we were living in a world without God. | |
| We're everything, you know, we're just animals, biological beings out there. And we're living in this, you know, the law of the jungle and things happen, you know. But there's no God. There's no explanation. There's no purpose. There's no rhyme or reason for anything. Things just happen because we're just... | |
| Matter, you know, we're not spirit. There's nothing outside of the visible, the physical. So, you know, accidents happen. And that's how I would explain it and be at peace about it. | |
| But if you're a Christian, you know that's not the way it is. You know that God exists. You know that things don't just happen. There's always a reason for everything. And there's always an underlying spiritual reason. That guy having that stone fall on his head wasn't just happenstance. So as a Christian, if I did that, I dropped this stone off the balcony without realizing there was someone walking down there and | |
| To me, it would be a sign that I was not discerning in the spirit. Because if I was right with God and I was about to drop the stone, what would happen? What do you think would happen if you're in the spirit? It's like you're about to let go of the stone. And suddenly the spirit of God inside of you would say, stop, stop. Like you would sense that something is wrong. | |
| And you would just hold on to the stone just before dropping it. And then you look down and somehow you see, oh my goodness. If I dropped the stone just now, I would have killed that guy. God would have warned you. But why didn't you heed the warning of God? Because you were not discerning in the spirit. You were not prophetically hearing the voice of God. You were just living. Oh, I have to throw out the stone again. | |
| off the balcony today because I have too many stones that they piled up. So you're dropping these stones off the balcony to get rid of them. But you're not thinking. You're not asking God. You're not discerning. It doesn't mean that you have to kind of like be nitpicking, literally asking, explicitly asking about everything. Sometimes you have to, sometimes you don't. Sometimes you just go on automatic. But even when you're on automatic, | |
| You have to be like that watchman that we talked about. I forget where and what recording, whether video or audio, but you have to be like that watchman in the tower, attentive to the voice of the Spirit. And at any moment, God will say, stop. And if you're attentive to the voice of the Spirit, let's say just before you go out on the balcony to drop the stones, God will say, you need to do this. | |
| God will call you to do something else and you will go do it. And because you went to do that something else, then the timing will change. And by the time you're on the balcony dropping the stones, there's no one walking down there anymore, if that makes sense. Because you're guided by the Spirit. So in the Spirit, there are no accidents. And that's what God is saying here. If you're living in the Spirit, there are no accidents. | |
| So if you drop that stone when you dropped it, and you dropped it on someone you shouldn't have dropped it on, it's because you were not in the spirit. You were not hearing prophetically. And that's why God forces you to stay in the city of refuge as a prisoner in that city until the death of the high priest who was anointed with the holy oil. Because it's, yeah, it was an accident. Yeah, you didn't mean to do it. But it was because you were prophetically careless. | |
| So now you're being forced to pay attention to someone with the prophetic anointing and wait until they die so that you come out of the city of refuge. In other words, God is forcing you to pay attention to the prophetic. I hope that makes sense. It's like you're going to be trapped in a city and you're going to be looking at the man who is anointed with oil, waiting until they are no more. | |
| And that's how you should have been behaving when you were on the balcony about to drop the stone. It's like, I'm not going to do something unless I have in some way, implicitly or explicitly, had peace in the spirit that I'm doing it in God's will. That I'm heeding the voice of the spirit. | |
| So it's like God forcing you. Yeah, you were prophetically careless. And that's why you have to be on the lookout for the man with the anointing until he passes, until he dies. Then you can come out of the city. In other words, pay attention to the prophetic. Because that's exact. So the punishment. So the person is not being sentenced to death like in a normal murder. | |
| But the person is being punished to house arrest. Or at least city arrest. Because now he's saying. You have to pay attention to the spiritual stuff. That you were so. So. What's the word? Callous or careless about. Because you were living like a Girgashite. Like an earthly person. I pray that. That's making some sort of sense. I don't know how to explain it. But that's what. | |
| that's the principle here that God is saying and why are we here we are Numbers 35:25 because uh we were looking for the verses that have the word blood and um and city or ear uh in Hebrew uh dam blood and ear uh city um and it's interesting that um | |
| You can see here the connection to the apostolic and the Jebusite because this whole passage is talking about someone avenging another person's death and potentially doing it. | |
| In a Jebusite way, you know, doing it in anger of the flesh and not doing it the way God calls us to do it. So if this avenger of blood goes into the city of refuge and kills this man, he is sitting against God. And that points to someone who, as we said before, is... What's the... | |
| I apologize. Yeah, it's someone who's building a town with blood, a city, an ear with blood. If that makes sense. You're killing people unrighteously. So, okay. And so another, if we go and see the verses that use town and... | |
| or city and blood. Let's see another verse. And I felt prompted earlier to, yeah, there was another verse, I believe. | |
| For example, Ezekiel 22:3 says, So again, it's a city that's shedding blood that is doing unrighteous Jebusite judgments and | |
| killing people figuratively and maybe even literally with judgments of the soul. | |
| So it just reinforces the connection to the Jebusite spirit. Ezekiel 7:23 says, Make a chain, for the land is full of bloody, of dumb crimes. And the city, the ear, is full of violence. Jeremiah 26:15 says, But know ye for certain that if ye put me to death, ye shall surely bring innocent blood, innocent dumb, upon yourselves and upon this city, this ear, and upon the inhabitants thereof, for a truth of the Lord, for other truths, | |
| The Lord hath sent me unto you to speak all these words in your ears. So this is, I believe, Jeremiah speaking about, you know, if you kill me, you'll be shedding innocent blood and you will pay for it because God is the one who sent me to speak to you. Yeah. | |
| So again, all of this is just reinforcing the connection to the Jebusite spirit. But I believe it was important to do that digression about the city of refuge, and I pray it made sense. But in that example of the city of refuge, God is emphasizing someone who is not operating in the prophetic context. | |
| Because just like the guy who killed the other person by accident has to stay in the city of refuge and be looking at the high priest who's anointed with the holy oil the whole time, the avenger of blood has to do the same thing. The avenger of blood has to be looking at the high priest anointed with oil because he knows that he can't go into the city | |
| Of refuge. To go kill that man. I'm sorry. If he sees the man. Outside the city of refuge. If. He has to be looking out. To see. Is the high priest with the anointing. The prophetic anointing dead or not. Oh he hasn't died. Oh I can't touch this guy. I'm sorry. If he hasn't died. Then I can't touch this guy. I can't kill him. But if the guy. So. | |
| How can I explain it? It's as if both people have to be looking to the anointing. And the Avenger of Blood, if he sees the man outside the city when the priest has not died yet, then he has the right to kill him according to the commandment. And I would understand also by implication that if | |
| The moment the priest dies, then he can't touch him anymore. Whether he's in the city or out of the city. But the thing is, the important thing is, the principle there is the apostolic endowment. It's God kind of tying the apostolic endowment to the prophetic. | |
| And that's one thing that Jebusites tend to have when you look at them and you see like in Scripture, people who are very Jebusite tend to forget the prophetic endowment. And that's what makes them more Jebusite. | |
| And we've shared on the website about when God speaks to the church in Ephesus in Revelation, he says, you have forgotten your first love. And we share on, I forget in what article, I think it's Pre-parousia 2 or something like that. The one on the red horse, maybe. Let me just see if I can find it quickly. So let's see. | |
| Where do we talk about this? I'm going to do a search on the phrase first love to see if I can find where we talk about that in detail. | |
| Oh, it's in a posting on wolves, I believe. Wolves in the church. Let's see if it's here. Yes, it's here. The first love. There's a section called the first love. And we talk about how that talks about the apostolic and the evangelistic. And I'm sorry, the prophetic and the evangelistic. And it's almost like saying... | |
| when you don't do judgments in love and you don't value the firstborn quality of your fellow believer, that he is also called to inherit the kingdom, then you will be doing Jebusite judgments. In other words, you have to do it in love | |
| And the first part of first love, that has to do with inheritance. It's saying, oh, that person is destined to inherit the kingdom of God. And if you don't see him as a king, as a prince, | |
| and you just see him as a peon, a little believer, then you'll be doing Jebusite judgment. But the love part has to do with the prophetic. Love is eminently prophetic, as we share on the website. Love is about sacrifice, and sacrifice is prophetic. So when you don't have prophetic love for others, | |
| you will be prone to doing Jebusite judgments. The church in Ephesus, the church in Ephesus, that message is to the church, it's the message from the spirit of Ephesus, the spirit of God from where the apostolic endowment comes. So God is, when he's speaking to the church in Ephesus, he's speaking to how the church is using the apostolic endowment. | |
| That's why the Spirit of God, from where the Apostolic Endowment comes, is the one that speaks to Ephesus. Ephesus was an apostolic church. And God calls her out for the misuse of the Apostolic Endowment, some misuse. They were doing some good things and some bad things. But the point is, the Apostolic Endowment, to be used right, needs to pay attention to | |
| To the prophetic. Not lose sight of the prophetic. You have to keep your eye out. On the high priest. With the anointing of the holy oil. If that makes any sense. You have to be looking into the prophetic. Because. The Pharisees were very Jebusite. But they lacked the. And that's because. They lacked the prophetic. They couldn't see past the invisible. Um. | |
| And that's why the Lord says in John, judge not by appearance, judge with righteous judgments. When you're Jebusite, you're trying to make judgments. You're applying laws, but you're doing everything with your natural understanding, with what you can see with your mind. And you can't see things of the spirit. You can't see prophetically into things. So you can't discern the intentions of a person's heart. You just don't see spiritual stuff. | |
| And that's why your judgments are so off. And that's what God is kind of subtly emphasizing in that woe when he mentions blood and city. And that's why the City of Refuge passage is calling us to look | |
| at the person who's anointed with the holy oil. Like look into the prophetic. Otherwise you will fall into the woe of the Jebusite spirit in Habakkuk 2. I pray this is all somehow making sense. Okay, so woe to him that buildeth a town with blood and establisheth a city by iniquity. | |
| And the word city is kiriyah. So it's very similar to ir. Ir sometimes is translated as city, sometimes as village, sometimes as town. But it's a place where people live. | |
| where multiple people are living. And Kiria is like a city as well. But from what I was reading, if I'm not mistaken, Kiria is more an emphasis on the fortress, because the cities used to be walled cities, and they had fortresses to protect against | |
| any invading army and so forth. And so the city, the kiriyah, is more to do with the fortress. And what I get in my heart when I see the word city is that it's more, to me, it refers to the system, like a mechanism or city or system. That's what I get from the word kiriyah in my heart. And it could be misinterpreting, | |
| That's what I get in my being. So when it says here, woe to you who establishes a city by iniquity, and the word iniquity is evel. | |
| which is kind of peculiar because it sounds like evil in English. I don't know if that's a coincidence or if that's where the English word evil comes from, but eval literally means iniquity. There's another word that I've seen that means iniquity that's like avon, and I am not sure if they're related. But eval literally, it says here, means injustice, unrighteousness, or wrong. | |
| And aval, it comes from aval, which means to act wrongfully or unjustly, to deviate from. So God is saying, woe to you who establishes a system of justice that is based on injustice. Okay. | |
| That's what I get in my heart when it says establishes a city by iniquity, but the word iniquity, it might be a bad translation here. I think the word, the better translation would have been unrighteousness. Um, because the, the word for iniquity that I've seen, uh, in scripture usually is, um, Avon, uh, like Avon, you know, like the Avon lady, you know, Avon. Um, that's, I believe the actual word for iniquity. Um, | |
| And again, what I see is something pathetic when I see this phrase establishing a city by iniquity. You're establishing a system of justice that is based on injustice. But you're so proud. Oh, I built a city. I built a system of justice. And that whole system that you're so proud of is built on injustice. | |
| You know, it's like inventing a soap that makes people dirtier, if that makes sense. It's like the very opposite of what you think you've accomplished. And there's something pathetic about it. | |
| Okay, so then verse 13 of Habakkuk 2 says, Behold, is it not of the Lord of hosts that the people shall labor in the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity? And I'll be very frank, my understanding is very limited on this verse. I'll just share the random thoughts that come to my heart and mind as I read the verse, but I don't know how they all fit together. | |
| It's interesting to me that God refers to himself as the Lord of hosts in this verse. And Lord of hosts makes me think of warfare. Warfare makes me think of warrior. Warrior makes me think of evangelist because the evangelist is the endowment most directly connected to warfare and having a warrior conquering nature. So God is coming as an evangelistic conqueror, the Lord of hosts. | |
| And he's saying, I, the conquering evangelistic God, I am saying, or I have established that people shall labor in the very fire and that people shall weary themselves for vanity. But I don't understand what this means. Fire makes me think of judgments. | |
| But I don't know how it all fits in. And it's interesting to me that God uses the word people twice, and it's the word Am, like Abraham. | |
| And as we shared before, am has a more spiritual connotation. Nations or goyim has a more earthly connotation. So it's people with a spiritual quality. That's what I get every time I see am. It's people but emphasizing their spiritual quality. So behold, is it not of the Lord of hosts that the people shall labor in the very fire? It's like saying people who think they have a spiritual quality to them. | |
| and they're laboring in fire. In other words, it will just burn and be nothing. And it kind of makes me think of the Pharisees. They thought that they were being spiritual people doing all these laws and regulations and things like that and laboring, but it's all to be thrown in the fire. It's meaningless. And it's like God saying, I will make sure as a conquering evangelist, | |
| that everything you do will be burned and destroyed. I will come against you as an evangelist, as a warrior and a conqueror to destroy all your works. It's like you draw the wrath of a warrior God when you build a city on unrighteous Jebusite judgments. I hope that's making sense. Um... | |
| I think that's what the Lord is saying. And I will make sure to weary yourselves, that you will weary yourselves for vanity, for emptiness. That everything, you'll be toiling in that system of injustice that you've built, and it will be for nothing. You will produce nothing. I will make sure of that. I will come and fight against you to make sure this happens. | |
| You stir the wrath of the warrior God of Israel when you do Jebusite things. And that's the thing. Whenever you're dealing with a Jebusite, you can say that. You are drawing the wrath of the warrior God against you. And he will make sure that your whole labor, your so-called spiritual labor that you think is so lofty and so valuable, | |
| that has eternal value, will be consumed by fire, be shown to be nothing. And all that you're wearying will just produce emptiness. And you're drawing the wrath of the God of Israel, the warrior God of Israel, to ensure that you will end in vanity. And you can release that in prayer against Jebusites when you run into them. And you can keep this in mind to make sure you don't | |
| fall into Jebusite behavior because you'll see how pathetic it is to be like that. And then verse 14, it says, for the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. And notice glory, as we've said so many times, is most directly connected to the prophetic because glory is connected to resurrection, you know, | |
| our resurrected bodies will have a glory to them. So glory is always connected to resurrection. And resurrection is connected, obviously, to death because you have to die in order to resurrect. And death has to do with sacrifice because, obviously, you're not going to be resurrected if you died for the wrong reasons. If you die in sacrifice, you will be resurrected. | |
| And sacrifice is connected to the prophetic. It's the endowment most directly connected to sacrifice. To sacrifice yourself for others. You're willing to die. You lay down your life in prophetic sacrifice. So in other words, glory is connected to prophetic. So that emphasizes this thing that God is saying to the Jebusites. Those who misuse the apostolic endowment of judgments. It's like... | |
| you don't realize the value of the prophetic. And it's so valuable that it's going to fill the earth. The knowledge of the valuable prophetic will fill the earth as the waters cover the sea. And the word knowledge is translated from the Hebrew word yada. | |
| And yada is like the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek noun or Greek verb ginosko or the Greek noun gnosis, G-N-O-S-I-S. And as we shared before, that's heart knowledge. So yada is heart knowledge. | |
| And heart has to do with evangelistic. So God is saying two things, the prophetic and the evangelistic. The Jebusite forgets grace. The two endowments most directly connected to grace are the evangelistic and the prophetic. And God is bringing these up. So God is saying... | |
| To avoid being a Jebusite, you have to see grace in others. You have to value grace. You have to value the evangelistic grace in others and the prophetic grace in others. Because those two things combined, God will use them to fill the earth as the waters cover the sea. Yeah. | |
| I hope that's making sense in some way. The Jebusite does not understand grace, does not see grace in others. | |
| You cannot see the prophetic grace, the evangelistic grace in others. That's why they can be so, uh, so heartless and so judgmental in an unrighteous way against others. They don't see the prophetic and evangelistic value in others. God says that very thing you disdain, the very thing you dismiss is going to fill the earth. The knowledge of the glory of the Lord shall fill the earth as the waters cover the sea. and, uh, | |
| And there's more here in this verse. This is a very powerful verse. A lot of people quote it, but they don't read all the things we've read so far. So they take it and they kind of run with it almost out of context. But it's interesting that God says this in the context of his woe against the Jebusite spirit. And that's very important. And | |
| And I'll be very frank, this is the first time as we're meditating on these passages that I have become aware of that. I had never seen that this verse that speaks to me greatly, that this verse was connected to a judgment against the Jebusite spirit. I hadn't seen that until now. | |
| And so, okay, so let's look at a little bit of this verse here. For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord and | |
| as the waters cover the sea. And the question would be, what does that mean, waters cover the sea? So because of that, I felt prompted to do a search on verses that have some of the words. Like there are three words there, waters cover the sea. And the word for waters is mayim in Hebrew. The word cover is from the verb kasa, | |
| And the word sea is yam. Y-A-M. So mayim, kasa, and yam. Mayim is waters. Kasa means cover. And yam means sea. | |
| So to kind of get a sense of what does that mean, waters covering the sea? Because if you think about it, the sea is made of water. So what does it mean that waters cover the sea? I hope you see what we're saying. It's like the phrase doesn't sound natural if you try to understand it in the natural way. | |
| waters covering the sea. So to kind of get a better sense, we have to kind of begin to look at verses that have combinations of those three words. So first we're gonna look at waters, which is mayim, together with cover, which is kasa. So I'm typing that right now into the Blue Letter Bible. | |
| So what I'm doing is typing the Hebrew strong number for waters and the Hebrew strong number for cover. The Hebrew strong numbers for Mayim is H4325 and then space. H3680, that's the Hebrew strong number for kasa or cover. So I'm putting that in the search box at the top here of this Blue Letter Bible website page and pressing go. | |
| and um I typed something wrong here um yes I did uh oh I typed 3860 instead of 3680 okay let's try one more time and here we go okay so um so it's not too many but | |
| There are a few verses, I would say, like 15, I think it is, it says here, 15 verses that have waters and cover, Mayim and Kasa. But I find it interesting, the first verse that has, the first two verses that have Mayim and Kasa together are Genesis 7:19 and 20. And they say, and the waters and the Mayim prevailed exceedingly upon the earth. | |
| and all the high hills and, and the, and, and that phrase, all the high hill hills, um, uh, has the word Casa in Hebrew. In other words, they covered the high heel hills, uh, that were under the whole heaven were covered. Um, yeah, so I'm sorry. So, so the word covered is at the end, uh, it covered the high hills. So obviously it's talking about the, the, uh, Noah's flood, um, | |
| And how the waters covered the high hills. The Mayim, Kasa, the high hills. And then verse 20 of Genesis 7 says, the next verse, 15 cubits upwards did the waters, the Mayim, prevail and the mountains were covered. The mountains were Kasa. So this is in the context of judgment. A judgment that came upon the earth that filled and covered the earth. | |
| But the thing is, what is confusing a little bit to me is that here, God is talking about the waters covering mountains, not the sea covering mountains. Now, the thing with the sea is that if you take the water out of the sea, | |
| you will see that it's a big hole. It's a big abyss. And what I'm getting in my being here is that like a Jebusite is someone who has a sea full of water that seems like it's filling the void, but it's not. I hope that's making sense. | |
| Like, because, yeah, it's like there's water there, but it's not really filling the sea. It seems like it is, but it isn't. And God is saying the waters will cover the sea, will fill the sea and cover it when it's waters that come with grace. | |
| and I don't know what I'm saying, but I feel an anointing as I'm saying it, that when you are in the Spirit, when you're living by faith, and you're using the apostolic endowment right, you will, through your judgments, just like Noah, Noah's flood was a judgment on the earth that covered mountains and all that. When you do judgments in the Spirit, when you're living by faith, | |
| Your judgments will come with a grace that will have the evangelistic knowledge and the prophetic glory of God in them and will saturate the emptiness of the earth with the grace of God. And I feel an anointing as I'm saying that. I don't know what I'm saying, but I feel the authority of God as I'm saying it. | |
| There's something very fulfilling, literally, about exercising the judgments of God in the Spirit that you fill the void of the sea and you cover the water. You will bring supernatural waters with evangelistic and prophetic grace full of the glory and the knowledge of God and you will fill the earth. | |
| and really, really cover the sea as opposed to the waters, the Jebusite waters that seem to be covering the sea, but they're not. They're not filling that void. So supernatural waters with an evangelistic and prophetic grace coming in. Imagine the sea with water | |
| And there's this second layer of supernatural water, like coming in and combining with the natural water and covering the natural waters with the grace of God. | |
| I hope that's making sense. It's grace waters coming to cover the natural waters of the sea and covering the sea with the grace of God. And that's what the judgments of the Spirit do. And it's a beautiful thing. And the Jebusite cannot grasp that | |
| Because he doesn't have his eye on the high priest who is anointed with the holy oil. He doesn't have his eyes on the prophetess. | |
| prophetic he can't grasp that and he draws the wrath of the evangelistic God of Israel um who will come to burn in fire the Jebusite's labor and make him be weary for vanity um | |
| The Jebusite does not see the value of God's prophetic and God's evangelistic. And that's what God is emphasizing, how pathetic the Jebusite is. And he doesn't understand that true judgment filled the earth, filled the sea, the natural waters of the sea. | |
| with these supernatural waters of grace that fill the earth with the prophetic glory of God and the evangelistic knowledge of the Father. And that's how you operate when you're living by faith in the Spirit, when you're not letting the soul abuse the apostolic endowment. | |
| That's how you operate. And that's what you do. And the Jebusite doesn't come even close to doing any of that. And it's pathetic. He's building a city. He thinks he's building a system of justice and it's based on injustice. It's so pathetic. And he's also building a city with blood, unrighteous blood. | |
| Okay. So, um, or unrighteous blood shedding. That's what I mean. Not that the blood is unrighteous, but, uh, the shedding is shedding blood unrighteously. So, um, I, uh, I, and I think there are a few more things, uh, we need to say, but, um, uh, let me just do a one final search on, um, | |
| Covering and see. So I'm going to look for kasa and yam. Cover and see to see the words, the verses in Hebrew that have those two words. And the first verse that appears here says, | |
| It's Exodus 15:10. It says, Thou didst blow with thy wind. The sea covered them. They sank as lead in the mighty water. So obviously this is the song of Miriam, I believe. So Miriam is singing this and rejoicing over what God did against the Egyptians and Pharaoh and the army when he drowned them in the Reed Sea. So it says the sea covered them. The yam kasa. | |
| them. So the sea covered them. So again, it's judgment. As you can see, it's a judgment of God against Pharaoh. God came as a warrior God against Pharaoh to make his labor like | |
| like burning fire and all his effort be for naught against the people of Israel because he was trying to do Jebusite judgments against the people of Israel. And then it's interesting that Isaiah 11:9 says, They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain. | |
| For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. So that's another verse I didn't know that says almost the same thing as Habakkuk 2:14. And notice it says, they shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain. Holy prophetic mountain is... | |
| evangelistic kingship so the two ministries the two endowments that have to do with grace are there again in my holy mountain in my prophetic evangelistic kingship and they will not be able to hurt the grace of God and that's what the Jebusite spirit does it hurts grace it damages grace it attacks grace the true grace you know the prophetic grace and the evangelistic grace of God because it has no regard for it | |
| And that's the woe against it. How pathetic and blind it is against the grace of God. And they don't know that they draw the wrath of the evangelistic God that they don't understand. The Lord of hosts that is mentioned in, what was it in Habakkuk 2:13? Behold, is it not of the Lord of hosts that the people shall labor in the very fire and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity? | |
| Okay, so basically we have gone through the third woe against the Jebusite spirit. In other words, when the soul misuses the apostolic endowment of judgments, and it shows how pathetic it is. | |
| And it's also, as we're looking at that, it's kind of telling us how when you're in the spirit, when you're living by faith, how your apostolic judgments will release grace into the earth and fill the earth with the evangelistic knowledge of the prophetic glory of God. And you will add to the natural waters a supernatural water that will cover the natural waters and fill it with the grace of God. | |
| And that's what you do through your judgments, which sounds so counterintuitive to the matriarchal because they are anti-judgment. And they realize it's through the righteous judgments of God that the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will fill the earth as the waters cover the sea. And I know that so many prophetic people, teachers, quote Habakkuk 2:14, | |
| And they don't realize, and I'm realizing that now, this is very strongly connected to judgments when they're done in the Spirit. And that's why it's no coincidence that another verse that sounds very similar has to do with judgments. And I'm going to read it very quickly, and we're going to stop there. Psalm 105:7. He is the Lord our God. His judgments are in all the earth. It's the same principle. Yeah. | |
| And then verse 15 of Psalm 105 says, Touch not mine anointed and do my prophets no harm. This is a word of judgment, a word of warning against the Jebusite spirit. Don't dismiss the value of the prophetic. Don't exercise Jebusite legalistic judgments against my people without recognizing the prophetic value in them. Touch not mine anointed and do my prophets no harm. | |
| So we'll continue with the fourth and fifth grace, Lord willing, in the next, sorry, fourth and fifth woe in Habakkuk in the next audio word as the Lord leads. Thank you very much for listening. Amen. |
Hello, and welcome. In this audio word, we continue meditating on the principle that the just shall live by faith. The Lord mentions this in Galatians 3:11, and we have meditated on Galatians chapter 3 for that reason. But the Lord also speaks this phrase in Habakkuk chapter 2, which is why we have been meditating on that chapter, seeking to understand what it means to live by faith and how justice flows out of that faith.
We have seen that Habakkuk 2 contains five woes, and each woe corresponds to one of the five spirits that arise from the distortion of the five endowments listed in Ephesians 4:11: apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher. When the apostle goes bad, the Jebusite spirit emerges. When the prophet goes bad, the Hittite spirit emerges. When the evangelist goes bad, the Amorite spirit emerges. When the pastor goes bad, the Canaanite spirit emerges. And when the teacher goes bad, the Girgashite spirit emerges.
Each distortion occurs because the soul has decided to take dominion over the spirit. Living by faith means trusting God's promise that a new spirit man dwells within you, connecting to that spirit man, and deciding by faith to walk in the spirit. When you do this, your actions begin to change, and life and justice flow out of you.
Faith is a decision to enter a state of being in the spirit, where the spirit is king and the soul is subservient. When the soul seeks to exalt itself, as Habakkuk 2:4 describes, "his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him," the five endowments become misused. The five woes show what happens when the soul is exalted above the spirit. They are, in a sense, a portrait of how pathetic that condition is, so that we will not fall into it, and so that we can recognize those misusing the endowments and judge them in the spirit through prayer.
The purpose of these woes is to expose what it means to not live by faith, and to be used in prayer, because the ultimate goal is to end the dominion of the soul on earth so that the Spirit of God may be king. True faith is not about using God to obtain blessings and provision, as much of the church teaches. Rather, as Jesus said, "Seek first the kingdom of God," and the focus of living faith is the expansion of God's kingship.
We have already seen the first two woes. Here we return to them to add what may have been left incomplete.
The first woe concerns one who misuses the evangelistic endowment. In verse 6, the King James reads, "to him that ladeth himself with thick clay," but this is a mistranslation. The English Standard Version renders it as "and loads himself with pledges." The King James translators seem to have struggled to make sense of "pledges," which is why they rendered it differently. Yet "pledges" reveals a spiritual principle: the one who increases what is not his own accumulates debt.
A contemporary illustration is the vast debt being accumulated in the AI industry by companies with an evangelistic drive to conquer the world, pouring money in unrighteously and stretching themselves thin. Verse 7 warns that "they shall rise up suddenly that shall bite thee," and such debt will literally come back to bite. Napoleon is another example: the evangelistic drive to conquer more and more leads to overextension, defeat, and debt, because the endeavor was pursued unrighteously and beyond one's means.
The deeper meaning is revealed through Acts 20:4, where Paul is accompanied by several companions, including "Aristarchus of the Thessalonians." Aristarchus means "best ruler." Scripture names "the Thessalonians" before Aristarchus, indicating that the best ruler is one who places the people he rules over first. The evangelist therefore has a debt of care toward those under his authority. When he fails to serve them and instead exploits his kingship for his own gain, he accumulates debt both to God and to the people.
Verse 8 adds: "because thou hast spoiled many nations, all the remnant of the people shall spoil thee." The unrighteous evangelist may plunder many nations, but there will always be a remnant of righteousness that cannot be destroyed, and that remnant will eventually spoil him. The Roman emperors who sought to exterminate Christianity illustrate this: though the remnant was weak in worldly terms, it was indestructible, and it eventually overcame the empire. Similarly, Hitler sought to crush England's remnant spirit but never succeeded, and that resistance became the source of his downfall.
The second woe concerns one who misuses the prophetic endowment. Verse 9 begins, "Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness to his house." The word translated "covetousness" is batsa, which points to the prophetic, while "evil" is ra, which points to the Girgashite spirit. This apparent contradiction reveals that a misused prophetic endowment becomes mingled with the Girgashite spirit. The prophet who operates in the soul is self-contradictory: pretending to be lofty and spiritual while sinking into earthliness.
Verse 10 says, "thou hast consulted shame to thy house... and hath sinned against thy soul." The one who misuses the prophetic sins against his own soul, harming himself rather than blessing himself. This is the reverse of the natural instinct to help oneself. Proverbs 15:27 reinforces this: "He that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house, but he that hateth gifts shall live." The gifts of God, when misused to bypass the process of God, become a trap. The one who hates such shortcuts lives.
The Hebrew word translated "gifts" is matanah, which means gift, and the King James rendering is correct. The English Standard Version's "bribes" illuminates the principle: a bribe is something received without going through the proper process, a perversion of justice. The prophet in the soul seeks to bypass the process, wanting something for nothing, rather than walking the righteous path.
Proverbs 11:29 completes the picture: "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind, and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart." Inheriting the wind means inheriting nothing of substance. The prophetic that is misused in the soul produces no apostolic substance and no evangelistic conquest, and when examined, it is found empty. The fool becomes servant to the wise and heart-centered, showing the pathetic subordination of the misused prophetic.
Five verses in Scripture combine the words for "trouble" (akar) and "house" (bet): Proverbs 11:29, Proverbs 15:27, Genesis 34:30, 1 Kings 18:18, and Proverbs 15:6. Genesis 34 shows Simeon and Levi troubling their father's house by avenging their sister through deceit, using holy covenant signs for fleshly revenge. First Kings 18 shows Elijah confronting Ahab, who had forsaken God's commandments and followed Baal, the prophets of which were the false prophets Elijah confronted. Proverbs 15:6 contrasts the house of the righteous, full of treasure, with the revenues of the wicked, which bring trouble.
Consider how this manifests today: those who use drugs to "liberate" creativity, or who seek spiritual experiences as shortcuts, often find their lives troubled and their gifts unfruitful. Those who dabble in witchcraft seek quick results, but they open doors to spirits that bring trouble on their homes and families. The prophetic gift used in the soul bypasses God's process and opens the way to trouble.
Notably, the two grace endowments, prophet and evangelist, are the ones most quickly misused by the soul. The prophet who cuts corners lacks faith in God's judgments and justice. The evangelist who conquers for himself, rather than trusting God to provide, lacks faith in God's promise. Both reveal a deficiency of faith. History bears witness: Hitler and Napoleon both believed they could overcome what God had made indestructible.
The third woe concerns the misuse of the apostolic endowment, the endowment that establishes foundations, principles, and laws. Verse 12 says, "Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood and establisheth a city by iniquity." The word for "town" is ir, and "blood" is dam. The apostolic that goes bad becomes Jebusite, the spirit of murder and unrighteous judgment. Judgments kill, but the apostolic in the spirit judges in righteousness, while the Jebusite judges in unrighteousness, shedding innocent blood.
Numbers 35:16–25 addresses the principle of the city of refuge. Those who kill by accident are protected in the city of refuge but must remain there until the death of the high priest "anointed with the holy oil." Holy oil points to the prophetic endowment. The lesson is that an accidental death reveals a lack of prophetic discernment. A Spirit-led believer would sense the warning and hold back. Because the one who killed accidentally was prophetically careless, he is confined to attentiveness to the anointing. In the same way, the avenger of blood must also keep his eyes on the anointed priest, who represents the prophetic. The apostolic judgment must never be severed from the prophetic.
Revelation 2:4 records the Lord's rebuke to Ephesus: "you have forsaken your first love." The Ephesian church was apostolic, yet it lost sight of the prophetic. Love is prophetic in its nature, since love is sacrifice, and sacrifice is prophetic. Without prophetic love, the apostolic becomes Jebusite. The Pharisees were judgmental and legalistic because they could not see beyond the visible; they lacked prophetic discernment of hearts.
Verse 12 continues: "establisheth a city by iniquity." The word for "city" is kiriyah, which often emphasizes a fortified system or mechanism. The word for "iniquity" is evel, meaning injustice or unrighteousness, derived from a root meaning to act wrongfully or deviate. The woe describes one who establishes a system of justice founded on injustice. Such a person is proud of what he has built, but it is like inventing a soap that makes people dirtier, the very opposite of what he believes he has accomplished.
Verse 13 reads: "Behold, is it not of the Lord of hosts that the people shall labor in the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity?" The "Lord of hosts" evokes warfare and the warrior-conqueror, associated with the evangelistic. The word for "people" here is am, which carries a spiritual connotation. The Jebusite who thinks he possesses spiritual quality will see his labor consumed by fire, and his toil will produce only emptiness. This is the wrath of the warrior God drawn upon those who build on Jebusite judgments. This principle can be released in prayer against Jebusite behavior and as a warning against falling into it.
Verse 14 says: "For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." Glory is connected to resurrection and therefore to sacrifice, which is prophetic. The word for "knowledge" is yada, heart knowledge, connected to the evangelistic endowment. The Jebusite forgets grace, but the two endowments most connected to grace are the prophetic and the evangelistic. Those who see the grace of God in others will be the ones through whom God fills the earth.
The phrase "waters cover the sea" uses mayim (waters), kasa (cover), and yam (sea). Genesis 7:19–20 uses the same words to describe the flood covering the mountains, a judgment that covered the earth. The sea, if its water were removed, would be an empty abyss. The Jebusite's judgments appear to fill the void, but they do not truly fill it. True judgments in the Spirit bring supernatural waters of grace, evangelistic and prophetic, that cover and saturate the natural waters with the grace and glory of God. This is what spirit-led judgment accomplishes, and it is a beautiful thing the Jebusite cannot grasp, because he does not keep his eyes on the anointed prophetic.
Exodus 15:10 shows the sea covering Pharaoh's army, a judgment against unrighteous oppression. Isaiah 11:9 repeats the promise, "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." The holy mountain represents prophetic and evangelistic kingship, the grace endowments that the Jebusite attacks and damages.
Psalm 105:7 declares, "His judgments are in all the earth." Psalm 105:15 warns, "Touch not mine anointed and do my prophets no harm." This is a warning against the Jebusite spirit that disregards the prophetic value of God's people.
Those who quote Habakkuk 2:14 often do not realize its connection to judgment. True judgment done in the Spirit, in living faith, fills the earth with grace, while the matriarchal church, which opposes judgment, cannot understand this. The third woe thus reveals both the pathetic condition of the misused apostolic and the glorious fruit of righteous judgment in the Spirit.
We will continue with the fourth and fifth woes, the Canaanite and Girgashite spirits, in the next audio word, as the Lord leads. Thank you for listening.