ART KATZ ON 'DECEPTION'
Posted by: prophetic <prophetic@...>
"Anatomy of Deception"
-by Art Katz.
God has triggered something in my heart to raise the
questions of authenticity before the Body of Christ. Are we
willing for authenticity's sake and for truth's sake not to
grasp at the first straw that floats our way, and which
seems to present the possibility of solving our problems?
Are we willing to refrain from simulating something out of
our own humanity that has the appearance of love, but is
not? I want that which comes down from above, however
long I have got to bear the terrible agony and reputation of
'lovelessness.' I do not want a saccharine counterfeit.
Authentic things do not come cheap. They never have.
It is we, as believers, who have been inducted into the
spirit of glib, unctuous and facile kinds of doings.
Do we recognize that there is a cross for us to bear, and it
is to this suffering that we are called, and that the resolution
of the issue will not be far from us if we seek the things
that are authentic and true? Do we have the discernment
to distinguish the authentic from the counterfeit? Are we so
habituated to success, and so desirous of seeing some
visible effect of power that we are not too discriminating so
long as we 'get it,' somehow? We want the excitement; we
want the titillation; we want the appearance of power; we
want to succeed, because the possibility of failure is a
form of death we are not willing to bear, thus avoiding the
Cross. We ought rather to ask ourselves what is success
as God defines it?
Nazi Germany put great emphasis on demonstrations of a
very impressive kind, such as their meetings at Nuremburg
with marches and torchlight ceremonies, almost like pagan
practices, that filled the void in German life with emotion
and intensity. It was an answer to a need for fulfillment,
excitement and engagement. If we do not have a valid
apostolic reality in our spiritual life, that void will be filled
by other contenders who are only awaiting their opportunity.
If we move into the realm of what is false, synthetic, humanly
contrived and not the operation of the Spirit, we can move
very easily from the charismatic to the demonic.
We cannot tell the difference between the hunger for God
and the hunger for experience. If we have a real hunger for
God, we do not have to go to places where 'signs and
wonders' abound. Last Days' deceptions are related to an
inadequate view of God by which we interpret the 'blessing'
or seeming power as being the evidence of God as we
know Him, but the true knowledge of God would have made
no room for that kind of understanding, or even the desire for
these phenomena in the form in which they have been manifested.
There are some people who see God as some kind of a
lackey or errand boy, who provides the convenience of
meetings for this kind of entertainment and so-called
'blessing'... The thing that we need is to be transformed into
His image, not to project our image onto Him. He is not a
convenience for us. He is God. He is the Creator. He is
the Almighty. I think those words have lost their cogency.
Maybe we have said them too often. They have become a
catechism or an invocation of a mechanical kind. Unless
we know Him in the place that is too deep for words, then
we do not really know Him. Until there is a gasp and a
splutter, until we find ourselves prostrate and stretched out
as dead, do we really know Him?
When the Last Days' deceptions come, of which we have
been warned, will they not come with 'good' things? Can we
tell the difference between the true and the false, especially
when we want so much to be blessed and to have an
experience and be relieved of our hang-ups and depressions?
How discriminating are we about the source from which the
'blessing' comes? How do we tell whether something is of
God, or a contrary spirit who is able to lift the depression
that he may well have inflicted in the first place? Here is the
key: our authentic knowledge of God, not as we thought
Him to be, but as He, in fact, is.
Deception is a deception when it contains elements that are
dubious and suspicious, and at the same time there seems
to be apparent blessing. Who has the acumen and the
discernment to see through it except a people of priestly
stature whose discernment has been increased by the
exercise of it? And who can discern between good and evil,
between the profane and the holy? If blessings, so called,
can succeed in bringing the Church to viewing benefit as the
criterion by which something is judged to be of God, we may
well have been brought to the very ground of deception itself.
There is something more important than benefits, something
more important than being released from depression; it is
the holiness of God, it is His name, it is His honor, it is He
Himself. Receiving benefit of a dubious kind is too high a
price to pay if it is going to throw any shadow upon His great Name.
It is remarkable that, though we are explicitly warned about
end-time lying signs and wonders (2 Thess 2:9; Matt 24:24),
we somehow imagine that it is future, and mindlessly trust
ourselves in our greed for experiences, empowerments, or
releases, to dubious personalities who have caught the public
fancy in incredible overnight popularity. I profoundly respect
God' s use of the weak and the foolish thing, but I cannot, for
that reason, endorse what is garish, cheap and coarse as
being that weak and foolish thing of which Paul speaks.
"Holiness unto the Lord" is still the standard of God's House,
even when it is unspectacular and unassuming in the eyes of
the world, and even in our own eyes.
Waiting is a priestly function, and we need to wait to see if
our spirits are hospitable to what is being mediated from
church platforms. Is it compatible with our already existing
knowledge of God? If it is not compatible, they can stand
on their heads, run all over the platform, and every other
kind of madness. We are not to mindlessly give ourselves
to it at all. Our integrity in God needs to be guarded, and
we should not allow ourselves to be influenced, taken up
and affected by the current trends, or else we will never
have anything significant to give.
What has come to us in our relationship with God, our
personal history of the knowledge of God, has come
through obedience and the reproaches that accompany
obedience, and the sufferings that come with following the
Lord. It did not come cheap. That knowledge is precious
and dear. We need to make it the index of all other
knowledge, and if present phenomena are not compatible
with what we already know, and have tested, as being the
knowledge of God as God, then we need to hold at arm's
length that which purports to be from God, even if it is a 'blessing' to others.
I have found safety in aligning new phenomena with what
already is my knowledge of the holiness of God through my
forty-year walk. I am jealous over that inward deposit, that
residue of the knowledge of God that is beyond words; it
cannot be articulated, but I know it to be there, and it is in
the innermost place of my being. Everything has to be
tested against that. If present phenomena are not consonant
with what I already know to be the holiness of God, then I
am alerted, and cannot indiscriminately receive what others
seem to be applauding. This has been a life-saving provision
for me, and it ought to be so for all believers.
It was not too long ago, in a church where I was speaking,
that in a moment of time the thought came to me that one
does not have to be a Mormon or a Jehovah's Witness, or
subscribe to some cult to be deceived. One can subscribe
to correct Christian orthodoxy and be as effectually =
deceived in the correctness of that credal statement as if
they were embracing false doctrine. And in fact, that kind
of deception is the most devious and most powerful of all,
because you think you are correct.
It is a critical hour for the Church. Deception is rampant.
My Jewish people are perishing. Where is that witness
that moves them to jealousy? The Jews are everywhere
about us, totally unimpressed and untouched with our best
Charismatic demonstration. The Church needs to come
into a place that is holy, holy, holy, where they know God
as He is, and not just as they think Him to be. Only out
of that place are we then able to make Him known.