Rapture 31

The woman who held power with men

February 3, 2007

Joel Akin

Acts 16:18 And this did she many days. But Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out the same hour.

Paul was grieved with a spirit that we would call evil. He was grieved for it would not shut-up. It was a voice that persisted and grieved Paul. Yet let us think a little deeper. Paul was on the road and there was a spirit that came to hinder. Yet it came from a woman and Paul was a man of honor. To rebuke a woman meant that it had to be of wrong. To be of wrong meant it was a symptom of something that was deeper.

This woman wasn't just a spirit speaking truth but a woman seeking truth. She followed them for weeks telling the truth. Yet it wasn't the truth that was pleasing to God. God wanted the word to be true. He wanted it to be powerful. He wanted it to be of God. He wanted it to strike chords and strike the one place that could not be touched by a man. The part of the spirit that Jesus had awoken. And this was the role of the Holy Spirit. It wasn't the role of Paul. He wasn't trying to garner attention to himself. He wasn't standing on the street corner.

That was the role of others who had been called to do that. God speaks to those who have that position and they have an affect. Paul was on the road and being on the road meant he was tired and wanted men to hear his word. To have a woman speak it meant they were speaking out of turn. And it was a woman Paul spoke of as being one who should ask her husband the deeper questions at home.

Maybe there was a deeper reason for it but it isn't really stated in scripture. But if I were a man seeking to spread the word in a far place I would not a woman walking alongside me shouting these are men who serve the Lord Jesus. Not because I was ashamed but because that wasn't the way the Spirit guided us. And as Paul grew angry and frustrated it seemed as if there were only one thing to do. And that was rebuke the woman. Except he didn't. He waited and it says after many days he was grieved. And being grieved he rebuked her in the name of Jesus Christ. Well, that is how we would think it should be. Instead he rebuked the spirit that was within her.

Not multiple spirits just one. And it was in the name of Jesus Christ.

When we deal with sin do we think that he is just one spirit? Do we as men fight sin believing that it is one? Sin isn't just one spirit. Paul had to struggle not to yell at this spirit. It wasn't just an evil spirit but it was one spirit and it was one he wanted out of the woman. Those who made money from her were angry. But who were those men? Were they men of our age as in men who earn money from those who are of evil?

In some ways this is a story of time. We are men and we think that this spirit was cast down into hell. Yet perhaps it was like the spirits that Jesus rebuked. Maybe there are spirits not just of hell but of sin and of the grave and of the air and of power and so on. Spirits who fell and were lost so long ago that no one remembered their name. Spirits that were not meant to be evil. Spirits who sought the truth. Spirits that heard the truth. Perhaps even the creature that Jesus asked us to preach to.

The problem is this woman held power with men. And men searched her out for information so they might earn money. Scriptures tells us the love of money is the root of all evil. If the root was in that spirit then maybe we are dealing with a root that goes back to the tree of knowledge of good and evil. If there was a root that dealt with money then it would be of time.

That would seem to indicate a vast element of evil based on a deep root of evil. That would be time or Time. Now if Jesus came to set us free from sin then why wasn't it called Sin as in capital? Maybe some of us think it was but lets suppose Jesus had to go and deal with the tree. The tree was of death and of sin but the true root was more evil. Jesus could chop down the tree but the root remained. And if the root remained then the evil in it was still there.

Now if the evil were cast down to earth then think of the root as not a spirit but a multitude of spirits. It would have been similar to the evil spirits that inhabited the man in the cemetery. Jesus cast them into the swine and then they did what they wanted most. They were free to go out and pillage again. But why not bind them in some other way?

To understand that could be a book in itself. They had ways and means of freedom but lets suppose they played a trick and wanted to go into the abyss but no one but Jesus knew it. Suppose they wanted to go into the abyss. Maybe the abyss signified a place of safety and that was what they wanted to trick Jesus. Or maybe they were speaking the truth.

I have another theory and I think it is a good one. Perhaps the swine had souls which trapped the swine. When the swine were carried into the sea the sea had something in it called nothing. That is the sea represented the time of the end when the sea would give up its dead. By casting the souls into the swine the soul of the animal carried the soul or spirit of the evil ones into something they did not expect. Maybe there were ones among the evil spirits who knew what they were doing. Maybe the soul of the animal trapped them inside of the body and they were carried into the sea and held down by something called death.

So lets say that is the correct answer. Not so the spirits could flee but so the spirits were in the right body at the right time to be carried into the sea. And that is part of the history of the root and part of the spirit that Paul had to deal with. He was grieved by the spirit but that sounds like the language of the Holy Spirit. Maybe the Holy Spirit had to create a time and a place where the spirit could be trapped.

Whatever happened we know the power that drove it out was that of Jesus Christ.

So lets go into the rapture story because this is the joy of my heart.

Revelation 20:13 And the sea gave up the dead

Now along with that will be hell and the grave. Read it if you wish. But the sea gave up the dead would indicate people who had drowned at sea. But lets think a moment. This is toward the end of the Bible. Not towards the beginning. It seems to be a different hell and grave. So lets suppose there are several and one was of Time. Time would be a spirit that was based on riches so lets call him Rich. He was of a brother that was of the Ent so lets put the first letter of the Ent into Rich's name. Erich. Erich would be a twin to Rich and would be of the same family. As in the family tree.

Now lets say that a family tree is based on truth and we really do inherit something physical or spiritual from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil which Adam and Eve ate of. Lets say that it passed unto us a measure of good and of evil. The good would be one of several things. It could be sin or evil. That doesn't seem likely so what would the good be? Lets say it was of the fruit. That makes sense since the fruit comes from the Holy Spirit. So lets say the fruit was death.

Now death isn't a blessing except when we think. And when we think then it becomes a blessing of time.

Time would be the blessing of Erich if Time were of God. But what if Time became part of the root. What if Time were part of Death. What if Death became Erich.

Now this does seem possible and some will think of Lord of the Rings and the Ent trees in that story. They were all male. All the Ent women had gone somewhere long ago and none of the men knew where. We could play with that but suppose this was the work of sin. And Ent women and Ent men became separated over the issue of sin.

Now if you were the twin to Time you would be Erich. But not of true death because sin would carry that sting. Scripture tells us the sting of sin is death. Now in a way that is part of the mystery of this story but remember we are dealing with one tree. So if it produces fruit that means it had a good heart. And that means it was good and evil.

So if it was good and evil then it takes after us. We have something good in us and that is the spirit which God gave us at birth. Now birth is of God and birth could be considered the first breath or it could be considered the conception that leads to the first breath. Whatever we chose is fine.

Now the first level of time is of men. Lets say men played with time and it took on the nature of rot. After all men wanted to save fruit but the fruit wouldn't preserve. The preserve of fruit became the death of the fruit.

So men had to create evil and that would not be easy. It would mean they would carry it to a tree and the tree would have to bear knowledge. And that meant if the tree bore knowledge it would produce knowledge. And that was not the bore of a drill which is what we were taught in school but the bore of a worm that took our knowledge and made it part of his resource.

So God had to find a way of controlling evil and that was not easy. Evil rose up from the slightest queue or cue and that was either of a line of men or of a line on the billiard table.

The two seemed to be related and the two seemed to be at war and they were. It was based on time of men and their creation vs the Time of God and His creation.

Men wanted God to be free to do His thing but some wanted God out of the picture. And that meant if they could find a way of destroying God they would. And they did. Or at least they tried. But God had friends and that meant those who loved God fought with heart and with soul. And those evil men had no chance. Well if an ice cube could exist for long in a lake of liquid then maybe it could. And perhaps that was part of the problem of evil in that it just froze and thawed itself out. Or gnawed itself a hole and escaped.

It seemed that way but God saw all possible ways of escape. One was through His son Jesus bearing part of it and the other was for men to bear part of it. We did by prayer. And thus God used our prayer to help. What does prayer do? It builds up power and it is like a drill. And the drill imparts knowledge. And the drill blocks ways of escape. And it helps us in our walk so we can stay pure and holy. It also helps us with life. It gives us understanding. It gains us estates and it gives us ability of life. Ability of life is like a writer who wants to write. It also gives us insight into things that are spiritual. And it does aid us in love. It gives us friends in heavenly places. Men of time see us as men of love. And women view us as men of love. But perhaps more importantly prayer kill bugs dead.

And that is what prayer does in simple form. It is the most amazing thing. It doesn't matter how evil sin gets to us as long as we can pray. Sin cannot stop a man of prayer. No matter how evil it gets. It can try to kill such a man but it cannot succeed. It can try to hinder with tired fingers and that is part of history. For I wear fingers out faster then God replaces them. So by prayer God takes the pain and makes it part of sin. Sin has to bear our pain back into the earth.

Now when the woman who was filled by a spirit was set free it turned out the spirit was a male spirit. That seems to indicate that evil is mainly male. For whatever reason men are evil though it doesn't mean women don't go bad as well.

So when the spirit was cast out it had a few choices and one was to run. You have to remember the spirit is evil. It is grieving the man and the Holy Spirit. The men who make money from it would continue to earn profit until it is cast off. It then returns to the root and that is not available to it. So it has to be cast into the abyss which is time. There it is bent into a pretzel and torn apart because time doesn't exist for evil.

So in a way time is evil because it wants to be torn limb from limb. It is also a spirit that wants us to think that it is gone forever. So lets look at this another way. Imagine that time is a spirit but it is called Rich. Now Rich isn't the root but only the twin to Erich and he is death. Some would call him Deth because the a would be of earth.

Anyway the one thing we must remember is that sin is everywhere on earth. He was a broken man in his day which means he divided his soul and spirit in a way that wasn't right. It allowed him to be evil and good. And it gave his bad side a new meaning. We try to be good and evil so God set a new value that none were righteous. Not one. And that not one was meant to refer to sin because sin tried all men to find one righteous. There were and there are none.

So sin went and turned himself into a creepy baggage of plant, animal, rock and creation of God. And it worked unfortunately. And all creation groaned for the evil that had been done to it by sin.

It would seem sin was the evil but as it turns out there were other spirits out there that wanted to be in on the gang. So there was the angel we call death who wanted in. He was bad in a good way but sin made him really bad. Then there was God. God wanted to be good all the time but his son had to bear the time of men. Seems that there was a part of God that had been of man and that was a man named Jason. Now Jason was part of the spirit of God but not the Holy part. It meant this spirit became Rich and richer and richer until he owned everything but the kitchen sink. So God instituted a new policy for super rich men and that was they gave him 90% of their earnings. Don't worry it doesn't work for evil men but does for men of God. The policy is simple and I follow it even though I'm among the poorest men on earth.

Now sin took evil down to the smallest queue of life and there he rotted away at the innards until it began to fester. And it was vile and it stank. God had to create life anew and it wasn't easy with so much flesh.

Jesus went down into the earth and had to vile the spirit out which meant sin or Sin had to become a man in order for the vile to begin to heal. He didn't know what he was doing at that time but Jesus had a body he gave him. Whether we like this or not it was essential to draw out the poison and Jesus had to do it. And the only way he could was for there to be a new man standing there for Sin to fill up. That is the mystery of time and Time and T I M E. It will be revealed in that time when God thinks enough time has passed.

The benefit of this story is that Jesus never met this man but he did leave behind something called his body. Jesus' body was broken but his Spirit was alive. So he went into his Spirit man and that was the part that was the mystery. Some think he went immediately from a shattered body to fighting for three days. It wouldn't be impossible it just wouldn't be fair. Not even to Jesus. So don't make him go through that as we do in our Sunday School lessons.

Think of fair as being of God. And think of Jesus as being put into a freer situation. Like he left that old body in the earth, not in the cave on earth, but inside the earth, and there God restored him spiritually to a new Spirit man. It was free and it was tough and it was free of pain. And the remains of that old body had to remain behind so no one could have it.

Now Jesus is free to run and not be weary and it fulfills scripture. He runs and runs and runs for three days and makes his way to the gates of Paradise. In a way he is running for his life and for ours. So think of him as running from a horde of demons. And think of those demons as pouring out of hell which isn't supposed to be possible. That was part of the abyss. And if they were getting out then he had to help rescue Paradise.

Now this means something to us because we think that maybe there is more for us men. If those spirits broke out of hell then maybe there was a reason why God had to have a rapture. A rapture of the dead. A reasons for hell and the grave to give up their dead. A reason for the sea to give up its dead. Maybe those spirits were not really dead but were struggling to break free. So they could come out of the abyss. And that sounds way too much like truth for us to ignore.

Jesus arrives at Paradise. They let him in just in the nick of time. They pour on the fuel and the gates are on fire and burn the brigade of evil spirits. Jesus lifts up his feet and jumps with Paradise up to the level of earth. Well, it doesn't weigh as much as we think. He carries it up and is carrying Paradise so he has to tell people "Don't touch me" because there are spirits all over him and he doesn't want to lose them.

Sound crazy? It might unless we think of our spirits as being tiny and very small. They are embryonic and not able to bear pain and suffering. So when we are given life by Jesus we begin to grow but some of us remain stunted and can't retain life. And our spirit is carried up to God so it can be returned with life. That is every time we sin and then ask for forgiveness. So don't play with grace because that is the price Jesus pays to breath life into us.

So if our embryo's are of the spirit of life then what does this have to do with everything we are. Think of that embryo as our spirit man. It is embryonic and never matures because we refuse to believe. Belief goes beyond what Thomas experienced with Christ. It becomes the status of prayer and prayer is something most of us hate to do. And if you hate it you put it off until your embryo is burning with pain and eventually dies. Sounds terrible but we don't think of ourselves as anything but human. And our spirit man needs prayer to live. It feeds on prayer and prayer is the power of God unto salvation. And so we hate this because it seems to add to theology. Much better just to keep up doing my own thing because I know its what God called me to do.

Lets just say I was there and I don't belittle that. God calls each of us to do. But think of him as father God who gives us direction and then waits to see if we want to spend time with him. Not just for direction but for teaching and friendship. And that is where we go from just guidance to friendship. And if we are sheep to Christ we hear his voice. Not just direction but friendship. He is part of God and part of the voice of the father. There is not need to divide up into three voices though one can distinguish if the need arises.

So this does have to do with the rapture. It is us who are caught in a war. We are trying to be free but we are trapped by tradition. Tradition has us pray with rosary but not with single minded concentration. That is where we submit to God in prayer and let him speak. In 99.9% of the time if we seek we will find. Only when the enemy strives with us do we not hear.

Just listen and don't list. Listen is what happens when we forget the list. It is the way God works with words. List and Listen are meant to be a word for our benefit. We want help but help isn't going to happen until we list or listen.

Now here is the 0.09% of those who cannot hear and how they can get their life back. If this happens to you and it probably won't but it did with me God wants this to be a reminder to help. Sin arises and thwarts us with lie. God thwarts him with truth.

Write down the list of desires. Make it personal. Find a list and make it yours. Find truth and make it yours. Think of a list as a friend and the friend comes and knocks at the door. He says "My name is L and I want you to live in my house." You think "I don't know L but if this is of God I'll go there.

So you find L's neighborhood and you try to find out what you like about it. You map it out and you try to see it from a new perspective. What area is best? Would be his roommate make a diffference? If so then ask L what is the best place to live in the city. Find people who have been there. Talk to them. Ask them what they think. Remember people still exist and care. Even if some don't.

When the list is finished in one area go into another. It isn't meant to be a promise list but a promissary list. Think of it as something God wants to give us. We don't make it happen we wait for God to see it. And then he does with prayer.

Now if a man prays a list does it not become a rosary? No because the list isn't given to a man by men but given to a man by faith. So if a man prays and seeks God God gives them wisdom and they pray for it.

Now if God gives them wisdom does that represent knowledge of life? It does and it does for many reasons. The best one is life is meant to be of life. Not of sorrow and of death. Even if death was a fruit that came into men it was given that men might have life of spirit. Otherwise the spirit would die. It cannot be killed but mans nature can be twisted.

The last thing of list is that it is meant to be of tree. Let it be a pair of trees or a fruit of trees. Each one leads to a different page and each one becomes part of the fruit of the page. So what is the fruit of L? The asking is part of the fruit. Asking people would help. Asking them with love would be better. So think of love as the key to being in their arms or hands depending on who they are. If L is a city then the city becomes the one with open arms. If the city is hard to get along with then its okay to be on the outskirts of the city. And if L is hard to love then find a friend with passion. As in a caring spirit.

Finally don't let L become a springboard to discouragement. Remember God is rich and able to deliver. Not just you but all your dreams. Remember to pray and seek for each part of the story. And remember its okay to draw and to think and to pray while doing something restful. Like music and for some TV. Just forget laws of time and let God resound into the story. He wants it to be his and not the enemies.

Just remember all dreams get bigger with time. If God casts off a dreamer he casts off the nature of the Spirit of God. For God created a spirit of hope and it is not of men but of the nature of a woman. Just as true Truth is of a woman. Like the nature of Christ is gentle but what he learns from women were those who helped wash his feet with tears. He learned enough from them to pass it on to men with love. They didn't want him to wash their feet but they did because Jesus learned from a woman of truth. Its okay to cry once in a while. Let your feet do the talking.