Spiritual Warfare (Part 2)

Today I want to develop a really serious thought, a bit heavy in a sense, but that it is the word of the Lord and it is the call of the Lord for his church in this time that he wants to perfect us, purify us and temper us to the extent that he wants-.

You may remember the last time I preached we talked about Ahab being besieged by this mighty King Ben Hadad of Syria, declaring to him your children and your wife and your money as mine. And he tells him 'oh, yes Lord, you know it's like that', to get this man out of the way because he is very powerful, a very powerful king. And then the king comes, this enemy king, and says 'well, I want to put that into practice. I want to effect it, carry it out.

And we put this text in the light of spiritual warfare, because we know that the Bible writes these things, establishes these things, not for us to read them as if they were history, but to establish certain spiritual principles, that we reading it we extract and apply to our life in appropriate ways. What matters is not the historical account itself, although that is interesting, but the spiritual truth that is within the account, which we can apply to different situations in life. And this text obviously has connotations of struggle, war, conflict and how we have to behave in those situations.

Ben Hadad is a type of Satan, satanic attack, spiritual warfare who wants to possess church property, wants to rule your life, wants to establish authority over your life and say 'all you have it's mine'. That is what Satan wants, he wants to possess, he wants to steal, he wants to kill, he wants to destroy, he wants to establish his lordship on earth over man by stealing God's authority.

The church has been placed on earth to declare to principalities and powers that Christ is Lord, amen. That it is not Satan nor his demonic powers, nor his illegitimate force, but the power of God, which reigns over our lives.

And Elijah appears to him, or a prophet, appears to King Ahab frightened by what this man has threatened with war and says: 'Don't worry, the Lord is going to give you the land'. Or rather, 'the Lord is going to give you that army. Today the Lord gives him to you', and he calls Ahab, who is an evil king, he is a sinful and rebellious and idolatrous man, but the Lord wants to show Israel and I see there the mercy of God that goes to an illegitimate king and evil and tells him 'I am going to hand you over so that you know that I am Jehovah, that I am the owner of the land, that it is not Ben Adad with his might but that I can defend my people, if my people trust in me.'

And King Ahab's servants told him 'don't obey him or do what he asks', which I said last Sunday, that's what we have to do. When the devil wants to control our life and wants to take over some area of our life and establish his dominion, we have to not obey him or do what he tells us. On the contrary, what do we have to do? what does the bible say we have to do with the devil? Resist him, it says 'resist the devil and he will flee from you'. Amen. And that is what Ahab does, he resists Ben Hadad and the Lord gives him a great victory as we saw in that passage.

Now, however, there is something interesting. Look at verse 22, “.....after that great victory –Ahab could have said, well I already destroyed Ben Hadad's army, now I can rest for the rest of my days. I'm already calm. Ben Adad already knows that I'm not that easy, he already scared me because of the huge defeat I gave him. But what does God's prophet say to Ahab?

It says in 22, “....then the prophet came to the king of Israel and said, 'Go, strengthen yourself and consider and see what you do because after a year the king of Syria will come against you."

What does that teach us? What spiritual principle does this teach us, brothers? The devil never gives up. listen to that. You take him out one door, and he tries to get in through the other. Yes or no? The Lord Jesus Christ speaks, he says that when a spirit is taken out of a person, he says that he goes through deserted and dry places. Because? Because spirits mysteriously enjoy human company. We do not know how or what benefit they get, but there is something of the human warmth that they do not have and of the grace of God that they do not enjoy either, that they stick to human beings and of course, since their desire is also to harm, to do damage, and their enjoyment is that, they need human closeness.

Then the Lord Jesus Christ said 'be careful that when a spirit comes out of a person, it goes around looking for where to land, where to exert its bad influence and comes back, says 'let me go back to where I was there, to so-and-so , to visit him again after they kicked me out of there, that pastor who prayed for him and scolded me and took me out. Let me see, even from afar, how he is.

He says that he finds it, his house is tidy, God has blessed him, his marriage is beautiful, his finances are good, he is going to church, he is serving the Lord, he is giving his offering and his tithe to the Sir, everything is in order, your house is beautiful. Why what happened? When the Lord is in control there is blessing. Amen. Yes or no?

When you are serving God and doing as God commands and obeying the word of the Lord, the order of the Kingdom of God comes into your life. Little by little things are being ordered, where there was disaster, where there was disorder, where there was conflict, it begins, where before there was in the bebelata and the money that went away in a weekend in games or womanizing, or waste, now the person begins to save and work and there is order in the home because the spirit of the Lord is there.

And what does it say? When that spirit arrives and sees the house in order, it says "wow, this is beautiful", it says that then it goes and looks for other spirits worse than it and they come and occupy it and the last condition of that person becomes worse than the first . What happened? That person was neglected.

The devil is always trying to... See? As I say, you take him out the door and through the window if you don't take care of yourself. That is why the word says “be sober and watchful”. That is why here the prophet tells Ahab 'Go, strengthen yourself and consider and see what you do'. 'Go, strengthen yourself and consider and see what you do.' Be sober and watchful.

Do you see the relationship? Because we have, we are at war, there is an enemy that does not give up. The only entertainment, so to speak, that evil spirits have, and they exist and are real, brothers, is to look for ways to attack our lives, to sow damage, to dirty what God has cleansed.

And I have seen people like that, brothers. When they come to church God begins to bless them, they give themselves to the Lord and one sees that they are in the fire of the Lord. God begins to bless his children and there's... and then a man or a woman comes along and begins to cajole them and this and that and they begin to stray from the Lord's fold, a romantic interest, anything, it begins the devil. And when you come to see him shortly, you no longer see him in the church, they have already disappeared and the wear and tear begins again, the collapse begins again and the enemy begins to break down those walls that God was establishing, he begins to put his hands, their nails of steel, to destroy the foundation, little by little to dig until the house collapses again. And that blessing that that person was experiencing, that that family was experiencing, everything falls apart again because they did not do what the prophet tells Ahab "Go, be strong."

If you are going to serve the Lord, see if you have been in the clutches of the enemy and decide to enter the ways of the Lord, be careful because you have to strengthen yourself, because the enemy now hates you more than before and you are resentful and he knows where you live, he knows your address. He knows which foot you're limping on. The devil is a hunter who knows the habits of his prey and knows the type of bait his prey likes.

You know that every fish has its bait. Each animal has its type of meat or whatever it likes, its habits. And the hunter learns the habits of the prey in order to hunt it properly. It is also Satan. He is a schemer. The Bible speaks of the machinations of the devil, the strategies of Satan. He is a strategist.

So he is always trying to observe us and see what our area of weakness is so he can get into it. For some it may be sensuality, for others it may be anger. For others it may be resentment. For others it can be the delight of the people, the homage, the respect of others. For others it is prestige, for others it is money. There are different baits. Those who like gambling don't necessarily like liquor; who likes liquor does not necessarily like money. Each one has its area. We have our weaknesses and Satan is an expert at going to that area and focusing on that area and he knows how to attack us and how to go about destroying our foundations.

And that is why we have to, without being paranoid, we must not be paranoid, we must not be afraid of the devil. We are not talking about fear, but beware of Satan. Amen.

You have to watch your back and you have to be sober and vigilant. And that is what the prophet tells Ahab, 'go, strengthen yourself and consider and see what you do that after a year....'

How good it is when one has the advice of people who have spiritual discernment! How good that there was a prophet of God to advise public order, civil order! Today men want to get the church completely out of civil affairs and talk about the separation of church and state, using a phrase that was never meant to get spiritual influence out of civil government.

Right now I am reading a book about the life of John Adams, the second president of the United States, an admirable man. I was very impressed, I have been very impressed by the life of John Adams, a man of integrity, a completely upright man, which is why he got into a lot of trouble. But one sees the life of John Adams going up, and John Adams had a lot of influence on the formation of the United States after his revolution against England.

And it impresses me that the love that man had for God. He was perhaps not a Christian filled with the holy spirit as we would define him, but he was a man of spiritual integrity, he loved God and once when Benjamin Franklin, another great man of the revolutionary war, of colonial times, badmouthed the Gospel, John Adams confronted him and said 'I am very disappointed in you, a man as great as you, as illustrious as you and speaking of the Gospel in that way.'

And I see that in the formation of this country there was a healthy fear of God. These great men established separation between church and state because they did not want any particular church, any particular denomination to influence the government as in England, but they did not want God to be outside. There is a difference between a denomination and God. Do you understand the difference?

Today they are using the phrase 'church and state' to want to get the spiritual influence out of the state. But it's not like that. Here I see that the state benefited from the sound, wise advice of a prophet of God, a man of God, who knew how to discern the spirit and who knew what God was saying, could see the future.

Brothers, surround yourself with people who know the movements of the holy spirit. Seek the advice of wise people, of people mature in the holy spirit. Don't meet around there as they say, with bambalanes, scoundrels who have nothing good to say to you. Get together with wise people, mature people, serious people, people who know the holy spirit and be infected with their anointing, with their blessing. Seek advice from proven people, from serious people, from people mature in spirit who can give you sound advice and who can discern God's move.

When you are going to choose a partner, you are going to choose a job, a place where you are going to move, make sure you first pray and seek illumination from God but also look for people who can advise you wisely in the spirit.

And this prophet said to Ahab 'get ready because within a year that man is going to return.....' And look then, the Bible gives us as an entrance to the interior councils of the council of the King Ben Hadad, the Syrian king. And there comes the camera and introduces us to Ben Adad's advisors – you can read it yourself – telling Ben Adad, 'you know that, Ben Adad, what happened there, that defeat you suffered is because the gods The Israelites are gods of the mountain and the fight was fought in mountains, in places of ups and downs and there was inequality in the terrain, and the specialty of the Jewish gods is in the mountains. But you know what? as it is, now try a flat place. They are not gods of the plain, they are only mountain gods and that is why they defeated him. If you fight them, if you fight with them on the plain, you will see that you will defeat them.

You see here the enemy looking for the terrain he thinks is advantageous, the area where he can do the damage he wants. Now, these men are thinking that God, Jehovah is like their gods, limited to the ground, to the physical. Because that's how the pagan gods were, gods of corn, gods of the harvest, gods of the sun, of the moon. The carnal man only thinks in carnal and physical terms, but our God is above the physical, our God controls the physical, our God created the physical and is in control of all things.

Then they advise him 'prepare your army again, replenish it exactly as you had it, man for man, sword for sword, horse for horse and challenge them again and this time fight them on the plain and your you will see that you defeat him'. How bad it is to have the advice of people who do not know things of the spirit, do not really know how God moves!

And what happens? Then it comes again and the war is locked and in verse 28 it says that "....then came the man of God to the king of Israel, -again the influence of the church, the influence of the holy spirit, the influence of the spiritual understanding. Our leaders need good counselors.

Brothers, we must also ask the Lord for a church wise enough to advise the civil government. Because yes, I also say that there are many people from the church, just as I say one thing I say the other, that we allow ourselves to be bribed, we allow ourselves to be manipulated by politicians and they wrap us up in a little finger and do with us what they want. They use us to win votes and then forget about the values we hold dear and stand for. And we have to be careful with that too.

I long for prophets of God who will say to the president's face exactly what they have to tell him, not what they want to hear. Because there are many men who have gained access to politicians and presidents by telling them what they want to hear or not by telling them what they don't want to hear.

And I see one thing in the Old Testament that these prophets of God spoke to the king as if the king was under their tutelage. And so it is because the church is above the civil power. Yes or no? because the church represents the interests of the Kingdom of God, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. We don't have to fear or pay homage to any man even if he has the name of President of the United States or Prime Minister of England, or whatever.

The church must speak the truth as God declares it. Not a church that allows itself to be bribed by civil power, but a church that moves in the authority and in the truth and in the power and integrity of God, brothers. That is the type of church that is needed to advise the civil power. Not the church we have today, it's a decrepit church, brothers, a church that is afraid to tell the truth and that's really what this is about... I don't even know if I'm going to get to the real topic of the sermon I had this morning, but please bear with me for a while because this is very important.

So, I am not a 10 or 20 minute preacher, brothers, forgive me and I know that many things are late and Miguel told me, 'we have run out of time', but this is the word. .. I don't think we wasted time. Amen.... in nothing, at any time. So receive, receive because this is the word of God that can bless your life.

Then the prophet comes again and he spoke to him saying '...thus said the Lord –verse 28- because the Syrians have said –it is good to know that God is in the intimate councils of the men. When those counselors were speaking to Ahab, there was the spirit of the Lord listening. God does not need spies, he does not need satellites to know what men deliberate in their intimate chambers, he knows exactly what they are saying in their hearts.

And he spoke to him saying ".... thus said the Lord because the Syrians have said the Lord is the God of the mountains, not the God of the valleys, I will deliver all this great multitude into your hand so that you may know that I am Jehovah.”

You see, there was apparently a merely geopolitical war going on. Everything would seem... if there had been historical analysts, the only thing they would have been analyzing was the conflict between Syria and Israel, something merely political, economic, social, ethnic conflicts, they would have put it in those terms. But little by little, as we read about it, we realize that there is a spiritual controversy underlying the conflict of nations. Like today Lebanon and Israel.

You know well brothers, there will never be peace between Israel and the Arabs until the Lord Jesus Christ makes peace. The United Nations will be able to do whatever they want and all the diplomatic brains will be able to exert all the influence they want in the Middle East, until the Lord says peace, there will be no peace there. I can say this because there is a spiritual dynamic underlying all of that. There is a controversy between Ishmael and Isaac that goes back thousands of years. And there is a hatred that the devil has against the people of God that is not satisfied by anything. And no matter how much men try to solve this problem, this problem does not obey human, diplomatic laws, because there is a spiritual controversy underlying it.

And also here apparently in the fight against Syria, notice that this idea of competing gods begins to emerge, their gods, our gods, the God Jehovah who wants his lordship to be established and others who they do not want to acknowledge the Lordship of God. And there is also a controversy between God and his own people, led by a king, Ahab, idolater and a devilish woman named Jezebel who is poisoning her husband's brain because she is an idolatrous woman and comes from idolaters and they are corrupting the people Jew. And God wants to teach that hypocritical and rebellious people that he is the God. And that is why he says 'I am going to hand them over so they can see that it is not the power of man but my power that is in control of the nations.'

And then God... says 'I'm going to give it to you'. And it certainly says that "...on the seventh day the battle was fought and the children of Israel killed one hundred thousand foot soldiers in one day from the Syrians and the rest fled, says verse 30, to Apheg to the city and the wall fell on 27,000 men who were left. That is called effectiveness in warfare because God was in control.

When God is for you it doesn't matter who is against you. The psalmist says even if an army encamps around me, I will fear no evil; Even if war rises against me, I will be confident.

Says the word of the Lord 'you prepare a table before me in the presence of my distressers'. Hallelujah! When the Lord is in your favor, when the Lord is defending you, when you are moving in the axis of the Lord's will, there is no power that can be placed between you and the Lord, there is no .....

It says that the enemy will come like a river but God will make a wall between you and the enemy, because the power of God is like that. When one is full of the grace of the Lord, even if the enemy wants to do what he wants, you can be confident. I will be confident.

A thousand will fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come to you, says the Lord.

A total destruction of that army. But look, brothers, here is something important. Again, because it's one of the themes that's starting to emerge from all of this. What do you do after the victory? I think that would be a good title for this sermon. “what do we do after the victory?”

We said that there are people who when they are healing and life and everything is beginning to emerge and being a blessing they neglect, they let their guard down. You know what? Many times the most terrible moments in life come after the great victories, because then we let our guard down, we get careless, and we already begin to rest on our laurels. And that's when the enemy trips us and makes us fall and stumble.

Look what happens. This man Ben Hadad, the Syrian king, had blasphemed against God, had poured out his anger and hatred against the people of God. God had a controversy with him, there was a spiritual controversy between God and Ben Hadad. And what happens?

Look at what it says here in verse 31, it says that “....then the servants of Ben Hadad said to him, 'behold, we have heard of the kings of the house of Israel that they are kings merciful, let us now put silicon on our backs, and ropes around our necks, and let us go out to the king of Israel to see if by chance he saves your life.”

Ben Adad was in serious trouble. Israel had defeated his army, he was hiding from place to place, he knew it was coming to him because in those times there was no mercy, but an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. You did it, you pay for it. And because Israel still had some of God's influence left, it had a reputation for being a merciful nation, not as bloodthirsty as they were in those other kingdoms.

So these men who are already in trouble, say 'look, they have a reputation for being merciful people, so we're going to put a noose around our necks as a sign of service, that we are at your disposal, that we are under death, in a sense, and we are going to give ourselves to his mercy, silicon, that is to say black and battered clothes as a sign of mourning and mourning, and ashes on our heads as a sign of humiliation, and we are going to appear and ask him for mercy so that they spare your life.

Now, this is where things get dense, as Christians because, brothers, as Christians we follow a Christ of love and mercy, who forgave the adulterous woman, who had mercy on the great sinners in Scripture and that on occasions when, for example, the disciples wanted to call fire against the heads of those who had not accepted the Lord, the Lord rebuked them and said 'you don't know what spirit you deserve'.

What would we do? How would we write the rest of that text? This is where Scripture gets dense and that is why I love the word of God, because it is complex, multidimensional. what would dictate to us, superficially the spirit of Jesus Christ? Well, let's forgive them. That is what the word of God says. Forgive, have mercy, let's... and that's what I have preached, and I preach and will always preach. We already beat them.

And in fact there is Biblical precedent because later on when Elisha, the successor to Elijah.... You will remember that there is a band of Syrians coming to capture Elisha and Elisha's servant is trembling because of moment they have surrounded them and if they want to capture Elisha and take him away. And Elisha tells him 'don't worry because there are more who are with us than those who are with them'. And he prays to the Lord to open the eyes of his servant and at the moment the servant sees an army of fire, soldiers and angels around them. And it says that Elijah gave a word and struck the Syrian army with blindness and they were all blind and confused and did not know where they were and put them in a trance and Elisha led them into the very midst of Israel, surrounded then by the Israelite army and they captured to that whole Syrian gang. And Elisha's servant says to him, 'what do we do with them, Lord, do we kill them? Look, the same question, what to do when you have the enemy captive, when you have defeated the enemy, what do you do?

In that other case of Elisha, Elisha tells him 'how are we going to kill them? Would you kill those you have already defeated? No, don't kill them, on the contrary, do you know what Elisha does? He gives them food, cooks them a big dinner, humiliates them, and then sends them free back to their nation, without touching a single one of them. One would say, that is the spirit of Jesus Christ.

But guess what? In this case, brothers, in this case it is not so here. You know what? King Ahab, when these men thus humiliated and completely delivered to him appear to him, King Ahab tells the ambassadors sent by the king 'look, if he lives he is my brother', as if to say there is no problem, I forgive him and not only do I forgive him but I enter him into my privacy, he is going to be my close friend. And certainly that is what he does: he rides him in his chariot, rides him around the city and King Ben Hadad, very proud and happy that the problem is over, returns to his nation honored and blessed by King Ahab who thinks he has done well to forgive this man.

And look where it gets really dense. That's why let me... I hope you're not getting bored. I'm not bored, but I'm up here so I don't know about you, this is very important. We are now getting to the heart of the matter. Look at what it says in verse 35, because this is a lesson that I don't want you to lose, my brothers. It says “..... Then a man of the sons of the prophets – God was moving at that time in Israel. I ask the Lord, Father, send the prophetic spirit at this time, that your prophets return to speak to the secular world; that your prophets return to speak to the society of the United States and of the nations; let the truly prophetic voice be heard resounding again in the nations because it has not yet been heard as God wants it to resound.

And then this prophet approaches and again the chamber of the word enters an intimate place, we are no longer at the national, international level, but a scene in a place, in a house somewhere, in a school of the prophets perhaps. It says ".... then a man of the sons of the prophets -verse 35- said to his companion by the word of God....

Everyone say 'by the word of God'. This man was speaking in the spirit at that moment, he was speaking in the power of God, with the authority of God, by the move of God, it was God speaking through that prophet, because what I am telling you is very important. here for you to see what happens.

“..... he told his partner by the word of God 'hurt me now, hit me, take a stone, take a stick, whatever hurt me, hit me. Listen to me if a friend here from church tells you one day, they are there watching television, watching a video or talking and at one point he says 'hurt me, hit me', and you see the plate with which you can hit him in the head 'mmmm'. Or are you going to think 'is this guy crazy, what got into him, what wasp stung him?' And you don't, do you? But look, then he says:

"..... but the other did not want to hurt him." This is a mysterious passage. I have read this passage for years and wondered for years why God put this passage here in the Bible, of all the things he could put, why did he put that passage there. And I have asked the Lord for wisdom and I believe He has given me understanding why. Because look what happens:

"..... but the other did not want to hurt him and he said to him, the first prophet, because you have not obeyed the word of Jehovah, behold, when you away from me a lion will hurt you. And when he turned away from him, a lion found him and killed him."

Wow, brothers. Is God unfair? Wow, all this man did was good. He didn't mean to hit another man. I believe that we cannot blame anyone because they say "hit me" and you don't hit them even if you don't hurt them. However, God sends a lion that kills this man for not wanting to hurt that other prophet. What happened here? You see?

This text revolves around an essential truth, brothers. The writer of Ecclesiastes said 'everything has its time. There is time to kill and there is time to give life. There is time to love and he says there is still time to hate. That's what the Bible says, not me. There is time to destroy and there is time to build.

Human history has its times. There are times to forgive and let the enemy live and there is time to destroy him. There is time to be patient with the sinner and there is time to meet him face to face and tell him God's truth to his face. There is time to be patient with someone and wait years and years until that person repents and there is time to say, 'because you have continued to disobey the Lord, the judgment of God falls on your life, and either you fix yourself or the Lord It's going to split in half.

There is time for everything, brothers. And the important thing is to know how to discern God's time. Listen to me. Knowing how to discern when God is calling you to do one thing and when he is calling you to do the other.

There was a time to forgive that army and that man, but it was not that time. That man had already violated God's mercy. God's mercy was over for him. What Ahab had to do was discern the moment and kill that man. And this prophet that was supposed to have understanding, was supposed to discern that that other prophet that was speaking, was speaking by the power of God and to obey the word of God.

Brothers, when the holy spirit is moving in your life, in a church, or in an environment, look, very strange things happen. God when he is in all his power, God is sinister, God is ugly, God is terrible. God has an aspect, that if you look at it, you are petrified of how horrible God looks in all his glory, in all his power and in all his authority. God is the most dangerous thing you can imagine.

When the Jews heard the thunder, he says, and the trumpets that sounded on the mountain, when God was present, he says that they were so frightened that they told Moses 'you go up and leave us down here because we don't want to go there'.

When Moses lowered his face, he was so resplendent, and his appearance was so terrible that he had to put a sack over his head so as not to frighten and terrify the Hebrews. Because when God is in all his power, God is sinister. And for me, brothers, that is one thing that I have understood that I do not need my God to be pretty and attractive, and cute, and loving, and sweet, with long blonde hair, little blue eyes and a pretty face. I have a God that I know also has claws and teeth, and that when offended is also terrible.

Says the word 'horrible thing is to fall into the hands of the living God'. The church has lost the fear of the living God. The world has lost the fear of the terrible God, the creator God, the holy God, the 3 times holy God, the God of the cherubs, the sinister God who, when manifested, terrible things happen.

And, brethren, I ask the Lord, 'Father, help us to preserve as a church, as individuals, the sense of your holiness, of your terrible majesty, that we can't trifle with you, that we walk on a terribly mined ground of holy things, and that this world is a mysterious world. There are demons, there are angels, there is God, there is Satan, we are at war for our souls, we are in difficult times, we are in times when the church is called to be a prophetic church, brothers.

I see in the United States many churches and many preachers who are forgiving and healing and saying beautiful words and peace, when God is calling for war, and is calling for holiness and is calling for confrontation, and is calling to speak his word clearly, to a clear definition of what the word of God is and that the nations clearly hear the word of the Lord, and whoever wants to obey him obeys him, whoever does not, goes to hell and will suffer the consequences.

The Lord says 'come and let us reckon'. He says 'I don't want the sinner to be lost, I don't want the offender to be lost'. But it also says 'if they don't put themselves in order, I'm going to destroy them'. And I see today many preachers and many churches that what they are doing is trying to bribe people to come to church. And he says 'let's not talk about this, let's not talk about that. Let's not say this, nor let's say that, because we say it, people leave us'. They don't want to hear that. So let's not say it so they don't get upset.

Brethren, I cannot be that kind of pastor or preacher. You forgive me. I think we could possibly have a lot more people here of certain types and of a certain lineage if I tempered my preaching a little bit, but as long as I can in the name of the Lord I'm not going to do it, and I hope you will help me. They're going to support this. Because I do not believe that the church of Jesus Christ has to apologize for announcing sound doctrine.

The Bible says that in the last days people will have itchy ears and it says that there will be an accumulation of preachers who flatter their vanity and tell them what they want to hear because they are hungry for something spiritual but don't want them to be lost. tell them the truth. And the church has to say 'No'. If you want to enter the Kingdom of God, you have to play by the laws of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God does not accommodate man, man accommodates himself to the Kingdom of God.

That does not mean that we do not have mercy, that we do not have love, that we are not humble, that we do not recognize our own sins, that we do not recognize our need for the Lord's grace, that we do not love the sinner. That does not mean that we walk around with our eyes up and our noses upright saying 'we are better than the rest of the world'. No. In a spirit of humility, mercy, love, and recognition of our own sins, we speak the truth and the sinner is spoken to, told the truth, and confronted.

God is calling this nation to judgment if they do not repent. And we cannot preach peace when God is preaching war. We cannot be saying blessed to what God has cursed. We cannot call pure what God has said 'this is an abomination and it is a sin'. We cannot sit still while the foundations of society are being undermined by the spiritual foolishness of man. And when the church gets into an accommodation mentality, like Ahab, when the church refuses to do the violent things that God has called them to, like that second prophet who refuses to hurt the first because that's what God wanted in At that time, the church then brings judgments on itself.

And that is why there are so many churches and so many ministries today that are in decline, still dying of men who love God and his word because they are in disobedience with God, because they are not preaching everything that God asks that they preach; because they are shortening, abbreviating the Gospel, they are removing certain things because they are not convenient to proclaim from the pulpit. And every time you do that, every time you take something from the word of God and put it in a pocket for another day, you are making a pact with the devil. And that's why we can't do that. The church has to be clear, it has to be forceful. We are in the times of Ahab and Jezebel. We are in the time of Elijah and the church has to have that same integrity and that same violence.

I believe that the times that are coming for the United States and for the nations, just as they are times for God to call man to reconciliation, but they are also times of judgment. And the church is going to be called to administer those judgments. God will raise up his prophets. God is going to raise their voices to confront man and to tell him what he has to say and be channels of God's judgment. If men do not repent, listen to me, and the church has to prepare itself and we have to walk, brothers, with great integrity before God. We have to walk very carefully before the Lord because these are dangerous times.

This prophet who refused to move in the violent tonality that God required of him at that moment stepped out of the will of God and when the holy spirit is moving and is telling the church 'walk this way ', and the church doesn't walk around, that church becomes a rebellious church against which God has a controversy and God judges it.

That's it. I wish I could continue with this text. But look, brothers, what happens here is that this prophet, this first prophet needed that man to hurt him because he was going to appear before King Ahab and he was going to give him a parable to tell the king 'what you did to forgive that king, that violated my will.'

That second prophet had to do a service that God needed, and it was to administer an artificial wound to this first prophet, so that the prophet would put on a bandage, appear before King Ahab without being recognized, and this second prophet gave him a parable that tells him: 'king, I was told to keep a prisoner and that if he escaped I had to either give my life for his life or pay a talent of silver, pay a very large fine; and I let him go. And then the king, who was riding in his very plump chariot, told him "well, that's your sentence, you said it." Then for the moment the prophet removes the blindfold from his eyes and says that the king recognizes him as the prophet of God and tells him 'because you, King Ahab, let the man escape from my anathema, now your life will be for his and your kingdom will be for his kingdom'.

Do you see? Ahab did not know how to discern God's will and fell into false mercy and false grace. Brothers, be careful not to fall into false grace and false mercy, because any mercy, any grace that is not administered in the spirit and at the time of the Lord, is disobedience against God. It is not grace and mercy that God accepts and applauds. It is sin.

If God tells you to 'jump over there', you jump over there. If God tells you to 'destroy this', you destroy it. If God tells you 'save life from something you hate', preserve life. If God tells you 'don't touch that anathema', don't touch it. What God asks you do not question, you obey. The obedience. Obedience is what God wants in our lives. He does not want your tithe, he does not want your attendance at church, he does not want your diaconate, he does not want your service, the hujieres, he does not want your song. He wants obedience and everything else flows from obedience in any dimension of life.

Let us ask the Lord, Father, make me obedient to your will, to what you want, Lord, but make me obedient because we cannot bribe God, neither with money, nor with praise, nor with tongues, nor with nothing, except to obey the Lord in what he asks of us.

That is my desire and we as a church, brothers, let's make a pact. We want to be a church obedient to the Lord, obedient to God's call. If God tells us to 'destroy', we destroy. If God tells us to 'declare judgment', we declare judgment. If God tells us to 'confront', we confront. If God tells us 'have mercy and patience', we have mercy and patience, but we cannot disobey what God wants done at a given moment, supposedly putting our own judgment and our own mercy above God's mercy. God knows who he has mercy on and who he has no mercy on. And God knows why it dictates that something is acceptable and why it is not. And you do not want to call acceptable by false mercy something that God has said 'that is not from me'. I want obedience, not sacrifice, says the Lord.

Brethren, we are going to obey the Lord. We are going to be a God fearing church, fearing the holiness of God, declaring the word of God, moving in the seriousness of God. These are very specific times, they are very clear times, they are times to return to the ancient paths, these are times to uncover the wells that these things have not been spoken of for centuries. These are times to return to using the weapons and the vessels and the resources that have been hidden and dusty for many centuries because it was not the time. But now is the time. And now is the time for the church to move in the spirit of the pages of Scripture.

I tell the Lord, Father, when, when, continually crying out to the Lord, waiting for the moment when God's visitation will be. As we have seen it in the pages of the Bible, so we want to see it again move on the earth.

I am not satisfied with partial manifestations of God's power because I believe that what God wants to pour out on earth at this time is his genuine manifestation without brakes, without clothing, without anything that impoverishes him, naked his power, his clear word, his prophetic word announce it clearly. A church that walks straight before him, mercy on one side, judgment on the other; on one side the truth, on the other side patience; on one side humility and on the other side clarity for the things of God. A church that moves in the power of the holy spirit with all the gifts at its disposal to declare the purposes of God in the end times.

And I would like to be part of that church and I hope that our church is part of that larger church that God wants to raise up in time. There is a price, there is obedience to render to the Lord, there is righteousness. You have to lose your fear of men, what they say, what they want, the pressure. We cannot give in to the weak with their good intentions, but they are weak and need to be strengthened, not for us to leave their side for people who are so attached to God that they know what God wants and move gritting their teeth even if they don't want to , but he does it because God says so. That is the people that God wants to bless and use.

We are going to ask the Lord that this spirit be born in us. Let's stand up. We are going to ask the Lord, Father, fill us with your power, fill us with that spirit of obedience, integrity, seriousness, fearing God and not men.

You excuse me if I have exceeded the time, but... it is the word of the Lord that falls on us this morning. God is already tired of playing games and wants seriousness in our lives.

Father, forgive us, forgive me for playing us with your extreme holiness and majesty, your terrible lordship. Oh, Father, forgive us for bragging more than we should and help us to be obedient, to be upright, to be upright, Lord in our walk towards you. Do not let us fall into arrogance certainly, Father, but neither do you let us fall into false grace and false mercy and timidity, Lord that you hate in a warlike people that you have called.

Clean us, clean us, clean us. Cleanse us, Lord, heal us, forgive us. Help us to walk as you want, Father. Be obedient to the end. Forgive this church, Father, in the things in which we failed you. There are many, Father, we acknowledge our sins, Father. We humble ourselves in front of you. We humble ourselves in front of you. Father, we recognize that we have fallen short before your holiness but today we ask you to restore us and heal us and help us to walk according to your will, scrupulously, Lord, meticulously, Lord, doing exactly what you ask of us at the moment you ask, discerning the moment, discerning the specific move that you ask for, at the specific moment, oh Lord.

We adore you. Thanks for your disclosure. Thank you for your word Lord, this morning. Bless your people. Renew it, Lord, and take us closer and closer to your will every day. Glory to God in Jesus name. Amen.