11 January 2023
This is something I may have to repeat on a regular basis: In terms of spiritual warfare, there is no neutral ground in this world. The only safe place is within Covenant boundaries. Everywhere else is under Satan's dominion.
One of the greatest lies in American culture is that most of our world is neutral territory. The common notion is that Satan has to work to suck people into his kingdom, has to offer special inducements, and that regular people can oppose him without having to think too much about the Covenant. This is utterly false. Satan loves movies that portray that false reality.
Everyone who isn't under the Covenant covering is already Satan's pawn. If you are not actively pursuing the Lord, Satan owns you. This applies to the Elect, those who know they are born again, but haven't yet embraced the Covenant. It's not in the specific obedience measures, but spiritual safety is in your personal commitment to the Lord to obey His Covenant.
I'm sorry if you aren't aware of the Covenant, if you've been misled by the majority of mainstream church teaching. The Covenant is your only protection from Satan's authority, whether you know about it or not. Until you wake up and embrace it, sight unseen, you are in Satan's hands. He is sucking up your blessings and keeping them from you. The fullness of your divine inheritance in this life is bound up in Satan's hands until you make that commitment.
Yes, there are degrees of spiritual covering, but you don't have any covering at all until you consciously make that decision to walk in the Covenant. Satan will know, and he'll oppose you, making life particularly difficult for you. He's got lots of time to focus on folks like you who do that, because the rest of humanity is already under his control. He owns every mortal fleshly body that isn't specifically submitted under the Covenant. The only thing that worries him at all is not merely the Elect know who they are, but that they have embraced the Covenant. Everyone else is just left to operate at random.
Let me restate that to make sure you get it: Divine Election is totally out of Satan's hands. He never could do anything to prevent spiritual birth. The whole issue there is that the Elect were elected before they were born, and "spiritual birth" is the term for them realizing that's who they are. That recognition does not take you out of Satan's hands, because he doesn't have any control over eternal souls. Satan's authority is limited to this world. That's why the Covenant matters so much. While in your mortal flesh, the only way you can escape his grip is to embrace the Covenant. That's all Satan cares about. The rest of humanity is his already, and spiritual birth is no threat to him, but souls under the Covenant are a nagging intrusion in his domain.
The image of the Covenant path as narrow and challenging is quite intentional. Life here is supposed to suck; it's not going to be easy. Choosing the Covenant puts you at war with Satan and at odds with every other human on the planet who isn't under the Covenant. Do you realize how small your spiritual family is on this earth? Do you realize how utterly critical it is that we pull together and support each other?
Why do you think I despise Western Civilization? From its very roots, the West has been oriented against faith and conviction. The West lies about the symbolism of the heart and treats convictions as mere sentiment. Faith is not allowed to exist in the West, because faith means a heart-bound commitment to Jesus and His Covenant. It gets personal, and that's forbidden in the West. I'll confess it was a divine miracle of God that I was awakened to this very early in my adult life, but that doesn't excuse anyone from their covenant duty. Satan is bound by the Covenant, not by western mythology.
To embrace the Covenant puts you at war with Western Civilization as a whole, and makes you the target of every weapon the Devil can mobilize, which is an awful lot. The whole of the fallen human race belongs to him, every institution and every government, the full gamut of cultural frames of reference. The whole world is his weapon against the Children of the Covenant. However, nature is on our side, along with the very small select group of people who have embraced the Covenant.
You cannot even trust manmade objects. Those can be accursed. This is part of the symbolism behind the Old Testament warning that altars of sacrifice under the Code of Noah must be untooled stones. In their natural state, as you find things in nature, those things cannot be cursed. Only when mankind applies a tool to something can it come under the Curse of the Fall. There's still plenty of death in nature, but you can learn about those things and not worry about curses. Once man has altered it in any way, curses can attach. This is why you must ritually cleanse manmade articles. I mean that literally; pray over every manmade object you gain in this world.
Yes, there's a shortcut for that. Make up your own rituals; that isn't what matters. Try to echo something you read in the Bible about it, but take a moment to pray over the whole collection of things under your domain. Take spiritual dominion over the things you must use in this world. This is not name-it-and-claim-it religion, but it's going to look something like that to anyone who doesn't understand the principles involved. Take some time to pray and gain a strong spiritual atmosphere, and then verbally declare all your physical property as under Christ's dominion, and then receive it back from Him as a feudal grant of Kingdom service.
This is what more conventional church folks think of as a "dedication" ritual. The difference is that you are actually gaining the Lord's participation because you are operating under His Covenant. It won't hurt to remind yourself from time to time by perusing the Code of Noah. It's not my formulation you need, but that you understand the principles and apply them as best you can.
It's not that the rituals will impress God or the Devil, but it will help your mortal being become more aware of the dynamics. That's the whole point of any ritual. What really matters is that you are changed, and it's well established that rituals help to correct the flesh. This is why you cannot rely on the rituals themselves, but you must be fully engaged in your soul.
Finally, learn how to hear from your convictions. Get used to praying and contemplating just what your inner moral drive says to you about every little thing. Bounce events and scenarios you witness off your own conscience. The answers will change from time to time, so check again. Your conscience is the mind's interface to the convictions. The conscience must learn from the convictions, and your moral impressions will change over time.
This is what we mean by the practice of Christian Mysticism. This is how we do the Covenant.
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