The Harlot and the Glory.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedWe are not living in ordinary times,
but rather,
a great time of shifting and transition.
I have been going over the words we received
on our listening day.
I want to end this teaching today with a few
practical thoughts for all of us going forward,
but before I do that,
let’s talk about some big thoughts.
I was asked a few days ago about the glory,
and how we carry the glory.
And this related to something Bob Jones said
before he died,
that the glory of God was going to return to the church,
and that the glory would accompany
the great “end time”
billion soul harvest,
this harvest
he described as the “House.”
Related to this is the opposition
those who are called to carry the glory would face.
This opposition is described in Revelation
as the “Harlot.”
Today we want to talk about the Glory
and it’s counterfeit,
the spirit of Harlotry.
The book of Ezekiel continues fascinate to me.
God used it to call me into ministry.
Over years of in depth study into the gospel of John,
and the book of Revelation,
I have discovered that themes in Ezekiel
continue to be woven into John’s thought process.
In Ezekiel,
God eventually removes his glory from the temple.
And Ezekiel tells us
that the glory would not return
to the temple until after the end of the age.
And this was Israel’s experience,
there was no glory in the second temple.
So first,
what is the Glory?
In our Bibles
there are two words that get translated “glory.”
The Hebrew word “Kabod” and the Greek word “Doxa.”
The word “shekinah” does not appear in the Bible,
but rather comes from the Talmud, and does not mean glory.
Shekinah
means to be shiny or flashy,
and Jewish writers understand the shekinah
as the feminine aspect of God.
Kabod is the heavy,
weighty presence of God.
Moses was held in the cleft of the rock,
and the LORD described his glory as all his goodness.
The Glory is the person, presence, and power of God.
It is, in a sense,
the radioactive field around God.
This “force field of God’s goodness”
was present around the Ark,
in the Holy of Holies,
and in the Tabernacle of David.
Scripture describes this glory
as goodness,
lovingkindness,
greatness,
and in the old prayer book
“terribleness.”
This is a love so great it will burn you up.
Our God is Love and,
Our God is an all consuming fire.
The word kavod always contains a sense of “weight.”
The Glory filled the temple
and no one could stand.
And in this sense
the Latin word “gravitas”
is related--it is the root of our word “gravity.”
You do not mess with the glory.
Doxa,
the Greek translation of Kavod,
also means weight and heaviness,
but also reputation,
reknown,
and powerful influence.
We have several English words that contain “doxa.”
Doxology is a statement giving glory to God,
and Orthodox means true faith, or belief, or prayer.
In Ezekiel 43
the prophet describes a day when there would be a new temple.
This temple is fantastic in scope and size,
and here we see that the Glory
and the Holy Spirit are one.
The Presence of the Holy Spirit is the glory of God.
And out of this glory
we see this description in chapter 47
of the temple being the home of a fountain
that produces a river.
And that river produces a stream that gives life,
and brings resurrection power and wholeness wherever it flows,
and that life produces trees that create leaves
that heal the nations.
Out of this we get a core idea.
Under the Old system
if you touch something dead or diseased
it makes you unclean.
In the New Covenant,
if you touch something dead or unclean,
it comes to life or gets cleansed.
The religious mindset has to always seperate
from the world
to stay clean.
The Kingdom mindset is always sending you
into the world
to cleanse it.
Jesus echoes this when he starts describing his body
as a temple.
He is the embodiment of the temple.
And wherever he goes,
the blind see,
the lepers are cleansed,
the lame walk,
and the dead rise.
And then, in fulfillment
of the word from Zechariah,
that they will all will look on him whom they have pierced,
the temple of Jesus,
his body,
is pierced
and the water flows out.
Paul would go on to tell us in I Corinthians 3:16-17:
Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If any one destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and that temple you are.
So Paul is the bridge between Ezekiel and Jesus.
Ezekiel is giving us a cryptic description
that even orthodox Jewish writers recognize as an
image of a human being.
Jesus says the heart of this temple is a river.
Out of your bellies will flow rivers of living water.
And then Paul says
that you are the temple.
John tells us in Revelation 21
there is no temple in the city.
We will relate to God directly
in relationship.
The Kingdom of God is in you,
the glory of God in in you.
You do not need to do something to get the glory
to come down.
That is religious thinking.
No,
the Glory is here.
The glory is in you.
The Presence, Power, and Person
of the Holy Spirit is in you,
and that presence is God.
God is not out there,
where you have to do something to come visit here.
God is not interested in visitation,
God is interested in habitation.
In you.
Jesus prayed that if we were one with the Father
all would know we are his disciples.
And if we are one with the Father,
we will be one with each other.
Jesus said that the Kingdom of God is within you.
In other words,
the Kingdom,
the Holy Spirit,
and the Glory
are supposed to be inside you.
You do not need to “ascend up to heaven”
or do some religious hoo ha
to make the glory appear.
The Glory is here.
And Satan hates this.
And this hatred is rising
as the Glory of God is being revealed in the earth.
In I Kings, we are given the story of Elijah,
who is a prophetic “archetype” throughout scripture.
Elijah is the forerunner prophet.
And the chief opponent of Elijah is a queen
named Jezebel
who is also an “archetype” in scripture.
She is a foreign born princess
who is trying to corrupt the true message
and the people of God.
This theme repeats in the gospels,
John the Baptist
is the forerunner prophet,
his chief opponent is Herod’s wife,
and through behind the scenes manipulation
she has him beheaded.
Jezebel is just a shadow
of another person in Scripture.
When we come to the end of Revelation
we see not just a prophet or a preacher,
we see a generation.
There is a generation of martyrs,
and there is a generation of people
who carry the weighty presence of the Lord.
The whole people of God
become an army of Elijahs and Johns.
These people carry the Glory.
The climax of the book
is a cosmic confrontation
between the children of the Woman,
who is called the Ark of the Covenant,
and another woman.
In Revelation 17,
John sees the “great harlot.”
She is the personification of a spirit that operates
to oppose the true prophetic,
the true forerunners,
and those who carry the Glory.
Revelation 17 and 18
gives us a sweeping picture of her.
She is a prostitute.
She is deeply immoral.
Most important of all:
the harlot is interwoven into the
monetary system,
commerce,
and trade.
“Come out of her, my people,
lest you take part in her sins,
lest you share in her plagues;
for her sins are heaped high as heaven,
and God has remembered her iniquities.
Render to her as she herself has rendered,
and repay her double for her deeds;
mix a double draught for her in the cup she mixed.
As she glorified herself and played the wanton,
so give her a like measure of torment and mourning.
Since in her heart she says, ‘A queen I sit,
I am no widow, mourning I shall never see,’
so shall her plagues come in a single day,
pestilence and mourning and famine,
and she shall be burned with fire;
for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.”
And the kings of the earth, who committed fornication and were wanton with her, will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning; they will stand far off, in fear of her torment, and say,
“Alas! alas! thou great city,
thou mighty city, Babylon!
In one hour has thy judgment come.”
And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her,”
So we have two images,
Babylon,
represented by a whore,
and the Temple of God
that will be revealed as a spotless Bride.
And at the heart of the conflict is this verse from Luke 12:
No one can serve two masters,
you will love the one and despise the other.
No one can serve both God and mammon.
So I have thrown a bunch of big thoughts at you.
It’s like a crazy stew,
but hang in there,
it will all begin to make sense.
The Glory of God
is the Person, Presence, and Power of God.
The Temple of God
in the Kingdom
and the New Covenant
is intended to be in you.
Your physical body is the temple.
You are the temple of the Holy Spirit.
And when Jesus returns
he is looking for temples, not built by men,
but by God.
He is not looking for buildings.
And these temples are going to be filled with the Glory.
Before he comes,
the is releasing a forerunner spirit
the spirit of Elijah
and John the Baptist.
And how this expresses itself
for our community
is a generation of forerunner artists
who will prepare the way
for the coming of the Lord.
We are called to raise up artists who
literally carry the Person, Presence, and Power of God,
into art galleries,
concert halls,
creative team meetings,
media centers,
and arts organizations.
And being light in dark places is going to shift culture.
These places are currently Satan’s domain.
The weapon rising against us
is the spirit of harlotry.
This spirit looks like temptation
and pressure
to do it the world’s way.
It is the temptation
to try to change an evil system from within.
If you enter into a dialogue with evil,
you will become evil yourself.
We were called from the beginning
to not build a ministry:
no fundraising,
no networking,
no commercial product.
God said to not raise money
but rather tell the story of what God was doing
and he would move hearts to give.
We were called to listen to God,
pray about everything,
and trust God to supply.
Very counter cultural,
and totally opposite from the contemporary
ministry scene.
This makes the spirit of harlotry furious.
Think about this,
if you entice a person
to become intimate with them,
and you do this to make money,
what is that?
As a person who worked in the ministry world
for twenty years,
I have seen many people who
were passionate about God
to get material
to sell at conferences or sell online.
If you are loving Jesus to make money,
well, you can figure it out.
This is normal in much of the church,
whether it be church growth,
consumer Christianity,
or the prophetic thing.
The spirit of harlotry makes people believe
that name recognition and public relations
equals credibility.
There are many people who take out loans,
hire PR companies,
and buy email lists to get a big splash.
And then naive people say,
“Hey they are everywhere,
this must be the new hot thing.”
It’s not the new hot thing
its the old hot thing
in a new package.
It is not God,
it’s old style marketing and showbiz.
Trust me
I worked in that world a long time,
in the church and in the world.
We have had so many people come into our community
who come from this world
and think that prostitution is normal
that they get really upset with me
because our community moves so slow.
They think slowness is a sign that something is wrong
with me and the ministry.
The try to “help” me.
I have had people try to hijack prayer meetings,
try to go behind my back and pressure those around me
to stop listening to God,
stop living by faith,
and stop praying.
I have had people steal my material
and make a lot of money from it,
because they thought I was too stupid to know.
These folks always use manipulation and control.
And it seems that when one leaves,
another replaces them almost immediately.
The message all of these people carry is the same:
“You have all the right stuff to build a big ministry,
let me show you how to do it the ‘right way.’”
And when I say “no,”
then they go after my areas of insecurity,
and they say,
“Well, let me give you the right connections
and show you the way it should be done.”
And when I say “no,”
then they say,
“Oh, you just aren’t a team player.”
or
“You must be deeply broken.”
Or “You are just plain stupid, and I need to take over.”
Friends,
let me tell you,
twenty years of this
will make you a very tough person.
For the record,
I know exactly
what I am doing,
why I am doing it,
and most of my decisions
are deliberate,
and were tested in the furnace.
We are moving into a new chapter
and God is promising that he is about to release his glory
in our community.
The dark is getting darker,
and the light that we carry is going to get brighter.
So first,
how do you carry and steward the Glory?
You need to learn to practice the Presence of God.
This happens several ways,
and it is what I teach all the time.
The charismatic and revival culture is like a blow torch that is
is lit but not powerful.
It is the shekinah.
It is flashy,
and it can set some things on fire, for good or bad.
If you develop a rhythm in the Holy Spirit,
you tighten the knob on the blowtorch.
Then you have a flame that can cut steel.
So carrying the glory
begins with the Presence of Jesus in you.
We receive this presence through the Holy Eucharist.
When you receive the Body and Blood of Jesus
you receive the infinite grace of God,
and you become a carrier of the glory.
When you do this,
you present your body
as an offering.
You offer yourself
to host the presence
and Jesus in you,
as it says in John 15
abides.
Then,
you come to the Word of God
every day
and you learn how to hear the voice of the Father.
And we get transformed by the renewing our minds.
And as we get transformed more and more,
we receive the mind of Christ.
And we begin to change how we see the world,
and the way we respond to it.
And we begin to learn how to work out of
the resources of heaven.
This lays the foundation
for listening to the Lord and doing what he tells you.
This is how you host the Glory.
You surrender daily
to a power greater than yourself.
And let that power manifest through you.
It is deceptively simple.
And it does not reward your human effort.
When you surrender your human effort to this process,
God will take you on a profound journey.
There are several practical things that have come out of this reflection,
and our day of waiting on God.
First,
as I mentioned,
we have an ongoing battle with this “spirit of harlotry.”
I had to ask someone to leave the ministry this week.
After I made the decision,
nine people came to me and told me that they noticed
that this person did not respect me,
was antagonistic toward me,
and was trying to form a power block against me.
This happens about three times a year.
If someone comes to you,
and you feel like something is off,
please don’t do the Christian thing,
and not tell the truth in order to be nice.
The spirit of harlotry does not operate through pagans,
but through Christians
who say the right stuff
but are deeply divided in their hearts.
We need to begin having collective discernment.
Tell me if you see a red flag of control,
manipulation,
or disrespect toward my leadership.
For a long time
I have been the one carrying the message,
and telling the story.
Twice this week someone came to me
and shared that they are using the
Prayer Rhythm for artists on beginning on page
259 of Artists at a Shift in Time.
They both said,
I have tried a lot of things,
and this works.
It works.
If stuff I teach works for you,
tell other people
and say,
“This is not a big ministry,
it is not flashy,
but it works for me.
If it works for me, it might work for you too.”
There were several words on our listening day
about the need for the whole community to begin
sharing the message.
Our direction was “tell the story,
and I will move people to give.”
I need your help to tell the story,
it is not my ministry.
If you listen every week,
please like and subscribe this message on the platform you use.
We have to break the block in the algorithm.
If these messages help you,
please tell others.
If you hear a testimony in a prayer meeting
or in one of our gatherings,
share that testimony,
and point people to Belonging.House.
If my books have helped you,
refer to them on social media,
quote me,
and leave a review online.
We have a herd of cats,
and I get it.
The church has taught that information
is equal to transformation.
Sadly,
this one of the ways the door
to this consumer harlotry gets in.
If you just buy more books,
go to more conferences,
or listen to more teaching
you will change.
That is not discipleship.
We have several hundred people
who connect to my “content”
but who do not attend our community.
If you want to experience the glory,
you have to be in relationship with people.
Information is not enough.
I encourage you,
if you are not in a church fellowhship and you listen
to my teaching all the time
Come join us on Sundays
or for the daily prayer furnace.
Yes, it is on Zoom,
but it is not a point and shoot TV church.
Discipleship is all about relationship.
And finally,
keep me and our community in prayer.
We are in a real war.
Lord, may we see everything the enemy doesn't want us to see.
You can support Belonging House at https://belonginghouse.betterworld.org or buymeacoffee.com/christjohnotto.
We have a Mighty Network for artists and creative people who are committed to a lifestyle of discipleship: https://belonging-house.mn.co
Member discussion