Dispatches from the Spiritual Front Podcast

Gold Medal Gaslighting

Summary Alan Wartes explores the spiritual deception rooted in modern science and societal lies, emphasizing the importance of radical repentance and trust in God to break free from the world's falsehoods and find true freedom in Christ. Keywords spiritual deception, radical repentance, trust in God, biblical truth, spiritual freedom, Christian faith, deception in science, biblical worldview Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Spiritual Awakening 01:44 Confronting Deception and Lies 04:36 The Radical Nature of Repentance 07:59 Understanding the Lies of Science 10:40 The Impact of Deception on Society 13:48 The Journey of Spiritual Rehab 16:39 Trusting God for True Freedom Transcript Welcome to Dispatches from the Spiritual Front. I’m Alan Wartes. Whoever you are I’m glad you found your way here. It’s worth repeating that I’m no expert. I have no degrees or credentials to set me apart from anyone else. If you have found your way to these videos, which I don’t promote in any way, I’m betting it’s because the Holy Spirit knows you are as tired as I am of swimming in a toxic ocean of lies. You’re tired of pretending there is nothing wrong with the world. You are waking up to the lies all around you suddenly aware you are starving for the truth. That’s hard enough, but if you are like me, you are even starting to feel angry that Satan’s program of lies includes much of what you’ve been taught about what it means to follow Jesus. You know in your soul that there is far more to the life Jesus won for you on the cross and in His resurrection than you’ve ever been taught in church. Paul wrote in Galatians chapter 5: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Galatians 5:1 It’s astonishing to read that and realize you don’t feel free. You don’t feel empowered as a new creation in Christ. You feel constantly off balance, afraid, guilty and even ashamed because all of that must be your fault. Jesus said the truth will set you free, but you don’t feel any nearer to really knowing what truth He’s talking about than when you first believed. Am I the only one who has experienced this? I don’t think so. The part that makes me angry is realizing this is no accident. What I’m describing is the mental and emotional state of someone who has been psychologically abused, subjected to evil gaslighting on an unimaginable scale. In these videos I’ve set out to face this fact, as uncomfortable and controversial as that may be. There’s nothing easy about that. Along the way I’ll probably get some things wrong, but I can’t keep pretending and looking away. In a moment, I’ll share how I’m being led to consider a much deeper understanding of what the Bible teaches about these things. The truth is not new; it’s been there all along in plain sight. Most believers would recognize and agree with it — superficially, at least. Genuinely living by this truth is a different matter entirely. Layer upon layer of deep deception has kept us trapped, as the Bible says, in an intellectual form of godliness while denying it’s power. But we don’t have to stay there. Before I get to that, however, here’s a quick recap of ground I’ve covered so far. First, repentance is an ongoing way of life for followers of Jesus, not just that first moment when we confess our need for salvation from sin. It is the daily process of disentangling ourselves from Satan’s world — Babylon — and coming out of her as we are commanded to do. “Come out of her my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven and God has remembered her crimes.” Revelation 18:4-5 That’s repentance. But many people who identify as Christians aren’t used to thinking this still applies to them. It does. Second, repentance is a radical thing to do because it is nothing less than giving our consent to die rather than remain in slavery to our old sinful nature. It’s what Jesus was talking about when He said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” Matthew 16:24-26 From the world’s point of view, that’s the most radical thing ever spoken. Next, we can’t come out of Babylon without being brutally honest about all the ways we are still in it. This world IS deception, I have said. We must open our eyes to the multitude of Satan’s lies and admit how we still believe them, live by them and even defend them. The purpose of that is to reclaim what the lies have taken from us — the true knowledge of God and of ourselves as His redeemed children. This is hard work because it challenges everything we think we know. It’s no small matter for us to question things we’ve religiously believed since birth. And yet, aggressively confronting this deception is exactly the task set before us. Paul’s description of that is downright militant. “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 This phrase, “every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God,” describes everything in our world. Everything plays that role to some degree. Let’s get more specific about that. Keep in mind that all deception has a single goal: to hide God from us. To sow doubt about His sovereignty and even His existence, if possible. Let’s start with science. I have a degree in geology and was trained to “trust the science.” But I now see that, taken as a whole, modern science presents the universe as cold, dark, empty, random, mechanical and dangerous. It teaches that the earth is a meaningless speck of dust in the vast void of space. It enshrines chaos as the engine of creation. Our fate, science preaches, is governed by vague, impersonal forces like gravity, thermodynamics and the random hand of evolution across practically endless amount of time. And it’s all a lie. Or rather a multitude of them which all originate in the big one, the Big Bang of modern lies, to borrow their term. That’s when so-called science enthroned the sun at the center of our existence. To explain that they imagined that a mysterious force called gravity is what holds things together. To this day no one can prove what it is or where it comes from. That done, science then imagined many planets in orbit around the sun and gave all of them the names of pagan gods. The sun, itself named Helios after the Greek god, is said to orbit the center of the Milky Way, which is one of billions of galaxies barreling through the cosmos at a million miles per hour. All of it is conjecture. None of it is proven fact. I know this is tough, because we’ve all been conditioned to believe it’s true, but believing doesn’t make it so. Allegedly, it was the leadership of the renaissance-era Roman Catholic Church that pulled the trigger on all of this. They had three goals in mind: • Discredit God as the supreme creator of all things • Question the Bible as the ultimate source of truth • Oppose the growing protestant reformation working to put the Bible into the hands of everyone, not just an elite priesthood. Why would they choose this as a way to accomplish all of that? Because the Bible describes the origin, shape and nature of our universe very differently and in no uncertain terms. If you could get a competing lie this big to stick, then you could cast doubt on everything else the Bible has to say. This was a religious and philosophical choice, not a scientific “discovery.” It is pure deception that has spawned a flood of supporting lies over the centuries, right up to today. I’ve included a link to an informative documentary film on this subject. Moving on, the lies of science have enabled deception to infect everything else. In one way or another, the picture that science paints of a universe that can be explained without the need for God, of humanity without divine origin and worth and of life without meaning or purpose has corrupted everything in the world. • Health care • Government and politics • Money • Education • News media • Entertainment • Churches That’s a mouthful, I know. There’s a reason why most of us will plug our ears rather than listen to it. Many will fight with religious zeal to defend it. Because naming the lies inevitably puts us in serious conflict with people and institutions committed to Satan’s deception. That even includes people we love. It’s not safe, and what we stand to lose is real. Jesus told us this would happen when we follow Him. “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law — a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’” Matthew 10:34-36 This doesn’t happen just because someone suddenly professes belief in Jesus. It takes more than that to make enemies out of members of your own household. It’s the result of radical repentance, of calling lies what they are and refusing to live by them any longer. So where does that leave us? I’ll tell you. It brings us to the threshold of a profound choice. It’s not new, it’s just been obscured by the deception. Because Satan’s deceptive world is all I’ve ever known and because I can’t hope to come out of it quickly or on my own, in my last Dispatch I shared that if feels like I’ve come to the end of my ability to cope. I said I feel God has put me in spiritual rehab. After hearing that, one subscriber wrote that the idea of rehab is a comforting one because it implies being under the constant care of the Great Healer Himself. Rehab is a place where we can rest and be guided, if we are willing. The key words there are, “… if we are willing.” Anyone who has ever struggled with addiction, or watched as someone they love does, will tell you that healing never happens until the addict is ready to receive it. I think that’s just as true of someone who comes to the cross but hesitates to lose their life even in order to save it. The writer of Hebrews echoes this idea. “Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. And we are his house, if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory.” Hebrews 3:6 That made me wonder why do we ever resist the redemption that God so clearly promises to anyone who believes? One element in the clinical definition of addiction is that an addict persists in behaviors or beliefs they know are causing them harm. Why? What keeps us trapped in the obvious self-harm of living by and for all of Satan’s lies in this world? Some people simply love the darkness and have no desire for anything else. But that’s not true for those of us who are hungry to follow Jesus. Why do we so often continue to be ruled by the lies and habits of the old way, even though we are sick of eating its rotten fruit? This brings me to the powerful insight I teased earlier. One answer to that is that we approach repentance without first settling a matter of vital importance: Who and what do we trust? God or a world built of lies? I told you that’s a statement that most Christians will hear and say, “Oh, yeah, sure, I know that.” But here’s a hard truth. Almost no one has any idea what it really means to trust God. And that, more than anything, is why believers stay stuck in a world built of lies. It’s why we fail at radical repentance. It’s why the call to abide seems just out of reach and why the Bible’s promises can feel meant for someone else. Imagine checking into a rehab center where you don’t trust your basic needs will be provided. You feel afraid, unworthy and unsafe most of the time and you don’t trust anything that the care givers tell you. Under those conditions, could you reasonably expect to succeed? And yet, tragically, that’s how most of us approach Christian life. Deep down we believe the lie that how we live now is the only way it’s possible to live and survive. We can’t escape our conditioned trust in false hope promised by the false gods of this world. Healing is impossible until we trust God instead. In my next Dispatch I will unpack all of this in more detail. What does radical trust look like in daily life and how does it lead us closer to the freedom we are promised in Christ? Until then, God bless you and keep you. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Spiritual Front! This post is public so feel free to share it. Get full access to Dispatches from the Spiritual Front at www.alanwartes.com/subscribe [https://www.alanwartes.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Our world IS deception

Transcript below Summary Alan Wartes shares a profound reflection on spiritual revival, the deception of the world, and the urgent call for radical repentance and coming out of Babylon. He discusses the challenges of living in a deceptive world, the importance of truth, and the need for spiritual rehab to restore our understanding of God's sovereignty. Keywords spiritual revival, deception, repentance, truth, spiritual rehab, faith, Babylon, Satan, Christian life, spiritual discernment Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Spiritual Struggles 01:46 The Challenge of Radical Repentance 04:05 Awakening to Deception 07:27 The Urgency of Truth 10:05 Fractured Faith and Confusion 12:00 Satan's Strategy and Our Response 15:00 Restoring Knowledge and Truth Transcript I’m Alan Wartes. Welcome to Dispatches from the Spiritual Front. I have to tell you these past few weeks have been hard for me. It has felt like God put me in time out while I struggled to hear and see some important things. After my last post making the case that repentance is nothing short of giving our consent to die, I’ve struggled on a couple of different spiritual fronts. The first will be familiar to anyone with experience trying to walk in faith in this world. After being so bold in talking about our calling as believers to die with Jesus on the cross, that idea was immediately put to the test in my own life. That’s not surprising. James wrote: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” James 1:2-4 That sounds great and I’m in. But there’s nothing easy about it and choosing to see moments of testing as a source of joy is actually just another facet of choosing to die. The second source of conflict is perhaps less universal. It has to do with my reluctance to admit where this conversation about radical repentance is headed. Honestly, I’ve been arguing with God over the message taking shape in my heart and mind. Not because I don’t think it is true, but because I don’t relish being the one to share it. It’s a hard message, sure to draw fire. Essentially, it’s the idea that we can’t truly come out of Babylon, as we are commanded to do, without being brutally honest with ourselves about all the ways that we are still in it. That in many ways we still love it. We cannot grasp the urgency and severity of what we must do to repent and be ready for our Lord’s coming unless we’re willing to face the truth about the total corruption of this world and our collusion with it. Repentance involves confession, and confession can only follow honest self-examination. That’s a long way from the feel-good gospel so commonly preached today. The life of authentic faith is one of stark contrast with the world that we must not look away from. It demands a binary, either-or choice to serve God or Mammon. There is no middle ground. John didn’t pull any punches when he wrote: “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life — comes not from the Father but from the world” I John 2:15-17. Unpacking what that means on the front lines of daily life requires uncomfortable and undoubtedly controversial truths that I’d rather not even think about, much less speak about publicly. I’ve already stated in previous dispatches that nothing in this world is untouched by Satan’s deception and corruption. As strong as that declaration is, these past few weeks have been a painful awakening to the fact that it’s actually a massive understatement. I’ve seen with fresh eyes that our world is deception. Not just parts of it; all of it. Satan has told a million lies that have corrupted everything we think we know about ourselves, about God and how we must live to survive. This can’t be overstated. The entire apparatus of the modern world — government, finance, science, education, health care, information and entertainment, religion and so much more — is the product of countless lies. Admitting that and grasping the implications is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I know I’m not alone as many of you are coming to the same conclusion. In the movie, The Truman Show, the main character slowly becomes aware that nothing in the world he knows and trusts is real. His entire life has been a carefully constructed and managed falsehood. In that story, the purpose of the deception is entertainment. He is unknowingly the star of a TV show watched by millions of people. That scenario, as far-fetched as it sounds, is very close to the truth of our own lives. The only difference is who runs the show and why. The lies we’re waking up to aren’t even very well crafted. It turns out the key to deception is not its cleverness, it’s our willingness to believe whatever we are told. Most people do whatever it takes to remain in the fiction, because it feels safer. But once you begin to see the truth it gets harder and harder to pretend you don’t — and it’s very important that we see. Rejecting deception and receiving the truth has always been part of following Jesus. But we’re currently living in the moment the Bible foretold when Satan goes all in. The signs are clear that we are on the threshold of a whole new level of deception that will test our faith in ways we can barely even imagine. If you pay attention to the news at all you know what I’m talking about. The command to come out of Babylon, to abide in Christ and keep our eyes fixed on Him, has never been more urgent. That’s the uncomfortable truth I’ve been chewing on for the past few weeks: I can’t go on pretending I don’t see it, but do I really want to be the messenger calling others to upend their comfortable view of the world? Am I really the right person for that job? Who cares what I think? Maybe the “time out” I felt was God telling me it’s okay to be quiet. A breakthrough came when I realized that “time out” is the wrong way to describe where God has led me. It’s more accurate to say I’ve been put in spiritual rehab. Like an addict who finally admits he can’t continue living the old way. Or maybe like a brainwashed cult member fighting my way back to reality. And rehab is not an end, it’s a beginning. At first, rehab involves seclusion, a time of raw detox and withdrawal. That’s true whether you’re addicted to chemicals or to false beliefs. It’s as if all your molecules are being disassembled and you’re pretty sure you won’t survive. But you do, and then the real work begins. However, that’s getting ahead of the story. There’s a lot to say about that. We’ll come back to it in a future Dispatch. For now, I realize that saying the world as we think we know it is a lie sets us down in a whole field full of rabbit holes. Each one is stuffed with people willing to argue forever to defend their point of view. I have no appetite for entering that fray. For one thing, that’s the realm of the intellect and what I’m talking about is spiritual discernment. It’s enough for me to say I’m convinced we live in an age of unimaginable deception and to trust the Holy Spirit to work out the truth of that in everyone ready and able to hear it. If that’s you, He will be your guide. Seek Him and listen. Now, for just about anyone, what I’m saying is hard enough, but for followers of Jesus, it gets worse. Because living in a fake and deceptive world has left what we call the church deeply fractured and confused. We know that’s true, we might as well say it out loud. After centuries of evil gaslighting — much of it from within the church itself — we honestly don’t know who we are, what we are, where we are, or when. That adds up to this: we don’t know what to believe, which is why Christians are so often at each other’s throats. Jesus warned of this when He said: “At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people” Matthew 24:10-11. A little later in verse 24 He says that the deception will be so powerful it would even trick the elect, if that were possible. There’s no way to escape the truth that that’s where we are today. Believers can’t take a step in any direction without stumbling into another bitter argument about who’s doing Christian faith right and who’s doing it very, very wrong. Everyone guards their particular rabbit hole like life depends on it. And that’s the trap I’m determined to avoid — and which I urge you to avoid as well. Our purpose is not to prove a point but to perfect our faith by seeking refuge and strength in Christ alone. The key to that — and to getting on with authentic, radical repentance — lies in the answer to a simple question: What does Satan hope to gain from all the lies? Knowing what he wants will point us in the direction we must go — the opposite way. The answer is not complicated. Satan’s million lies all have a single, coordinated goal: to sow doubt about God’s supremacy and sovereignty over all things. Those are stations Satan claims for himself, as Isaiah wrote: “You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God … I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High’” Isaiah 14:13-14. But notice that Satan’s key strategy for accomplishing this is not to challenge God directly but to fight a proxy war — through God’s human children. All the deception we see around us is a continuation of the original lie Satan told in Eden. He said, “You can be more than what God made you to be.” It’s obvious that our world is saturated in that message. But Satan’s claim to a throne of his own is just hot air … unless we believe it. He coaxes us into that belief by suggesting that we also deserve to rise above the place God gave us. In the ultimate bait and switch con, he entices us to worship him by exalting and worshipping ourselves. Believing his lies and colluding with the culture that’s built upon them has made us the most idolatrous generation in history. The evidence for that is undeniable: we worship ourselves, even when making a show of worshipping God. Revealing and renouncing Satan’s lies and repenting of our role in perpetuating them is the work of faith in our time. This is enormously difficult, which is why we don’t want to talk about it. It’s a severe test of our faith that can only be undertaken in complete dependence on the Holy Spirit within us. That’s why we must die to the old, sinful self that relentlessly clings to the world as it is. Our task is to restore what Satan’s deception has taken from us — the fearful knowledge that the Lord our God is One. God is Almighty God and there are no other Gods before Him. He alone is the source and creator of all things. Everything in heaven and on earth exists for him and through Him. Every lie, every edifice of falsehood dissolves in this truth. Truth is the weapon that sets us free. “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” 2 Corinthians 10:3-5. There is no better definition of Satan’s deception than this: It is “every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God.” The harsh truth is that this covers everything in this world. But it also contains the key to our victory: the knowledge of God as He truly is. In the next Dispatch I will return to the idea that we all urgently need to enter spiritual rehab to reclaim this knowledge and the power it holds for demolishing strongholds. I will lay out a practical program for how we can do that. Until then, grace and peace by yours in our Lord Jesus Christ.                 Get full access to Dispatches from the Spiritual Front at www.alanwartes.com/subscribe [https://www.alanwartes.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Your consent to die

Read transcript below Summary In this episode, Alan Wartes explores the concept of radical repentance, emphasizing its biblical roots and profound implications for believers. He discusses how true repentance involves a revolutionary, even violent, confrontation with our sinful nature, and the importance of dying to self to truly follow Christ. Keywords radical repentance, Christian faith, spiritual transformation, death to self, Jesus teachings, Christian growth, biblical repentance Chapters 00:00 Introduction and Personal Reflection on Consistency in Sharing 02:52 Introduction to Kathy’s Question on Radical Repentance 03:22 Defining Radical Repentance: Not a Different Echelon 04:01 Synonyms for Radical and Their Connotations 04:33 Jesus’ Statement on Bringing a Sword and Its Radical Implication 05:27 The True Nature of Repentance as Revolutionary 06:07 The Full Gospel: Beyond Salvation to Radical Calling 07:04 Repentance as Consent to Death and Transformation 08:13 The Power of Death in Christian Transformation 09:09 Following Christ Through Death to Life 09:32 The Cross as the Path to True Life 10:22 The Holy Spirit’s Role in Dead Self Transformation 11:28 Living Daily in Radical Surrender and Abiding in Christ Transcript Hi and welcome to Dispatches from the Spiritual Front. I’m Alan Wartes. In this episode I plan to address a question posed by one of our subscribers. She wants to understand why I so often use the word “radical” to describe repentance. It’s a great question that really made me think. But first I want to acknowledge that it’s been three weeks since my last dispatch. I admit that’s a long interval. Partly, I allowed myself to be distracted by other things, some that were beneficial in themselves and others, not so much. I suspect everyone can relate to that. On the other hand, I always want to guard against the impulse to come up with something to post just because the calendar says it’s time. I think that’s where a lot of the empty, lukewarm teaching comes from that is so common these days in Christian circles. That’s especially true in the realm of social media. Someone who is chasing an ever-larger online audience feels they can’t afford to be quiet for even a day. In that world, momentum, or the lack of it is real and to be silent is to be invisible. That may be why so much of what we see and hear on platforms like this one is just a thicket of platitudes. Such posts are placeholders meant to be seen but not much else. Under the relentless pressure to post it’s hard to blame people for that. Over time, though, so much empty noise has a hypnotic effect that hardens our hearts and dulls our ears to the truth. That is the unspeakably rich and radical calling we have received in Christ. So, there is a time to speak and a time to be still and listen. The only algorithm I care about is what the Holy Spirit can do, first to inspire a message and then to deliver it exactly where it is needed. That means this may not be the last gap between dispatches. If you are a paid subscriber and that feels like less value than you expected, please contact me. I’ll be more than happy to refund your support. Dispatches from the Spiritual Front is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Now, on to Cathy’s question. Here’s what she wrote: “You’ve mentioned in your messages something you call ‘radical repentance.’ How do you understand ‘radical repentance,’ and what is the difference between repentance without the adjective, and ‘radical repentance?’” Great question. First, I don’t use the word “radical” to imply there is a different echelon of repentance, something that’s above and beyond ordinary repentance. The word is there to remind me that there is no such thing as “ordinary” repentance. Seen from the world’s point of view —from the perspective of our sinful nature — all repentance is radical. Here’s a list of synonyms for the word radical: · extreme · revolutionary · ultra · fanatic · violent · subversive I’m sure you’ll agree that these words all have negative connotations by modern standards. I was even tempted to remove “violent” from the list to avoid objections. But for reasons that will be clear in a moment, I believe it does belong in the context of repentance. If nothing else, it helps to explain a statement of Jesus that sounds jarring to a lot of people these days: “Do not suppose I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law — a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.” Matthew 10:34-36 Sounds pretty radical to me. I believe repentance, properly understood, is the reason. True repentance is extreme, revolutionary, subversive and even violent in the sense that it confronts and tears down the status quo of relationships and other ways of being in the world. Jesus preached this. John the Baptist preached it. But we’ve lost sight of this fact in our time in part because we are tangled up in that thicket of platitudes I just mentioned. So much of that messaging is soft, reassuring and comforting. It’s about making us feel better where we are and makes few demands of us. To be sure, salvation from judgment for our sins, freely available to anyone who believes, is a tremendous source of comfort and hope. It is contained in the message of “glad tidings of great joy” the angels delivered when Jesus was born. But that’s not the only part of the message. The full gospel of our redemption as sanctified and glorified sons and daughters of the Most High God involves an unspeakably ferocious calling — to repent. Yes, ferocious. But repentance is not ferocious if we think it simply a confession of guilt and acceptance of salvation. Nor is it the resolve, after salvation, to “do better” or to henceforth live your life for God. The old covenant and the law proved once and for all that you can’t do any of that. What’s called for is something completely revolutionary. Something radical. Here’s the key point: Repentance is radical because it is nothing less than consenting to your own death. We all want to skip to the stage where we share in the glory of our risen Lord. James and John said that part out loud when they asked Jesus to grant that they be seated on His right and left in the coming kingdom. “You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said to them. “Can you drink the cup I am going to drink?” Matthew 20:22 Repentance is always radical because it escorts us to that question: can you choose to die to your old self? There is no transformation in life more radical than death. You can’t be a little bit dead, or even mostly dead. Dead is all the way dead, or it’s still alive. That’s true of your sinful nature every bit as much as your physical body. Paul wrote in Romans 6: “The death (Jesus) died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Jesus Christ.” Romans 6:10-11 To claim that new life, we must believe this and then follow in His footsteps. Late nineteenth century preacher Andrew Murray put it like this in his book “Abide in Christ:” “There is no path to true life, to abiding in Christ, than that on which our Lord went before us — through death. At the first commencement of the Christian life, very few see this … They don’t yet know that nothing but death, the absolute surrender to death of all that is of nature, will suffice if the life of God is to be manifested in them with power.” Andrew Murray Platitudes are stripped of this power because they attempt to steer us around the threshold we must all approach: the cross. The invitation — the command — that Jesus gave his disciples to follow Him did not end at Calvary. If He had not paid the price for our sin that day, then their journey certainly would have ended. But His death and resurrection opened the door onward through which we must all follow. The unimaginably good news is that when we consent to die with Him, then the process of putting to death our old self becomes work that the Holy Spirit completes in us. Our contribution is faith and the total surrender of any self-effort. Our part is to yield and to say “Yes!” Then what is dead is replaced by Christ himself living within us. In Galatians chapter 2 Paul wrote: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live today, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Galatians 2:20 But nothing about that is soft or easy or automatic. Drinking the cup that Jesus drank is the essence of radical repentance. It’s a solemn choice, a daily choice, to surrender our old self to death on the cross and then to keep it there by abiding in Christ in every moment. There is so much more to say about this! Come back and let’s keep talking. Share this dispatch and leave a comment so your voice can be included in the conversation. May God bless you and keep you as you learn to abide in Him! Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Spiritual Front! This post is public so feel free to share it. Get full access to Dispatches from the Spiritual Front at www.alanwartes.com/subscribe [https://www.alanwartes.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

No middle ground — part 2

Read transcript below Summary In this episode of Dispatches from the Spiritual Front, Alan Wartes discusses the urgent need for believers to recognize the pervasive evil and deception in the world. He emphasizes the importance of coming out from the world’s corrupt systems and institutions, including the church, which has conformed to worldly ways. Wartes calls for radical repentance and a deeper understanding of the biblical prophecy regarding the end times, urging listeners to abandon their attachments to the world and embrace the truth of God’s word. Chapters 00:00 The Wake-Up Call for Believers 04:33 The Process of Refinement and Revelation 11:01 The Urgency of Radical Repentance Dispatches from the Spiritual Front is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Transcript Welcome to Dispatches from the Spiritual Front. I’m Alan Wartes. I hadn’t intended to continue last week’s Dispatch in a part two. I called that episode No Middle Ground and pointed out that the evil depicted in the recently released Epstein Files is a wakeup call to believers to get serious about what it means to follow Jesus. I discussed just how deeply the world is saturated with deception and evil. There’s always a fine line to walk between being aware of what’s going on in the world and giving it so much attention that it breeds fear rather than leading to greater understanding about how to abide in Christ. But every day now the spiritual front lines seem to come closer to home. That’s no accident. It’s happening now because time is growing short for believers to see the world for what it is and come out of it. So long as you think the world is kind of a mess, maybe, but with a lot of good stuff worth fighting for too, then you will not understand verses like this: “Therefore, ‘Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.” 2 Corinthians 6:17 To gather the courage needed to truly come out, you must be able to answer the questions: “Come out of what? Why?” All the evidence of chaos in the world is pointing the followers of Jesus to a conclusion that we should have reached already, because it is clearly spelled out in the Bible. That is that this world is a total write off. That’s a blunt way to put it, I know, but no more so than when Peter wrote: “But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.” 2 Peter 3:5-7 What’s clear in the story, from Eden to the New Jerusalem, is that this world was not intended to last. God knew from the beginning what the wicked would do and that Satan would have rulership over the earth until the very end because of human rebellion. What we see all around us today is not failure, it’s fulfillment. All of history has been a crucible meant to contain the heat necessary to refine the precious metal of God’s chosen. As it says in Psalm 66: “For you, God, tested us; you refined us like silver.” Psalm 66:10 Jesus brought us to the Great Refiner by securing forgiveness for any who would believe. But it’s what happens next, when He places us in the fire, that truly makes us ready to share in the glory of Christ and reign with Him in the kingdom to come. When we surrender to it, the heat of discipline and hardship for His sake drives evil from all its hiding places within our hearts and minds to it can be seen and rejected. This feels like death, because it is. It is the death of that version of yourself that belonged to Satan. From the point of view of your old self, it is a catastrophe. It is, quite literally, the apocalypse. The Greek word apokalupsis means “revealing” or “unveiling” or “disclosure of hidden knowledge.” That’s not something I had ever heard until recently. How many Christians realize that when we pray, “Your kingdom come,” we are asking for an apocalypse, the end of the world as we know it so that another can begin? The end of that world begins with the stark revelation of what it really is: thoroughly evil. John said so when he wrote: “We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.” 1 John 5:19 Understanding that, we have a chance to see that we, even as believers, have participated in creating and sustaining that evil world by believing the lies upon which it is built. The whopper that launched everything is that it is possible for us to make our own way in the world without God and that we might even be better off. That’s what Satan sold to Eve in the garden. But the lie that binds most Christians to collusion with the enemy is that we must all compromise in some way or another and feed at Satan’s table to survive in this world. That’s very convenient for our sinful nature which wants to do so, even after we have believed. Furthermore, we tell ourselves that this is the world God made, so we must make the most of it and get along the best we can. That is not what the Bible says. “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.” 1 John 2:15-17 No. This is Satan’s world. Someone might argue with that by quoting Psalm 24: “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world and all who live in it.” I struggled with that apparent contradiction myself until I found a way to see it in which both things are true. Imagine we are looking at a magnificent Manhattan skyscraper, and we know that it belongs to God. He conceived it and built it. Everything about it exists because of Him, all its artistry and marvelous workings. Now we look again at the tenants of the building. They don’t own it, but God has given them the freedom to use it in any way they choose. Satan, because of what he achieved in Eden, owns the master lease and he oversees everything that happens there. Jesus cancelled that lease forever in His death and resurrection, but the final eviction is yet to come. What we see all around us today is not failure, it’s fulfillment. For now, though God owns the heavens and the earth, the human world within it is utterly lost. Not all the people, of course. Grace has made a way out for anyone who believes. But all the systems, institutions, industries and governments of the world are thoroughly corrupted by deception and evil. Someone might say, surely you don’t include the church in that. How I wish that were true. The revelation of evil in the world today is not sparing the church. I don’t mean the sanctified body of Christ, which is an invisible work of the Holy Spirit. I’m talking about the church infrastructure, material and philosophical, that seemingly exists now to serve and perpetuate itself. To be blunt, it has inherited the woes of the Pharisees by conforming itself to this world’s way of doing business. And if the church can be shown to be corrupted, and it can, then what hope is there for the rest of society? Satan is a deceiver who rules everything that happens on earth. We have no reason to assume that his reach or his zeal for chaos is limited. The present apocalypse points to the opposite conclusion: his hand is in everything. A lot of courageous followers of Jesus have begun unpacking that by questioning the pillars holding up everything we think we know, in science, history and what the Bible really says about where we are in the prophetic timeline and what is yet to come. It is apocalyptic, catastrophic work that must be done to propel us forcefully into radical repentance. That’s the point of all this, that we finally see why we are called to come out of this world and cry out to the Holy Spirit for help doing it. The command to come out has never been more urgent or more plain. Why? Because the Bible says that God intends to demolish the building he created and replace it with another. Not gradually remodel it. Destroy it. Listen to Revelation 21: “Then I saw a ‘new heaven and a new earth,’ for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.” Revelation 21:1 If the phone were to ring right now, wherever you are, and it was the police department telling you the have reliable information that a bomb is about to go off at your location, what would you do? I’m confident you wouldn’t hesitate to leave everything behind and flee. If you didn’t and insisted on clinging to all the stuff around you, we’d call that insane. And yet, Satan’s deception is so powerful, so persuasive that he’s convinced us that the crazy ones are those who take God at His word and abandon everything in order to live. The truth is we have received that phone call. God’s word plainly tells us how the story ends and what we must do to be saved. The hardest hearts among us just refuse to believe it and hang up. That’s heartbreaking. But far worse is what many Christians do: they believe, but then put the Lord on hold so they can finish up whatever they were doing when the call came. Don’t do that. Open your eyes to the apocalypse of evil happening all around you. Drop everything and come out. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Spiritual Front! This post is public so feel free to share it. Get full access to Dispatches from the Spiritual Front at www.alanwartes.com/subscribe [https://www.alanwartes.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

No middle ground

Read transcript below Keywords spirituality, Jeffrey Epstein, Satan, Christian faith, truth, repentance, evil, spiritual battle, following Jesus, darkness Summary In this episode of Dispatches from the Spiritual Front, Alan Wartes discusses the recent revelations surrounding Jeffrey Epstein and the implications of these events on our understanding of evil in the world. He emphasizes the importance of discerning truth amidst the noise and recognizing the pervasive influence of Satan in society. Wartes calls for a radical repentance and a commitment to follow Jesus, highlighting the spiritual battle that Christians face against evil forces. Chapters 00:00 Introduction to the Spiritual Front 01:13 Facing Disturbing Truths 02:43 Understanding Satan’s Rule 05:03 The Nature of Our Struggle 06:47 The Call to Radical Repentance Transcript Hi. I’m Alan Wartes. Welcome to Dispatches from the Spiritual Front. I must admit it has been more difficult than usual to discern what to speak about in this week’s Dispatch. I think the main reason for that is all the noise created by the recent release of information related to Jeffrey Epstein. In times like these it’s more important than ever to be still and be sure that our thoughts are truly guided by the Holy Spirit and not tainted by our own understanding. It’s very tempting to contribute to the noise and miss God’s wisdom that leads us, under any circumstances, deeper into abiding in Christ as new creations. That’s our target, no matter what is going on around us. Dispatches from the Spiritual Front is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. That said, I think there is understanding to be gained from these events, but only if we face them truthfully. So, please forgive the following blunt summary. The federal government this week made public millions of digital files, emails and so forth, that appear to reveal a very disturbing fact. That people in the very top echelons of every sector of our society routinely engage in the trafficking and sexual exploitation of children in overtly satanic rituals. These possibly include torture, human sacrifice and even cannibalism. So far, the identities of these people have mostly been withheld. That’s where much of the noise comes from in the news and social media spheres. There is a clamor for justice. It’s impossible to overstate the evil all this describes. As shocking as this may sound, I think who these particular people are doesn’t really matter in the big picture. Stay with me. I’m not minimizing the horror in these revelations or suggesting anyone should get a free pass. We are promised that one day all the evil in the world will end and all the wicked will be punished, severely and forever. But we must not forget that vengeance and judgment belong to God alone, especially for crimes like these. That, paradoxically, sets us free to focus on the real truth being revealed in all this. It’s something we’ve heard before but have never really taken seriously. What the Epstein files reveal, along with many other events in recent years, is that everything in our world is ruled by Satan and his followers. Everything. The Christian church gives lip service to that idea but very few of us live like we actually believe it. There is much more to say about that, but for now just let it sink in. Everything in our world is ruled by Satan and his followers. Until you understand this fact, the call to come out of Babylon and live your life as a stranger and a foreigner in this world can seem a little over the top. You’ll misunderstand what’s at stake and go on making bargains with the devil in the name of getting along. Once you grasp it, you’ll see that no earthy tools can threaten Satan’s rulership. So long as he is loose in the world there will never be a shortage of people who will say yes to the offer he made to our Lord in the wilderness, as it says in Matthew chapter four: “Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ‘All this I will give you,’ he said, ‘if you will bow down and worship me.” Matthew 4:8-9 That’s right. That wasn’t just for Jesus. He said no, but many do not. This is why Paul wrote that we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood. Because the wicked are like grass. No matter how hard you try to pull them up by the roots on your own they will just grow back. While Satan rules the world, there will always be someone else ready to love the darkness and hate the light. We’ve heard what Paul wrote, but let’s remind ourselves anyway: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, after your have done everything, to stand.” Ephesians 6:12-17 Our struggle is not against people, but against Satan himself and all his hierarchy of evil. Do we put on the armor of God to win political battles? To reform society with better laws? Stronger enforcement? Military victories? No. That is precisely what the people of Israel expected Jesus to do as Messiah. Our Lord explicitly rejected that way of thinking and living because he understood where the fight really lay. So where is the front line in our spiritual battle with evil? Put another way, what is Satan fighting to achieve that the armor of God prepares us to resist? The easy, cliché answer is that he wants to stop people from believing that Jesus is the Son of God. But even the demons believe that and testify to it. Matthew chapter 8 tells the story of two demon-possessed men who came out from tombs where they lived when Jesus approached. “They were so violent that no one could pass that way. ‘What do you want with us, Son of God?’ they shouted. ‘Have you come to torture us before the appointed time?’” Matthew 8:28-29. No, Satan is not threatened when someone simply professes to believe. Words are cheap. He is desperate, however, to prevent us from hearing and acting on the invitation Jesus gives to all who genuinely believe: “Follow me.” We take up the fight when we follow him. If we take that phrase literally, it means we walk in his footsteps where they lead. And they lead us inevitably to the cross. That is not simply where his death counted against our debt. Thank God for that, but the cross is a gate we must follow him through in our own choice to die to all that belongs to the life we lived in Satan’s world. Jesus said in Matthew 16: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” Matthew 16:24-25 This is radical repentance. If there is a lesson to be learned in the unmasking of deep darkness and evil in our world, it is this: there is no middle ground in this fight. There is no gray area. Jesus was not kidding when he said it’s impossible to serve both God and Mammon — and yet most Christians attempt to do exactly that. The Epstein files are a wakeup call. Wake up and follow. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Spiritual Front! This post is public so feel free to share it. Get full access to Dispatches from the Spiritual Front at www.alanwartes.com/subscribe [https://www.alanwartes.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]