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The Two Pillars of the House of Dagon 

Then the lords of the Philistines gathered them together for to offer a great sacrifice unto Dagon their god, and to rejoice: for they said, Our god hath delivered Samson our enemy into our hand…and they called for Samson out of the prison house; and he made them sport: and they set him between the pillars. And Samson said unto the lad that held him by the hand, Suffer me that I may feel the pillars whereupon the house standeth, that I may lean upon them.  And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars upon which the house stood, and on which it was borne up, of the one with his right hand, and of the other with his left. And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.  Judges 16:23, 25-26 & 29-30 

God speaks to us in His Word by symbol, parable and typology in which natural things are used by God to represent a deeper spiritual reality relating to Christ, the Church and the systems of man that war against God’s people.  Samson is a type of the Sons of God who have squandered their inheritance by allowing themselves to be seduced by the carnal religious order as symbolized by the Philistines.  By giving in to the lures of Delilah, Samson lost his spiritual power, his liberty and his spiritual vision.  He was made to “grind in the prison house” as a minister within the religious system of man.  If the house of Dagon (the fish god) represents organized religion, which worships the creature rather than the Creator, what then are the “pillars whereupon the house standeth”? 

If you analyze, dissect and deconstruct the teachings of Babylon, you will find, as I did, that there are a couple of key concepts that underlie the various doctrines that keep Christians in bondage and spiritual blindness.  These concepts -- based on outright deceptions, misinterpretations or mistranslations – are the theological pillars that support the religious system’s carnal understanding of God’s Word and His plan for the ages.  Let us look at these two “middle pillars” upon which the house of Dagon stands. 

Pillar #1: The doctrine of free moral agency 

Then Jesus said, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. Luke 23:34 

What a shocking and radical scripture!  Jesus is saying that those who committed the greatest evil in human history are not morally culpable because of ignorance.  The most religiously moral people of Jesus’ day crucified the embodiment of goodness and yet they were deemed not culpable because of ignorance.  In light of this, why would man’s orthodoxy elevate so-called free moral agency (not a scriptural term) to the stature it has in the religious doctrines of Babylon?  This scripture calls into question fallen man’s “freedom” and the crucifixion itself calls into question his “morality.” 

You can not understand the unconditional love of God, the power of the atonement, the sovereignty of the Almighty and His plan for the ages as long as you believe that the fulfillment of God’s purpose is contingent on man’s so-called free will.  The question comes down to this: whose will is sovereign?  Is it God’s will that all be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth or is it fallen man’s will?  The teaching that man, in the exercise of free will, has the power to frustrate the plan of God is a subtle form of idolatry that permeates the religious teachings of man.  Man in his fallen state is enthroned by this teaching and God is rendered cruel, capricious and, ultimately, powerless. 

Would a loving God, who is declared by the Word to be the father of all spirits, allow one of his rebellious children to suffer in eternal torment because of 70 years of rebellion?  Would He entrust fallen man -- who He calls dead, blind and unable to distinguish between his left hand and his right -- with the responsibility of determining his own eternal fate?  Is this love?  Is this wisdom? 

It is true that God has endowed man with a measure of freedom of choice but it is very limited, especially for those dead in their trespasses and sins.  Because of the Fall, man’s will is in bondage to sin and his separation from God has rendered him dead in God’s eyes and spiritually blind.  Dead men cannot make an informed choice.  Even man’s ability to decide to turn to Christ for salvation is called into question by the scripture: 

No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him…John 6:44 

The initiative is God’s not the sinner’s. You might say that the last man to exercise free will was Adam, but even the Fall was ordained by God:  

For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope...Romans 8:20  

To assert that man can frustrate God’s plan to reconcile the entire creation to Himself by the exercise of his puny, limited and mostly illusory will is reflective of an idolatrous humanism.  When you dig deep into the teachings of Babylon and consider the underlying assumptions, you encounter a modern paganism every bit as evil as Philistinism.  Oh, how the spirit of anti-christ hates the everlasting gospel of Grace!  By elevating the notion of free will, the system promotes a works mentality, and with it, a judgmental and self-righteous spirit which keeps Christians locked into the realm of carnality and, therefore, the realm of death.  The doctrine of free will goes hand in hand with the doctrine of death. 

The greatest problem in the Church today is unbelief.  The teaching that man has been endowed with free will undermines faith because it calls into question the immutability of the counsels of God and the reliability of His Word.  The impact of the doctrine of free will on faith was explored by Martin Luther in his article On the Bondage of the Will written in 1525.  Here is a portion of that illuminating article which can be accessed on www.reformedreader.org : 

For if you hesitate to believe, or are too proud to acknowledge, that God foreknows and wills all things, not contingently, but necessarily and immutably, how can you believe, trust and rely on His promises? When He makes promises, you ought to be out of doubt that He knows, and can and will perform, what He promises; otherwise, you will be accounting Him neither true nor faithful, which is unbelief, and the height of irreverence, and a denial of the most high God! And how can you be thus sure and certain, unless you know that certainly, infallibly, immutably and necessarily, He knows, wills and will perform what He promises? Not only should we be sure that God wills, and will execute His will, necessarily and immutably; we should glory in the fact, as Paul does in Romans 3:4 - "Let God be true, but every man a liar", and again, "Not that the word of God has failed," and in another place, "The foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are His." In Titus 1:2 he says: "Which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began"... If, then, we are taught and believe that we ought to be ignorant of the necessary foreknowledge of God and the necessity of events, Christian faith is utterly destroyed, and the promises of God and the whole gospel fall to the ground completely; for the Christian's chief and only comfort in every adversity lies in knowing that God does not lie, but brings all things to pass immutably, and that His will cannot be resisted, altered or impeded.  

We can begin to understand why so many Christians are unstable, lacking in peace of mind and weak in faith.  It is the result of the insidious influence of this foundational doctrine. 

On the surface, the reason the false teaching of free will has such a strong hold on Christians is that so many of them do not bother to study the Word or to question orthodoxy.  They will quote scriptures concerning eternal judgment or everlasting torment without bothering to look up the words “eternal” and “everlasting”.  Both words are a mistranslation of the Greek word meaning “age enduring”.  The Father’s correcting and purifying fire is for the purpose of reconciling the rebellious creation to himself.  Truly, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.  For those of us who were called by His Spirit in this life, the knee did not bow and the tongue did not confess until He burned out of us all rebellion.  He made me “willing” and it may have felt like a choice but, believe me, he put me through hell before I “willingly” submitted to His love.  Does He love me more than those who were not called in this life and who died in rebellion?  Does His mercy endure only until we die or does it endure forever? 

On a deeper level, the doctrine of free will is a projection onto God of man’s finite and conditional love.  We need a revelation of the depth and breadth of the Father’s love for His creation, for the sheep of his hand, to understand the glorious plan of reconciliation and the power of the atoning work of Jesus Christ.  We need to be delivered from a works theology that permeates every Christian denomination from Catholicism -- where works theology can be seen in an overt form – to full Gospel faith ministries, where works theology exerts its powerful influence in a more subtle way.  The Church needs to regain the basic revelation of Grace that Martin Luther had which is reflected in his article On The Bondage of the Will.  Unfortunately, in the years since the Protestant Reformation, the system of the beast has reinforced the pillar of free will that the Reformers attempted to knock down.  But, make no mistake about it, the truth of God will prevail and He will have the last word. 

Pillar #2:  The doctrine of the physical return of Jesus 

But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. John 4:23 

The Holy Spirit today is revealing the powerful truths of the kingdom of God to many in the Body of Christ.  Revelation knowledge is increasing as more and more Christians come to the understanding that Christ and his kingdom are within us and that the fullness of the atoning work of Jesus is available to us right now.  As many grow in spiritual understanding and faith, there remains an underlying misconception that prevents the people of God, even those who function in Sonship ministries, from being conformed to the image of Christ. 

It is the desire of the Father to raise up a people who can truly worship Him in spirit and in truth.  When Jesus spoke these words to the Samaritan woman, he was pointing us away from our fleshly orientation that seeks a physical location and a physical person around whom to center our worship.  He was pointing us away from the realm of the senses in order to reveal the dimension of the spirit contained within the believer.  This is why Jesus always pointed people to the Father during his ministry.  Jesus was the door to an invisible realm of Glory that we cannot fully enter into as long as we are focused on a physical Jesus who is now up in a place we call heaven but who will one day be walking the streets of Jerusalem.  If you happen to live in Chicago or Bangkok, I guess you will be out of luck. 

I say this to point out the absurdity of this notion that the Glory of God will one day be again localized in the physical body of Jesus Christ.  The hope of Glory is not Christ sitting in a throne in Israel but Christ in us.  All the scriptures that refer to the coming or appearance of Christ are based on a mistranslation of the Greek word parousia which means the presence or nearness.  God’s plan of the ages is to reveal Himself in His saints.  In order to accomplish this, the Father has to deliver us from our religious orientation which is geared to outward worship and to that which we can see with our eyes and handle physically.  He wants to tear down our mansions in Glory Land and our dreams of kissing the nail-scarred hands of Jesus.  God’s people need to hear the Word of the Lord: 

Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more. II Cor. 5:16  

The transition from the old heaven, represented by Jesus’ physical body, to the new  heaven and the new earth, contained within the Church, has to occur in order to bring man back into spiritual fellowship with God through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  The physical body of Jesus was the seed that had to die in order to bring about God’s harvest – which is the manifestation of his Glory in a multi-membered body.  As long as that old heaven walked the earth, we could not come into our inheritance in God because the focus would always be on something outside of ourselves.  If the Light of the world is outside ourselves, then darkness still reigns within us.  As John the Baptist had to decrease that Jesus might increase, Jesus had to “go away” – he had to die and, after his resurrection, he had to ascend to the heavenlies no longer to walk the earth in his own physical body – so that the revelation of Himself in us might germinate and grow.  That revelation of himself in us is his “return” or “coming”.  Jesus gave his life to take away the old heaven that the new heaven in us might be established.  When he paid such a price to open up the revelation of the new heaven, it grieves his Spirit that Christians persist in hanging on to the old heaven by putting their hopes on the reappearance of Jesus in his own individual physical body.

Some Christians try to have it both ways.  They halt between two opinions by trying to have their cake and eat it, too, so to speak.  They understand that the Sons of God will manifest the fullness of God’s Glory but they believe that at the end of the age, Jesus will appear to head the army of glorified Sons. The problem is that as soon as the Glory of God is again localized and externalized (and believe me, if Jesus in physical form headed an army consisting of you and me, all focus would be on him) all sorts of carnal absurdities arise.  Christians would trample each other to be physically close to this physical Jesus.  The truth of the matter is that the re-introduction of the separate physical body of Jesus would nullify the work of the Holy Spirit that is bringing us into the fullness of God.  The Sons of God would become the “2^nd class” body of Christ overshadowed by his “real” individual body.  The veil of the tabernacle that was rent, which represented his individual flesh body, would be sewn back up and the Glory of God once again kept at a distance from us.

The scripture that is often cited to support the physical return of Jesus is the passage in Acts 1:11 where the angel asked the disciples why they were looking to the sky for the return of Jesus: 

Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.    

The angel here is speaking a prophetic utterance using God’s spiritual language which cannot be interpreted literally.  Just like the men of Galilee, Christians today are still looking to the sky for the return of Jesus.  The same Jesus that was received and hidden from the view of his disciples by a literal cloud in a physical sky, appeared in like manner to the disciples in the Upper Room, to John on the island of Patmos and to many of us as the Father began revealing the truths of the kingdom message.  His unveiling is in “like manner” except that the natural has now become spiritual: now he is unveiled as the Sun of righteousness breaking through the Glory Cloud containing myriads of saints. 

Will a man rob God?  The “tithes and offerings” God wants in this day is the presentation of our bodies as a living sacrifice for his purposes.  The doctrine of the physical return of Jesus is a pillar in the temple of carnal religion because it robs God by reinforcing our reliance on the arm of flesh, even if that flesh belongs to Jesus.  On a subtle level, a carnal doctrine will exert an influence on all aspects of our spiritual walk.  In the case of this doctrine, Christians are influenced -- on a conscious or unconscious level-- to rely on Jesus Christ to fully manifest the glory of God.  As a result, because of this misplaced hope and through ignorance of the plan of God, the people of God can never truly mortify their flesh or sow to the spirit.  They may have all sorts of revelation truth, but as long as they are holding on to the physical body of Jesus and relying on his “coming,” they have not in reality died to the flesh and death is at work in their own physical bodies. 

Bringing Down the House 

Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts… Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves: Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste. Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place. And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand…Isaiah 28 

The key to bringing down the house of Dagon is knowledge.  The Word declares in Hosea 4:6: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”  When more and more of God’s people begin to receive the true revelation of Jesus Christ, the brightness of his “coming” will destroy the thought patterns of unbelief, the web of lies and the programming of deception which have held the Church in bondage for 2000 years.  When the knowledge of God spreads throughout the Church as the waters cover the sea, then will a priestly people rise up who will have the power to roll back the waters of the river Jordan just as the Israelite priests did in the Old Testament upon entry into the promised land.  They were a type of the overcomers in whom the covenant with death will be disannulled.  When God’s people begin to shake off their lethargy, when the spiritually blind begin to see and the spiritually lame begin to walk, when God’s elect heed His call to come out of her O my people, then will the nations see the Glory of God in the earth. 

As we allow the Spirit of God to take hold of and destroy the pillars of the temple of idolatry within our lives and to erase the carnal imagery that has defiled his temple, we will truly be that new creation: His new heaven and His new earth for all to behold the transforming power of His love.  

GLORY!