We had
been forewarned, but we could not remember, and we did not understand the
warning when we heard it.
And so
the reality of the words came as a shock wounding all of us with its impact, even crippling us in our minds.
"You
will forget my words for a season", the King spoke, "but in due time
I will make you remember.
I will
bring to memory the importance of trusting Me, believing the words I speak.
Have I
ever let anyone of you down, have I ever spoken a word which did not come to be?"
All of
us were amazed at the question, because the King always had
been true to us.
How
could He not be true?
So when He
told us that we should trust and believe in Him we did not understand why He
would say such a thing.
Of
course we trusted Him, of course we believed in Him.
Did not
all of us love Him more than anything else?
"You
will be drawn away from your love for Me by the Adversary", the King
continued, "but since all of you came forth from Me, your love will not be
destroyed.
It
CANNOT be destroyed because it is My blood which I gave you, the blood which
flows through your Spirit.
And you know that I AM, and so my love IS, WAS and always WILL BE.
Your love will seem to suffer damage and be darkened for a little while, but it will always be there, undamaged, even if
it seems to have left its place to deceiver masking as love."
"I
will place each one of you in the Land of Oblivion where you will forget, and again
remember.
I will
prepare for you huts resting upon three firm long pillars so that the huts
reach into the clouds and beyond where you can see Me.
These
huts I will put in different regions and times in the Land of Oblivion to keep
you safe and out of reach of the Shadows abiding on the surface.
When the
Shadows will see your presence they will desire to bring you down, because they live at your expense, desiring to enrich themselves with
the treasures I have given you."
"Do
not be afraid of them, because I will watch over you and give My guards
orders to watch over you so that none of you can be devoured by the tentacles of the Pit of
Darkness stretching out into the Land of Oblivion.
Trust
Me, I know what will happen before it comes to pass.
None of
you will be devoured by the Dark Pit, I will make sure of that.
But you WILL
be harassed by Shadows hacking at the pillars upon which your hut rests in
order to bring you down.
Know
then that these three pillars of trust, faith and love are the hut's strength as
well as its weakness.
The
Shadows will seek to turn these pillars into your weakness because that is the
only way they will be able to bring you down into their Darkness."
These
words bouncing from the walls of the great palace on top of the mountain were
cryptic to all of us.
None of
us had ever sojourned in the Land of Oblivion and we did not understand what
the King was referring to.
So one
day when the King had finished building the huts, we walked out of the palace across the bridges unto the various platforms upon which our huts were
built, and we saw how the platform had indeed three very long legs stretching
all the way down.
Our huts were basking in the bright light of the sun, yet the further down we
looked, the thicker the Darkness became.
Whereas
we could see the heads of the clouds caressed by the bright sunlight, the
inhabitants of the Land of Oblivion faced their dark belly.
These
clouds drifting in the sky cast patches of Darkness upon the Land, and all of
these patches merged into what seemed like an interconnected network of roads,
highways of Darkness where the Shadows were able to travel freely.
The
Shadows could only exist by the grace of the block against the sun
the clouds created, and so they rejoiced in the presence of the clouds and
cursed the light of the sun.
In the
beginning life in the Land of Oblivion did not seem as bad for many of us as we
had feared.
We lived
comfortably in the clouds where we could bask in the light of the sun.
But it hurt
us when we noticed that some of the huts of our brothers and sisters had
shorter legs, so that early on during our stay in the Land of Oblivion some of
us found ourselves thrown in the deep end of the Dark pool.
When the
Shadows noticed our huts standing in defiance of their authority they took umbrage
and bound themselves in an oath to bring us down.
We were
considered to be spies sent by the King of the Mountain, intruders in the Land
of Oblivion.
Furthermore,
as sons and daughters of the King we carried treasures the Shadows eagerly desired
to have for themselves.
And so
they began to wield their axes against the pillars upon which our huts rested.
Fervently
they hacked away at the pillar of trust.
Their
axes sent us blows of betrayal and abuse of our trust, and soon we learned the
lesson of the Land of Oblivion the hard way.
In this
strange land you better learn to live by the commandment to Trust No One,
because to operate in trust renders you vulnerable to those who seek to abuse
that trust at your expense.
So if
you want to remain whole and out of harm's way, then learn to Trust No One.
With
great fanaticism the Shadows hacked away at the pillar of belief.
They
smote us with lies sent our way as a response to our belief, and we learned how
our belief in the words spoken in the Land of Oblivion turned us into victims
at the hands of the servants of Darkness, the slaves of deception who see trust
and belief as weaknesses, opportunities which lend themselves very well for exploitation
and abuse.
When the
Shadows confronted us with betrayal of trust and abuse of our belief, we
learned that in this zone of deception disbelief and an untrusting nature were
the best defense.
The
hardest pillar for the Shadows to destroy was the pillar of love.
Yet here
too they were very agile in teaching us the lesson that, like trust and belief,
love lends itself very well for abuse.
Because love can serve as a perfect vehicle for manipulation, exploitation and betrayal, it is a weakness in the Land where the scepter of
Evil rules.
If we
wanted to avoid being hurt, then we were required to learn how to
put love in service of opportunity, and make it serve the greater purpose of
being able to prosper in the Land of Oblivion.
We
learned that love is best spent on loving your own self-interest, because that
was the only guarantee that our love could not be turned against us.
In the Land of Oblivion selfishness was the greatest expression of love, because it did not waste its energy on others but instead served to enrich the giver of love.
'Love Your Self', more than anything else, was another important commandment we picked up in this strange land where selfishness was the highest form of love.
Yet in
our hearts we knew that this was not real love.
Selfishness contradicted the love we knew in our hearts.
The King's love was
the blood flowing through the veins of our Spirit.
Even
though there were moments when the multitude of different incarnations of anti-love
managed to wrap us in their tentacles through our response of anger and even
hatred, within us the immense conflict of a loving Spirit vs. the anti-love
assault of Darkness on our Soul remained.
The
many blows of the axes of the Shadows brought our huts closer to the soil
where Darkness dwelled and sought to devour Souls.
Whereas
in the beginning we bathed in the light of the sun shining above the clouds,
gradually as the Shadows kept hacking away at the legs of the platform upon
which our hut rested we began to lose our vision of the light beyond the
clouds, and found ourselves staring at the dark belly of the clouds.
We had
been given power over the clouds to make them shed rain, hail and even snow blizzards upon the Earth.
We could
make the thunder raise its voice and lightning pierce the heart of Darkness.
The
Shadows knew very well the power we had at our disposal, and so they sought for
ways to control our power through manipulation.
They
knew they could not take that authority away from us, so instead they had invented strategies to turn us into an extension of their Darkness
so that Darkness could rule over the clouds by means of our authority.
In our
anger over the injustice of the Shadows seeking to destroy the legs of the platform
of our huts, we threw rain and hailstones at the Shadows whenever they hacked
at the pillars.
We
thundered with our voices in reaction to their assaults, seeking to destroy
them with lightning gushing forth from the clouds.
Only,
where we expected the Shadows to back off, we noticed how they seemed to thrive
on the rain and the hail, imbibing it to renew their strength and proceed with
their demolition efforts with greater zeal than before.
They
loved the lightning as if it was the elixir of life, and the thunder became the
muzak accompanying their nefarious plans to bring down our huts.
The more
the Shadows hacked away parts of the pillars of our huts, the closer we found
ourselves to the Darkness beneath, and the further away our Father the King
seemed to be.
The
clouds which used to be beneath us now hovered over our heads, casting shadows from their dark bellies on our heads and obscuring
our sight of our Father and the light of the sun even more than before.
The
shadows the clouds cast on our bodies made it seem as if we were divided in a
part of light and a part of darkness, and the closer we came to the Darkness,
the less light there seemed to be in us and the more we began to resemble the
Shadows.
The more
we forgot our Father's character, the greater the memory of the ways of the
Darkness beneath grew to be, and the wiser we became in the world's ways, the
dumber we made ourselves in the ways of our Father the King.
Until
the pain of the conflict became more than we could bear.
The role
we had learned to play in order to survive in the Land of Oblivion conflicted
with whom we truly were to the point where it
felt as if it tore us up.
This was
the breaking point where we stopped forgetting and began to remember.
And we
never really forgot.
It was
the block we created when we began to play our roles which cut us off from our
knowing.
It took
time for that block to grow, just as it took time for the block to wither away.
Eventually
all of us reached that point where we almost fell with our huts to the Earth.
Yet in the
pain of our distress we remembered our Father the King, and we cried out for
help.
That is
when we noticed a hut right next to our old hut.
Where it
came from nobody knew, as if it had grown overnight.
It was a
hut resting upon the same three pillars as our own old hut, yet it looked stronger and somehow different.
It seemed as if it had
been hiding for many years, waiting all this time for the moment we were ready to switch from our old hut into the new hut.
Our own
efforts managed to bring our old huts down to the point of destruction, but the
moment we had decided to give up and rely on the strength of our Father we
remembered, this new hut appeared, and we were determined to learn to rely on
the strength and providence of our Father instead of our own effort.
It used to be second nature, but after we had grown into the ways of the Land of Oblivion it felt as if we had to learn to love, trust and believe all over again, like babes in the Spirit growing up in the Spirit just as we had been babes in the Land of Oblivion growing into the ways of this land of deception.
Since
our old huts were almost falling into the Darkness beneath, we all jumped to
that new hut.
We had grown into the deceptive ways of the Land of Oblivion, learning to be selfish, to distrust, to be skeptical, to be unbelieving, even to
those who were like us living in huts on legs.
Our
conformity to the ways of the land, and our angry reaction to the demolition of the foundation of our huts at the hands of malignant Shadows gave them power to perpetuate that deception.
The
moment we saw what our own efforts had wrought, and we reached out to our
Father, the new hut was there to welcome us as if it always had been right
there next to us.
But it was only when we remembered and yearned to turn back that we
noticed its presence.
All of
us jumped into the new hut since we knew that our old huts were about to
collapse and fall into the Darkness beneath.
When the
Shadows noticed how suddenly a new hut was standing next to our old hut, and
how we had jumped unto the new platform of our new hut, they began to wield
their axes against the pillars of that new hut.
They
were obsessed with the prospect of appropriating the treasures given to us by
our Father the King, so that they might be rich and powerful in the Land of
Oblivion.
After
all, if their strategies succeeded in bringing our old hut down to the point of
destruction, if they managed to appropriate our authority by means of
manipulation so that we became their extension, then surely these strategies
would yield the same results with our new hut.
Besides,
this new hut was not reaching all the way beyond the clouds like our old hut,
so it would not take too much time and effort to bring it down.
And so
they began to hack with the same old axes at the pillar of trust, dealing us blows which lead us
into betrayal of trust, hoping that the lessons we learned in the Land of
Oblivion, the seeds they had sown in our minds which taught us to Trust No One, would yield fruit in our Spirit so that we would come to apply the commandment
of the Land of Oblivion and not trust our Father the King either.
But we
had remembered that our Father could be trusted.
Our
mistake was that we had learned to see Him through the lens of the commandments
of the Land of Oblivion, which was to Trust No One since trust is a weakness in
this world of deception, a vulnerability which turns us into prey begging to be
devoured by the predators roaming the Dark alleys in search of victims of their
self-enriching scams.
But then
we remembered that our Father was and always had been true, and that this land of make-belief was a world where lies were promoted as Truth and Truth was scorned as a lie.
And we
began to trust again, clinging to that trust with each blow of the axe.
The
Shadows wielded the same axes against the pillar of belief by bringing to us
the opposite of that which we believed in.
But we remembered that our Father the King could never lie.
And so
we believed in Him and His promises, and we learned to cling to that belief in
spite of the parade of lies the Shadows manifested in our lives.
The
Shadows tried to reverse our faith so that we would become suspicious of our
Father, and we would come to distrust Him.
By
making us go through the lies of adversity, situations manipulated and
engineered by the Shadows in order to reverse the polarity of our faith and
trust, they sought to implement a blood transfusion in our Spirit where we
would substitute the blood flowing through the veins of our Spirit with
anti-blood manifesting in anger and reproach towards our Father the King.
Yet
whenever thoughts made our Soul a hostage of doubt towards YHWH, we noticed how we
were growing in the likeness of Shadows, and we came to realize that if we
persisted on that road of disbelief we would slide into a Shadow-existence ourselves.
But then
the point of the return came, the moment our eyes began to open and see the
ugly veneer of lies posing as our reality.
We
jumped unto the platform where our new hut was beckoning us.
We remembered, and we turned around.
As we
clung to our belief and we learned to operate in trust and love for our Father the King,
believing in His words and promises, the axes of the Shadows achieved the
opposite of their intended purpose.
Instead
of weakening the pillars of the new hut, every attempt the Shadows made to
inflict damage to the pillars ended up strengthening them, so that the Shadows
grew tired, drained of their energy to bring down a hut which they could not control.
Their
only hope to lay their hands on our treasures was to bring down our huts, and
although their strategy produced the desired end result in the case of our old
huts, with the new huts it seemed to bring about the opposite, even strengthening the
foundation of the new huts.
Where
before they stole our authority through manipulation, turning our emotions and
feelings against us so that we became their extension in our response to their
injustice, we regained our authority by relinquishing it entirely back to our
Father the King.
If the
blows of the axes troubled our Spirit, we learned to turn our hearts in prayer to our
Father, and He would command the clouds to issue forth rain, hail, thunder and
lightning.
Whereas
the Shadows might have rejoiced at the sound of the thunder in the beginning,
they soon learned that this thunder, this rain, this hail, and this cold snow felt like mighty blows of an invisible axe wielded against their strength and
energy, and they felt depleted and at a loss how their former success now had become their failure.
Every
blow of their axes strengthened the legs of the huts, and the legs began to grow, bringing our huts closer to heaven.
Not only
that, but every blow of the axe aimed at the King's sons and daughters became
an assault against themselves, as if they were cutting down their own
foundation.
The
desire for the previous jewels worn by the sons and daughters of the King
spurred them on in their attempts to bring down that new hut standing in
defiance of their authority over the Land of Oblivion, inventing stronger and
sharper axes in their hope to gain dominion over the intruders.
Yet all
their attempts to bring us down became the means to lift us up and bring us closer to the King, strengthening us where before they almost destroyed us.
Then the
day came when the huts had grown beyond the clouds, and we stepped upon the bridge leading us back to the palace on the mountain, the home of our Father the King.
Each one
of us who had sojourned in the Land of Oblivion carried wounds, yet the wounds
had turned into our strength, and the strength manifested in a brightness we
carried within us, a brightness which could only be drawn out by learning the
lesson of the Land of Oblivion.
The
moment the brightness had come forth was the moment our Father let us walk back into His palace on the mountain, where the Man we loved so
much had rushed from His throne to welcome us back into His home, carrying a
radiant smile on His face which made the sun look pale in comparison.
It took time for us to forget, just as it took time for us to remember.
------------
The
Shadows knew that the pillars of love, trust and belief is what kept the sons
and daughters of the King close to Heaven and out of their reach, so to be able
to devour the intruders the Shadows had to hack down these pillars.
Adversity,
trust betrayed by others, love scorned, abused and ridiculed, unanswered belief,
all these are tactics belonging to the strategy the Shadows use to hack down
your hut and bring you down.
It is
their aim to reverse our faith, love and trust towards YHWH by means of the engineered circumstances of our lives here on Earth.
Thus, the
Shadows want us to relate to YHWH through the lens of our encounters with
betrayal of trust, belief and love.
They
create situations and circumstances where we receive betrayal as a reward for
our belief, abuse of our trust, exploitation and hurt as the wages for our
love.
The
experience of going through these engineered circumstances aims to teach us the
lesson of the Land of Oblivion, which is that trust will be betrayed, belief is
naive and lends itself for abuse just as unselfish love is bound to become a
great disappointment and cause for pain.
This
experience becomes a distorted lens, so that when the Shadows manipulate our
circumstances to the extent that they embody the opposite of YHWH's words, we project the
image of the lens unto Him.
Through this lens of our hurts and disappointments it seems as if YHWH too betrays our trust,
our belief and our love for Him.
The Shadows
seek to manipulate us so that we come to project betrayal unto YHWH through the
conditioning process of betrayals we were put through, and give up our trust,
our belief and our love for Him.
It is
this tension between YHWH's words and His essence vs. the lying circumstances
created by Shadows and their essence which can bring us down, but which also ends
up a tool to strengthen our belief, our trust and our love for YHWH.
It is
the manifestation of the opposite of YHWH's words and the conflict it produces with our faith, trust and love which becomes a tool drawing out our characters.
Do we hold on to Truth, or do we surrender to the Lie?
Just
as this conflict can be a tool in YHWH's hands to strengthen us, it can be a
tool for our destruction if we believe in the manifestation of the Lie in our
lives in the form of adverse conditions.
The
Shadows seek to destroy the pillars of our hut by leading us into situations
where this foundation is challenged by the manifestation of the opposite of what the pillars stand for.
The
design is to make the opposite the new foundation of our hut, so that belief in
YHWH, which ties us to Heaven, becomes disbelief and through disbelief belief in
the lies of the Evil One, which ties us to the grave, trust in YHWH becomes
distrust of Him and thereby trust in the lies of the Adversary, and as love for
YHWH grows cold and morphs into reproach and anger, it is replaced by love for
the Adversary through love of this world.
This is
why we encounter adversity and animosity in Life.
They are
tactics used by the Shadows to bring us down to their level so that they can
devour us and be nourished.
Yet the
tactics they use can become tools which help us grow and be stronger when we learn to see through
the deception and hold fast to the foundation of the pillars of our hut, the
pillars of trusting YHWH, loving YHWH, and believing in YHWH.
That is
when the strategy of the Adversary is turned against him as YHWH turns it into a
tool to refine us and draw out the brightness of our characters.
That is when the light of the sun, which used to be blocked by the clouds, suddenly spreads through us into the Darkness of the Land of Oblivion, destroying the power of Darkness with its very presence.
