LXXXVI

BELOVED, BELIEVE NOT EVERY SPIRIT, BUT TRY THE SPIRTS WHETHER THEY ARE OF GOD

1 JOHN 4:1

SEVEN SALLIE

“Hey, Dad,” my daughter Sevenia’s voice greeted me through my phone. I immediately detected an urgency in her tone. I also felt myself stiffen. She knew better than to call me moments before I was to begin my live podcast. But she was a teenager so she probably lost track of the time.

“Hi, Sweet Pea,” I replied. “What’s up? I’m getting ready to start my live program. In about Seven minutes to be precise. No pun intended.”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry,” she replied. “But please tell me Devin Easton isn’t with you.”

“No,” I replied cautiously as I froze. I felt a chill go up my spine.

“Thank God!” she said with a relieved sigh.

“But he was here,” I told her, as my brain whirled. “Why do you ask?”

“I had a profound dream about him,” she told me as a bit of urgency returned to her voice.

“You don’t say,” I replied, dumbfounded. The last time she had a profound dream, Sevinia, Destiny, and my cousin Brock found two cold, homeless girls under a bridge. They had been on the run from human traffickers. “What kind of dream?”

“Why was he with you? Did he say anything about being converted?”

The chill in my spine caused the hair on my neck to prickle and I shivered. “Yes, the reason he contacted me was to tell me just that, that he did in fact experience a conversion a couple weeks ago.”

“How long did you talk to him?”

“I don’t know, a while.”

“But he left, right? I mean, you’re not going to interview him about it or anything?”

“Actually, I already recorded an interview with him, and I was planning on airing it on the next broadcast.”

“Daddy, no!” she pleaded. Sevenia rarely called me Daddy anymore. It reminded me of when she was a little girl and wanted something. And, well, it seemed she wanted something now. Something I didn’t understand. “Surely you have something else you can do for today.”

“Sweet Pea, you didn’t listen. I said the next broadcast, not this broadcast.”

“Oh good gravy,” she said and then chuckled happily. “We need to talk.”

“We are talking.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Sevenia,” I said patiently. “Devin experienced a pretty miraculous encounter. You should see him. His eyes are bright, he doesn’t smell like an ashtray, and his voice was crisp and articulate. He didn’t mumble, slur or sound like he was in a Pirates of the Caribbean movie.”

“What do you mean by encounter?” she asked as concern elevated in her voice.

“He had an encounter with what sounds like, I don’t know, an angel.”

“We need to talk.”

“We are talking.”

“Daddy!”

“Listen, Sweet Pea, I need to let you go. But we’ll talk later, okay?”

“Okay, can we get together after your podcast?”

“Sure thing, Peach Plum.”

“Peach Plum?” she replied. Instead of the giggle I expected, my mind’s eye  saw her frown. She must really be concerned about this Devin Easton situation.

Later I ended up in something like negotiations with my daughter over whether or not to air the interview I did with Devin Easton.

“Help me understand this,” I told Sevenia as I looked into her intense, emerald eyes. “Devin claims to have had an angelic encounter. His life is noticeably turned around. You encountered an angel in a dream, and it warned you that Devin’s conversion isn’t genuine?”

She winced, chewed her lip, and then ran a hand through her short auburn hair. “How do I put this? Obviously, it’s good that Devin has cleaned up his life and is seeking spirituality. What I’m warning you about is taking part in the sensationalism of this encounter. Didn’t Devin say that this supernatural being told him to tell you what happened.?”

“He did.”

“My point is holy angels do not seek the spotlight.”

“But he’s bringing glory to God. The angel encounter is just part of the story.”

My daughter sighed, crossed her arms, crossed one leg over the other and bobbed her foot. She was only days away from turning eighteen, but she had the maturity of a fifty year old. Yet when I watched her pick a scab on her knee, I was reminded she was still a kid in some ways.

“The way I see it, you’re putting your dream against Devin’s encounter,” I told her.

“No, Dad, I’m not,” she replied patiently. “I was simply given a warning that you should have nothing to do with his testimony at this point. I was shown that Devin’s conversion is more on the order of spiritualism, rather than Biblical doctrine.”

“What’s unbiblical about it?”

“Fear God, and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man,” Sevenia said, quoting Ecclesiastes 12:13. “It’s going to come down to that down the road. The law of God, written by His own finger, or the traditions of men. Biblical truth or spiritualism.”

“I don’t understand how that applies to Devin’s conversion, though?”

“His conversion is of a new age order, rather than primitive Godliness.”

“Honey, how can you judge him like that? You haven’t even talked to him yourself, have you?”

“No,” she replied meekly as she bit her lower lip and hung her head. There was a reason people in our fellowship began calling her the girl prophetess, she practiced what she preached.

This made her papa proud, until she told me she was giving up her childhood dream of becoming a doctor to be a minister. I tried to tell her that the medical profession was a form of ministry. But she told me she felt called to preach and teach the Word of God. As a man claiming to be Christian, how can I fault that?

“But do you really have to broadcast him now?” Sevenia asked. “Couldn’t you give Devin a little more time to absorb a, um, righteous life, so to speak?”

“But I’ve been lacking really interesting subjects lately, and Devin’s angelic encounter is interesting.”

“A lot of people won’t believe it. Your subjecting yourself to sensationalism.”

My daughter and I went back and forth for a while, and I ended up agreeing not to broadcast the interview I did with Devin. But a couple days later, he showed up at my place.

“I had another encounter,” Devin told me. “Check this out.”

I looked at his phone as he showed me a picture. My heart began to race as I gazed at an extraordinarily beautiful woman with long flowing black hair and a long white gown. What got my heart rate going was two elements with the photo. One was that she appeared to be floating. The other was that she didn’t appear to be fully physical.

Devin sent the picture to my phone, and I in turn, shared Devin’s story, along with the photo, on social media. I also promised Devin’s story would be a subject on an upcoming podcast. Not even a half our later, my phone jingled. It was my daughter!

(DESTINY’S BIBLE STUDY NOTES AND QUOTES)

(THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT PART 6)

“Whosoever… shall break one of the least of these commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:19

“Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.” James 2:10

There is not a commandment of the law that is not for the good and happiness of humanity, both in this life and the life to come.

By venturing to disregard the will of God upon one point, our first parents opened the floodgates of woe upon the world.

“Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:20

A legal religion is insufficient to bring the soul into harmony with God. The hard, rigid orthodoxy of the Pharisees, destitute of contrition, tenderness, or love, was only a stumbling block to sinners.

The only true faith is that which “Works by love” (Galatians 5:6) to purify the soul.

“Everyone who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgement.” Matthew 5:22

In the revengeful thought the evil deed lies enfolded, as the plant in the seed. “Whosoever hates his brother is a murderer: and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” 1 John 3:15

In the gift of His Son for our redemption, God has shown how high a value He places upon every human soul, and He gives to no man liberty to speak contemptuously of another.

We shall see faults and weaknesses in those about us, but God claims every soul as His property—His by creation, and doubly His as purchased by the precious blood of Christ.

“Be reconciled to thy brother.” Matthew 5:24

The love of God is something more than a mere negation, it is a positive and active principle, a living spring, ever flowing to bless others.

If the love of Christ dwells in us, we shall not only cherish no hatred toward others, but we shall seek in every way to manifest love toward them.

“Whosoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.” Matthew 5:28

When the thought of evil is loved and cherished, however secretly, it shows that sin still reigns in the heart.

“If thy right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off, and cast it from the.” Matthew 5:30

It is through the will that sin retains its hold upon us. The surrender of the will is represented as plucking out the eye or cutting off the hand.

Separated from God, existence may be ours for a little time, but we do not possess life.

It will require a sacrifice to give yourself to God; but it is a sacrifice of the lower for the higher, the earthly for the spiritual, the perishable for the eternal.

God does not design that our will should be destroyed, for it is only through its exercise that we can accomplish what God would have us do.

Our will is to be yielded to Him, that we may receive it again, purified, and refined. Then He can pour through us the tides of His love and power.