This group of articles deals with one of the greatest problems in the Christian Church and specifically with that part of the Church which Jesus calls the Church of Thyatira. I will define this church in greater detail within this series, but for now we can think of Church of Thyatira as the “Charismatic Church,” the church that believes that the Holy Spirit currently works in their midst. Thyatira makes up a large part of that corporate body of false religion called “Mystery Babylon” in Revelation 17-18. Much of the problem within this church can be characterized as a failure of spiritual discernment. Most of its leaders either cannot discern the Holy Spirit versus a demonic spirit or they purposefully mislead their people concerning the difference. In his letter to them Jesus characterized their failure as being twofold: 1) they ate food sacrificed to idols and 2) they engaged in sexual immorality. These failures, of course, involve spiritual matters and we will discuss them as the series progresses. I have written extensively on these subjects in the past, including an entire book which can be downloaded at the link to the right called “Food Sacrificed to Idols.” To really understand these ideas I want to discuss a few things we think are going on outside of the church first.

For two days before I began this series I was rather immersed in a few on-line and YouTube accounts of people who were abducted into and then “escaped” government “black” operations. You can begin to research these things by looking up “MKultra,” and the programs this search will lead you to, but I do not advise you to do so. To go down this path is to study the “deep things of Satan,” and I would not have you or myself go there. It is enough to know that many things we see in movies like “The Manchurian Candidate” and even more bizarre films like “Avatar” (which I have not watched, but have only heard of) really happen and exist.

The goal of many of these movies and on-line videos appears to be to get the general public ready to eagerly accept and receive aliens from another world. I have watched at least three videos of three different individuals over the past two days who claim to “channel” these et’s. They seem to earnestly believe that these beings from “another dimension or another planet” exist at a much higher moral level than we do and that they desire to help us come into the next age, an age in which mankind’s development has dramatically increased.

The similarity you will find in all of these alien converts is their belief in relativism. They do not believe in an absolute truth. They have become willing “channels” for these beings to speak through. And so I considered this today.

When I was a young Christian I felt the presence of God and heard his voice more often than I do today. I came into the church during the very last years of the “Latter Rain Movement,” an outpouring of the Holy Spirit that began in 1948. When first called to “teach God’s Word,” I enrolled in a traditional conservative Bible College, but left after two years to join a church that “walked by the Spirit.” I joined a Thyatira-type church described in Revelation 2:18-29 because I too wanted to walk by the Holy Spirit.

The Church of Thyatira teaches that God’s Spirit is alive and well and still acts in the earth. It is the “prophetic church” of the last days. This is the church that seeks God’s voice for his now word. “What are you saying, God?” they cry out with all sincerity and hope. And so they ask and expect God to speak to and through them! They want to become the very voice of God in the earth!

They want to “channel” God and this is where we come to in this series.