Human Trafficking in the Church — Part 9
Recognizing the Six Characteristics of the Religious Spirit of Babylon
The six characteristics of the religious spirit of Babylon are the same today as they were when they were first recorded in Scripture in Genesis 11.
3. Building an Empire (continued)
“Then they said, ‘Come, let’s build a great city for ourselves’—Genesis 11:4 (NLT)
During the height of the Azusa Street Revival, William J. Seymour led the meetings in an unusual way.
“Brother Seymour generally sat behind two empty shoe boxes, one on top of the other. He usually kept his head inside the top one during the meeting, in prayer. There was no pride there…. In that old building, with its low rafters and bare floors, God took strong men and women to pieces, and put them together again, for His glory…. The religious ego preached its own funeral sermon quickly.” (Bartleman, p.58)
Seymour did not control the meetings. He seemed to simply be a facilitator who cultivated an atmosphere that allowed God the freedom to do whatever He wanted to do.
But Seymour was not a passive leader. There were many times in which people tried to take control of the meetings. Seymour dealt with those situations swiftly and decisively. Many times, even when Seymour was upstairs and not in the meeting room, he heard voices of people attempting to take control of the meetings. Seymour would immediately stomp on the floor forcefully until the person speaking in the meeting got the message and yielded back to the Holy Spirit.
There was a lot of wisdom in William J. Seymour’s leadership style. Looking back, we can see now that moves of God often ended prematurely because men attempted to step in and control what God was doing.
There will always be a need for leadership to provide guidance, as William J. Seymour did, but God and His people must be allowed freedom within that guidance if God’s purposes are going to be to accomplished.
God went to great lengths to get that point across to Pharaoh in Moses’ time. Pharaoh seemed to be a very controlling leader who was preventing God’s people from having the freedom that was needed for them to accomplish God’s purposes.
A Model for Human Trafficking
Pharaoh was one of the most notorious human traffickers in history, but the people of God did not start out in Egypt as slaves. Do you remember how they got there?
The children of Israel were given that land in Egypt by Pharaoh himself out of gratefulness for what Joseph had done to save lives and bring prosperity to Egypt in a time of great famine.
“Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘Now that your father and brothers have joined you here, choose any place in the entire land of Egypt for them to live. Give them the best land of Egypt. Let them live in the region of Goshen. And if any of them have special skills, put them in charge of my livestock, too.’ … So Joseph assigned the best land of Egypt—the region of Rameses—to his father and his brothers, and he settled them there, just as Pharaoh had commanded.”— Genesis 47:5-11 (NLT)
But over time, the people of God were turned into slaves in their own land and forced to make bricks to build one man’s empire.
How did this happen? And how does it happen in so many Christian churches and ministries today?
It often happens gradually, with subtle changes over time, as we are told in the first chapter of Exodus.
“In time, Joseph and all of his brothers died, ending that entire generation. But their descendants, the Israelites, had many children and grandchildren. In fact, they multiplied so greatly that they became extremely powerful and filled the land.
“Eventually, a new king came to power in Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph or what he had done. He said to his people, ‘Look, the people of Israel now outnumber us and are stronger than we are. We must make a plan to keep them from growing even more. If we don’t, and if war breaks out, they will join our enemies and fight against us. Then they will escape from the country.’”—Exodus 6-10 (NLT)
It became an issue of control in order to accomplish one man’s vision of empire building.
No longer were the Israelites welcome guests of a grateful nation, free to come and go as they pleased, pursuing their individual destinies. Now, if the Israelites left the empire, they were considered escapees.
Strategies were implemented in order to control the people, prevent them from growing into the fullness of their own individual callings, and to use them instead to build one man’s empire. This is happening in countless Christian churches and ministries today.
Human trafficking became an accepted part of the culture in Egypt, as it has in countless Christian organizations as they pursue one person’s vision to build an empire.
“So the Egyptians made the Israelites their slaves. They appointed brutal slave drivers over them, hoping to wear them down with crushing labor. They forced them to build the cities of Pithom and Rameses as supply centers for the king. But the more the Egyptians oppressed them, the more the Israelites multiplied and spread, and the more alarmed the Egyptians became. So the Egyptians worked the people of Israel without mercy. They made their lives bitter, forcing them to mix mortar and make bricks and do all the work in the fields. They were ruthless in all their demands.”— Exodus 1:11-14 (NLT)
Quenching the Holy Spirit
Controlling people can become a very important tactic for spiritual human traffickers. If people are not controlled, things can get messy and chaotic, as they did on the Day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2. Can you imagine the chaotic scene on that day?
It started with the sound of a roaring, violent wind. Then fire appeared and seemed to settle on the people that were gathered! Then (as if that wasn’t chaotic enough) people began speaking in strange languages that they had never learned! And they did not seem to be taking turns in an orderly fashion, but they were just speaking out loud as God’s Spirit prompted them!
A crowd of very confused and astonished people began to gather and tried to figure out what was happening. It was so disruptive and disorderly that people began to accuse these disciples of being drunk!
Have you ever noticed that most of the significant events in the New Testament did *not *happen in church meetings? And the most vehement opposition to Jesus’ ministry always came from religious leaders. It seems that God does some of His best work when He is free from the constraints of religious meetings. Thank God there were no controlling religious leaders in charge on that day! Thank God that His disciples were allowed the freedom to fully enter into all that He had for them on the Day of Pentecost!
Issues of control enter into relationships because the controlling person has a vision that he wants to see fulfilled. Control becomes a means that he uses to try to force the actions of others to conform to his vision.
Visions can be simple or grandiose. A Christian leader might have a vision for something as simple as how a meeting should go. If people begin to demonstrate too much freedom in ways that don’t fit into a leader’s vision for how the meeting should go, a controlling leader may see this as disorderly chaos and exert control so that the meeting conforms to his vision for the meeting.
Empire builders also have visions. Their visions are more long-term and grandiose. Pharaoh had a vision for building his empire. In order to ensure that his vision for his empire would be fulfilled, he began to control the lives of those in his empire. God’s people bore the brunt of his harsh control.
Human trafficking can become an issue of control. Many Christian leaders exert control over God’s people because they don’t like things to be messy or look foolish or unorganized. In order to fulfill their personal vision, they prefer things to be predictable and respectable, always making rational sense to their natural minds. If people were allowed to freely pursue whatever they felt that God was calling them to do, things could get messy, as they did on the Day of Pentecost.
The problem is that the mind of a natural man who has a preconceived idea about how things should happen may not be able to perceive what God is doing.
“But the natural, nonspiritual man does not accept or welcome or admit into his heart the gifts and teachings and revelations of the Spirit of God, for they are folly (meaningless nonsense) to him; and he is incapable of knowing them [of progressively recognizing, understanding, and becoming better acquainted with them] because they are spiritually discerned and estimated and appreciated.”— 1 Corinthians 2:14 (AMPC)
When God’s people are allowed freedom to pursue God’s individual callings on their lives, they can sometimes be led by God to do things that don’t make rational sense to the natural mind, as they did on the Day of Pentecost. Sadly, many leaders go beyond providing wise guidance, and they try to bring God’s people under control, frustrating the grace of God and preventing His purposes from being accomplished.
Jesus’ own family tried to bring him under their control when his actions offended their natural minds.
“When Jesus’ family heard what he was doing, they thought he was crazy and went to get him under control.”— Mark 3:21 (CEV)
I once was invited to speak at a conference in another city with three other ministers. As we met to prepare and plan before leaving for the conference, I received individual prophetic words for each of the three ministers. The first two prophecies seemed to be encouraging words about the general impact that the first two ministers would have. The third prophecy was much more specific.
The third prophecy was for a church pastor who would be ministering with us.
In this prophecy, I told him that, at some point, he would have a prophetic word of encouragement for someone there, but that he would have second thoughts about giving it. I told this pastor not to doubt, but to give the word because it was from the Lord. The word was much needed, and it would make a significant positive impact.
The three ministers then traveled on ahead of me, and began to minister in meetings prior to the conference. I caught up with them a few days later.
When we were finally all together, this pastor began talking about their meeting the night before. He commented that he felt that he had a word of prophecy that would activate a gift in the life of a young man, but he had decided not to give the word because he felt that the man really would not have proper guidance to develop that gift, and it could cause some confusion in the church.
I was shocked. This pastor didn’t seem to connect that event in the meeting with the word of prophecy that I had shared with him before we left. I realized that this pastor had completely disregarded the word, and now … what would happen to that young man who did not receive the word that would activate his gift? Would he ever enter into the things that God had intended for him?
How many individual destinies and callings have been smothered and aborted by Christian leaders who put a higher priority on second-guessing the Holy Spirit in order to maintain control?
“When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, ‘Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us,’ be sure to appoint over you a king the Lord your God chooses. He must be from among your fellow Israelites. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not an Israelite. The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the Lord has told you, ‘You are not to go back that way again.’”— Deuteronomy 17:14-16 (NIV)
**Reference: **
Bartleman, Frank (1980). Azusa Street: The Roots of Modern-day Pentecost. Bridge-Logos Publishers.
