Human Trafficking in the Church — Part 5
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.
2. Using Man-Made Materials (continued)
“And they said one to another, Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly. So they had brick for stone, and slime (bitumen) for mortar.”—Genesis 11:3 (AMP)
I grew up going church. I was raised in a family that went to church regularly. But I also read the Bible, and what I saw in the Bible did not match what I was seeing demonstrated in the church. The lives of believers in the Bible were dynamic! They saw miracles! They experienced the power of God! God communicated personally with them! They walked with God and lived lives full of adventures!
As a teenager, I asked some of the church leaders why we weren’t experiencing some of these things that I saw people experiencing in the Bible, but I never got any satisfactory answers. I couldn’t help thinking that, “There’s got to be more than this!”
It was not until I got out of that church and found a church that welcomed the Holy Spirit and embraced His power that I finally felt that I was connected to something that was alive spiritually! I will never forget the first time that I heard a word of prophecy spoken in a church meeting. It was the most wonderful thing I had ever heard! It was Jesus personally speaking to His people today! Finally! I had found a group of people who seemed to be connected to the living God!
My life was never the same after that. Everything changed for the better!
“They will act as if they were serving God. But what they do will show that they have turned their backs on God’s power. Have nothing to do with these people.”—2 Timothy 3:5 (NIRV)
Hearing the Call of God
“No one is able to come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me attracts and draws him and gives him the desire to come to Me”—John 6:44 (AMPC)
In *The Matrix *film, the computer world represents the spiritual realm. After work, Neo spends his nights searching for something in this realm. Then Trinity (representing Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) responds to all of his searching and reaches out to him (See Jeremiah 29:13.). That is where Neo’s story begins.
Neo’s first meeting with Trinity is reminiscent of Jesus’ encounter with Nathanael in John chapter 1. At this time in his life, he is only known to people in his daily life as Thomas Anderson, but Trinity sees past that. Trinity sees his potential. Trinity sees him as the mature son of God that he was born to become.
Trinity: “Hello Neo.”
Neo: “How do you know that name?”
Or as Nathanael said, “How do you know about me?” (John 1:48 NLT)
Jesus responded to Nathanael by saying, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree. I saw you there before Philip called you.” (John 1:48 NIRV)
Or as Trinity said to Neo: “I know a lot about you.”
Then Neo responded: “Jesus!”
Or as Nathanael exclaimed, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” (John 1:49 NKJV)
Trinity: “Please just listen. I know why you’re here, Neo. I know what you’ve been doing. I know why you hardly sleep, why you live alone, and why night after night you sit at your computer. You’re looking for him… . It’s the question that brought you here… . The answer is out there, Neo. It’s looking for you. And it will find you, if you want it to.”
Breaking Free of the Religious System
Thomas Anderson (Neo) begins to seriously question his life in the religious system that he has been serving. The response of this Babylonian system is harsh and severe.
Neo’s Supervisor: “You have a problem with authority, Mr. Anderson. You believe that you are special, that somehow the rules do not apply to you. Obviously you are mistaken.”
But God is pursuing Thomas Anderson. Just as the religious system is tightening the screws on him; increasing pressure to ensure his compliance, Mr. Anderson receives a special delivery. The gift that he receives is a mobile phone that allows him to hear the voice of him who is unseen. This is a picture of a believer being given spiritual ears to hear the voice of God.
“He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”—Matthew 13:43 (NKJV)
In the film, everyone who has been freed from the Matrix system has ears to hear and is able to communicate in this way with the voices of the unseen.
But Neo is not free yet. Anytime someone hears the call of God and begins to question the path they are on in life, there will be opposition from the enemy. Pharaoh did not let the children of Israel go without a fight. He had kept the people of God enslaved for hundreds of years as they built his structures out of man-made bricks, just as many churches, denominations, and Christian ministries use the children of God today.
Moses had to fight to free the people of God from the human trafficking they had been subjected to for centuries before he could lead them into the new lives of freedom that God had promised them.
Agents of the Matrix, urged on by the religious spirit of Babylon, increase their pressure on Mr. Anderson just as Trinity intensifies efforts to free him.
Agent Smith: “As you can see, we’ve had our eye on you for some time now, Mr. Anderson. It seems that you’ve been living two lives. In one life, you’re Thomas A. Anderson, program writer for a respectable software company. You have a social security number, you pay your taxes, and you help your landlady carry out her garbage. The other life is lived in computers, where you go by the hacker alias Neo and are guilty of virtually every computer crime we have a law for. One of these lives has a future, and one of them does not.”
In The Matrix film, Morpheus represents spiritual transformation (metamorphosis) in which a disciple grows to become a mature son of God. It is obvious that the religious spirit that empowers the Matrix is terrified of this kind of spiritual transformation and will go to great lengths to prevent it.
Agent Smith: “I’m going to be as forthcoming as I can be, Mr. Anderson. You’re here because we need your help. We know that you’ve been contacted by a certain individual, a man who calls himself Morpheus. Now whatever you think you know about this man is irrelevant. He is considered by many authorities to be the most dangerous man alive. My colleagues believe that I am wasting my time with you but I believe that you wish to do the right thing. We’re willing to wipe the slate clean, give you a fresh start and all that we’re asking in return is your cooperation in bringing a known terrorist to justice.”
But God desires Mr. Anderson’s transformation more than he desires it himself.
Morpheus: “You see, you may have spent the last few years looking for me, but I’ve spent my entire life looking for you. Now do you still want to meet?”
When Mr. Anderson gets into the car with Trinity, he is challenged to choose which path he is going to follow. He must choose between the narrow way or the broad path (See Matthew 7:13-15.). The choice is presented to him by a character appropriately named Switch.
Switch: “Stop the car. Listen to me, coppertop. We don’t have time for twenty questions. Right now there’s only one rule, our way or the highway.”
Neo: “Fine.”
Neo starts to get out of the car, but Trinity stops him.
Trinity: “Please, Neo. You have to trust me.”
Neo: “Why?”
Trinity: “Because you have been down there, Neo. You know that road. You know exactly where it ends. And I know that’s not where you want to be.”
Neo decides to get back in the car.
Trinity wastes no time in leading Mr. Anderson through deliverance to rid him of anything that could hinder him on his journey forward. Shocked to see that an evil entity actually came out of him, Mr. Anderson cries out to Trinity, “Jesus Christ, that thing’s real?”
It’s interesting to note that every time Neo uses the name of Jesus, he is always speaking to Trinity, who represents Jesus in this film.
There are a lot of people who believe that Christians cannot have demons. But contrary to this erroneous belief, Jesus *only *cast demons out of His own people. The only exception to this was the daughter of the Syrophenician woman in Mark chapter 7. In her case, Jesus refused at first, explaining that deliverance from demonic spirits was something that belonged to the children of God.
“Let the children be filled first, for it is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.”—Mark 7:27 (NKJV)
Anyone who believes that Christians cannot have demons has not spent a sufficient amount of time in deliverance ministry.
Neo’s Discipleship Begins
In *The Matrix *film, Although Neo had been born physically years earlier, his spiritual journey to fulfill his destiny did not begin in earnest until it was revealed to him that the spiritual world in which he had been living all of his life was not at all what it appeared to be.
It was finally revealed to Neo that the spiritual world in which he had been raised had no real spiritual life in it. It was nothing but a religious system that had been trafficking him, along with everyone else under its control, and using them to build and perpetuate the system. This “Matrix” is a representation of the religious institutions that are guided by the traditions of men and the spirit of Babylon the Great, the Mother of Prostitutes, described in Revelation 17.
Neo’s journey was much like my own experience, and maybe like yours as well.
Morpheus’ first words to Neo: “At last! … Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain. But you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life. That there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there, like a splinter in your mind driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
Neo: “The Matrix?”
Morpheus: “Do you want to know what it is? The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us, even now in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”
Neo: “What truth?”
Morpheus: “That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind… . Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.”
Then Neo was faced with a choice, as we all are when God calls us to leave our old lives behind and to follow Him. Eventually, we all come to a decision point—a point of no return.
Morpheus to Neo: “This is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes… . Remember, all I’m offering is the truth, nothing more.”
In this scene, the blue pill represents rejection of truth, resulting in spiritual blindness. Neo chooses the red pill. The color red in Scripture is often associated with the way of wisdom, anointing, and supernatural power.
Then, just as Jesus said to the first disciples, Morpheus says to Neo, “Follow me.”
And the discipleship journey begins as Neo’s eyes are opened to discover who he really is and what he has been destined to accomplish in life. This is a picture of a new disciple beginning to discover who he really is in Christ and the purpose for which God created him.
A religious institution can never lead you to your true identity and your true calling and purpose in life. It is beyond the power of any religious organization to do that. Only Jesus Christ can do that as you follow Him in true discipleship.
As Trinity said to Neo, “the Matrix cannot tell you who you are.”
**Reference: **
Wachowski, L., & Wachowski, L. (2021, August 26). The Matrix Transcript. Matrix Fans. Retrieved March 15, 2022, from https://www.matrixfans.net/movies/the-matrix/transcript/
