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We have been speaking about the culture of the orphan,
which I equate to and use synonymously
with the culture of the fatherless.
And what we were saying is
that following the fall of man in the garden,
man began to himself as flesh,
preoccupied with the needs for provision and protection
so he clothes himself and he hides himself.
Whereas God had put him in the garden
with an identity of being spirit.
As a spirit, God is his Father,
God the Father of his spirit,
has put him here to represent his Father
and to bring the culture of heaven into the earth.
So the goodness of God
was to be put on display in the earth
through the house of God.
But when man sinned, he no longer sees himself
in this divine connection to heaven,
he's now preoccupied with clothing himself and hiding
which are the earliest forms of provision and protection.
Later on, after God would say,
"By the sweat of your brow you will eat bread,"
his understanding of his need for provision
became more focused on the need for bread
and yet God reminded him of who he was
by telling him that man should not live on bread alone
but by the very presence of God.
As Jesus would analogize to
"every word that proceeds from the mouth of God"
and the analogy would be
where Jesus would say in John 6,
"I am the bread of life come down from heaven,"
meaning that He is the word of God.
Now when this change came about -
the change between representing his Father
versus merely surviving -
we have explored the fact that
this is the result of a change in vision,
that previous to the fall man saw things
that the impulses of things that came to him
through his natural eyes
were interpreted by his spirit,
and that was his understanding.
And God, his Father, the Father of his spirit,
was the compendium of his resources
with which to address whatever he saw.
So in other words, whatever view of reality he had,
he did not feel that he had a need
because his Father was the sufficiency of his need.
When he fell, he began to see things through his soul
but as an orphan the soul recognizes no other resources
but what you could do for yourself.
And that is the culture of the orphan;
that is the culture of the fatherless
because more than that you have a biological father,
or in the case of Adam, a Father for his spirit,
the Father from whom the spirit of Adam was issued,
God breathed spirit from God into Adam,
so the essence of Adam's being was that he was spirit.
When you see yourself as spirit, God is your Father,
and so all of the resources of God's house
are available to fulfill and to support
whatever destiny you are in the earth to live out.
At that point, you see, you're not preoccupied
with what you'll eat or drink
or wherewithal you will be clothed
because the center of your culture
is not about surviving;
the center of your culture
is about representing your Father,
you're connected to the will of your Father
and you have being to give expression
to the will of your Father.
I'll come to that when we speak
of the culture of a son, subsequently.
But when that changes,
it changes to the culture of survival.
And we made the observation that an orphan hoards,
one of the signs that a person
has the culture of an orphan is they hoard.
And another of the signs
that one has the culture of an orphan
is that they are obsessed with the need to survive...
they're obsessed with the need to survive.
Right now in the earth,
the economies of nations are collapsing,
the mightiest and the weakest of nations alike.
And the phenomenon of people pulling back
and retrenching and becoming fearful
is throughout the earth.
And even in the land of the free
and the home of the brave,
the fear of survival is palpable
and we're being shown to be neither free nor brave
because none of us can escape the human condition
of feeling the need for provision and protection,
feeling the need to have enough for today
and to being able to survive.
None of us can pull away
from the orbital pull of that black hole
unless we return to a vision
of being spirit beings clothed in flesh.
Then what happens is a mindset change,
the mindset changes back from that which it now is,
to a different purpose.
The mindset of the orphan is provision and protection;
the mindset of the son is
to represent his Father in the earth.
The mindset of an orphan sees only itself
as it's resources for provision and protection,
only what it has or can do, what skills it possesses
and what alliances and relationships
it is able to cobble together
as the basis of fulfilling the need
for provision and protection.
The son depends entirely upon his Father
because the son is here to give place
to the will of his Father.
There has to be then a change of mindsets.
Demonic strongholds live in human mindsets
and there is no mindset that is more fruitful
for the intentions of demonic beings toward humans,
than the mindset of an orphan.
As this becomes
the dominant strain of influence in human culture,
it is not hard to see that human culture
will increasingly be co-opted by demonic influences.
The demon of fear, as we're saying,
is running through humanities culture now
nearly unobstructed, nearly unchallenged
as the shaking that is happening threatens survival,
threatens provision and protection.
But let's talk a little bit more
about mindsets for a moment
and let's follow out the concept of a mindset.
If I were to ask the average Christian
to explain to me what a "principality" is,
their response would be almost automatically
that a principality is a demon.
But that is in fact inaccurate, it's not true.
A principality, you see the Scriptures say
in Ephesians the sixth chapter,
"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood"
"but we wrestle against principalities, powers,"
"the rulers of the darkness of this world"
"and of spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."
This is Ephesians chapter 6,
the famous chapter on spiritual warfare.
The term "principalities"
is used in the King James version
and it has made it's way into the popular vernacular
of evangelicals and charismatics alike
and it is routinely understood to be a demon;
"principality" to that culture equates demon.
But that's actually inaccurate
and the inaccuracy covers over
a more sinister understanding,
one well worth our time and effort to understand.
A principality, even in geographic terms,
is "an area of rule",
like we refer to the principality of Monaco
in human and geographic terms.
In the same way "principality", spiritually,
is an area of rule, a mindset.
In that mindset we have default settings.
If for example, we have a mindset of an orphan,
the principality, this area of rule,
governs how we see the world,
it governs our views of the world.
The orphan sees the world as a scary place
in which the orphan is alone.
The orphan sees that he or she
has only himself or herself to rely upon.
This "mindset", this "stronghold", this "principality"
comes about as a result of fatherlessness.
The culture of human beings, beginning with Adam,
the original earth culture,
the one that broke away from heaven
and formed itself in the garden,
it didn't come from heaven
it was formed out of rebellion.
The original earth culture is that of fatherlessness,
it's the culture of the orphan.
Over time and through the centuries
it has matriculated to a global default setting,
irrespective of culture
because fatherlessness now is no longer defined
simply as one not having a living father,
fatherlessness may be defined
by many other categories
that do not necessarily mean
that you don't have a natural father, a living father.
For example, if the father is silent in the home,
doesn't participate in discussions
about a child's life and future, not involved;
then the child for all intents and purposes is fatherless.
If the father is abusive,
whether it's verbally or physically
and subsets of which may be violence
including the violence of *** abuse,
then for sure the child is separated
from what the culture of a father ought to bring
and the child within that child's own home
is alienated from the father.
If the father is uninvolved
by reason of drugs and alcohol,
that's yet another way that a child
may end up being fatherless.
And if a father is a workaholic
and spends no meaningful time
and engagement with his children,
then the child may be fatherless.
If the father is chronically ill
and has to be cared for,
the child would be fatherless.
If the father doesn't know who he is,
has had no fatherly role model himself,
even his attempts at being a father
will fall short of what the child needs.
Now here are some interesting statistics
and I want to show something of the extent
to which the culture of the fatherless
has now totally dominated human culture.
In northern Europe, in the Scandinavian countries,
66 percent, two thirds, of all children born
are born to single mothers,
to mothers who are not married to the fathers, 66 percent.
Coincidently, that is the same rate of fatherlessness
among African Americans in the United States.
When you add overlays of fatherlessness
through the deaths of fathers from wars, from diseases,
AIDS being a leading cause of fatherlessness
in Southern African countries in particular.
When you consider how prevalent divorce is
and how fathers are separated
from families through divorce,
when you begin to stack up and add up
all of the many ways by which people
are fatherless today,
in some communities
such as Northern European communities,
African American communities and some communities,
to have an actual father who meets
a biblical description of what a father ought to be,
is the rarest of commodities.
If children are fatherless,
who raises them
and therefore whose culture do they have?
In the majority of cases,
the one who raises children - fatherless children –
are mothers, sometimes grandmothers
but mostly mothers.
When you consider the resources
available to single mothers for the raising of children,
the only meaningful culture
that a woman can impart to a child
is the culture of survival
because they are scrapping everyday
in the reality of not having enough money,
not having enough resources,
often not having enough access
to education and training
because they themselves are so busy
simply surviving and trying to take care of children.
It is not that women are incapable of adding
the culture that reflects the nature of God to children,
it is that they are fully preoccupied
with simply surviving.
The cases in which
there would be enough women of means
to do that for children are so small
as to be statistically irrelevant.
And even if a woman were sufficient financially
to care for children,
the vulnerabilities of these families headed by women
to violence, particularly the violence of warfare
and the threat of violence of every kind
to that household
is still one that leaves little beyond
the culture of surviving.
It may be either surviving financially
or surviving in environments of violence or both,
and very commonly it's both.
So today the culture of the orphan
is the predominant culture of the earth, by far.
There is no other culture that even nearly compares
to the culture of the orphan.
What is the culture of the orphan?
It's a preoccupation with provision and protection.
The reason that we refer to it as culture
is that it is so normal that it is what we would call
in computer terms 'the default setting',
it is the paradigm of understanding
that is the most familiar
and therefore it defines reality.
Now this is a mindset...this is a mindset,
this is a principality, an area of rule,
it may or it may not be occupied by a demonic spirit.
If the person in whom this principality exists
has any relevance and poses any threat
to demonic dominance,
then it is conceivable that a demonic spirit
would occupy that principality.
For where there is a principality,
whether or not there's a demon in it –
it invites the presence of a prince.
A principality invites the presence of a prince.
But there does not have to be a prince
resident within that principality
for it to become the dominant cultural effect.
So when you preach the gospel of the kingdom
and the restoration of God's heart as Father to His sons
and the restoring of His house,
we must understand that
there is no cultural background present in the world
that makes that a familiar thought.
And frankly, that's why it's so much easier
to preach about going to heaven
because the orphan delights
in the possibility of finally escaping
the tragedy of a worn out, bruising, brutalizing system
that's on the earth.
The desire to escape to heavenly realms,
to green pastures, to streets of gold,
to the protection of angels and so on,
the desire for these things
is as deep as the spirit of the orphan.
That is why this gospel is not the gospel of the kingdom
but it is why it is so enormously successful
to the point where the orphan would be very loathed
to let go of this culture in favor of any other culture,
because it matches perfectly the orphan's desire
to finally survive, to finally escape.
This mindset you see,
is what keeps the orphan from fulfilling his destiny.
That is why the scriptures
in II Corinthians chapter 10 verse 4 says the following,
"The weapons of our warfare are not carnal"
"but they are mighty in God"
"for the demolishing or the overthrowing of strongholds."
"The weapons of our warfare..."
are meant to demolish mental strongholds
that keep us in the prison of being perceived
always and forever as orphans and not sons.
The importance of this
is that it holds the potential of a radical shift
away from simply the gospel of survival,
to the gospel of ruling.
We have previously spoken about ruling
as being not the person with the robe
and the crown who gives orders to others
in pursuit of their own survival
who will use authority and power in order to survive;
orphans do not rule, orphans have no culture of rule.
Even when an orphan has managed
to gather up enough authority and enough influence,
it is always predictable how the orphan
will use that authority and that influence,
the orphan will always turn that to their survival,
to their provision and protection.
You can always tell when a ruler is an orphan,
or the ruler has a sense of destiny.
A sense of destiny is that which connects you
to something greater than yourself,
your past is greater,
you come from a long line of those who are noble
who understand that rule is for the benefit
of those subject to rule
and not just an opportunity to secure yourself
through the use of power,
secure yourself against the perceived vulnerabilities
or real vulnerabilities, of provision and protection.
The son of God is one who understands
that he represents his Father's house.
That's where we're going
in the next set of discussions,
about the culture of the son,
not the culture of the orphan.
When you have the culture of the orphan,
you're living in creation without authority,
you're living in creation without an identity,
and you're living in creation without a destiny.
The culture of the orphan robs you of your identity,
it robs you of your authority
and therefore it robs you of your destiny;
you're just surviving,
until the gospel that is appealing to the orphan:
you get to go to heaven.
The story of the return of the prodigal
is a magnificent metaphor for what happens
when the orphan comes home.
When the orphan returned to his father's house,
having lived in the debauchery of being an orphan,
what does the father do?
Well the first thing the father does
is he re-clothes him, he orders a robe be brought
and put about his shoulders.
Why?
Because the first re-learning that the orphan needs
when he comes back to God,
is he must learn that he is a spirit being
that's clothed in flesh.
So he must be clothed again,
but he must be clothed again
with an identity of being a spirit being.
Then he must be restored to his authority;
he has been surviving, now he must be given authority,
he must be given the signet ring
signifying his authority to represent his father.
And you shod his feet again,
you put shoes on his feet again
because now he has a destiny to be walked out.
The orphan, when he returns to the status of a son,
experiences a restoration of identity.
We'll speak of the identity of a son
in the next broadcast.
I'm Sam Soleyn and I'll see you then, bye bye.