Wolves in the Midst of Sheep: Differentiation Between True and False Christians

By Percival D.B. Matlhaku

A complete renovation is needed in the body of Christ with regard to the spiritual meals given to people. What people are fed with determines their responses to certain influences, whether internal or external, and their consequential course of action. In this universe, two kingdoms exist, namely, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness. Both kingdoms have a bearing on our lives here on earth.
Natural and spiritual food is available to everyone that needs it. In case of spiritual food, God advises us to choose food that would give us life instead of food that would give us death. In the natural, when one indulges in junk food, it is likely to cause obesity, hypertension, diabetes and so on. So spiritually, if we feed on false doctrine, we will become sick spiritually; yet if we feed on sound doctrine, we will be spiritually healthy. We all have to scrutinise our food before we eat it.
The Bible furthermore classifies human beings as natural and spiritual people, respectively.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Apr 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483617497

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Copyright © 2013 by Percival D.B. Matlhaku.

ISBN:

   Softcover      978-1-4836-1748-0

   Ebook          978-1-4836-1749-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 04/10/2013

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction: Natural and Spiritual Food

Part 1: Reasons for Studying About Food

Where It All Began

Reasons for Inception of the Law

Clean and Unclean Animals

Part 2: Application of Knowledge

New Testament Application

My Thoughtlessness and Related Repentance

Paul’s Balance on Literal Foods

Partaking of Food Sacrificed to Idols

Part 3 Poison in Food (Doctrine)

Alas! Master, There Is Poison in the Pot!

Cults: Their Notable Characteristics

Part 4: Healing the Pot (Doctrine)

Healing the Pot

Restorative Intercessory Prayer for Healing

Flour: Righteousness—the Inevitable Ingredient

The Bread

Bibliography

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ as well as to my wife Olive and our three children Onkgopotse, Obakeng and Didintle. Olive has been a precious and wonderful partner and pillar of support to me. The Lord has used them to bless me in a great way.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I acknowledge and appreciate the divine service of healing and deliverance I have received from the Lord Jesus Christ. I was born again in 1989 at Faithways Bible Church wherein I was healed from epilepsy. I later moved to Rock of salvation Community Church. My manuscript could not get a breakthrough in getting publishing deals ever since the year 2010. However, the breakthrough came through the intervention and prayers of Apostle T. J. Mulaudzi under whom I submit.

PREFACE

A complete renovation is needed in the body of Christ with regard to the spiritual meals given to people. What people are fed with determines their responses to certain influences, whether internal or external, and their consequential course of action. In this universe, two kingdoms exist, namely, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness. Both kingdoms have a bearing on our lives here on earth.

Natural and spiritual food is available to everyone that needs it. In case of spiritual food, God advises us to choose food that would give us life instead of food that would give us death. In the natural, when one indulges in junk food, it is likely to cause obesity, hypertension, diabetes and so on. So spiritually, if we feed on false doctrine, we will become sick spiritually; yet if we feed on sound doctrine, we will be spiritually healthy. We all have to scrutinise our food before we eat it.

The Bible furthermore classifies human beings as natural and spiritual people, respectively.

The natural man cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God neither can he understand them because they are spiritually discerned. (1 Cor. 2: 14)

We are all born under sin, and our souls are without the life of God because of the sin committed by the first Adam. The whole human race was plunged into sin due to Adam’s disobedience. It is this sin nature that qualifies us as natural men. The natural man is someone that is spiritually dead, that is, insensitive to God and cannot understand or receive the things of the Spirit of God. This man is living under the control of fleshly passions. He or she can only understand spiritual things when the Holy Spirit supernaturally opens up or sheds light on his or her spirit and mind. The Bible calls this moment ‘a day of visitation’. The carnal man, on the other hand, is a believer in Christ that still depicts slavery mentality and bears bad fruits like bitterness, jealousy, pride and so on. The cares of this life still take pre-eminence in him or her. This one is double-minded. On the other hand, the spiritual man is a believer in Christ Jesus that strives to please God in all areas of life. His or her heart agrees with Paul that ‘I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who lives but Christ lives in me and the life that I live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God’ (Gal. 2: 20). The life of faith pleases God. The spiritual man minds the things of the Spirit; he or she has the mind of Christ, discerns, and esteems spiritual things above the sensual. Enoch had developed the habit of walking and having fellowship with God. He had the testimony that he pleased God and God took him. So anyone that pleases God is translated to the realm where God is. This is the reason Paul wrote that we are seated in heavenly places with Christ. In this faith walk, we can hear or perceive matters that are in God’s heart. When we are able to perceive things of the Spirit, we are walking in the Spirit.

Deception has carried on for a long time in the body of Christ with very little check. Scrutiny of the Church will reveal that certain fivefold ministry gifts have been neglected. Much emphasis was put upon the offices of pastor, evangelist, and the teacher at the deliberate neglect of prophetic and apostolic offices, respectively. The Holy Spirit has been misunderstood, and the world system is married to the Church. The food eaten by people was also poorly or wrongly prepared. We should identify the ingredients and the recipe used for cooking the meals. We then can separate the poison from the food, if it is to be suitable for eating. The identified poison has to be extracted and drained out of people before feeding them with proper spiritual food. The pot of teaching can then be healed by pouring in some flour of righteousness so as to neutralise the effects of poison in it.

When our pot of stew is healed, we can feed people with food that will bring health and salvation to their souls. This healing began when the Lord started restoring the prophetic and apostolic offices back into operation in the body of Christ as both offices were shunned for a long time. When evangelists, pastors, and teachers do their work according to the Lord’s direction, we believe to come to unity of the faith and order. The body of Christ, as all should be intercessors, needs to cry to the Lord in prayer about the presence of poison in the food so that He could continue healing the pot of our stew or doctrine lest we die on the vine.

These are the days of restoration of the Church. The enemy’s strategy of diluting proper teaching with heresies must come to an end. The first shall be the last, and the last shall be the first.

By this, I mean that the apostles and prophets that were at the forefront of founding the Church were put aside for a long time in the body of Christ. They seemed to have been done away with in the Church. Now the Lord is restoring them to their original positions according to the Word of God; hence, they will occupy the first position. Those who seemed to be first will occupy their rightful positions in the body. Proper positions assumed by the fivefold ministry gifts will necessitate proper teaching and feeding of the Church, and hence, true discernment will take place. We will know the difference between the sheep and wolves (hypocrites and false prophets). The Lord said that we would know them by their fruits.

INTRODUCTION

NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL FOOD

Food is part of man’s outstanding or most important substance of survival. If man is not given or does not find food, he or she becomes jittery or stressed out. The physical body cannot stand hunger for long, especially if there was no intention to fast or go on a hunger strike as some people might do for political reasons. Man ends up losing the politeness that he normally has during times of abundance. In the Third World countries, people scrape for food on trash hills and dustbins. Joblessness, poverty, natural disasters, colonialism, and idolatry are some factors responsible for food shortage. We are disconnected to the source of our needs, that is, the God Almighty. Recently, foods have been genetically modified with the pretext of multiplying its production. This move exacerbated the problem of poverty in poor countries. Scarcity is the hallmark of most Third World societies. Some ‘farmers’ sell self-destructive seeds to people. This makes them dependent on those who have these seeds. The situation will be rampant as climatic conditions deteriorate further with time.

The situation is not like before when plants reproduced seeds in abundance. So certain men with underhanded motives are reversing God’s strategy of abundance in the area of crop farming. A single fruit tree can, after consumption of its fruits, produce hundreds of seeds which could be used in planting other hundreds of trees.

Man searches and scrapes for food on dumps and ash heaps with the hope of finding some to satisfy his basic need. Such experiences of scavenging for food turn us into cannibals because of the need to continue living. It is quite interesting to note that people that scrape for food on rubbish dumps hardly ever suffer from food poisoning. People that have plenteous food supply are the ones filling doctors’ surgeries.

I remember (during my early teens) reading a shocking yet awe-inspiring newspaper article from the Sunday Times. It was reported that an aeroplane had crash-landed in the North Pole. As we know, this area is mostly inhospitable and unbearable for people who come from the tropical regions. The North Pole is covered with ice and is extremely cold with sparse vegetation and few animals.

The area where they had crash-landed was distant and secluded from villages, towns, or cities; so no one could help them at all. Many passengers, including the crew, died, but a few survived. Among the survivors was a surgeon. The survivors ate the remaining food that was in the aeroplane, but it was soon depleted. They stayed without food for a few days until an undertaking was made to eat raw human flesh of the strewn corpses. There was no way of making any fire due to the season then.

The surgeon became handy at this moment. There were corpses of their friends, colleagues, and relatives. You can imagine the battle that ensued in their souls. As the doctor had his instruments at hand, he used them for cutting off some flesh from frozen corpses. They ate raw flesh for the sake of continued existence until it was also depleted. As the hope of survival was fading, an Eskimo hunter on