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Command vs. Control: Part 2

First, I want to make one point clear. If I gave the impression in Part 1 that everyone must go through 25 years of training in order to learn how this stuff works, this was not my intention. I am a teacher, and so God has led me through these things in order to know by experience what to teach others. The purpose of this is to reduce the amount of time it takes for others to learn--because you can learn much more quickly through my experiences.

Secondly, God has a unique calling for everyone, and so everyone's experiences are going to be different. Elijah did eight recorded miracles; Elisha did sixteen with the double portion; but John the Baptist (the greatest of them all) did none. It is up to each person to hear from God for himself/herself and to know one's calling.

Most people think of miracles in terms of healing, because this seems to be the biggest need in today's world. I have seen some healings, but most of the miracles I have seen have been in other areas.

Regardless of the type of miracle, or direct divine intervention, one of the important lessons to be learned is that we should not seek to control, but to command. For instance, Jesus walked on the water in spite of the storm. He did not seek to control it. Control is a function of the dualistic carnal mind, which sees the storm as "evil" that ought to be abolished immediately. Jesus was led by the Spirit, and so He knew that the storm had a right to be there and was part of the divine plan.

Thus, He did nothing about it, but worked through it until the proper time. He commanded it at the proper time. So also with us. In March 1984 word came to the company where I was working in Arkansas that a tornado had touched down just 15 miles south of us and was heading directly toward us. All of the employees dropped what they were doing, jumped into their cars, and drove home.

I quickly consulted the Father and was led to go outside in the parking lot and command the storm to avoid us. We learned the next day from the newspaper that the tornado took a 90-degree turn to the East, ran along the ground for about 10 miles, and then turned back North and continued on its way.

As led by the Spirit, I did not even think to stop it completely, but to put it in its proper course away from my work place. It would have been wrong to try to take control of the situation by doing what the natural mind would have thought was right.

On another occasion, which I have written about recently, I was led to drive 1000 miles to Corpus Christi to deal with a hurricane that had not yet formed. It formed only while I was on my way, and it waited in the Gulf of Mexico until I arrived at Corpus Christi to deal with it. This time I was led specifically to rebuke it, and it died within 24 hours, never striking land.

So it all depends upon the situation. One cannot possibly do what is right in such situations without learning to hear God's voice. That is the key to everything. And I recognize that God put me in these situations as part of my training. I learned quite early that it was on-the-job training.

One of the more difficult principles to grasp is that these storms are consequences, not causes in themselves. From a scientific position, this is obvious. Weathermen will tell you that they are caused by, say, a low-pressure system. They could perhaps be traced back to sunspot activity or certain magnetic forces acting upon the earth. All of that is true on a physical level. But if you keep digging deeper for earlier causes, every atheistic scientist will finally run out of answers.

I believe that physical events are caused ultimately by spiritual factors in the same manner that God is the First Cause of creation.

For instance, what caused the storm in Matthew 14, which caught the disciples off guard in the middle of the lake? First, look at its spiritual meaning, for that is the key to understanding its cause and its purpose. It signified the concept of tribulation, which the disciples (and the Church for 2000) would have to experience in order for God to forge a New Creation Man through whom to manifest His glory.

Thus, the ultimate First Cause was God and His divine plan. Like the blindness in the man born blind, it was there for the glory of God--made manifest when he was healed. In regard to the storm, the more immediate cause was King Herod's execution (persecution) of John the Baptist, which had occurred just before the storm arose. The persecution of John was a forerunner and beginning point of Jesus' persecution, which in turn, was the forerunner for the persecution of the Church itself.

When we learn to view all things through the eyes of God, rather than through the natural mind, we will no longer judge things as good or evil, but as part of a single plan of God. It is not wrong to view things as good or evil, for these do exist and are as real as anything. But we must know that good and evil operate on the level of temporal structure, rather than upon the divine level. This is the level of the soul and its mind, which structures everything dualistically in order to understand it and attempt to control it.

To command successfully, one must stand above this realm of structure and see the storms of life as part of the world of structure. This is the position of command. It is the position of one's spirit in authority over one's soul. When a person has mastered that position through practice and exercise (being led by the Spirit), then that person will be fully like Jesus and will do as He did in every way.