PART EIGHT– Day 888 to Victory
Man of Sin 3
March 4, 2000
(Uploaded with great conflict to the farm March 25, A.M., 1 day after the 3½ year anniversary of Marilyn’s prophecy. Among other things, Mark had red Psalm 50:14-23 and I could see it so very applicable to me.)
In giving the Lord thanks, honor, and glory in all that is happening, both good and evil, not so He will change it (though He will) but because it is He Who does these things for good, He has given more of what He has been revealing these past months.
Up to March 2, 2000, before the praise and thanksgiving began, I was seeing myself on the negative side of life. I was seeing myself as King Saul, as Nabal, Cain, Esau, Balaam, and as villainous characters in stories such as those of Charles Dickens and others. Truly, all these things were revealed to me about myself. With Job I can heartily confess, “I abhor myself,” and with Paul I can truly say, with full knowledge and conviction, “For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing….”
That “wicked one” within was exposed and what a vile and ugly one he is, yet concealed under a cloak of faith, piety, holiness, and righteousness these many years. Yet there was always that awareness of him, with the hope that one day deliverance from his tyranny would come with final and ultimate rest ensuing.
Relative to our personal situation, I saw myself as a false prophet, and I was in my flesh, as Saul and all the others. Then upon giving myself earnestly to prayer and particularly thanksgiving and praise, the Lord lifted me up and began to unveil “the other side.” It was like the flipping of a coin. I had seen the “tails” side long enough and now it was time for the “heads” side, the new man in Christ Jesus.
The Lord showed me many things, and even “possibilities”! I don’t recall ever spiritually thinking in terms of possibilities before. It was as though He was saying, “Look, the situation is not as hopeless as it appears; I’ll show you options that have never occurred to you before.” And He did.
He shows us ways of escape so that we may be able to bear adversity:
“No temptation has taken you but what is common to man; but God is faithful, Who will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able, but with the temptation also will make a way to escape, so that you may be able to bear it” (1 Corinthians 10:13 MKJV).
Not that we should necessarily take those ways of escape then and there or perhaps ever, but they are there, and when we see them, we realize it isn’t hopeless; we have a choice through obedience and thus we can bear the trial. I had never understood that passage in such a way before.
I had seen myself as Saul and Sean as David, my house diminishing while he increased in power. Indeed, who can argue that such has not been happening? But now I see myself as David and Sean as Absalom.
I’ve been worshiping the man of sin. I’ve been seeing myself in his many forms and Scriptural examples. I’ve been consumed while he has been exposed by the Lord. His hideousness knew no bounds, and the shock of his presence in me, being me, quite overtook me. It was a necessary part of the process. But the time for this man in me to have any kind of preeminence has come to an end, by God’s mercy and grace. Oh, I certainly expect to see his presence yet, but I’m persuaded his power is broken.
Marilyn is in deepest bitterness. She can’t or won’t forgive. She was discontented from her mother’s womb, where all men of sin are born, and when we married, she had hoped to have contentment. It is said most men and women marry (more often women, I suspect) hoping in their spouses for fulfilled lives. Such hope is error on anybody’s part; it isn’t God’s will – He alone fulfills. The prophecy to her over 2 years ago said as much, before I realized this truth relating to marriage.
Marilyn was disillusioned with me. She had hoped I would lead her to mountaintops and green pastures, to desirable societal conspicuousness. She had tried in her discontentment to make me into something that would satisfy her. Don’t wives do that? She both succeeded and failed, the latter quite eclipsing the former. She succeeded in molding me but it was not at all pleasing to her or me. I always resisted and chafed at her manipulative disposition.
Along came Sean. She almost immediately began to pin her hopes on him. He came from a background, with a personality prepared, to suit her desires in various ways.
Marilyn has created a monster. She has hatched a cockatrice’s egg (read Isaiah 59). She has molded him to her liking; he is her possession, her creation, and she defends it jealously. She would sacrifice anything for this one formed in her own image and indeed has done so… including her husband, family, and family duties. The Lord once spoke to me saying, “She has rejected her head.”
Oh, the conviction and the faint sense of obligation to piety are there by the Law, yet while “the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak.” One can have faith and give the body to be burned yet profit nothing. She has forsaken her place as a true wife, which she could never be with anybody, including Sean. She has rejected the Law of God and formed this monster to reject the Law of God with her.
Marilyn says she heard she isn’t in adultery, but while the spiritual man has struggled against all this, her man of sin has opposed God with vehemence. In having the upper hand for a time under God’s sovereignty, she has gone whoring. When Israel left their God for other gods, God called it whoredom. By rejecting her head, she has gone whoring in the very same way.
What do others have to say or think about this? What kind of example are you “righteous ones” setting? Isn’t it a stumbling block? What about the sexual fantasies those two have indulged in, and he without shame, guilt, or apology? What vileness! What if all others were to hear of those?
What about Jonathan? What is he witnessing but the justification of a wife to have relations with another man, bringing confusion, pain, and sorrow to him, his father, and all concerned? Hasn’t Kumiko asked how he’s affected by these things?
Hasn’t Penny asked Marilyn, “What IS your relationship with Sean?” Was Marilyn able to give an unapologetic, truthful answer? With what perspective will Jonathan enter into opposite sex relationships and ultimately marriage, if God wills? “Oh, the Lord will keep him,” you say. Yes, the Lord will keep him if he’s called and kept of God, no thanks to you.
Aren’t many aspects of Revelation 2:20-23 being fulfilled here? Sounds like a tailor-made description for us:
Revelation 2:20-23 MKJV
(20) But I have a few things against you because you allow that woman Jezebel to teach, she saying herself to be a prophetess, and to cause My servants to go astray, and to commit fornication, and to eat idol-sacrifices.
(21) And I gave her time that she might repent of her fornication, and she did not repent.
(22) Behold, I am throwing her into a bed, and those who commit adultery with her into great affliction, unless they repent of their deeds.
(23) And I will kill her children with death. And all the churches will know that I am He Who searches the reins and hearts, and I will give to every one of you according to your works.
1) Marilyn calls herself a prophetess… she prophesied.
2) She teaches and seduces others to commit fornication (illegitimate and conflicting relations)…
3) and to eat things sacrificed to idols – Sean a prime one.
4) She has been given space to repent.
5) She commits adultery, and others with her.
6) Have they (we) not all tasted of tribulation – confusion, conflict, suspicion, pain, bitterness, anxiety, and fear – with more to come, unless repentance comes?
7) Shall her children (those who believe and partake with her) not be killed with death?
8) Has not the Lord been searching the reins and hearts?
The name “Jezebel,” according to Unger, means “non-cohabited, unhusbanded.” Marilyn says that we have never really been married, that I was always the Lord’s, that she thinks of me more as a father! (What a curious way to treat one who is ever the Lord’s, or one who is as a father!) Yet she’s the one who heard from the Lord before we were married that I was going to be her husband.
A father to her, am I? Am I a father to her chosen husband? Is Sean my son? I receive reports from Jonathan and Marilyn herself of Sean rebuking and correcting her. Tell me, is this not a shame to us all? Should a son not honor the mother and bind her law about his neck? Is he not instead bringing shame to father and mother? And if he’s right in the things he says, is it not a horribly shameful thing that we have had to be taught and corrected by our own children? Surely I’m ashamed for her and myself.
But you say, “He’s her husband now.” In adultery and worse still, incest, he is. Doesn’t nature teach you that the fruit of the womb doesn’t become a partner of the mother? Are we all dumb beasts as cattle needing separate pens? Didn’t I as a father bring him into the spiritual realm and nurture him for a time? Hasn’t Marilyn since taken over and formed this creature? Has he not forsaken me? Has she not molded him?
Did woman form man or did she not come from man? Is that not what the word “woman” means? And shall Eve marry Seth or Cain, leaving Adam because he didn’t measure up… whether in her sight or even God’s? Shall Eve marry her children because God was simply taking Adam? Such perversity in our midst – might even devils shake their heads? Truly, let’s add to the list above:
9) Have we not known the depths of Satan here?
Jezebel took over power in Israel, establishing Phoenician worship on a grand scale – 450 prophets of Baal (Baal means “Lord” and many prophesy by Baal) and 400 of the goddess of “love” and “fertility” and “prosperity” – Ashtoreth. Sound familiar? These are gods of… the man of sin. She eliminated all men of God but the few God preserved (1 Kings 19:18). She opposed and sought Elijah’s life, but he escaped. Now Sean is to me as Absalom was to David, and he is to Marilyn as Ahab was to Jezebel, doing Marilyn’s bidding, while I live in obscurity, hiding for a time as Elijah.
If the fruit formed is formed by a lawless one, it’s evil, no matter how impressive or holy that fruit may appear to be. Sean is Marilyn’s fruit formed in her image of God (Revelation 13). I had written a letter to all of you in my condemnation, praising her and Sean for faith, love, power, wisdom, attitude, and motivation. I spoke foolishly because I was consumed with my own wretched condition and thereby seeing all else as rosy in comparison. You yourselves said so.
My blindness was part of the process. But now I’m no longer in the flesh and I see. Sean has been elevated to that place he has by Marilyn in her rebellion against God, under God’s sovereignty, to expose that mystery of iniquity. It is an exposure of us all.
Update – March 24, 2000: Sean has struggled. Marilyn told Sean that when he believes, the battle in him would be over. Believes what? Marilyn’s word of prophecy or her interpretation of it, or the Lord? If her prophecy, the battle continues. Is it that he doesn’t really believe it? Why should he believe her interpretation? If it’s the Lord He’s supposed to believe, obviously the battle isn’t over and therefore he doesn’t believe the Lord – if Marilyn is right. Many things she has said must now be called into question. Overhearing my speaking to Lois one day, Marilyn said she heard words that I was “strengthening the hands of the wicked.” Was I?
Sean thinks nothing of anger toward me, impudently rebuking me before others, castigating me before everyone – unapologetic, haughty, proud, dogmatic, boastful, implacable… convinced that he’s right, justified, and holy, and that I’m in darkness and unbelief. He even shouted at me that I shut up. This is that mark of the beast I’ve spoken of.
Indeed, I have been in darkness, my opponent, but not such as you may suppose. Your hour approaches. A word to describe you is “intractable.”
Bathsheba bows to David, her husband; Solomon, while king, bows to his mother, Bathsheba. Even Jacob bows to Esau, his brother in the flesh, but Marilyn and Sean are a law unto themselves, independent of the Law of God, free of me and free of God, yet declaring He does a new thing with them. They think to change laws, times, and seasons while presuming to believe and serve Him.
Marilyn could not possibly tolerate from anyone her attitude with me, not even from Sean, her idol. How perverse a notion she must have of a father! Under Moses’ law, she would have been stoned for her conduct. She resents her father deeply. She resents God the Father with a passion and has reared up a serpent to fulfill her passion with her. They justify themselves as having revelation and faith beyond all others.
Strong defines “that wicked one” of 2 Thessalonians 2 as “lawless, not subject to the Torah Law; (by implication a gentile), or wicked – without law, lawless, transgressor, unlawful, wicked” (#459). Illegality, violation of law, iniquity, unrighteousness.
Marilyn has reared Sean in faith, but it is black faith, like a negative photograph – the details are there but the light is reversed. The man of sin also operates in faith. But it is not the faith “which works by love” (Galatians 5:6), though it would presume to be so. Black faith is powerful and in the likeness of the white, yet lawless and mysterious.
Marilyn has walked in righteousness, a black righteousness, cloaked in piety, with mission concealed even to herself. These two dwell fully justified in their own minds, deeming themselves to be approved of God, in company with the cloud of saints, but it isn’t so. Surely the saints are deeply grieved and angels distraught, hiding their faces from the spectacle that confronts them, not understanding. Yet there are saints that do understand and wait patiently for the full work of the Lord to be accomplished.
Marilyn speaks of a fellowship and says that when one doesn’t believe, fellowship is sullied or cut off. But what kind of fellowship is it? What I see is fellowship based on what she believes and how she sees things. If one doesn’t oppose her belief or her right to believe what she believes, then there’s fellowship, but let one question her or what she believes or how she believes, then that one is judged in unbelief and responsible for breaking fellowship.
Being full of contradiction, they impose upon others laws expedient to their agenda, yet are above the law themselves. Marilyn and Sean impose the mark upon all, disallowing them to buy or sell without it.
Sean, what can be more bitter than dung? Marilyn was eating and you came and helped yourself. This has been manifest. That vision of God was rejected out of hand by Marilyn and ultimately by you until I, in my self-condemnation, interpreted it in a way that suited her.
And indeed, I have failed to feed and clothe her spiritually. Yet the Lord again made clear, in these last days of turning to Him with thanksgiving, that this vision expressed the bitterness in her and you took opportunity to pursue the fulfilment of your own ambitions and desires.
Neither did you try to feed or clothe her in that vision, though you were clothed. And the Lord reminded me of what He said to that last church of Laodicea: “…because you say, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and know not that you are wretched [I see that wretchedness in Marilyn] and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked….”
While I have condemned myself for not meeting Marilyn’s spiritual needs, and surely the Lord has shown me what I’m about, yet He didn’t blame someone other than the church itself for its corrupt condition.
Sean, I told you I never felt settled about you being in a position of authority at the farm. I tried to put someone older (Paul) in place, hoping he could do it, but he couldn’t and it wasn’t meant to be. In the greater scheme of things, the Lord has engineered all and has placed you in charge, but herein has the Scripture been fulfilled as I feared: “Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the Devil” (1 Timothy 3:6).
You are lifted up now. You are now the railing, cursing, merciless, self-righteous, haughty, lawless one. Ah, but Marilyn sees you as an angel of God! The day I saw you inadvertently step on and crush a kitten’s head, its blood and brains splattered against the wall of the barn, and go on with your work like absolutely nothing more than swatting a fly had happened, I wondered, “What are we dealing with?” My question was to be answered in due time.
The fruits of my man of sin fulfilled? Yes, I must take some blame with Marilyn for the way I’ve been in anger, railing, and other evils. But I wasn’t the one to put that disposition in you, which was there from your beginning and manifest in the cat incident, among others. And you are also Marilyn’s fabrication, in part at least, not mine; the two of you are together my enemies and you demand my subjection to your perspective and dominion in the name of godly faith.
But Marilyn isn’t responsible for you entirely. You are “that wicked one” who has deceived and seduced ever so subtly. Satan and his ministers come as ministers of righteousness, as light. “As an angel shall he come and as a devil shall he go” – a prophecy I received some time ago. Is it you?
You’re the incarnation of arrogance. Marilyn is the incarnation of bitterness; her name means “bitterness.” She won’t forgive me or anyone she deems has wronged her. She is also iron. In bitterness she has formed you to be as her, with her, and you are also iron. Iron can be good but when mixed with Arrogance and Bitterness, we have a problem. You become twice the child of hell. I wouldn’t want to see your children.
Today, I called you to say I wasn’t ignoring, but avoiding, you. Don’t think I do it out of fear. I find there’s no talking to you. You are “righteous.” You harden yourself, forming a crust that becomes harder to penetrate with each day and with each perceived victory you find with me and others. I find you incorrigible, justified in your own mind; you’ve become a son of the Devil, determined in your course.
If you had any conscience in righteousness, you would have soon apologized to me for calling “crap” what I said to Trevor. Even if what I said was “crap,” and it wasn’t, you’re wicked in your stance and judgment. You have no justification in Christ for your ways but you believe you do, contrary to God’s Law.
You are your own judge – no consensus needed but your lover’s. You even judge the nature of my conversations with others, of which you weren’t a part, criticizing us, knowing little or nothing, thinking you have spiritual understanding independent of experience and participation in those things you judge.
How long have some of your conversations been… with me… with Marilyn… with others? Will you hold us all responsible for those, too? I’ve heard of other contradictions and criticisms you’ve made after I’ve spoken. You’re a gainsayer, and Marilyn has sanctioned you to oppose and displace me. It is all witchcraft; you are evil.
You’ve taken my wife at will, by her influence and permission, and she has certainly gone with her god. I won’t have pleasure in her ever again as she is. She has defiled herself and you have defiled her against me. Both unwittingly and unwillingly, you’ve actually done me a great favor. It wasn’t until you came along that my eyes were opened to our relationship’s unsatisfactory state. We’ll see what God determines.
I expect the judgment of God to make all things new. Concerning the lie and the delusion written in 2 Thessalonians 2:9-10, the New English Bible seems to express what I’ve been saying:
“But the coming of that wicked man is the work of Satan. It will be attended by all the powerful signs and miracles of… the Lie… and all the deception that sinfulness can impose on those doomed to destruction.”
The following verses express things very well:
“Destroyed they shall be, because they did not open their minds to love of the truth, so as to find salvation. Therefore God puts them under a delusion, which works upon them to believe the lie, so that they may all be brought to judgment, all who do not believe the truth but make sinfulness their deliberate choice.”
Which you people have done, despising God’s Law, snorting at it as though it’s no longer valid while you have the new, accrediting none other than the Most High for the new. Would He discard His Law for something different, when in fact He said that Heaven and earth would pass away before one jot or tittle of the Law would pass?
Marilyn, countless times you’ve said, “What do you want from me? I can’t change.” And I most recently said to you, “I’m more concerned about what is required of me by God than what I require of you.” Still, whether you can do anything or not (and I’d say it’s in the power of God alone to deliver you from yourself), I want not you, but total repentance from you and the rest of you all, too.
But I sense the scorn from you, Marilyn, as I have before, even as I write this and picture your reading it, because you hate the thought of not having what you have purposed to have. That goes for Sean, too… “all who do not believe the truth but make sinfulness their deliberate choice.” That’s what I’m seeing in you two now.
So, Marilyn, will you again threaten to have it your way or pack everything in? Is there no other option? Is the righteousness of God so despicable as an option to you two that you should stuff your faces with iniquity even as one perceives Trevor’s eating habits at your table? If so, it’s because your notions of God’s righteousness and will are perverse. And you despise me for testifying against your wickedness.
David was pursued by his son Absalom, who was comely and without blemish as you perceive Sean, Marilyn. Absalom came subverting his father’s subjects (those who would be subverted) and strove for the throne and even sought his father’s life, as Sean with me. And as Absalom defiled David’s concubines, so Sean defiles my wife before all. As David, I have fled; I have suffered these things and Shimei’s stones of guilt and accusations within. This is the righteous judgment of God on me for my past sins.
When Absalom was slain in his iniquity, David wept. And I know why. Not only had David lost a son, but he knew he had lost him because of his own sins years earlier. I saw myself crying bitterly over Sean, not because I had slain him; another had. Yet it seemed not only that I was robbed of a son, but there was something more to it. What? I can’t say I knew in the vision it was because of my sins that Sean was dying. I know it was very unpleasant.
This is not a case of Saul and David any longer, but of David and Absalom. This is the other side, the side farther down the road of process and time.
I’m acutely aware that this writing could cause something tragic. Am I premature in expressing what I see, thereby aborting what needs to be yet suffered for all concerned? Am I disobeying the command to “let it happen”?
You’ve thought in your hearts that I should let your liaison happen because your relationship is a righteous one, but God didn’t say that, not in anything He has said to any of us; I’ve only heard otherwise.
If I had opposed Marilyn’s choice, I wouldn’t understand the things I do now and it certainly wasn’t possible to keep Marilyn isolated in any way. Much good has come of “letting it happen,” particularly for me, who was given the commandment three times. Evidently, the command was for my sake as much as anyone’s.
Knowing the things I know, is it time to express them? The Lord has often hid secrets from us for our good. If God were to go on the basis of my trustworthiness to keep a secret, He wouldn’t tell me something He didn’t want others to know.
I had another revelation on Day 1220. Marilyn had a vision of a 3-strand, braided ring of silver. She interpreted the 3 strands to represent herself, Sean, and the Lord. I understand Sean thought it possibly represented him, her, and me. The verse came to her, “A threefold cord is not easily broken.”
Today, I received that the ring represented me, Marilyn, and Jonathan. I’ve often said that, if not for God’s grace through Jonathan, our marriage would be no more and I’d be gone. Marilyn has said the same.
Once when Marilyn was in pain (as a woman) years before Jonathan was born, the word “compensation” came to me. Soon after, she bore Jonathan and we have thought him to be a compensation. She thought the compensation was for her because bitter toward my not being what she wanted, and I, after this circumstance with Sean, thought the compensation was for me, seeing there was one person that I could care about, and be cared by, while she and all others abandoned me. The truth is that Jonathan is the third strand for both of us.
Because of Jonathan, Marilyn and I are still married. I marvel at the wisdom with which he conducted himself as a negotiator between us when we were in deep, desperate conflict. He had tact, strategy, wisdom, patience, determination… he had it all. I know that if it wasn’t for the Lord placing him here, our 2-fold cord would have been long broken.
The irony of this revelation is that while it tells of our being held together, Marilyn would disagree with and even hate it, so bitter is she toward me and so enamoured of Sean. I must confess I don’t relate this revelation to try to reconcile our marriage. I no longer want such. Truly, I despise the thought of it. But it is what I received. As God is my witness, I would much prefer another life.
In a way, it wouldn’t disturb me now if Sean and Marilyn were to announce their wedding. I’d say, “Go for it!” not because I agreed or approved of it under God, but because I’d be free to go my way. I confess this to the Lord and to you all. If the Lord wants otherwise, He’ll have to change me; I don’t even want to change.
I do hereby ask the Father that He doesn’t lay your sins against me to your charge. I praise and thank God with all my heart for what He has done with me through you for all our sakes.
May His will be done. All things are His and to Him belong all the power, praise, glory, honor, strength, wisdom, blessing, thanksgiving, and worship. Praise the Lord!
People, I hereby ask the Father and you to forgive me for all my offenses and attitudes against you. I do forgive you, whether you forgive me or not. Bless God! Bless the Saviour of all men! Bless the Lord! He is so very good. The Lord reigns over all! Praise the Lord! He has done great things!
Note: I have battled with this message for weeks, but in the last three or four days, I haven’t been able to flow with praise. This morning I finally asked why I wasn’t able to do so, and it occurred to me that one cannot praise God when there’s a duty undone, something I think Merlin Carothers fails to point out, at least explicitly, in his books.
Psalms 126:1-6 KJV
(1) <A Song of degrees.> When the LORD turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream.
(2) Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing: then said they among the heathen, “The LORD hath done great things for them.”
(3) The LORD hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad.
(4) Turn again our captivity, O LORD, as the streams in the south.
(5) They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.
(6) He that goes forth and weeps , bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.
Victor
Man of Sin – Part 3