KINDS OF MEALS (Part 1 of 3)

Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. 

Revelation 2:20

  1. Why We Eat 

All food does not serve a nutritional purpose, even though it might have nutritional value.  Everything we eat or drink is not because we were hungry or thirsty.  Sometimes it is merely for the fun of the food, or because it is part of a social event, or because there are medicinal properties we wish to derive from the food, or because the eating is part of a religious ritual.  The spirit realm is one of frequent meals and communions, and that realm recognizes and distinguishes meals and meal types.  

  1. Unentitled Titles 

In the passage above, God expresses grave concerns against a self-styled prophetess of great influence in the early Church; a socially notable but spiritually notorious preacher woman.  God seems to have been saying of her, that popularity is not spirituality, that influence is not godliness, that a title is not the mantle – that a copious religious label is no divine mandate, that the approval of humans is not the endorsement of Heaven, that fame in religious circles does not amount to divine commendation.

God called her “that woman”; she called herself “a prophetess.”  It is apparent that God didn’t recognize her hefty title.  Some people are so desperate for attention, they don’t care what Heaven thinks of their means and their grandiose names.

The demonstrative pronoun “that” suggests distance from speaker, unlike “this” which suggests nearness to speaker.  As far as God was concerned, Jezebel was “THAT woman.”  She was not as close to God as she would make the world believe by her eminent ecclesiastically proximate title.  She was not this but that; she was not here, but there. She was far from God although her title suggested nearness.  Heaven doesn’t recognize all the lofty names in which people clothe themselves.

  1. Mind Your Meal 

That someone has an elaborate church title does not mean that whatever they serve may be taken without checking (Matthew 16:22-23).  Unfortunately, church settings have sometimes been the unsuspecting cover for much witchcraft (Acts 8:9-24; 16:16-18).  Here was a prominent prophetess in the church, cleverly propagating idolatry and inducing even servants of God – preachers without discernment – into her spiritually questionable practices.  That something is done under a church roof does not necessarily make it safe.  Covens are learning to adopt ecclesiastical domes and steeples, and their priests are learning to adopt clerical robes and titles.

  1. The Identity of a Meal 

In Revelation 2:20, God was concerned not for the eating but for what was being eaten; for the spiritual tag of the meal.  God’s concern had nothing to do with whether it was bread or beans or rice or roaches; it had everything to do with the religious designation of the meal, and the spiritual implications thereof.

If all meals were merely carbohydrate or protein, that digested in the stomach and exited through the canal, God shouldn’t have been bothering.  If there was no implication at all for the eater; if physical meals could never be spiritually hazardous, God might have been wasting His words.   But here, God was specific about the worrisome identity of that meal, that it was food dedicated to idols.  In other words, spirits note meals dedicated to them or to other rival spirits; spirits respect the dedication that mortals make of their meals; and dedicated meals can be spiritually potent in a negative or positive way.

Physical food might sometimes carry an invisible psychic label that spirits see, a label that empowers or debars specific spirits to intervene in particular ways; a label to which careless eaters and casual mortals might be blind.  The meal in question in our text might have been very aromatic and appetizing, yet it carried an odorous idolatrous stigma.  It carried an implicating label of which only the Omniscient could report – through His seeing prophet; a label that might have been saying, “Dedicated to Idols: God, Keep Off!”

From The Preacher’s diary,
November 24, 2022. 

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