Taking Dominion Tour

Download PDF here

By Cheryl Weaver, Rev.

May 15, 2009

Stewardship of the Land, Petrie, Causes of Defilement, Ezra 9:11

 

Winkie Pratney states in his book, Healing the Land,  Famine, ecological devastation, war, and disease are four prophetic voices designed to get our attention when our moral madness is full. What we do not want to acknowledge will not be overlooked that we cannot get away with living as if God does not exist or as if He has nothing to say to us.

In Alistair Petrie’s book Releasing Heaven on Earth, He speaks of FOUR main categories of sin and defilement and four judgments of God that will visit an offending land when the land is defiled.

Scripture teaches us that there are at least four major categories of sin and defilement, the result of fallen stewardship disobedience. (Pg57)

  1. Idolatry (Exodus 20:3-5, Jer. 3:6-10, 16:18, Romans 1:24-25) Allowing anyone or thing to take priority in our lives over him.
  2. Immorality and Fornication (Lev 18:1-25, 19:29, Romans 1:24-25, Ezekiel 16:25-27, Gal5:16-26, Col 3:5-10).
  3. Bloodshed (Num35:33, Is 59:2-3) Includes taking of innocent life and slaughter of suppressed people groups
  4. Broken Covenants (Is 24:5-6, 1 Sam 18:3-4) Is 24:5-6 states, The earth is defiled by its people they have disobeyed the laws, violated the statutes and broken the everlasting covenant.  Therefore a curse consumes the earth: its people must bear their guilt.

Four Judgments that will visit an offending land when it is defiled:

  1. Famine

a. Of Food – Ezek 14:13, Ps 105:16, he called down famine on the land and destroyed all their sources of supply.

b. Of the Word Amos 8:11, days coming famine not of food but of hearing the words of Lord

c. Of Witness we hunger for since of God’s presence in and through us.  It’s as if His presence is absent from the sin that permeates the land keeping His holiness from us

d. Of Relationship to God and other people. The land is void of reflecting His nature and love

e. Of Harvest there is little productivity in the lives of God’s people. Fruitlessness replaces fruitfulness.   Scriptural harvests and physically harvests are closely connected in scripture, Amos 4:7.

This type of famine leads us to examine the second warning God gives concerning fallen stewardship.

  1. Ecological Devastation (Ezek 14:15-16, Jer 23:10, Hag 1:9-11)

Pratney comments:

It is no secret that the Western world faces a staggering economic burden.  The causes are many, the warnings dire, the consequences frightening.  Yet the root cause is none of the usual factors on which we usually lay blame. The root cause is moral. The source: personal selfishness, greed and carelessness.

How true it is that if we sin against God, even nature turns against us!  We each need to examine the level at which stewardship defilement may have penetrated our lives, homes churches, cities and nations.   In His Grace, especially when people forget Him, God allows tragedies to come our way in order to sober us up so we can see things from His perspective.

  1. War

Ezek. 14:17: Or if I bring a sword against that country and say, let the sword pass throughout the land,  and I kill its men and their animals.

We assume that war involved the assault of one nation against another.  This kind of sword, however includes anger, jealously resentment, competitiveness, aloofness and divisiveness; all reflecting the opposite of the nature of Jesus.  This can include wars in the church over sound or faulty doctrine; warfare in our homes; fighting between members of a household, conflicts in relationships, work, employees, or even government petty striving that is given so much media attention.

  1. Disease

Ezek. 14:19-20: “Or if I send a pestilence into that land and pour out My fury on it in blood, and cut off from it man and beast, even though Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live,” says the Lord God, “they would deliver neither son nor daughter; they would deliver only themselves by their righteousness.”

Believers are finding that when the tools of spiritual mapping and intercessory prayer are used correctly and applied to a community or a city or nation suffering from disease, we can often trace the history of that disease to an actual time of defilement in which the sin of the people gave the enemy legal access to that area, as implied in Eph 4:27-28.

Disease itself brings variety of fruit with it: anxieties, sorrow (see PS 103) and all forms of illness: physical, emotional, mental, spiritual. God is saying again and again, don’t ignore ME!

The earth is the Lords’ and everything in it, the world and all who live in it. (Ps 24:1)

These four judgments we have reviewed from Ezekiel also face the last generation of mankind:

Rev. 6:8 – “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.”

Here the New Testament is validating the warnings of the Old.

God is a good and just God.  He has to judge evil to maintain a standard of Righteousness and Holiness.

Healing our Land – Petrie

  • Consecrate Yourselves – Joshua 7:13, “Get up! Command the people to purify themselves in preparation for tomorrow. For this is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: Hidden among you, O Israel, are things set apart for the LORD. You will never defeat your enemies until you remove these things from among you.”
  • Identification Repentance — Num 35:33, This will ensure that the land where you live will not be polluted, for murder pollutes the land. And no sacrifice except the execution of the murderer can purify the land from murder.  Also the story in Joshua 9 (2 Samuel 21:1-14) Years later, David sought the Lord; why was there a famine in the land?  It is Saul and the Gibeonites, the account of Saul and his blood-stained house because he put the Gibeonites to death.  Ezra, Nehemiah and Daniel are often cited as prime examples of identification repentance.  Jesus cites this as well in the New Testament with Matthew 23:29-36.
  • Confession and Forgiveness –The confession of sin releases the immediacy of God’s forgiveness over the activities that have separated us from His presence. Neh 1:6-7: “I confess the sins we Israelites including myself and my father’s house, have committed against you.  We have acted very wickedly toward you.” John 1:8-9: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us and If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” James 5:16: “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.  The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.”
  • Breaking Bondages – The final step in this process of healing the land, breaking the bondages and barriers that have separated us from God’s love and healing. This principle extends from the individual right through to and an entire nation.  We need to recall that bondages (distorted relationships) are the result of sin that has opened the door to demonic activity. Mathew 18:18-1.

Seven Blessings of God on the Land – Petrie

Leviticus 26:4-10 presents seven categories of blessings that God longs to bestow on His people when they live and walk and work in obedience to Him:

  1. Ecological Health

Lev 26:4  “I will send you the seasonal rains. The land will then yield its crops, and the trees of the field will produce their fruit.”

  1. Economic Health

Lev 26:5  “Your threshing season will overlap with the grape harvest, and your grape harvest will overlap with the season of planting grain. You will eat your fill and live securely in your own land.”

  1. Personal Security

Lev 26:6a  “I will give you peace in the land, and you will be able to sleep with no cause for fear.”

  1. Civil Security

26:6b “I will rid the land of wild animals and keep your enemies out of your
land.”

  1. International Security

Lev 26:7  “In fact, you will chase down your enemies and slaughter
them with your swords.

Lev 26:8a  Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand! All your enemies will fall beneath your sword.”

  1. Honor and Growth

Lev 26:9  “I will look favorably upon you, making you fertile and multiplying your people. And I will fulfill My covenant with you.”

  1. Innovation and Creativity

Lev 26:10  “You will have such a surplus of crops that you will need to
clear out the old grain to make room for the new harvest!”

God’s further promises to His people for their obedience:

Lev 26:11, I will live among you, and I will not despise you.

Lev 26:12,I will walk among you; I will be your God, and you will be My people. 

Lev26:13,  I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt so
you would no longer be their slaves. I broke the yoke of slavery from your
neck so you can walk with your heads held high.

Aglow International Speaker Asher Intrater

2005 Nashville Message (cd 5 1:56-12)

Your nation has a destiny. Romans 4.  God has a purpose for our nation.  It’s not just that you are saved. God has a purpose and destiny for our nation every nation of the world, every racial group.  God has many colors in His rainbow, ethnic groups.

In Israel they have a sense of national calling they know they are a chosen people problem they aren’t saved are not aware of personal salvation Rom 10.  They are so confident they are a chosen people. For many Christians the opposite is true, they see themselves as saved, righteous, holy persons because of blood, but we see ourselves as a national group as carnal  we’re saved out of it. That isn’t true! God didn’t just save you as an individual.  He redeemed you as a nation.  Isaiah 52, His blood sprinkled many nations.  Not talking about individuals in the nations He purified the nation by his personal blood.  Until the cross your nation had no purpose, just pagans. The only reason the Jews are a redeemed nation is because of the blood.

All people groups have a purpose and a destiny. Indian, African, Chinese, now your people group has a purpose in the kingdom of God.  He wants His kingdom. He wants many racial groups.

God looks at the destiny of the nation by the remnant of believers with in the nation who are minority, not by the majority of the unbelievers in the nation.  When God looks at a nation, it is like He is looking at fruit; a banana peel or nut shell.  The unbelievers are outer shell, you the believing remnant within the nation — you are the part God is looking at!  The purpose and destiny of your nation is in not in the outer shell of the unbelievers, it’s in the core fruit of the believing remnant within the nation.

God looks at two things, wheat and chaff  You have to look at the believers to understand the purpose of that nation.  In every nation there are 2 parts: the believing part and the unbelievers who are in danger of going to hell.

Paul says it like this,

Has Gods destiny for Israel been done away with?  He says no, I am here. WOW, either this is really arrogant or something really deep!  One of things he is saying is that an entire nation, even if there is only one person saved, that person contains within him the destiny, heritage, calling of the redemption that entire nation; he is the bearer of that entire nation.

Who ever you are even if you are the only one in your nation, you contain the heritage and destiny of God even if 99.9 of the people are against you.  Jeremiah got to the point he was the only believer and he carried the destiny.  Paul said, if I am believer the national redemption is in me.  As long as I am still alive, as long as I still have faith, then God’s purpose and destiny for the nation of Israel has not been done away with. I will dedicate my life for personal salvation, but not just until I see individuals saved but for the national redemption for my people until my people come into there national destiny.

This applies to all nations. Don’t just think of individuals saved but see your nations redeemed, see you represent the DNA  the calling of Gods’ purposes of why He created your people group.  If you are a believer and grafted in to the purpose of god, you bring meaning to your people group.

Ezekiel 22:30
[I sought for a man among them that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none]

God has always sought for a man, even one man to stand in the gap and build a hedge to turn away His wrath from men, and has been disappointed in many generations and with many nations. Here He could not find a man with influence enough to turn the hearts of the people away from sin and back to Him, so judgment had to fall (cp. Ezekiel 13:5; Jeremiah 5:1).

Now with that said you might see this scripture in a different light.

2 Chron. 7:14
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

Go FORTH!