To His Majesty

Nations will rise and fall……and in this end time we have a responsibility to stand up and do what we can to help those who are falling or are in danger of being lost to get upright and be able to stand in these dark times. Being passive in this time is a dangerous thing.

When God commands me to stand………and to learn to stand still…….you must understand that that is an ACTIVE term. Imagine playing King of the Hill…….you are the king of the Hill and your friends are trying to knock you off of the hill……..is that a passive game? No…..it is a very active game of guarding a piece of property………it requires DISCERNMENT, Constant ADJUSTMENT AND CHANGE…..especially of your tactics, and it requires an understanding of what your opponent is really doing in order to provide a counter-defense.

God wants us to take the mountains of this culture:the church, the family, the media(and technology), law and government, business and finance, the arts, and education. He want secular music taken back. He wants the UN taken back. He wants DC taken back. He wants Hollywood taken back. But taking them is easy…….HOLDING THEM is a very different story.

That is the issue…….HOW do you hold a place that you have just taken from the enemy….? the key is in 1st Chronicles 11. David conquers the city of the Jebusites and makes it his capital. Shortly after this He immediately wants the ark of God’s presence there? Is this wise, David? This territory is still enemy territory to a certain degree…….occupied territory……..why put the most cherished possession of the Hebrews in harms way?

Because to Hold the ground of the City of Jebus He had to get God’s presence to the top of the mountain. You see, David took the mountain PHYSICALLY, but to take it SPIRITUALLY, he had to get God’s presence to the top of the City of Jebus……..to displace the spiritual powers that had resided on the mountain for hundreds of years. Only then, could the City of Jebus become Jerusalem……a perpetual inheritance of the Hebrews……..only then could it be the City of Zion………and David alludes to that in His Psalms.

So a Tabernacle of David is not built in the Church per se……..but in territory you want to occupy for the Lord………..Territory you want to HOLD for the Lord…………so we invade Hollywood or Secular music get social capital, and a group of Remnant Elites(Christians at the top of your arena), then like William Wilberforce we gather together in a tabernacle environment…..worship God, pray, plan, declare and creatively sharpen one another in an environment that is designed to focus our gifts and callings into the purpose heaven has for our arena……….a Tabernacle of David…….It’s kind of like a Greenwich Village, but pointed in a different direction…….

What could such a community provide? The ability to stand………to take ground and hold it…….to prevent passivity by the gathering of these gifted people together in community, in worship and in declaration……….and the strategic planning that allows us to maintain our influence in these arenas and most importantly to pass it down from generation to generation………..David understood this and so must we.

so I am reading this other blog, where a songwriter talks about repetition vs new ideas in songwriting……..and the basic idea is something J. R. R. Tolkien dealt with in Fantasy in his essay “On Fairy Stories”. A particular passage leaps to my memory……..

“Fantasy, of course, starts out with an advantage: arresting strangeness. But that advantage has
been turned against it, and has contributed to its disrepute. Many people dislike being
“arrested.” They dislike any meddling with the Primary World, or such small glimpses of it as
are familiar to them. They, therefore, stupidly and even maliciously confound Fantasy with
Dreaming, in which there is no Art; and with mental disorders, in which there is not even
control: with delusion and hallucination.
But the error or malice, engendered by disquiet and consequent dislike, is not the only cause
of this confusion. Fantasy has also an essential drawback: it is difficult to achieve. Fantasy
may be, as I think, not less but more sub-creative; but at any rate it is found in practice that
“the inner consistency of reality” is more difficult to produce, the more unlike are the images
and the rearrangements of primary material to the actual arrangements of the Primary
World. It is easier to produce this kind of “reality” with more “sober” material. Fantasy thus,
too often, remains undeveloped; it is and has been used frivolously, or only half-seriously, or
merely for decoration: it remains merely “fanciful.” Anyone inheriting the fantastic device of
human language can say the green sun. Many can then imagine or picture it. But that is not
enough—though it may already be a more potent thing than many a “thumbnail sketch” or
“transcript of life” that receives literary praise.
To make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible, commanding
Secondary Belief, will probably require labour and thought, and will certainly demand a
special skill, a kind of elvish craft. Few attempt such difficult tasks. But when they are
attempted and in any degree accomplished then we have a rare achievement of Art: indeed
narrative art, story-making in its primary and most potent mode.”

J.R.R. Tolkien—On Fairy Stories

He indicates that there is a balance between how much of the natural ordinary ideas that are merely a repeat of what we already see in life and in popular culture that must be balanced with new ideas for the new ideas to be potent and effective. We need new ideas….but they must be built on the foundation of older ones and in the context of them. Fantasy languishes if it is too fantastical, and New ideas languish, if they are not put into context with older ideas.

But the key here is not simply to do what everyone else is doing…….but to do something new on the foundation of what has been done and what is being done. But the balance between past, present and future is not easy to do in creativity and these days we tend to get more derivative works than creative ones. It’s just easier to go the safe route.

Tolkien, later in the essay, makes another statement:

“Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it
does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On
the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men
were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts
or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that
state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion.
For creative Fantasy is founded upon the hard recognition that things are so in the world as
it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact, but not a slavery to it. So upon logic was
founded the nonsense that displays itself in the tales and rhymes of Lewis Carroll. If men
really could not distinguish between frogs and men, fairy-stories about frog-kings would not
have arisen”

J.R.R Tolkien —On Fairy Stories

The idea in creativity often is to re frame a truth with new clothing. Oftentimes we take ideas for granted and we stop seeing the value in them because we have seen them too much in one form. So re-clothing a truth in a new creative form helps us process it once again and perhaps learn that we don’t know that truth as much as we thought we did. Which is the whole point of creativity.

Once we understand the relationship of new things to old things and fundamental truths wrapped in new creative clothing……we begin to see the value of going forward into new creative territory. If we do not…..we will not only have a drab life, but lose the power and the understanding of the truths that we have…..thinking that we understand them…….we will take them for granted and lose them……

“professing themselves to be wise, they became foolish.”