Vision
Although the vision of this ministry is evangelist and prophetic in its inclination, it is primarily centered on one guiding principle-Truth. However, to understand this fully , we must take a look at truth from the eyes of scripture and see how it relates to the work and vision of this ministry.
In Exodus 34:10-13 we see the Lord making a covenant with Moses in which He promises to do wonders never before done in all the earth. However, the Lord gives him a condition which he was first to meet before what he was being promised was going to come to pass. He tells Moses that he was to break down the altars of the wicked people he would encounter and smash their sacred stones. This scripture has many lessons for us today. One such lesson is the issue of the conflict between truth and deception. Many Christians today spend a lot of time in prayer crying out for miracles in their lives or ministries. Yet so few spare time to cry out for the revelation of truth in their lives or ministries. What many Christians fail to realize is that there is a link between the level of truth in one's life and the magnitude of miracles in that person's ministry. Indeed, the Lord’s words to Moses in Exodus 34:10-13 are a pointer to the fact that when one pulls down altars of deception and raises an altar of truth great miracles will happen in his ministry. But what exactly are altars of truth and deception?
Let us begin answering the question by first considering the word ‘altar’ itself. What is an altar? Well, an altar was initially a structure put together by men as a place where they could make sacrifices to gods. The nation of Israel itself had altars on which they offered sacrifices to the Lord, the true God. However, in most cultures, making altars is no longer practiced. People no longer make sacrifices on altars. However, when we consider what altars and sacrifices were meant to imply, we discover that altars and sacrifices have not really been done away with. They have just taken on a new form. Hence, we can define today’s altar as an influential point of belief or understanding around which one’s life is shaped and around which one’s destiny is decided. To that end, truth can be an altar. But so can deception. Your life can be shaped and your destiny decided by either of the two. If your life is shaped or your destiny decided by deception, your end will be either destruction or death. But if your life is shaped and your destiny decided by truth, your end will be life, and life in abundance. The word of God is the face of truth. To live by the dictates of the word of God is to live by truth. On the other hand, deception has many faces. It can come as philosophy, some demonically inspired religious doctrine, an ideology, some scientific theory denying the existence of God, etc. A distorted word of God is also deception. Indeed, of such a situation the Lord declared to the Israelites in Jeremiah 8:8-9, “’How can you say, “We are wise, for we have the law of the LORD,” when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely? The wise will be put to shame; they will be dismayed and trapped. Since they have rejected the word of the LORD, what kind of wisdom do they have?”’” Television is probably modern day’s most powerful instrument for presenting altars and is followed in that regard by the internet. These two have done more to shape the lives of many people than any other tools widely used today. In some circumstances television has been a blessing. I actually was born again and baptized in the Holy Ghost while watching a Christian television program. But over all television’s influence on modern life has been largely negative. It has led many into believing in a superficial life, where you find love without faithfulness, happiness bought with one’s wealth and fame without integrity. It has borne fruit to a make-belief world, a deceitful way of life. Those who go out to live such a life end up seeing their lives crumble right before their eyes. For many a ‘happily ever after’ story as told by television has proved to be fleeting vapour. My question to you is: Are you living a lie? Are you living the way the Israelites would live every time they rebelled against the Lord?
The greatest problem God had with the Israelites was that they often exchanged truth for a lie. Indeed, the Lord lamented in Jeremiah 2:10-11: “Cross over to the coasts of Kittim and look, send to Kedar and observe closely; see if there has ever been anything like this. Has a nation ever exchanged its gods?(Yet they are not gods at all.) but my people have exchanged their glory for worthless idols.” Before Israel was ever divided into two kingdoms, the people had undergone the rule of kings who rallied them in worship of the Lord. In fact, the second king to rule them, David, set a standard of national religious conviction that was never to be equaled again. True, the southern kingdom of Judah, as it was to be called after the division, was to have some good leaders-who included the likes of Asa, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah and Josiah. But even they could not reach the standards that David set. When it came to the northern kingdom, which retained the name of Israel, the situation was even more sad. There was not even a single king who came close to the standards which David had set, let along the standards of the good kings of Judah. In fact, the northern kingdom produced the worst king that the Jews have ever had. His name was Ahab. It was he who took idol worship among Jews to the highest point and filled the land he was ruling with countless altars on which sacrifices to false gods were made. However, Ahab was not the king who first brought idol worship to the northern kingdom. Idol worship in the northern kingdom of Israel begun with its first king after its separation from the Southern kingdom, Jeroboam. Jeroboam was led into introducing idol worship in the northern kingdom because he lacked faith in God’s promise and ability to keep his kingdom united under him. You see, Jeroboam acquired the northern kingdom because God had promised to give it to him in order to punish Solomon, the third king of a united Israel, who was led into idol worship by his foreign wives. God had promised to give Jeroboam an enduring dynasty if he followed the ways of David. But Jeroboam did not trust the Lord. He was afraid that the people he was reigning over would give their allegiance to the king of Judah when they would go to offer sacrifices at the temple of the Lord in Judah and rise up against him. So he made for them idols of worship and built altars in the land so that they would not go up to Judah to worship and make offerings(1 Kings 12:25-33). It seemed to him a good political movie. But it was a move which only earned him and his household the judgment of God. The bible tells us in 1 Kings chapter 13 that God sent a man from Judah to pronounce Judgment against the altar on which Jeroboam made offerings to false gods. It says that at the man’s word the altar was split apart and its ashes poured out. But Jeroboam was standing there to make an offering when the man of God spoke the words. We are told that when Jeroboam heard the words the prophet had spoken against the altar, he stretched his hand towards him and cried out, "Seize him."
The bible tells us that the hand he stretched out shrivelled up and he could not pull it back. This act of God and that of spliting the altar caught his attention. He had a momentary change of heart. He begun asking the same man he had sought to capture to pray for the restoration of his hand. When the man of God had interceded with God for him, Jeroboam's hand was restored. The restoration of Jeroboam's hand is of great significance to this scripture, as it symbolizes what happens when altars of deception are pulled down and smashed. This is made even more clear by the the first words which the man of God spoke. "O altar, altar! This is what the LORD says: 'A son named Josiah will be born to the house of David. On you he will sacrifice the priests of the high places who now make offerings here, and human bones will be burned on you’”(1 Kings 13:2). To understand the link between these words and the restoration of Jeroboam’s hand, we need to see them in their fulfillment. Twelve kings were to reign in Judah before these words saw their fulfillment(1 Kings chapters 22 and 23). After the twelfth one, Josiah became king at a very young age of eight. He found a kingdom very much involved in idol worship and a nation which had even allowed the temple of the Lord to fall into ruin. Josiah decided to restore the temple of the Lord. It was during the restoration of the temple that Hilkiah the high priest found the Book of the Law. When the book was taken to Josiah and read to him by his secretary, his heart was moved. And from that moment begun a spiritual reformation that was to see the pulling down of altars of false gods and the restoration of true worship. But Josiah did not end at the boundaries of his kingdom in his quest to restore true worship. He even went to the southern kingdom of Israel, even reaching as far as the Israelite town of Bethel, where the altar against which the man of God from Judah had spoken was. He demolished it and burned the bones from the graves around it on it in order to defile it, just as the man of God from Judah had prophesied decades earlier.
If you have been following me closely, you may have noticed from the above narrative that restoration of true worship only came when the Book of the Law was found and the things written it implemented. Likewise, restoration in this day is directly linked to the rediscovery of the primary role of the truth of the word of God. Many people today cry out day and night to the Lord asking Him to restore their health, finances, marriages, etc and yet refuse to heed the demands of the word of God. To expect restoration in your life without taking heed of the word of God is deceiving yourself. If you want to get restored in your life, you must first get rid of that thinking which tells you that you can receive blessings from God regardless of your unholy lifestyle. That kind of thinking is an altar of deception. If you don’t pull down that altar, things will only get worse, not better. The reason most people hold on to altars of deception is because such altars gratify their worldly desires or cravings. Hence, one of the most effective ways of pulling down altars of deception is by preaching messages that demand change of one’s desires, from evil ones to godly ones. I have often heard many people quote Psalm 37:4, which reads, ‘Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.’ Yet such people quote the scripture even when the desires for which they are quoting it are worldly. Clearly, that is a misuse of this scripture. But this in itself shows us tools which those who erect altars of deception use to erect them. Firstly, they appeal to the carnality of man, that part of man that is always craving for sinful things because they seemingly taste sweet. Secondly, they misquote scripture to support or, more correctly, camouflage their deceitful ideas. Does that strike a familiar tone with you? Are you a victim of such alluring ideas? The devil used exactly the same tactics in his failed attempts to harm Jesus. Luke 4:9-10 tells us: ‘The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down from here. For it is written: “’He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” Jesus answered, “It also says: ‘Do not put the LORD your God to the test.’ “’ The devil was attempting to use scripture to cause Jesus to sin. If Jesus had listened to the devil, he would have died a premature and purposeless death. Sadly, some people in this world have not acted as Jesus did and have , consequently, lost their lives prematurely and without fulfilling the purposes God had intended for them. They did not have the sense to say 'No' when they were asked to lay their lives on the altar of deception. In some cases the cause of their inability to say 'No' to the temptation is their lack of faith in God’s promises. But most of them died prematurely because their desire for worldly things blinded them to the altars of deception on which they were being presented. They mistook it for the altar of truth. How sad it is to believe you have found truth when what you have found is a lie. For if you mistake a lie for truth or deliberately deny truth, there is no hope for you. If you deny truth, you deny the solution to your problems. They are many people who have done so in this world. They include sects and cults who call true Christians heretics. They also include those who have allowed science to blind them to the reality of the spiritual world, to the extent that they call Christians delusional.
However, even among Christians all has not been well. Throughout the many centuries that the church has existed the devil has been working to export lies into the church, to the extent that some sections of the church now preach error. But God is restoring the altar of truth in this day, just as the prophet Elijah restored the altar of Israel on mount Carmel(1 Kings 18:30-32). The fire of God fail on the altar which Elijah had built and not on the altars of the prophets of Baal. In this day God is raising up a remnant of preachers who do not take part in sacrifices made on altars of deception. Through them he has purposed to restore the altar of truth. I believe that in my case the Lord wants to show Himself as the only God and the only source of real truth, so that after the dust of spiritual warfare has settled He will be left as the only one standing as proof of this character in Him. In other words, God would like to show through my ministry that He will have the last word in every spiritual and philosophical battle that will take place in the last days and emerge as the all-round victor at the close of the age. When I talk about philosophical battles and my role in them, I mean that God wants to use me to expose the folly of the wisdoms that men cherish, those arguments and perceptions they have come up with as an alternative to the knowledge and wisdom of God. He wants to show that beliefs in which truth has no identifiable lasting standard and is determined by your situation or condition are nothing else but an attempt by the devil to drain power and trust out of God's word and, consequently, leave the world confused and at the mercy of his destructive works. We Christians know the word of God as the lasting standard of truth. And the Lord will make it known as such to the world in this day in the miracles which He will perform through His servants in conformation of His word, just as He did through Elijah's miracle of fire. Thus will He also make His presence known to those who have not believed in His existence. Unfortunately, though much of the wisdom of man is inspired by erroneous human perceptions and by demonic deception, it has found its way into the church, so that there is need for an ecclesiastical shake up in the church today. Let me not be misunderstood on this issue. I do not mean God has appointed me to redefine the doctrinal stands of Christian congregations; but, rather, to help restore truth in areas where it is lacking. This is why the Lord directed me to name my ministry Altar of Truth Restoration Ministries.
