JUDAS UNDER the ANOINTING

by Chris Anderson

"Have not I chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil?" Jn. 6:70

The importance of the Judas factor in Jesus' ministry cannot be overstated. The corporate ministry of the Lord surrounded by the Twelve serves as a prophetic microcosm of what was to characterize the reality of ministry under the anointing throughout the ensuing church age. The role of Judas under that anointing is extremely instructive in today's Spirit saturated atmosphere.

Judas, as one of the Twelve, ministered under the same anointing under which Jesus ministered. In fact Jesus gave His anointing to him! And frankly, it just doesn't get any more anointed than when you're with the Son of God.

In the course of their ministry, no one ever looked around and said, "How come Judas isn't performing miracles?" His intrinsically impure heart had no bearing on Judas' ability to live and function in the Presence of God. So invisible was his true nature that, in spite of the Lord's repeated comments about a traitor in the midst, it was not until the very end that Judas was exposed for the son of perdition that he was. Even as late as the Last Supper, the disciples could not tell that their "brother" Judas was the traitor.

The Anointing: Support System for a Message

The Judas factor teaches us worlds about the anointing and the Presence of God-both what the anointing establishes and what it cannot. The anointing is given as a support system for projecting a message that brings forth an end product. The anointing does not function on its own by itself as a testimony to itself. It supports a message. The specific message the anointing is sent to support is the message of Yeshua and His cross. It is given as a witness to that truth.

The anointing was never meant to be ministered-nor the Presence of God experienced-apart from the truth of the cross. But, as Judas shows us, the anointing is quite able to be so ministered apart from its true function as a witness to the truth.

Removing the truth from the anointing (which occurs when the anointing is diverted to witness to itself) leaves room for a false "truth" to take its place, ie, a lie. Like an electron in search of a proton, the anointing cannot abide alone. By design it must support a message, a seed. And if it is separated from the message of the gospel and of the cross, it will then automatically support a false message, corrupting to become a lying sign and wonder.

The anointing is to the truth very much like what the egg white is to the yoke of an egg. The yoke harbors the seed of identity of the chick to be. The egg white is a watery plasma that houses that yoke until the two, working together, bring forth the one new life. Even so the anointing is the Spirit womb that houses the truth seed-identity of the children of God. It works together with that seed to bring forth our eventual birth into immortality.

But the seed-before it is fully consummated-can be removed ("fall away") and actually be replaced with the seed of another: one who is like, but not the same as the Son of God. It can be replaced by the seed of Judas.

As increasingly powerful as the corporate anointing of God is becoming in the earth, His Presence alone says utterly nothing about the state of heart of those enveloped under its cloud here below. The power of the Presence does not prove the nature of the seed that abides within its envelope.

God sees into every heart beneath the anointing, under the Presence. He knows every thought of every heart. He is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Behind every raised hand and bent knee, He knows those who are living out the crucified life, and those who are not. He sees every devoted heart surrendered to Him, and every heart with one eye locked on the girl in the next row.

Power of Imagery Vs. Reality

The imagery associated with today's corporate gatherings conveys very powerful portraits of a people practicing the presence of God-whether through print, or film, or CD, or DVD or website. The images of worship are everywhere. Images, images, images-glossy, slick, airbrushed. But images are yet only images, and portraits are only portraits. The Lord knows the hearts of all men, and discerns between the polished anointed picture which will pass away and the inner eternal reality.

As wonderful and powerful as the anointing is today and ever increasing, it is still falling upon mortals who live under a veil separated from the Reality for which they are being prepared. Our worship and our gatherings now are designed to prepare us for the final transcendent Reality-as "beauty treatments" ahead of meeting our King. But there is no guarantee that they are or will so prepare us.

They can lead to themselves. We can bask in the pleasure of "experiencing God" purely for the sake of the experience.

We can become enamored of the image of our own anointed gatherings. We can become idolaters of our anointed gatherings and of the powerful images at our disposal for projecting them to others. Yet underneath it all, we may not have the seed of new birth in us at all, but be harbingers of the Judas seed, whose ultimate desire is to prostitute the Presence through the power of image to establish the Lord's glory on the terms of this world.

The Coming Dividing Cataclysm

Between the image and the nearing Reality of immortal, incorruptible trans-veil worship is a great cataclysm at hand. A great separation is soon to take place. As the Lord said, "One shall be taken, the other left." It's important to know that this separation will not only occur in the field and at the mill. It will occur within the very anointed house of God itself.

In the very midst of prophetic gatherings, worship conferences and "houses of prayer," those of the cross who have come to full term in the anointing's womb will be translated into the Reality their earthly worship has ever only pointed to. Those who never knew the truth but made a fair show of the anointing will be exposed as Judas was finally exposed. There will be nothing to prove any more.

At that point, the power of the anointing upon mortal worship will be removed and the mirages attached to it. The anointing will be rendered ransid, even as manna that has passed its shelf life. The power of the images to sustain God's people built on the anointing will collapse. It will seem that everything has come to nothing. The gatherings will be scattered. The Christian Cities will implode. The debris of thousands of Christian "theater houses" will be everywhere. The grace of God which has sustained humanity and allowed it to bask in the perceived sense of its own goodness will be withdrawn.

The beast will turn on the harlot, and Judas will hang himself.

But before this the anointed Judas will come to the fore. As men are tried under the Presence and become ever more enamored of the images associated with their own worship and gatherings, the Usurping Replacer of the true Seed and pretender to the Sonship throne will take his place in the glorious temple, encompassed by his corporate harlot, who having herself abandoned the cross long ago in favor of purely experiential (read, "sensual") relationship with God will appear in all her exquisite beauty-arrayed in her royal kingdom garb and her bejeweled gifts of the Spirit.

But in the cataclysm, both she and the son of perdition will be exposed for their truthless sham. Then the veil will be removed. And the worshippers in Spirit and in truth will appear with our Lord-a seed without guile masked by anointing.

The moral? Don't be swayed by the beauty. Don't be deceived by the images. Ask yourself, "What is the message?"

"I desire to know nothing among you but Christ Jesus, and him crucified."