The Battle for Spiritual Inheritance

“The earth is the Lord’s – all of it! The world and the people – all of them!” God claims the natural resources and human resources. Of course, all spiritual resources of the kingdom comes from God. Jesus is Source and Resource, the Author and Finisher, of our faith.

Spiritual resources pass to spiritual generations. Every purpose of God requires more than one spiritual generation to complete, and God has a strategy of leadership to assign and release spiritual resources. 2 Timothy 2:2 speaks of four spiritual generations and the inheritance passed to each: Paul to Timothy to faithful men to others who can pass them on as well. (Reminds me the man who slept with other four men: “David slept with his forefathers.” Little joke there.)

Spiritual inheritance comes through covenant because covenant is God’s way of preserving purpose. The purposes of God come to fulfillment through covenant people; covenant people pass purpose and the spiritual inheritance of that assignment to subsequent spiritual generations. The covenant leaders assigned with purpose are responsible to prepare the next generation to fulfill purpose, prepare leaders, and preserve the inheritance.

Jezebel’s Children and Elijah’s Mantle

Stealing spiritual inheritance is the strategic goal of the Jezebel spirit. Whatever else this spiritual condition may be doing, the ultimate purpose behind the methods and machinery of Jezebel is to get what belongs to God’s covenant people by inheritance. Jezebel’s children are illegitimate, substitutes for appropriate inheritors.

Jesus identifies this demonic spirit for us in Revelation 2: 23: “I will strike her children dead.” Her children – products of her adultery, not the children of covenant relationships, not the proper heirs of spiritual inheritance. She offers her children as substitutes to steal the inheritance of true children.

Elijah turns the hearts of fathers to children, children to fathers. In this way, inheritance is preserved. Elijah turns hearts, not minds, for true sons inherit more than possessions; true sons inherit purpose.

Every purpose of God requires more than one generation to complete and requires one generation to prepare leaders of the next generation for spiritual inheritance.

Among the characteristics of a Jezebel spirit, theft of inheritance has the greatest intrinsic value. Her protocols run contrary to God’s protocols because she refuses to live consistent with covenant; she enters into covenant agreement only to gain advantage and destroy the purpose of the covenant. No one can remain in agreement with Jezebel and preserve their inheritance.

God’s covenants with man because He has a purpose to accomplish through the relationship. God invests covenant into marriage to produce covenant relationship between fathers and children so He can produce through fathers, children of covenant who inherit purpose. God chose Abraham because “He knew Abraham would order his children after him,” and the purpose of God’s covenant with Abraham would be preserved, passed down, and carried out by his true sons.

Jezebel destroys covenant, enters into covenant only as a strategic means of destroying it. She will not tolerate husband or lord, kills true children in order to substitute illegitimate heirs, to steal covenant inheritance, so she can possess without any covenant agreement in place. Jezebel wants the possessions of inheritance without the definitions of purpose.

New Testament Spiritual Inheritance

Perhaps we need to be reminded as New Testament Christians: we have a better covenant lest we come to the conclusion we have no covenant. In every sense, every possible way, Jesus improved the covenant between God and man, husband and wife, fathers and children. Jesus established a more excellent way for spiritual inheritance!

We learn valuable lessons from Old Testament behaviors and betrayals. Many examples involve inheritance issues which New Testament writers reveal as strategies of hell still functioning in spirit against God’s true sons today, targeting spiritual inheritance. Abraham wanted Eleizer and Ishmael as heirs when God promised Isaac. Esau sold his inheritance to Jacob for a bowl of stew. Jezebel stole Naboth’s vineyard, his family inheritance.

God chose Abraham because He knew Abraham would pass on purpose along with inheritance. The blessing of Abraham was inherited in order to preserve God’s purpose in choosing Abraham as the father of nations, but the fullness would require many generations of faithful leaders.

The famous “begats” of Messiah and Luke’s lengthy treatment of genealogy in the Jesus’ story speak to the Bible’s high emphasis upon inheritance and serve as examples of God’s mind about purpose. Jesus speaks significantly about inheritance in parables and stories: the prodigal son, the lost coins, the evil servants who kill the son to steal the inheritance.

Fathers and Inheritance

Modern America is plagued by dysfunctional fathering. Beginning at the turn of the twentieth century, a series of generational short-circuits challenged, then changed, then chumped fatherhood in the culture. During this same season, a strong delusion suckered the culture into redefinitions for the roles of men and women. A strategic effort of hell to undermine God’s covenant investment in marriage as a vehicle for the preservation of inheritance and purpose grew legs and began to walk and run.

Absent fathers gave way to distant fathers, men at home but disengaged. Although the population disparity of men to women, imbalanced by the horrors of war, was corrected in one generation by birth rate ratios, the roles of women and men were altered by an increasingly aggressive spiritual strategy through the 60’s and 70’s. America’s family definitions of roles, relationships, and responsibilities were in confusion.

We now live in a dysfunctional culture in which Scriptural norms for marriage and child-rearing are rare. It is rare for a child to be raise their natural parents who remain married. Considering that half of our children live through divorce, many have unmarried single parents, and many never know a father, the design of God for parenting is rarely available to American children.

The point is that a strategy to steal inheritance has been unleashed and is successfully robbing us. The dominant spiritual condition behind the strategy to steal inheritance: Jezebel. The mantle available to restore, Elijah. Elijah prepares the hearts to receive and release inheritance. Jezebel deceives the minds to accept her substitute offspring as inheritors.

Spiritual Inheritance

God reset covenant with leaders through Israel’s history to preserve His purpose. All these covenants suffered the failure of human leadership, leaders who failed to maintain the function of fathering the next generation to preserve God’s purpose. Abraham’s lineage failed. David’s lineage failed.

Jesus arrived as the Inheritor of Abraham’s promises and David’s throne. John the Baptist was sent in the spirit and power of Elijah to prepare Jesus a people. But when Jesus’ generation rejected John, they rejected Jesus. They were left unprepared to walk in His inheritance. Jesus triumphed at the Cross, Resurrection and Ascension, and is seated at the Father’s right. He, having gained a new lineage of inheritors, has received a restored spiritual inheritance that the Body of Christ inherits. hell is after that inheritance.

The redemptive victories of Jesus improve the ability of spiritual generations to fulfill spiritual inheritance and fulfill God’s purpose. The promises of Abraham, the throne of David, all the covenants of God with man receive a major, eternal upgrade to eternal perfection in Christ! The natural is won first in the spirit; the inheritance comes first in the spirit, then the natural.

So, Jezebel is after spiritual inheritance more than natural inheritance. She steals every inheritance when she possesses spiritual inheritance. Her spiritual attack gave her access to natural culture. Her access to natural cultural has been the basis for her attack against the functions of covenant relationship, the roles and responsibilities of leaders. That is, the failure of natural fathers is used to convince children of the failure of their Heavenly Father: God seems absent, distant, non-functional, uncaring, and hostile, and the next generation lives as if “from a distance God is watching us” is reality!

Upon this flawed cultural foundation—the lie of hell that Father doesn’t care—Jezebel builds the deep-seated impression that spiritual fathers are just as undependable, uncaring, distant, absent, and unworthy, as natural ones. Children abused or neglected by earthly fathers have great difficulties trusting spiritual fathers. Jezebel destroys honor at the very places where honor could be invested, honor ceases to exist. Without honor, we do not trust. Without trust, we short-circuit God’s strategies for spiritual inheritance.

We say “honor among thieves” to communicate that even dishonorable people must exhibit honor among themselves in order to function as a unit, that absent honor thieves cannot coordinate their strategies of theft. Without honor people cannot trust enough to work together, to have functioning relationships at all.

This attack against spiritual fathering creates Jezebelian characteristics and attitudes: “don’t trust anyone to get what’s comin’ to ya (or to get someone else’s stuff as well), get it yourself. Don’t allow authority—any authority—to play a proper role in your life. Trust no one. Play everyone.”

Most prophets and leaders victimized by Jezebel remain unaware of the most fundamental of Jezebel’s motivations, and therefore lack a good strategy of counterattack. They think Jezebel is after them when she’s actually after their inheritance. She wants them out of the way, dysfunctional, inoperative and ineffectual, absent and disengaged, and disassociated. She does not need to remove leaders and fathers, only make them dysfunctional, for in their dysfunction she gains their inheritance.

Jezebel says the leaders and fathers, “Go, do your stuff and leave the inheritors with me.” Work, watch football, hunt, fish, go to war, make money, play cards with the boyz, whatever, just don’t interfere with the hearts of the children. Even when father is involved, Jezebel says to the children, “I’ll speak with your father” so father’s responses are always seen as Jezebel’s intervention with a distant, uncaring father who would never respond at all except for her. She steals the hearts to gain the inheritance.

The Battleground of Inheritance

Spiritual fathering and discipling function together. Natural fathering and spiritual fathering are not the same. For example, we can have more than one spiritual father. Spiritual fathers are not the ones that “got me saved” or even the leader of the church we grew up in. Spiritual fathering does not require that we spend vast amounts of time with someone. Spiritual fathering occurs and functions spiritually.

Paul says, “You have many teachers but not many fathers.” Fathers are less numerous that teachers; teachers are good but do not replace fathers. Teachers spend a great deal more time with children but do not have the impact fathers have.

Spiritual fathering is about inheritance that belongs to us, not about being born to an entitlement. The fathers of the spirit function to prepare us to possess our inheritance! They cannot give us what is not ours, for what they possess was not theirs either! They didn’t earn it, buy it, discover it, nor were they entitled to it. They cannot choose children for themselves, pick favorites, or live by fear of man. They can only respond to the Heavenly Father’s purpose in the protocols of covenant, live in the role, responsibility, and relationships God assigns them.

The battleground for inheritance is to identify true sons and daughters, prepare them to function as leaders who can prepare future inheritors, and make a thorough job of releasing inheritance to children ready to possess and function in their spiritual inheritances.

Many people pray for a double portion but fail to understand what the “double portion” is. When a man released inheritances in Elijah’s day, the firstborn received a double portion. If there were seven portions, the firstborn receive two portions and the remaining five were divided among the other six sons. The principles of firstborn and first things are consistent throughout the Old and New Testaments.

When Elisha asked Elijah for a double portion of his spirit, he was not speaking of natural or physical inheritance. Elisha was talking about spiritual inheritance. Elijah did not respond as a natural father to his request, assuring him that the will and testament were sealed and he would get his double portion of Elijah’s earthly stuff. Elijah responded as a spiritual father to a spiritual son with protocols of spiritual inheritance: “You’ve asked a difficult thing. If you receive it, you will be in position to see me go and the One who takes me will determine if you receive your double portion.” Elisha received a spiritual inheritance of spirit and power. Elisha anointed Jehu, and Jehu defeated Jezebel.

Jesus makes it very clear in the Revelation that the called together assembly leaders are responsible to stop Jezebel in her tracks. Not to defend themselves from her attacks, but to defeat her in order to preserve the inheritance of spiritual sons and daughters from Jezebel’s illegitimate children! If we do not, Jesus will take care of her personally, but the end result remains. Without leaders who deal with Jezebel, spiritual sons and daughters are not available for spiritual inheritance. Jesus may stop Jezebel and kill her illegitimate children, but He must start over with new leaders and restore the inheritance for a future generation.

Preserved and Reserved Spiritual Inheritance

Without fathers, spiritual generations live and die without inheriting, without fulfilling purpose, and without fathering spiritual children themselves. When spiritual generations fail, Jesus preserves and reserves purpose for a future, faithful generation. Jesus resets and restarts with revolutionary revival the family’s purpose, resets the definitions for the roles, responsibilities, and relationships of kingdom leaders, and restores spiritual inheritance to a prepared generation!

The spirit and power of Elijah is available, an available mantle, to prepare the Lord a people ready to respond in the season of kingdom reset. That generation can be positioned and prepared to receive the mantles of covenant leadership, to restart the process of fathering and inheritance.

Here’s God’s Word on the spirit and power of Elijah: “He turns the hearts of fathers to children, and the hearts of children to fathers lest I curse the land.”