The message from the scriptures is clear. Drink waters from your own well, your own “cistern”, or drink from the communal pool. Jesus stood on the last day of a great feast and said, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.)”

Paul wrote and clearly defined two forms of hearers, those at Berea and those at Thessalonica:

“And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea: who coming thither went into the synagogue of the Jews.These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so”.

The spiritual importance of this comparison is revealed in the meanings of the names “Berea” and “Thessalonica”.

   “BEREA” means a “Well-watered” garden, or, a garden sustained by it’s own internal well. In such a garden, the water is always at hand. It is not a village watering hole that you must periodically visit , draw from, and transport the water home. The cleanliness and purity of the communal well is  not an issue in the well-watered garden. Examining the comparative saying of Paul also gives insight into the scriptures as they that testify of the one in whom you have eternal life, and not as the source of that life itself.  The word which the Noble Berean hears with all readiness of hearing, is the well within. It is the testimonies of the Spirit of Christ in him. The Spirit of Christ, IS Christ. And the scriptures, inspired of Christ, searched daily, will bear out and verify everything the well is revealing in you. The scriptures agree to everything the Lord speaks…they do not replace Him in speaking. And inasmuch as they are they which testify of Him, without Him in me, they have little in me, if anything, to testify of. Consider the two disciples leaving Jerusalem for Emmaus. All of their expectation concerning Messiah were dashed when He was crucified. They were dashed because they were wrong. They were wrong because they were the collective teachings of the teachers and masters of the Jew’s religion, manifest in the thinking of the two disciples. They were WORMWOOD.

  So, with these two, beginning at Moses and expounding in all the law and the prophets, Jesus showed how he had to suffer, and enter into glory. He had to, for our sakes. It says “Then opened He their understanding to understand scripture…”. He did, and does this, by His Spirit. And the unasked question is, before Christ did this in them, what was the effect of  scriptures, carnally interpreted for them up to that day? It was confusion and disappointment. But now they are spiritually opened IN them, by the Spirit. We can know Him no more after the flesh. The Spirit of Christ,  IS Christ. If I do not come to know Him in Spirit, I do not know Him.

  THESSALONICA means “Victory of Falsity”. Not victory over falsity, but victory OF falsity. Or put in another way, it is to be overcome by a false way or thing. Thessalonica is a compound word, where “nica” , or “Nike” means utterly vanquish. It is the same word used in other compound words. NICO-laitan, NICO-demus. (Clergy-laity)(Ruler-people). The “Nicene” creed that alleges we are to sit in silent agreement and obedience to a handful of church “fathers” (so called), and to parrot with WORMWOOD numbed minds, their idea of the Godhead, reduced to a paragraph on a parchment, and administered and enforced by their Spirit-resisting antichrist system, this creed was postulated in a town with it’s name derived from “nike”. I do not have “fathers”, and I could not care less about their vanquisher’s creed. I have one Father, and that in heaven. When you hear a “minister” quoting Augustine, Jerome, and others, calling them “church fathers” and saying it is the fulfillment of Acts 15, you are being lied to. It is the fulfillment of Acts 20:29,30 & 31. It is the very thing Paul was shown in the Spirit, and warned with tears about, everywhere he went, for three years.

The notion that the Lord’s people are subdivided into clergy and laity, into leaders and followers, is an abomination. All begin at some point with a conception in the Spirit of Christ, and all grow in all things, into Him. Some may be farther down the road in the process, and so bear “marking” or put to good use by observing, but all are on the same path, and all are joint heirs with Christ, in all the fullness of God. As the Lord, the spiritual rock which followed Israel, and from which they all drank, admonished them, “Drink waters everyone from his own cistern”, and “ If you will hear my voice…”, So now, as then, the admonition is the same…for He is the same. The gift of the Father, the Holy Spirit of Promise, is given to all that believe on Christ, and that ask Him.

Jesus once met a Samarian woman at a well. She was there with vessels to draw, and with as many misconceptions about God and about the well, as had the two disciples leaving Jerusalem for Emmaus. Jesus encountered the woman at a town called Sychar. The name means “drunken”, a derivative of the Hebrew word שֵׁכָר

“shā·kär’ “, meaning  “a strong drink, intoxicating drink, or a fermented and intoxicating liquor”. It was at this place located near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave his son Joseph, that Jesus taught this woman the He, Jesus, is Jacob’s well, and not the hole in the ground she had a dependency with. The encounter is in John 4, where Jesus spoke to her of water she knew nothing about. Living water that springs up in you, not that comes from a communal watering hole. Water that lives in you, Spirit and Truth, and is not limited to the elders or the church hierarchy, the “mountain” where the “fathers” had taught her to worship. It is notable that when Jesus had finished speaking with her, she left the hole in the ground, and her former drawing vessel with it. God is Spirit, and Jesus taught her that true worshipers, worship God, not in the mountain and system of men, but in Spirit…in God. Without the Spirit, they know not what they worship ( as said Jesus to her).

The topic of this writing is to show how that the Lord desires, and has always desired that individuals, each individual, hear His voice, and know Him. Israel, departing Egypt, was  told to hear the Lord’s voice. We know that the angel that followed them, the rock from which they all drank, the spiritual meat they ate (signified by manna) was CHRIST, the true bread of heaven. The Lord dealt with them, each of them, by His Spirit. But the people refused and rebelled. They chose a system of mediators and laws. They desired, and received, a king and leader of flesh, like all the other nations. They desired, and were given a temple of stock and stone like all the nations around them had. They received all their asking, but with a warning. They were told that when, not if, but when they would corrupt themselves in all the things they had wanted, when they would forsake the Spirit, the fountain of living waters, and hew out their own system, a broken cistern which can contain no water (for the Most High dwells not in any house, system, discipline or order and structure of things devised by man), when they will have accomplished to do all these things and reject the Lord from being King and Counselor, over and in each of them, the Lord would administer a peculiar and bitter drink called WORMWOOD. And the delivery system for this noxious and intoxicating mixture, would be the unfettered and vain imaginings of their own chosen leadership. If one cares to read the chapters in which WORMWOOD are mentioned, it becomes clear that it, WORMWOOD, can not be disassociated from the product of the vain imaginings of a leadership void of the Spirit of God. All of the sources of WORMWOOD in Israel after the flesh, false teachers, pastors, priests and prophets, false systems of worship, kings and leaders of flesh, etc., EVERY ONE of these things is mirrored and present in the churches today, and may be read in detail in chapters 2 and 3 of the book of Revelation. For the seven churches at Asia is not geography. It is a signification, a spiritual picture of manners of assembly, of people unto the name of the lord, where He is present (as He said He would be) to give glory to the Father, and to testify and admonish any who has an ear to hear, to overcome, and “come up here”, to rise above all this and live and walk in the Spirit. It is the seven ewe lambs and the well of the seven fold oath between Abraham and Abimelech, it is the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters, the chambers of the South (of the lamp stand in the tabernacle)of which Job spoke. It is a picture of the Lord fulfilling to Abraham, that portion of His promise to Abraham, to offer the Promise of the Father (the Spirit) to the gentiles, it is the Lord keeping his covenant with Noah, and with every living thing to come out of the Ark with Noah, to include Japheth, of whom came the “isles of the gentiles”. Assembling two or three, in His name, is wonderful. For it affords opportunity to the individual,to hear what the Spirit is saying in groups and assemblies, to the individual. Some hear. Many don’t. But the way to be delivered from the WORMWOOD mixed drink of the assemblies, is the hear Him, and to clear your mind of the delivery system of the WORMWOOD, the hierarchical system in them, resisting and contending with the Spirit.
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These are the verses of scripture in which the word “WORMWOOD” appears.

[Deu 29:18 KJV] “Lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turneth away this day from the LORD our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and WORMWOOD;”

[Pro 5:4 KJV] “But her end is bitter as WORMWOOD, sharp as a twoedged sword.”

[Jer 9:15 KJV] “Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with WORMWOOD, and give them water of gall to drink.”

[Jer 23:15 KJV] “Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts concerning the prophets; Behold, I will feed them with WORMWOOD, and make them drink the water of gall: for from the prophets of Jerusalem is profaneness gone forth into all the land.”

[Lam 3:15 KJV] “He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with WORMWOOD.”

[Lam 3:19 KJV] “Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the WORMWOOD and the gall.”

[Amo 5:7 KJV] “Ye who turn judgment to WORMWOOD, and leave off righteousness in the earth,”

[Rev 8:11 KJV] “And the name of the star is called WORMWOOD: and the third part of the waters became WORMWOOD; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.”

In each case in the Hebrew, the word is לַעֲנָה  (la`anah) , “Bitterness”
The herb so named is from it’s being noxious and poisonous.

In Revelation 8, the word is ἀψίνθιον (apsinthion) , a name given to a fallen star.
From the Greek we have the English word “Absynthe”, the alcoholic drink made with the herb Artemisia absinthium, or Wormwood.

Absinthe, the drink, has it’s concentrations of the psychotropic compound, thujone, regulated and limited by law. The WORMWOOD the Lord allows to arise in the hearts of Spirit-void leadership, as hatched up in their vain imaginings, comes with no guarantee of such limits.

A study of the drink, Absinthe, is worthwhile, because it is the physical equivalent of what is spiritually named in the book of Revelation, both the fallen star, and the waters he mingles with. It is impossible to pollute the Spirit of God. Pollution occurs in the mind of the individual. Hearing what the Spirit says, offers deliverance from the mixed voices of the assemblies.

Absynthe contains the psycotropic compound, Thujone, in minute quantities. It comes from the wormwood plant, a bitter herb, and it’s affects are mind numbing. It is associated with enhancing the senses and stimulating the imagination. It can not be over emphasized, that the WORMWOOD of spiritual application, is derived from the religious imagination.