BITTER GREEN FIGS
From The Tree Of Life
Exerpts From Chapter 16 of Book 2
8 books in this collection of Bitter Green Figs

THE SPIRIT OF DEPRESSION, THE BLACK MONKEY

The spirit of depression, the black monkey, causes the world to seek after the flesh. It causes the world to seek after pleasures. It causes the world to seek after people, and friends, and family, and relationships, and most of all, physical pleasure.

The black monkey causes the Christians, the labourers in the vineyard, to set down the basket and sleep underneath the vines overhead and even if the grapes drop at their feet they will not put them into the basket. It causes the labourers to grow weary unto death, to see no purpose, to see no reason, to see no profit in even getting up every day, let alone labouring for long term fruits and gains in life and eternity. Only the pain and sorrow and the strength of the black monkey is felt at every moment and the heavy weight of it. It wraps itself around you in that bed like a warm blanket. It draws you to it like a magnet. It entices you to sit down and rest with an exhausting fatigue. It says, "Come play a while. Take a rest. Sit down and eat. You are tired, O so tired. The work will wait. Tomorow you will feel better. You are so tired you will get sick if you do not go to bed. If you go to bed you will feel better."

It waits for you in the bed and when you get up it will follow you with enticements to return to the bedroom and the solitude of your own comforts of rest. Every thought of resistance you make toward it to rise, and to go do this, and to go do that, it will say, "Later. Someone else will do it. It will wait for you. You don't feel like writing music. You don't feel like singing. You don't feel like smiling. You don't feel like being sweet. You feel lousy. Rest a while till you feel better."

ARENT YOU TIRED?
Words & Music By Martha Miranda ©

Aren't you just tired of it all
Aren't you just weary of it all
Aren't you just plain sick and tired of it all
Don't you wish it was all over
Don't you wish it all would end
Don't you wish the sun would set and never come up again

Cause you don't want to get up today and bear your cross
Let somebody else do it
You don't want to get up today and bear your load
Let somebody else do it

Aren't you tired of it all
Aren't you weary of it all
Aren't you just plain sick and tired of yourself
And everybody else

Cause you don't want to get up today and work in the field
Let somebody else do it
You don't want to get up today and sweat in the vineyard
Let somebody else do it.

Aren't you tired of it all
Aren't you weary of it all
Aren't you just plain sick and tired of yourself
And nobody else

You just want to get up and eat and drink
You don't want to work in the vineyard
You just want to stand idle in the marketplace
And yak your mouth all day

Aren't you tired of it all
Aren't you weary of it all
Aren't you just plain sick and tired of it all
And everybody else

The black monkey hangs on your head wih his body wrapped around your head and mind like a steel helmet. All day and all night long it will be as a heavy weight upon your head and upon your shoulders. Recognize that this monkey is one of the plagues that is sent upon the whole earth in the last generation, that men will seek death and not find it, as written. It is going to cause murderings, rapings, molestings, riotings, and all manners of evils and wickednesses. It will cause suicides to increase and increase for no apparent reasons.

Let me tell you something. We all complain. Everyone grumbles all the time, and criticizing and condemning never ceases day by day but increases day by day. And this black monkey has been in the earth since the fall in the garden of Eden, for it is a terrible fruiting of sin. Now he enters literally into people's minds and possesses them to do terrible atrocities to themselves and others, and is a destroyer of life and everything good. To take away the right of complaint would drive everyone insane. We could not bear it. Grumbling is often a pathway to straighten out our own selves, and put our own feet back on the straight and narrow.

Depression must come from the inside out. It must be gotten out of there. It is like a festering splinter that must be pulled out. It must come out of the mouth. It must be purified. It must be prayed away, cast away, cast out, spoken out, commanded out, resisted, but it must not be ignored. It must not be denied. It must not be simply tolerated. It will not go on its own. It will return time and time again. It must be resisted. Do not ignore depression.

Cast your burdens upon one another and pray for one another that you might be healed. In this evil day, we must pray for one another and support one another in the trials and pains of life as well as the burdens of the Kingdom of GOD.

I have no problems with hearing your burdens, for as you speak them, you are released from them and releasing them, having someone else help you even to carry them. Write them all down and then burn them all up if they are too personal for you to share with someone. Because of the sins the world casts upon us to bear, we need to bear one another's burdens concerning the sufferings of this life.

We need to bear the sins cast upon us by others and share their burdens and carry the weak, and sometimes we are weak and need carried, and need help having our own wounds bathed in love, needing to be cared for and nurtured. We need to keep the black monkey off of each other's backs. Love is always seeing the need and giving it, supplying it, and love is always easing sufferings and sharing the sufferings of others. That is love. We need to bear one another's sorrows, and supply one another's needs. That is the fulfilling of the law of love.

As we speak our burdens, we are released from them. We speak and somehow they are released and set loose from us and we feel delivered and helped. We must speak and release our pains and sufferings. We must. Sometimes we come to conclusions of faith, and cast our pains and sufferings into faith, but this is but a temporary solution. For faith is an illusion of the mind and it is comfortless to us. Faith is not a tangible place to hide burdens or to find strength to carry burdens. For our burdens come from the sufferings of being sinned against and faith will not right these burdens nor give strength to carry them. There is no faith that can comfort someone whose child has been molested and murdered. There is no faith that can right such a horror. There is no faith that can right a marriage that will not be restored. There is no faith that can heal the heart of a spouse that has been betrayed by infidelity. Faith must rest in an equitable solution, and to these things there are no solutions. There is only a battle with the black monkey who preys on these sufferings of this life like a blood sucking vampire. It is in substance that comfort and strength are found.

Now to the faith that arises out of the mouth of the black monkey, listen to it. And those who are snared by him are unwise indeed.

Wicked faith is that faith that snared Eve that said, "Go ahead. GOD did not mean that. GOD would surely not slay you. He was not serious about that." He said to Jesus, "Go ahead. Jump! The angels will catch you that you will not dash your foot on a stone."

The monkey says, "Go ahead, Martha. Buy it. GOD will pay for it. Go ahead, Martha, get on the radio. GOD will pay for it. Where's your faith? Do it. Buy it. Go do it. Where is your faith anyway?" Yet Jesus said, "What man buildeth a house without first seeing if he has enough money to finish building the house?"

The monkey says..."Eat it. You will not get fat. Drink it. You will not get drunk. Do it. You will not get pregnant. Do it. No one will know. Where's your faith?"

Now, a man of faith that is going to cross an ocean will first, deal with the severity of the ocean, and deal with its power, and get what he needs to safely cross the ocean. That is true righteous faith. He does not get in a canoe and paddle across, nor bob across the ocean on an innertube singing hymns. These are not faith, but the lying spirit of faith would say so! The true spirit of faith agrees with reality. Men say the opposite. The devil says the opposite. "Go ahead. Crucify Christ. He cannot die. He is immortal." So Judas betrayed Jesus unto death, deeming He was immortal and could not die! Lying faith! Listening to the deceiver, a lying faith! A corrupted faith!

Always remember the simplicity of truth. Truth and reality agree!

We must shake off this black monkey of a lying faith and come into the reality of substance. We must work. We must pay our bills. We must rise and labour and put our faith into substance, into reality. Faith does not float around the earth in a substance form waiting for anyone who believes in imaginations to reach up and grab it. Faith is substance. Get the substance. The just live by substance, not the imagination of the mind that is an enemy of GOD and the truth.

Jesus is not here working and labouring to pay for my electric bill. I am. Jesus is not here cleaning the floor. I am. Jesus is not here cooking the food I am. I am not doing these things by faith, but by necessity. Therefore, through necessity we are tempted toward wicked faith. Through exaltation we are tempted toward wicked faith. Through want we are tempted toward wicked faith. Through desires we are tempted toward wicked faith. Through doubts, the greatest monkey, we are tempted toward wicked faith, and these things make monkeys out of us.

Without the truth, faith is a paper house of lies. Get the truth. What is the truth? Find out the truth. Confess the truth. Walk in the truth. Be no partaker of a lie. Walk in the light. Bring all things out into the light. Allow no darkness. Keep the light on and keep it pure!

A man may see his thousands of friends around him, but not see the tens of thousands of enemies that hide in the darkness. We can have all the truth there is to find, and yet have one lie that is hidden and the whole of the house will come down on the one lie. Without the entire truth, the whole truth, everything lies in darkness.

Now, applying this thing again, this thing called faith, to us, to the spiritual, we need now the substance. For it is the substance of the Word that bears witness to the WORD itself. For when we believed in the baptism of tongues, we received the promise, the substance. If we believe and receive not we have believed the wrong thing or believed a lie, or only have deceived our own selves that we have believed at all the truth if the truth does not manifest the substance. When Peter began to sink in the water, Christ reached out and took his hand and they both returned to the boat. So the issue in that instance was Christ. The power was in Christ. Maybe Peter was being humbled by the LORD and was made to know that the power rested in the LORD and not in himself. Today, men believe the power is theirs and that it rests in themselves, and that they own the power or have the power, whether it be wisdom, or undersanding, or faith, they laying claim to these spiritual things. I do not know from moment to moment what the truth is or what faith is or what substance is or what even my life and breath is. I must at all times and with every thought acknowledge my GOD who is ever present in me living and breathing and moving in me, and me? I am as spit on a hot sidewalk. I must hear the LORD speak and then do what is spoken out of His mouth.

Our flesh is under attack. Our minds are under assailings. We are targetted for death and destruction by the powers of darkness. Lest we sink in the water and forget where and in whom is the power, lest we become arrogant and high minded, lest we perish, lest we are weakened unto death, lest we are disgraced by sin, lest we are cast aside as unworthy, let us always remember that we are glorified in Him and He in us. For all the power is in Him, and He is in us!

Satan has ravaged our bodies with death and the fruits of sin, but life and immortality are in Christ, and He is in us. So as satan has claim to our flesh because of sin and judgment and disease and death, we yet living under the covenant of death, we are also glorified in Christ and in His immortality and in His redemption. So whether we live or we die, we must remember at every second and with every single thought, we are in His glorification, even now, and as He is glorified, so are we glorified. For though we see death working in our members, we also see eternal life working in us as well as life in our members through the quickening power of the Spirit of Christ.

Since the beginning of time GOD has desired only a people that hated sin and loved Him. The gospel of light is that true, and straight and narrow. Israel sacrificed according to the commandments. The shedding of the blood of goats and lambs did not change nor instruct nor enlighten nor cause men to hate sin nor to cease sin. They all the more pursued after sin to then sacrifice. In Christ, the same has happened that men sin and cast their sins upon Christ, polluting the sacrifice of His holy blood.

In truth, men do not even know what righteousness is, what GOD requires, nor what even sin is. For even men cannot keep up with making laws because sin so abounds and men despise truth and righteousness and anyone who speaks it. Men make laws calling evil good and good evil. Those who oppose homosexuality are called the transgressors and wickedness. Those who hate abortion are called wicked and transgressors of rights. So then, back to the sacrificing of animals for sin, that was not GOD's will, nor GOD's desire. He wanted sin to cease. That was GOD's will. GOD still wants sin to cease and bloodshed to cease. GOD killed the first goat and made Adam and Eve wear the skins of death and still they repented not. They smelled the blood and stink of the skins and still they repented not of their transgression. They saw not the innocence that was slaughtered in GOD's anger because of their sins. Now the sorrow of GOD comes down to earth and torments the earth with its sackcloth and sorrow and blackness. GOD makes all things as nothing and as blackness and as worthless that men might see that true value lies only in the soul and its living or dying.

Now men turn upon men in this hour and blame and seek to escape this blackness in any fashion they can as these black monkeys are running all over the earth and swinging from tree to tree to tree and you no sooner get one of them off of your back and here comes another. Especially in the body of Christ and in the churches is this onslaught not even understood. How can they understand? They are waiting to go up and out. They are not taught anything at all concerning the great spiritual battle they are waging against the powers of blackness and despair. So they eat more. They fellowship more. They sing more. They dance more. They cry more. They go to church more. They marry. They bear children. They buy lands and houses and possess the goods of the world. They seek anyone and everywhere for peace and safety. They tithe more to buy more, all in an effort to rid themselves of these monkeys of despair that are multiplying everywhere and in every place and every government and every country and in every single nation of the world. And these monkeys are multiplying in the churches and have given birth to a great prosperity doctrine, they feeding with a frenzy on these sorrows, troubles, and afflictions, and cares of this world and the anxieties of the flesh and this life. And women cling to unclean men and unclean men cling to unclean women, as well as others, and wonder why the church is coming down to the dust with a violence.

Christ has given us an understanding of faith, for the target of satan is to cause us to not understand so we cannot have faith. But we have an understanding of faith. Faith is the absence of fear. One who doubts is not perfect in faith.

Satan's target is the WORD. He destroys the world through destroying faith in the WORD. Even as Jesus hung on the cross and died, shedding His blood for the sins of the world, the black monkey glared at Him, rejoicing in his accomplishment of the demise of the Son of GOD. Jesus was well acquainted with the black monkey. He was well acquainted with sorrow and with grief. Jesus was triumphant, and in Him, we are also triumphant over all the despairs of this world, over all the sorrows of life and over all the sufferings of death. The modern gospel portrays Jesus as full of laughter and rejoicing, filled with jesting, even foolishness. The scriptures tell us He was a man acquainted with grief, with sorrow, with sackcloth, with anger, with suffering, with pain, with anguish and agony of soul. The scriptures also tell us He looked to the glory that laid before Him. That is how He bore His sufferings! He endured the cross beholding the glory that lay before Him. He looked through the eyes of death at what lay beyond.

THROUGH THE EYES OF DEATH
Words & Music By Martha Miranda ©

JESUS looked beyond this life
To the glory hidden there
He looked through the eyes of death
JESUS looked beyond himself
Through the death and suffering down here
He looked through the eyes of death
JESUS did not care if he lived or if he died
He looked only through the eyes of death
Following the unseen hidden vine

Through the eyes of death the eyes of death
The vine so hidden here is clearly seen
Through those eyes of death
Those beautiful eyes of death

JESUS is the vine of life
That travels from here to there
That beautiful unseen hidden vine
That vine that weaves us through our pains
And takes us through that door
That beautiful door of death
We must not care if we live or if we die
So we can look through the eyes of death
Following the unseen hidden vine

Through the eyes of death, the eyes of death
The vine so hidden here is clearly seen
Through those eyes of death
Those beautiful eyes of death

Excerpts taken from the collection books of BITTER GREEN FIGS FROM THE TREE OF LIFE, Chapter 16 of BOOK 2 of 8 in the collection.

Table Of Contents in this particular book 2 of Bitter Green Figs are:
Chapter 15 On the Sayings of Jesus
Chapter 16 The Black Monkey
Chapter 17 The Eternal Values
Chapter 18 The Treachery of Wolves
Chapter 19 WORD of the LORD
Chapter 20 The Life of a Disciple
Chapter 21 When the LORD Appears