• Totem poles are made out of organic materials that have become inorganic through death. To look at the physical materials of the totem / asherah pole, the bricks of Babel, or any other material possession(s) we sometimes place upon the same level as God, one must see the root of these materials. The steel in our nice cars, the wood for the asherah / totem pole, and the bricks and tar used to build Babel all have one thing in common. A living organic being that once had life experienced death and decomposed to being inorganic to create these materials. The asherah / totem poles were once living trees. The bricks and tar to build Babel were once the decomposition of the dinosaurs and humans before them. Why do we find many dinosaur remains in old tar pits? Why does the Bible say that man is the "dust of the earth" and when man dies, he decomposes back to dust? The steel in our cars came from the coal and minerals that scientists claim came from decomposed earlier life. To sum this point up "What was once life became death and decomposition" The by-products of totem is death. You see, the ancient Native American art of ancestry worship is very necromantic and is deeply rooted in the satanic and demonic. Where did the demonic come from? It came from the war in Heaven where Lucifer and his pack of following angels tried to exalt himself above God and was kicked out of heaven to suffer an eternal punishment of Hell. The demonic through rebellion became eternal death and the force driving totem. Totem, in reality, is somebody or something that tries to implement idolatry by exalting itself above God. The Israelies who once followed God and turned their backs on Him to worship Baal and Asherah went from being blessed and spiritually organic to being cursed to death to physically, naturally, and spiritually being decomposed and inorganic. Temples of the Holy Spirit are made from willing vessels who were once sentenced to becoming physically and spiritually decomposed and inorganic, but through the blood of Jesus, repentence of sins, and infilling of the Holy Spirit became supernaturally organic, blessed, and givers and reproducers of life. Jesus said that he is the bread of life. It was Jesus (in John 20:22) who breathed on His disciples and told them to "receive the Holy Spirit" It is through the infilling and baptism of the Holy Spirit that the Holy Spirit gives us the supernatural power to further continue cutting down the totem / asherah poles that are trying to re-take precedence in our lives. The rest of the Old Testament beyond the first five books clearly show us how to live the Spirit-filled life. The crossing of the Jordan to enter the Promised Land is the Old testament equivalent of baptism of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. In both situations: (1): A supernatural miracle takes place to create the pathway from the wilderness to the promiseland. In the Old Testament, the Jordan river was parted. In the new covenant, Jesus provided the pathway to the Holy Spirit (comforter) via the Cross where he became the sacrificial lamb without blemish who shed his blood to pay my price for my sins to where I can now enter the Holy of Holies (2): There are giants and enemies present that still have to be dealt with when we go possess the land. Why did the Lord tell Joshua not to intermarry with their enemies, instead destroy them. Why did Paul tell us to "crucify ourselves daily" and "die to the flesh daily". Because the sin is still present and the sin wants us to become from organic to in organic instead of being organic to more organic. (3): The first thing done in the promised land and after Pentecost was to defend their actions against the enemies of God. Joshua went after Jericho. The disciples had to defend themselves against the organized church of his time. In summary, totem takes a believer from life to death while temple takes a believer from death to everlasting life.
• Since totem is dead, totem is stationary. In Judges 6, we noticed that Gideon had to "cut" down the Asherah pole. That clearly states that the Asherah pole was huge in size and height along with having a firm foundation at the base of the idol. If the Asherah pole had to be moved, it would require massive amounts of human effort to move the idol. Every major world religion except Christianity has a god that is a idol that is remembered in some way like a totem pole. The Buddhists have the squatting fat guy stature of Siddhartha Guatama (Buddah, a dead guy). The Hindus have Gandhi (another dead guy). The Islamic people have Mohammed (another dead person) and Mecca (a stationary building). The old line Communist have a preserved Lenin in Lenin square (another dead guy). Our Jesus is alive and living and moving on behalf of his people. The Pharasees and Saducees are a perfect example of totem in action. They idolized their synagogue and centered every activity around it. Their teachings of the law were based on works and human effort. Everyone went to the synagogue to worship, pay the temple tax, bring sin offerings, etc. Therefore, the church did not move from it's foundation. Instead, the church stayed in it's place and criticized Jesus. Therefore, it is possible for a church that was a temple filled by God to become a totem in the name of past movements of God that have came and went. How!!! The church can become totem by refusing to embrace the new things God wants to do on planet earth. Every major religion today is a monument to a movement that WAS the current revelatory move of God in it's time. But when it was time for God's people to move with the cloud by day and fire by night, the church stayed back in their newly built pieces of architecture and said "this is not! of God" and became totem to the new move of God. Just like the Pharasees did in the times of Jesus. If the pioneers of the Toronto and Brownsville blessings are anot alert to the next move of God, they have the same chances of becoming totem when the next move of God pours out on planet Earth. We have grown inward with our "sky is falling" mentality and lived in our churches (spiritualized bomb shelters) awaiting for gloom and doom instead of rescuing the perishing from the gloom and doom and/or being instruments to generate revival to defeat the gloom and doom. Since temple is alive, temple is mobile. If you ever noticed that all of the stationary temples men built (in God's will) for God listed in the Bible were later destroyed and no longer standing when the people turned their backs on God. The only temple in the Bible that was never destroyed was the mobile tent that was used as a temple throught the times from Moses to David. I find this very interesting due to the fact that since we are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and we are to go out to do the will of the father and preach the Great Commission, that the temple of today is moble and not stationary. You see, to do the will of the Father and the Great Commission, we must go out into all the world... (Matthew 28:18). The concept of totem tells us to come to the stationary place of worship moved by human works. Jesus instructs us, the Temple of the Holy Spirit, to go out and take the temple of the Holy Spirit along with Jesus to the poor, oppressed, and dying. Where totem has to be moved by human works and labor, temple is moved by the breath of life that God gives us to fulfill his divine will. Acts 17:24 tells us that "God does not live in temples built by human hands". Mobile temples of the Holy Spirit come in all different colors, shapes, sizes, gender, and culture. Like the description of the temple described in Exodus 26, the outside may not be appealing to the human eyes, but the inside of the temple is full of the beauty, splendor, and the best of what God has to offer.
• Totem poles usually had symbols of animals and objects that depicted their ancestors. The same war paints used to paint the totem poles and the same style of art also was the same paint and artistic style painted on the faces of the Indians who performed their powwows in the name of their ancestors. Asherah poles and the Tower of Babel are really the depiction and masking of the demonic. Underneath the piece of wood, the concrete mortar, or the steel used to build the possessions we place above God is the masks of the demonic. Idolotry is making something else god above God. In some churches today, the building becomes the god instead of God. The traditions of men become the mask that look attractive but yield death when the traditions become god instead of God. The temple of the Holy Spirit that is mobile cannot afford to have masks on during ministry. (1): If temple decided to wear a mask, how can temple perform proper and Godly spiritual warfare at the proper time and place when the armor of God (especially the helmet of Salvation) will no longer fit on the head of the person wearing the mask? In order to properly wear the helmet of Salvation, the mask must be removed and destroyed in order for the helmet to slide on and offer full protection against the attacks of the enemy. (2): If you notice the latest evangelism methods, more people today are won over to Christ today through the use of relationship evangelism. This form of evangelism was used by Jesus during his time here on Earth. Jesus spent more time fellowshipping with sinners with some of those sinners becoming believers than He spent with the organized church leaders of the day. He was in touch with the needs of the people because He went out to see and feel the needs of the people around Him. Very unlike the Pharasees who spent their time studying the law and centering their lives around a building of brick and mortar. The days of hellfire and brimstone preaching along with the scare prophet intimidation tactics are over. Most sinners know that they are in sin and are tired of attempting to answer their sins with more sins. Most sinners today once experienced the masked church of totem in the form of either dead, pious, and dry tradition or bombastic hyper paranoia. People today desire to see an open and authentic temple that desires to have relationship with them while at the same time deal with the sin and dysfunction present. They want to see real people who have real solutions to real life's real problems. They want to see these solutions in action and working in a real person's real life dealing with someone's real problem. Non-Christians are tired of the Christians who portray the Christian walk as a big theme park with no problems living in their worlds that are so out of touch with reality today. Non-Christians are tired of the Christians who try to teach us that God is this big genie that we can rub his Word and get mansions, money, fame, and BMW's. The world wonders why the Columbine High School massacre happened. The Christian community is easy to point the fingers at prayer being out of the schools and doom the schools to hell and send their children to private Christian school or homeschool. In order for light to be present in our schools, some parents (it's usually determined by the lack of financial resources to send their children to homeschool or private Christian school) have to train their children and develop their relationship with God in order to bring the light into the darkness and be the willing vessel to let God activate the light source. Moses was raised in Pharoh's education system (Harvard equivalent) and never forgot God. Our children, when properly taught and properly prayed and annointed over, can be the temple of the Holy Spirit to shed light in the darkness and death to cut down totems in their schools and establish the temple back in the land that was once God's.

In fact, if we are not careful, things that were of religious significance in our past can turn from the things reminding us of our quest for God's Holy Temple to be at work in our lives to the totem we worship. In the book of Isaiah, we see King Hezekiah implement moral renewal in the nation of Judah. However one thing was in the way. The People started to worship a brass serpent named Nehustan. Nehustan was not just a ordinary brass serpent. Nehustan was a brass serpent made by Moses in order to remind the Israelites of the past miracles of God during the Exodus of God's people. Now, the Israelites are burning incense and worshipping this serpent. In order to move his people into the future movements of God, King Hezekiah had to smash this statue of their past to show that God is going to do a new thing. The brass serpent that once was a reminder of life in temple now became the totem that prohibited the move of God amongst his people and the totem that caused God's chosen people to go into idoltry to worship. Today, movements that are now symbolized by monuments of archetecture and memories are now being worshipped. The memories and the past has now become the totem we worship instead of the Jesus we surrendered all to. We see a rise today in Southern Gospel singers trying to convince us that we need the Bible back in our schools and society. That statement is true in one sense but when the hidden motives of eliminating anything modern and technological in order to experience the "old-time" religion, we see the root behind this movement. The root being worshipping the past instead og God, the victor of our past, victor of our present, and victor over our future.

Also, the same danger exists when we focus too much on what God is going to do in the future. If we do not have the right priorities, we will build a totem based on a rhema word of God and attempt to make it happen prior to God's timing. We hear of people chasing after golddust, diamonds, etc that is falling out of the sky. I do not know if this is of God or not, therefore I have no comment on this issue. However, When I hear people invite me and send me e-mail to "experience the golddust", I wonder. What are we worshipping here, the gift, or the giver of the gift? Do we go to church for the gifts or do we go to church to worship Jesus, the giver of the gifts and his redemptive power of snatching me from a pathway to hell? If we go for the gifts, then our motive is for the gifts only and the gifts become the totem we worship instead of worshipping Jesus who lives in the temple known as our body. If we choose the pathway of totem, we will become disillusioned when the gifts stop to be given out and manifested and / or the move of God ends up being nothing like the totem we erected "in the name of God". If we choose the pathway of temple, then our focus will be on Jesus instead of things moths and rust destroy.

Concepts birthed and fueled by the totem mentality are implemented through human reasoning and fleshly works. Annointings that flow out of the natural believer that allows their body to be the temple of the Holy Spirit are performed by the supernatural move of God. Therefore, one who is the temple of the Holy Spirit actually becomes "supernaturally natural" The temple can not be pioused, self-exalted, and holier than thou. Instead the temple must be open, outgoing, accessible, teachable, and loving. The world is very tired of these self-exalted Christians who built their own pedestals and called anyone who criticized them as "secular humanistic devils" or told these people to "touch not mine annointed or you will get cancer". The world needs to see us be the church that God called us to be. Running away from life because life just does not seem to go the way we think it should is no way to defeat totem. In fact, running away and refusing to deal with the root issues that fuel the concept of totem in our life only increases further and deeper the inner workings of totem in our lives. In summary, totem is inwardly directed to self while temple is outwardly directed to serving others. Totem exalts itself above God while temple surrenders and submits to God. The wages of sin is death. Totem brings death. Temple brings life.

Lord, right now in the name of Jesus, I ask that you would remove any idolotry that is taking the place of you. We are a people who want to escape death and turn towards life. We are a people who desire to move from totem to temple. We ask that the gifts you give us will not consume us to the point of the gift being god instead of the giver of the gift being God. We want life. We choose life like the commandment states in Deuternomy 29 and 31. Let us flee death and totem to become the givers of life and the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Take us through the supernatural impartations needed to live out the Spirit-filled life. All of these things I ask in Jesus' name I pray, AMEN!

Click here to go back to part one of Totem to Temple.

Click here if you are not a Christian and you want a way out of the state of totem.