Our friend Mike Ramsey in his recent newsletter challenged us again in talking about the prostitutionalization of the arts. Specifically, he is working in the art school world; but his comments could be applied out to the whole entertainment and arts worlds.

In the book of Joshua, the first city that is to be conquered was Jericho. The method of attack was a symbolic action. Symbol preceeds and illuminates general action, as God likes to communicate symbolically what He is up to before He just does it! Many artist are being called or stirred to “go in” now and start marching around Jericho. The levites–the symbolizers come in before the main armies, to prepare a way symbolically. We believe that this is exactly how God is working now, using the arts to go in a retrieve lands which are God’s, and prepare a way for His Kingdom, and even the general church, when it is unified, to enter and dwell in the land.

Recall also that Jericho was guarded by prostitution–you see Rehab living in its walls, but also that the ways of prostitution covered this city. So one of the first true enemies to displace in “the land” was prostitution.

Now it seems obvious, that the ways of prostitution are largely what the entertainment and arts worlds  are under, or “guarded by”. People and talent becoming products to sell and buy; but also, the sexual perversity that comes as a visible fruit of prostitution. It is easy to see both in the current state of the entertainment industry.

Prostitution is not just buying sex, but is also the way of enslaving others for your own pleasure or ends. You see that it is opposed to God’s way of gift giving–God gives us to one another as in marriage, which itself is the opposite of prostitution, and is often used to fight it–even on a personal level; conversely, prostitution takes whatever it wishes, and is therefore not able to receive it from His Hands or in His Way. When we prostitute, we are either using or being used–and many artist feel caught up in both!

It is our heart, that artist enter more fully their true context for living, as well as creating. And that they are then able to be “sent in” by God to combat the ways of prostitution guarding the gates of the arts world. Currently, the arts are being recovered by God as part of an overarching restoration of His Own symbolic function. When the symbolic is healed, you will see that things will begin to symbolize what they truly mean again.

In the garden, each tree symbolized the specific things which God had chosen to have them mean. You see that our ability to read what things symbolized was broken by the fall in the garden. But this is not a permanent state. Part of God restoring the arts, is about our larger relation to the creation and meaning. As we see already in the church, The Spirit of God is starting to restore the church’s understanding even of history itself, and this will continue until the restoration of His Symbolic is complete.

As you see in fashion, the enemy is at work placing false associations on everything from a woman’s body, to a child’s smile. Oswald Chambers called this “false associations”, and the enemy is vigilant in the art world teaching and assigning these false associations constantly. So that it is difficult to check out at the grocery store without seeing a false image of motherhood or womanhood in general. This is land which must be recovered. And it is not a task which the church has been able to do up til this point.

But as we see artist arising , not just making fresh and inventive work, but also teaching again what things are meant to be connected with, we see the emergence of not only a new aesthetic, but a more whole understanding. This is the start of the restoration of the symbolic on the earth, and the prophetic movement is also a part of this restoration. We are excited to be a part of displacing the ways of prostitution with His Ways! And to do so as artist, and symbolizers!