In the closing hours of our age, the orphan spirit has come to interpose the spirit of Elijah. Just as God is calling the Elijah’s to arise in this hour according to Malachi 4:5-6, the enemy has sought to disrupt this plan with a spirit of his own: the orphan spirit. The enemy has no ability to love or father; he has no ability to nurture or grow. His footprint is clear, and we cannot confuse it with God’s fingerprint.
The goodness of God as Father is being reset in the hearts and minds of people. For too long, the circumstances of life have erroneously shaped our view of God and skewed our understanding of His goodness. This has resulted in a hesitancy to make room for what God has for us. The orphan spirit has sought to supplant the Father’s love for us – a love that has only goodness to offer.
The only thing that can stop us from receiving what God has for us, is the deception of the orphan spirit. It is believing the lie that God is not all that good and that He sometimes teaches us hard lessons through circumstances. When we choose to believe that God is not the good Father He really is, we open ourselves up to the rejection and abandonment of the orphan spirit; we trade in our robes of righteousness and authority for prodigal rags of disillusionment and doubt. We are unable to see our identity, our relationship to the Father, our acceptance in Christ and our purpose.
The orphan spirit is in direct conflict with the assignment of the Elijah spirit. The orphan spirit breaks, destroys, divides, disenchants and misdirects lives into empty chasms of fatherlessness. The Elijah spirit comes to “turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers.” (Malachi 4:6) It resets relationships, brings repentance and reconciliation, and ultimately turns hearts back to Father God.
In the days when the prophet Elijah walked on the earth, his greatest opposition came from King Ahab and his wife, Jezebel. They promoted wholesale idolatry and rebellion to all things godly and righteous. They sought to shut the mouths of the prophets and ruled with a wickedness that was greater than anything that had come before them. In the days of Jesus when John the baptizer came in the spirit of Elijah to prepare the way of the Lord, his greatest opposition came from the religious crowd. They ruled with hypocrisy and blindness, leading the people away from truth and caging them into prisons of empty religion. In both scenarios, the hostility towards the assignment of Elijah aimed to put distance between the people and their God, ultimately leading to fatherlessness and an orphan spirit. Afterall, we who were fashioned in the likeness and image of God, cannot fully function in wholeness until we return to the Father’s heart.
In our day, the spirit of Elijah must arise to prepare a way for the coming glory of the Lord. The assignment of Elijah is laid out in Isaiah 40:3-5 “the voice of one crying in the wilderness; ‘Prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill brought low; the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places smooth; The glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together…’” The Elijah’s of this generation are needed as a heralding voice for the coming glory of the Lord. This glory will put all things right in the presence of God and will point all eyes to the Father.
It’s not enough to identify the orphan spirit, although in so doing, it now becomes exposed. Now, it must now be deposed; it can no longer be allowed to operate and war against the spirit of Elijah. It is time to answer the orphan spirit with the proclaiming voice of Elijah, calling a generation to repentance and to the Father’s heart of love and acceptance. The greatest outpouring of the Father’s love and glory is about to be unveiled as we take our places and do our part.
By Nicola Ramitt
06-26-21