Today let's consider a popular doctrine - "touch not my anointed". In the Word of God we find this here:

"²⁰And they wandered about from nation to nation,
And from one kingdom to another people,
²¹He permitted no man to oppress them,
And He reproved kings for their sakes, saying,
²²"Do not touch My anointed ones,
And do My prophets no harm." 1 Chronicles 16 20-22; then quoted in Psalm 105

In 1 Samuel 16, the prophet Samuel anointed David king while Saul (whom he had anointed previously) was still king, but God was replacing him with David because of his sin. They were both anointed of God as well as Samuel was an anointed prophet of God.

The scriptures used in this doctrine come from 1 Samuel 24 where Saul, (anointed of God), was pursuing David, (also anointed of God), to physically kill him. David had the opportunity to kill Saul in 1 Samuel 24 and did not kill him because of the scripture admonishing not to, "touch My anointed ones". Reading 1 Samuel 24 we see that David says, "I have not sinned against you", even though he had cut off a piece of Saul's robe so he would know David could have killed him and even though he strongly reprimanded Saul for wrongly trying to kill David, to the point of Saul temporarily weeping and apologizing.

In the original language, "touch" meant a physical aggression/harm, not stating a negative truth about the "anointed one".

Many today have corrupted this passage and manipulated it into a doctrine that threatens any who would disagree with a preacher/teacher/pastor with wrath from God. They hide their error, sin and even false teaching behind "touch not My anointed", sternly warning others that this means no one can say anything about them, but you can see from the Bible that it referred to physically killing God's anointed, not disagreeing as David thoroughly did and "sinned not", even cutting part of his clothing off.

There are many other examples in the Word of God where people reprimanded "God's anointed" without condemnation form God:

• Samuel reprimanded King Saul. 1 Samuel 13:13-14
  
• Nathan reprimanded King David, "a man after God's own heart" about his sin with Bathsheba. 2 Samuel 12
  
• Paul reprimanded Peter, who preached the first sermon at the birth of the church, for hypocrisy concerning eating and not eating with non-Jews. Galatians 2:11
  
• Priscilla & Aquila corrected wrong teaching by Apollos who was preaching the gospel, "showing him the way more perfectly in love". Acts 18:23-28
  
• Peter reprimanded Ananias & Sapphira, anointed because they were Christians, for lying to the Holy Spirit and prophesied their immediate deaths which followed. Acts 5:1-11
  
• Paul had "such a sharp disagreement" with Barnabas over John Mark, that they parted ways, yet no condemnation from God is mentioned. Acts 15:36-40
  

God carefully put checks and balances in His body, the church. There were to be multiple elders/pastors, not one dictator running everything and above accountability, so that if one were in error, the others could see and correct it for the purity of the body of Christ and that person's benefit. Remember countless admonitions to remove the leaven before it harmed the whole body? Leaven was "false/wrong teaching". We are all to be accountable to each other and the leadership God has placed over us in the church and to Him, to keep us on that narrow path to heaven, with the motivation of LOVE.

It is against everything God did in setting up His church to forbid brethren from disagreeing or pointing out sin or error in leadership, but we are to do it respectfully and in love. This abuse of "touch not my anointed" is a sinful man-made doctrine created by those in religious power to elevate themselves to an un-touchable, un-teachable level not ordained by God. We all need to be corrected at times, as an act of love for our salvation. This is NOT "touching" to "harm", but is rather love to save both that person in leadership and those they are leading astray or polluting with their sin.

Today I'm giving you the next of a dozen beautiful Pattern Overlays. Each day I'm giving you a different overlay to download, but the preview picture will stay the same to save time and space. The papers in the preview give you some ideas of what you can do with them. Click image to enlarge. Here are some possibilities:

1. Use as an overlay and change the blend modes and
opacity.

2. Select the black or white areas of the overlay and
make a layer of it then, clip a paper of your choice to it.
You can put a different paper under it and play with
blend modes.

3. Select the black or white area of the overlay and
then fill with a different color, pattern or gradient.

4. Select the black or white area of the overlay and
make a layer of it, then apply a layer style to it.
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