Anointing

Anointing is the book’s term for the empowering presence and ministry capacity associated with God’s power. It is not treated as a decorative religious status: it is something believers pursue, receive, carry, and exercise in situations of deliverance, healing, and spiritual authority. The central pattern is persistent devotion—refusing to withdraw from God until His power becomes evident—yet the narrative also warns that compromise can cause a person to lose the very strength and authority once entrusted to them.

Meaning and Spiritual Function

Anointing is closely connected with worship, commitment, and deliverance. The book interprets the prostrate worship of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace as a bodily declaration that their devotion belonged to God rather than to a man-made image. Their worship did not merely express inward belief; it placed God above political pressure and became the setting in which they experienced supernatural protection. The same principle is applied to the reader’s trials: worship is described as an act that calls for God’s delivering power because it exalts the Lord above personal failure, fear, and bondage.

The state of anointing therefore operates relationally rather than mechanically. Prayer, worship, the Word of God, the name of Jesus, perseverance, and submission to faithful pastoral leadership are presented as practical ways of standing in the sphere of freedom. The book’s stated principles include refusing to leave God alone, believing that the Lord desires freedom, standing one’s ground, refusing to give up on deliverance, and remaining in church with an anointed pastor. Anointing is thus framed as power that serves liberation and obedience, not as a possession that permits spiritual self-importance.

Samson and the Loss of Power

Samson provides the book’s clearest warning about how anointing can be forfeited through gradual compromise. He began as a Nazirite from his mother’s womb, under vows representing consecration, dedication, and purity before the Lord. His decline was not portrayed as a single sudden collapse. It moved through places and choices that increasingly exposed a divided commitment. Timnath represented the stage at which a person feels conviction about a course of action but continues toward it anyway; Gaza, associated with strength, represented the stronghold that followed ignored conviction.

The deterioration continued as Samson repeatedly broke his vows and lied about doing so. His final compromise with Delilah resulted in the loss of both his anointing and his physical strength. The Philistines then bound him in chains and put out his eyes, an image the book uses to explain how strongholds produce spiritual blindness. His physical captivity therefore mirrors an inward loss of liberty: the man who had been marked by consecration became bound, weakened, and unable to see.

Yet Samson’s story does not end in failure alone. Even after he had failed the Lord completely, he did not abandon the possibility of correction. The book presents his determination to address what he had done as a source of hope for people who believe their spiritual collapse is final. In this account, repentance does not erase the seriousness of lost anointing, but it keeps restoration from becoming impossible.

Elisha and the Inheritance of Anointing

Elisha illustrates the opposite movement: anointing is received through sustained attachment to a spiritual calling and to the person who carries it. As Elijah prepared to leave the earth, he repeatedly told Elisha to remain behind while he went from Gilgal to Bethel, Jericho, and Jordan. Elisha repeatedly refused. His response was that, as long as Elijah lived, he would not leave him, and he followed his spiritual father from one place to the next.

The repeated departures functioned as tests of resolve. The book interprets Elijah’s apparent attempts to send Elisha away not as rejection but as a way of exposing whether Elisha truly valued the relationship, the ministry, and the anointing he hoped to inherit. If Elisha wanted only power for his own purposes, he might have abandoned the pursuit. His continued following demonstrated that his hunger was attached to Elijah’s God and to the responsibility represented by Elijah’s ministry.

When Elijah was taken up in a whirlwind, Elisha cried out for his spiritual father and saw the mantle fall. He picked it up and struck the Jordan with it, asking where the Lord God of Elijah was; the river divided, and he crossed. The mantle became the visible sign of transferred responsibility and power. Elisha did not receive it by standing at a distance. He received it after refusing to leave Elijah alone until the moment of departure, and the book makes that persistence the decisive condition of inheritance.

Testing, Pursuit, and Ministry

The route from Gilgal to Jordan gives the book a progressive model for entering anointing. The four places are described as tests that build a person capable of grasping God’s power and refusing to let it go. Gilgal represents new beginnings, conversion, and the establishment of God’s rule in a believer’s life. Bethel, Jericho, and Jordan continue the testing process, culminating in the moment when the mantle falls and the person must pick it up and move forward.

This progression makes anointing both gift and formation. Elisha’s power was not presented as an isolated supernatural deposit detached from character; the journey prepared him to carry what he received. The book repeatedly returns to the conclusion that he had to decide whether he would leave Elijah or continue pursuing him, even when returning would have seemed easier. His persistence through every testing place positioned him to walk in the inherited power and to continue a powerful ministry.

The same framework is applied to contemporary ministry. A testimony about an overseas prophecy describes a pastor whose ministry had been persecuted by a government official and who had even been imprisoned. During ministry, the speaker told him that an angel stood behind him and that God had sent the angel to deal with the situation. The next day, the hosting pastor reported that the official had died during the night and that the persecution had stopped. The account presents anointing as operating through prophetic ministry and delivering angelic intervention, while grounding its larger claim in the biblical example of an angel striking Herod after his persecution of the church.

Persistence, Restoration, and Calling

Anointing is finally placed within a wider theology of persistence in prayer. The book explains importunity as being shameless, bold, determined, pressing, entreating, and persistent in requesting, and connects it with Jesus’ teaching that people should pray and not faint. The reader is urged to continue pressing in prayer rather than interpreting delay, disappointment, or apparent refusal as proof that God is unwilling to act. Persistent prayer becomes the posture through which a believer remains available to divine power.

That appeal is explicitly evangelistic. Readers who have never known Jesus Christ personally are invited to begin a new life of daily fellowship, forgiveness, repentance, and pursuit. The concluding prayer asks for forgiveness, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, a closer relationship with God, and the commitment not to leave Him alone until blessing is received. Anointing therefore belongs not only to celebrated ministers such as Elijah, Elisha, or Samson; it is held out as the consequence of a life that repeatedly returns to God, seeks His presence, and accepts the discipline required to carry His power.

The book also gives this vision an institutional setting through Lord of Hosts Church, which Hank Kunneman and Brenda Kunneman pastor in Omaha, Nebraska. The church is described as combining praise and worship, prophetic teaching, organized leadership, and ministry directed toward people’s everyday needs. In that setting, anointing is not merely an individual mystical experience. It is transmitted through mentoring, worship, pastoral oversight, congregational life, and a ministry structure intended to raise up strong believers. Its decisive significance lies in this union of power and formation: anointing delivers, but it must also be pursued, guarded, and carried faithfully.