In the Manger is the Bread of Life Part Two

In the first part we looked at Jesus in the manger and then looked at a real world conflict that concerned tithing.
Today I want to look at Cain and Abel in relation to the manger. 

Genesis 4 NIVAdam^[a] made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain.^[b] She said, “With the help of the Lord I have brought forth^[c] a man.” ² Later she gave birth to his brother Abel.

Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. ³ In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. ⁴ And Abel also brought an offering—fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, ⁵ but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.
⁶ Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? ⁷ If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”

 SOIL speaks of works, of the very curse which ACTS to Wear at our insides....to bring us to an end of our selves.The POINT of the CURSE even has a "wink" in it as Norman Grubb would say. It brings us to ourselves. To the true nature of what is a self.
FLOCKS speak of that which grow of themselves, SEPARATE to our efforts, which were offered in our place.
In Genesis 3
²¹ The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.
An animal died as replacement in order that our "sin", our "selves" were covered.

 Whatever happened had to be a complete answer.
Cain's offering is not a complete answer.
Adam and Eve's figleaves were not either.

Even the yearly presentation by the High Priest referred to in Hebrews, although the whole pattern was DIVINELY REVEALED, was not a complete answer. Because it had to be repeated each year on the Day of Atonement. And High priest by high priest died.
Now for this even to be mentioned meant Paul (or whoever wrote Hebrews) was thinking in COMPLETE terms which involved the defeat of DEATH itself.

What Cain was doing was religion. He was operating out of his "darkness"........ the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them who believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine to them.1 Cor 4:4
What is the Darkness inherited from Genesis 3.
That we can live as separated  beings, self-empowered souls.
This position is a delusion and comes out of a totally wrong view of God, a lying view of God as a hard taskmaster, as someone, far from being our Father, actually holding out the best from us, and thus we were in need of some "helpful advice from a serpent" to show us how to act like god, knowing good from evil.
But this independent stance is not really independent since we are made to be empowered by spirit....and if not empowered by Deity....we hook into not our self....but the fast one that was played on us, was that we hooked into a perishing self, Satan's spirit. The nature of this "wrath" spirit is that we now have a junk feeling being around God who is holy.

We feel separate from God, even though we still live from what is basically His Life. He is,after all, the Only Life in the universe. 

So without any revelation of God's heart like Abel had, we feel we have to "buy off" this guilt.
All religion is about the appeasement of an "out there " God.
God's heart is about connection. About doing everything in His Power to bring us back not only into relationship....(Havant church have got that far)....but into UNION, into FUSION.


If you are still in an appeasement mentality you are still in shame. You haven't really seen God's love for you. Not you among others....YOU PRECISELY as you are!!! Precisely as you are God loves you.
If we don't see God....not really....I mean really as He is, we give Him the scrag ends of our produce, the works of our hands, and hope that somehow we've fit the bill, that we've appeased this far off, out there God.


Let's go forward a moment to a beautiful "image capture" in the Spirit that is recorded for us in the Old Testament. Both Daniel Yordy and I have come to its significance independently. I refer to Genesis 22:7b and 8
And (Isaac) said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” ⁸ Abraham said, “God will ^[a]provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.

God will provide for Himself the lamb

In the context that this statement was made:
of an extremity of obedience that none of us can hardly imagine, yet in this situation to boldly assert his word of faith, and a word of faith of world changing TRUTH and MEANING .

People say Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son. I'm sorry that doesn't cut it. Isaac was his only real son by Sarah at that point, and born according to supernatural promise, after years and years and years of heartache and believing. It was this very child of promise Abraham was going to willingly sacrifice AND contrary to stupid worldly professors who sit in their stupid theological colleges in Cambridge and Oxford, comparing his act "anthropologically to neighbouring cultures who sacrificed their children"
this was done stating by faith : God will provide (for) Himself the lamb.

The manger is an incredible scene. We do not know that Jesus was still in the manger for the arrival of the three magi, but for the arrival of the shepherds he was. And this was the true Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. They were required to BEHOLD.
Not to bring gifts.
Not to do anything particularly.
Just Come.
Just Behold.

It had been 400 years since the last main written prophetic Word from God.
After this hiatus of extraordinary length what would be the next Word from God?
Well there were several...from angels,Simeon,Anna and Zechariah....but the BIG ONE direct from God
was in flesh form. 
Here now.  
A Baby.
A life.
Bread for the Life of the world in a feeding trough in a city called House of Bread.
I want you to catch something in this article.
Because the Jews haven't caught it yet  and neither has the world church.



Religion is an act of appeasement in the false belief that we as independent beings have to buy off this "out there separate God" who is desperately angry with us.
That's all Cain understood.
Abel gave of the fattest portions of His flocks, and knowing the heart of God knew this wouldn't be a problem to an All Blessing God. He was looking ahead, seeing in the Spirit.

By the time of Jesus arrival the full revelation of the sacrifice of animals had been well and truly caught ever since Moses, and was now a religion. Even that had become the religion of Cain.
To buy off an angry God.
A separate out there God.




What was God's answer?
A son.
Conceived directly from the Life of the Father.

In other words God's answer was not religion.
It was a Life.
A Life source.
Divine in nature.
That we also RECEIVE a WHOLE LIFE.
Not a religion.
Not steps To a Life.
Not 10 steps to overcome.
Not manuals.
Not even gifts of the Spirit.
BREAD.
For transplanting into the whole of our Life.



We don't DO anything to GET anything.
We COME.
WE BEHOLD a BABY in a foodtrough.



Let's break into this here with another brief point.
The stable says two or three things.
It tells us about how things are to be from now on.
This is a Melchizedek Order event.
As is the whole of the NATURE of Jesus Life on Earth and continues to be now as lived by us.
He comes from effectively nowhere, since He has no human father, being Divinely conceived.
At the end of His life he will return to the Father (humanly what seems like nowhere) by rising in the ascension.
The nature of all "meeting" or "gathering together in the stable" is by DIVINE revelation. It's supernatural.
The only reason Mary is pregnant was by supernatural overshadowing bythe Holy Spirit . The only reason the shepherds are there is because they were divinely instructed. And the only reason the wise men turn up is again by instruction from a star. Each bring something. The shepherds are there because Jesus is the Lamb. The wise men each bring gifts about a fact of Jesus Life. This is how meetings are in the Holy Spirit. Each person has a contribution but it concerns "this Life that we have handled and tasted and touched.".


It's NOT a religion.
It's not tithing.
It's not supporting a priesthood.
It's not rehearsing some morbid religious event.
It's Beholding a Lamb that was slain who ferried off our former existence
and left it there, and who resurrected with Us in Him
now CO-SHARERS IN A LIFE.

No human is ever ready to welcome the Melchizedek Order.
In fact human Kings are gathered together it says to destroy the King. Psalm 2
So no organisation was ready to receive Jesus, and so like His death, He
is effectively "out the back".....in a stable.

Yet His BIRTH , LIFE and DEATH cut right through Cain religion.
Jews thought they could slightly modify their existing process and allow
Him to intersperse the odd reading....UNTIL HE declared HIS LIFE....NOW....
saying, Now is this scripture fulfilled in your presence."

A religion about Jesus, as the Christian Church have made it is not offensive.
But the ACTUAL LIFE of Jesus received by faith
Eating His flesh BY FAITH
IS really OFFENSIVE....

because it spells the end of tithing and supporting a priesthood, that actually
in Hebrews terms, or heavenly Sanctuary terms, was NEVER a priesthood.
It spells the end of hoops, activities to gain more of God's Life
Rather ALL ACTIVITIES and they are LIFE ACTIVITIES NOW proceed
out of beholding what this Lamb has done.

People used to wonder at His authority.
Well His authority came OUT of HIS LIFE.

Hebrews 7:15-16    ¹⁵ And this is clearer still, if another priest arises according to the likeness of Melchizedek, ¹⁶ who has become such not on the basis of a law of ^[g]physical requirement, but according to the power of an indestructible life.   


This is the point I am making with Simon Waters,Ed Harding,Martin and Kay Elwood and every single one at Havant....
there are NO LAWS of physical requirement, no tithing, no activities according to a law like meetings, like reading the Bible, like praising, like praying....

All these things Issue FORTH out of an indestructible Life, the Bread that was in the manger that came down from heaven.  

WE LIVE NOW FROM A SPONTANEOUS LIFE

Tithing makes no sense because there is no levitical priesthood. Only a Law of Giving and supernatural REBOUND, a whole giving cycle that we enter into , but in the context of our whole lives now issuing out of that SHEAF that the Jews waved on Easter Sunday morning  , without knowing this was the very resurrected Life of Jesus that was walking in such an unassuming way out of the Tomb....almost as if nothing had happened, and Mary certainly was confused. Was this the gardener?


When we meet, we meet in Life. We gather all the more because of the magnetism of the Life within us."Gather together all the more frequently as you see the Day drawing near."

The very ministry of Jesus was Him living. He shared the Kingdom life He had with 12 normal people.And beyond them to the rest of the multitudes. It was largely outside of the synagogue walls, although at times he would go within the old system. But the system was as irrelevant as church life is to us who have now discovered this ALL DAY ALL NIGHT ALL WEEK Bread. We'll go into church in order to try to penetrate the system with God's message of Love, but like Judaism as a system, church life also as practiced now in its Cain like separation, is an irrelevance.  All over the world God is bringing forth a manifestation of the obedience of faith.
Jesus said...who is it who is righteous? Those who say Lord Lord, yes, but don't do the will of my Father, or those who express no concern and say , no no....but afterwards obey and hear the Lord.

Such is this increasingly broken generation who know little of church, little of christianity, but who will increasingly "catch" this Galations 2:20 consciousness of ours. 


Jesus said...who is it who is righteous? Those who say Lord Lord, yes, but don't do the will of my Father, or those who express no concern and say , no no....but afterwards obey and hear the Lord.Such is this increasingly broken generation who know little of church, little of christianity, but who will increasingly "catch" this Galations 2:20 consciousness of ours.

Such is this increasingly broken generation who know little of church, little of christianity, but who will increasingly "catch" this Galations 2:20 consciousness of ours. 

The Holy Of Holies, The End -Time Call of the Spirit - David Swan

This is quite a book to have at hand. A large part of our Bibles are accounts of human beings having encounters with the heavenly. If it was coming from one unique person in one time period, we might be able to more easily dismiss this in our prosaic materialist age.
This book puts the lie to the rather weird sounding random pictures and images, and certainly in the context of the Heavenly Tabernacle, lays out quite clearly what the direct link between "our portion of light" down here and the heavenly reality is. It is our choice entirely what we want to make "ours" here on earth.
David Heisler's "Meaning of Union" series makes it plain: IT IS ALL OURS now....but there has to be a "taking of it". He and I hate any sense of elitism in Christianity. And , to be frank, some of that was still emanating from Ed Miller...or maybe it was just our perception as it is those who first encounter the subject of this blog.
Jesus had a very simple solution for elitism. The Father picked the whole of the Adamic race up in the spirit,squeezed the whole lot together in the palm of His hand and plunged the whole spirit actuality of it into His Son Jesus on the Cross. Every single human that ever lived or will live. Not some elite. As He did that, the whole of creation moaned big time. It went completely dark. The whole area surrounding Golgotha had the oppression  of  Ausschwitz, Hiroshima after the bomb, and countless other events rolled into one. The spectating centurions and soldiers didnt know what was going on, but they felt it.
But you see in that moment we all completely died. We didnt partially die. The elite didnt die more. There were no elite. We were all absolutely annhilated, then on the third day raised up in Christ. Which is a problem for those who still believe they can live in their own right. And that is a lot of the belief struggle that is the Christian Life. We rather like to think we live in our own right. This is discussed here:

We're not spiritual as the world understands spiritual
My problem with spending the entire time trying to have spiritual encounters is this: we are going to spend eternity doing it, and it dishonours the very real purpose why we were placed here on earth. Someone will say, we were placed here in a material world so we would hunger and inquire into the spiritual. This would appear to be justified by verses such as "Set the mind on the things that are above and not earthly things..."
Maturity in the spirit is not how the world understands the word "spiritual".
The world , or some of the world have this ennobled airy fairy view of Buddhists and Eastern ascetics navel gazing all day, or seated at the tops of the poles contemplating the infinite. And lots of young Christians bring this into Christianity with them and get baptised in the Spirit. How do I know? I think to some extent I did too.
I get the slight impression that David Swan spends too long shutting himself away in the mistaken view that this is what a charismatic leader does in order to rightfully serve his minions every Sunday in his charismatic services.When what a charismatic leader really should do is be a facilitator in encouraging everyone to give and share.

Spiritual in a Christ context is "setting our minds on things that are above", but seen through everything we see around us. Living normally. Understanding that it is ALL in one sense or another God stuff going on. Jesus spent 30 years in our material universe LIVING.   The whole charismatic, rather immature version of Christianity hardly honours this at all. Yet all the negatives of being a supposed bastard child, plus all the positives of being in a very mixed race cosmopolitan trading town on a major trade route that was Nazareth, plus possibly being a carpenter like Joseph......all this was caught up in the phrase "He learned by the things that He suffered."  But without sin. Learning to live it all IN THE FATHER. The authority of His High priesthood,is in this paragraph in Hebrews 7:15 " And this is clearer still if another priest arises according to the likeness of Melchizedek, who has become such
not on the basis of a law of physical requirement, but according to the power of an indestructible life."
And if it suited the Father for the first "ensample " of this new race to learn in this way.... so it does us too.
And part of the reality of our own authority is learned in the choices and experiences of everyday life. Learning God's life in it all. So setting your mind on things that are above  ARE IN THIS CONTEXT.
Perhaps I am being unfair to David Swan, who is after all a bit of a modern pioneer, and so someone had to do it, and write about it. I do not see any distinction between our deepening walk in the Spirit in very real, all too human messes down here, and our deepening awareness as the Body of Christ in realms of the Spirit, and in perhaps our collective worship together.
I think we should from now on be so minded, so armed, that we will take on a committal mind set to explore the depths of both equally.