One of the most exciting things about being on the receiving end of worldwide input through Facebook and blogs, is to see the Body of Christ putting jigsaw pieces together. Comments from Stephanie Macentire for example who is not at present in any church, but like many of the others in the Free Believers Network on Facebook, is a hunter for the truth about who we really are in Christ,- right through Brad Jersak really questioning this "angry God thing" and "appeasement" image that has wound itself through church history.
Or even Darin Hufford or Paul Andersen Walsh , both of whose books I have yet to read....
Together with the collections and inspirational light coming through Merrill Thompson and Nancy Gilmore, and the odd bit from Brian Coatney. Then there is the fresh light on grace and freedom coming through other hunters like Rob and Ryan Rufus, Bertie Brits, Joseph Prince.
Gems coming through from Francois Du Toit.....in fact so many. Then the light experienced together here in Havant Church, both in Word and worship. I have loved what I have been reading through Daniel Yordy, and through his site I have come to know John and Bonnie Morris too.
We are putting together a jigsaw , largely unravelled by Paul in the New Testament, yet on a bigger unparalleled scale, hidden until precisely these times. The Best and the Worst of times.
With each major advance of light, comes unprecedented attacks and advance in the compexity of the devil's plans to delude, confuse,destroy and cause misery. He has and always will thrive on misery. He gets off on it. He and his cohorts regard it as fuel, as food.
Evangelists went worldwide. Their new discoveries of place and peoples were used for the purposes of slavery and tyranny. Christ always gets the rap, as do his genuine servants.
This was so in Ghana. It was so in the case of Hudson Taylor having to use the same boats that opium traffickers used into China. To this day Christianity gets the rap there!
While the Moravians and subsequently the Wesleys were sharing the gospel of knowing a personal Saviour, the rest of the world were bathing in the blood of Revolution.
When the Pentecostal light broke out in 1904 and 5, the spread of this supernatural Christianity was heavily opposed by Satan using two world Wars, the rise of Communist and Fascist dictators, and in the aftermath of these uprisings and mass exterminations, a dreadful pall of atheism attempting to suck all belief into itself.
In the wake of this, and the French existentialist and nihilist philosophies, which caused many students to simply toss themselves off buildings in the 60s, God spoke again into the nothingness and reawakened many in the deadest regions of denominational Christianity.
This affected a whole generation of us around 1970.
Around 1975 in Paderborn West Germany, God began a whole move centered around a Catholic Theological College there under a Professor Dr Heribert Muehlen. How do I know? Because (it was God again I believe) who arranged for me to practice German in precisely this town in the immediate aftermath.
All you sceptical so called free believers!!! Have you as males ever skipped and danced and laughed hand in hand with an older nun down a German high street late at night!!! Schnaps??? Nope. Just praise.
Just an overwhelming love for Jesus as experienced in that moment after being in a meeting! Gertraude had been a nun for years, without really knowing Jesus. This is what took place in Paderborn. I was 18 or 19.
Two weeks ago on BBC Horizon they were doing a programme about how in the next 20 years scientific advances were going to mean "additional enhancements" were going to be added to our brains and the rest of our bodies, to accelerate our thinking, to make us live longer, to make us superior. This is but one step from "implants" or a "sign of the beast" in our hands and foreheads. The machinery of warfare and control will take on chilling proportions. We will need to know the Secret Place of the Most High in Psalm 91 as reality. Technological good can so easily be turned to technological bad, by an enemy who wants to try to snuff out the coming Light in the Body of Christ: the Light of Christ living His life as me.
Here is Daniel Yordy's last instalment of the Curse, It's Purpose and Overthrow. It is an astonishing Instalment in the way that it ties up many loose ends that have come up on the rest of this blog.
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The Curse, It's Purpose, and Overthrow (Part 3)From: Daniel Yordy
http://www.dyordy.com/Genesis 3:21 "Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them."
The final part of the curse is the worst part and the best part - and the most important.
Adam could not escape God. The certain knowledge of God filled his consciousness. He tried, desperately, to hide. He covered himself with fig leaves; he hid behind tree trunks - both typifying all the many ways his descendants have developed to try, somehow, to hide from the reality of God.
None of it worked for Adam. Nothing shielded him in his sin and shame from the light of a pure and holy God. To have lived his entire life in that light, his sinfulness and shamefulness, his attempting to persevere in the presence of holiness, would have been a lake of fire for Adam; that is the lake of fire - God, without any protection from Him.
God, of course, did not condemn Adam. Adam condemned Adam - that is the nature of independent self.
But God had a different plan for Adam and for his descendants.
It was not His plan for them to live in the lake of fire - even those who have died without Christ are not presently in the lake of fire, no matter what the fertile imagination of Christians has concocted.
No, God's purpose was first to redeem Adam's seed, and then to form Christ within those whom He elected as a firstfruits out of Adam's seed.
But that could not happen, so long as Adam was unshielded from God. Independent self, striving to exist in the full light of God, is hell.
The skin of the beast is the mercy and kindness of God.
The skin of the beast allows Adam and his seed to live long enough for Christ to come, first as our Redeemer, and then as our Life.
And so God took the skin of an animal, and He wrapped Adam and Eve in that skin.
It is easy for you to know that you are encased in the skin of a beast. Look around the room in which you are sitting right now. You are completely surrounded by all the Shekinah glory and power of Almighty God. There is no place in heaven more holy and more filled with God's glory than the room you are looking at right now. How do you keep your head up? How do you go about your business without falling flat on your face in terror?
Very simple - you are blind. You can't see the obvious. But even a blind man can sense when someone else is in the room. You can't. And the reason you can't see the obvious or even sense the presence of other persons in the room all around you, both holy and evil, is that you are more than blind, you are clothed with a beast skin.
[The beast skin is what makes the people of this world so beastly. The poet, Alexander Pope, said, "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." He was speaking of man's capacity to sin filthily and arrogantly in the very presence of Almighty God.]
James says that demons always tremble in fear, unable to separate themselves from God's presence. We know that the only way they can hide from that Light is to encase themselves in human flesh. That is the first part of the curse. [Demons hide from God behind any human mind that sees itself separate from God, that is, human flesh. When we see God in all things, inside and out, they have nowhere to hide and they flee.]
That beast skin is God's kindness to you.
You are not ready for His light, not until Christ is fully formed inside of you. Nor is He ready for you, not until you have abandoned all thought of independent selfhood.
Jesus was the last Adam; Adam ended upon the cross. The old man is dead. I am already crucified. Why, then, does the beast skin continue as part of my experience?
Romans 8:18-21 "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility (the skin of the beast), not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God."
Believing that Christ is our life does not come overnight.Even when God reveals to us that He did not lie when He says that we are already dead; even when He shows us that we are NOT an independent self, struggling to somehow please Him, but that Christ is the only life we have; even when He reveals to us that He did not lie when He said that old things are passed away, and that all things are made brand new; even then, it takes days and months, and even years, for the full knowledge of Christ living in us as us to permeate every part of our thinking.
We revert back to the old way of thinking so easily. Seeing ourselves separate from Jesus, now having to line up with a God who is surely displeased with us. We wake up in the middle of the night, feeling awful, feeling certain that God has departed from us. Over and over, we have to stop in our tracks, stop all such thinking, in spite of what we feel, and think that Christ is living as me right now, that He is my life; He is one with me even as I feel so bad right now.
And every time we do that, Jesus draws us a little closer to Himself in our knowledge of Him.
So long as I saw myself as someone separate from Jesus, I could not know Him, no matter how much I wanted to. The only way to know Jesus is to see yourself utterly inside of Him. Then you will know the sweet communion of His person.
Most believers in Jesus are not ready for the skin of the beast to be removed from off of them.
This word, the "revealing" of the sons of God, is the Greek word "apocalupsis." It means to take the cover off. The cover that conceals Christ in us is the skin of the beast. That cover is coming off.
What will be found inside? An independent self, desperately trying to please the implacable requirements of a holy God? Or will there be one who, with joy, has abandoned all sense of the independence of self, but who knows that Christ is his life, he has no other life?
But, of course, the passage from Romans 8 is talking about so much more than that. We know that out of our belly flows the mighty river of the life of God.
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I wrote the first part of this a week ago. Last night, the Lord showed me the real reason for the continued presence of the skin of the beast, of this earthly blinder that keeps us from seeing and knowing all that God is and all that we are in Him.
I just finished a romance novel by Georgette Heyer. Let me briefly give you the story line.
A wealthy man of 35, kind, well-loved by family and friends, was being pressured to marry. He had once before been in love with a vivacious girl, but she had died in an accident before they were married.
The man chose to ask a friend of his, aged 29, a plain and simple girl who had been passed up by all eligible suitors, to be his wife. Her family was convinced that the only possible choice she could make was to accept.
With full respect, she refused him. She did not say why.
Meanwhile, he became involved in the life of a beautiful young runaway, who was trying to persuade her grandfather to let her marry an officer in Wellington's army when she was just 16. He was attempting to restore her to her family. In the process, he was accidentally shot.
In desperation, the lady who had declined his marriage offer was asked to come nurse him. She went secretly and spent several days caring for him. Finally, they were found by all who were concerned about "propriety." Her family demanded that the wounded man marry their sister to preserve her honor.
He refused.
When they had left, the two were sitting side by side, alone in a garden. They were finally comfortable together, having gotten to know one another in the midst of difficulty. Picture the most beautiful, romantic, garden scene possible. He told her that he could not marry her for obligation, but only for love. She told him that she had refused him because, though she knew they were friends, she also knew that intimate love would not have been the beginning of their marriage.
But now, they truly knew one another as friends and they both knew that they loved one another.
I finished the book and went to bed. As my thoughts turned towards Jesus, I instantly knew the purpose for God allowing the skin of the beast to remain upon us in spite of the cross and resurrection of Jesus. God speaks to us through story.
This relationship we have with Jesus is about marriage. He is betrothed to us and we to Him. That is what our union with Christ is all about.
But Jesus will not marry a woman who honors and respects Him, who is grateful to Him for His great kindness. Nor even more will He marry a woman who fears Him and who does what He says because she believes she is under obligation to do so. Nor will He marry a woman who chooses Him because of His great power and wealth and how honored He is before all creation.
Jesus wants to marry a woman who sits by His side on a "garden bench," who is equal to Him in heart and mind, who walks through the difficult places together with Him, leaning upon His shoulder, who knows that her union with Him is because she loves Him and He loves her. Jesus will marry only a woman who knows Him in the deepest and most intimate of friendships. Jesus will marry only a woman who knows that He has conformed Himself to her, that He loves what she loves, enjoys what she enjoys.
Listen, it is not up to the woman to conform herself to the man; it is up to the man to conform Himself to His beloved. This was the sacrifice that Jesus embraced in Gethsemane - for the joy set before Him - you and me. So long as I think that I must change to please Him, my heart is not comfortable side by side with His.
So long as you and I see ourselves as beneath Him in any way, we cannot love Him with the love that He alone will marry.
Jesus says the most extraordinary thing in Revelation chapter 3. He says, "Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man opens the door, I will come in to him and I will sup with him, and he with Me." (ACW see also
http://080808onnowto.blogspot.com/2009/02/revelation-320-prophecy-and-glory-cloud.html)
Jesus was not talking about those who did not know Him; He was talking about you and me. First we open the door to Him. Will you let Him be your sin and your shame? Will you let Him be your flesh? If Jesus could take your sin upon the cross 2000 years ago, why can He not take your self upon Himself now? Or, do we really believe that something happened 2000 years ago when we cannot believe that He swallows up our sinful flesh and all of our foolish mistakes today?
Then, it is He who comes in to us and it is He who sups with us. There are few statements more precious in the entire Bible. To sup with us is to share an intimacy of closeness with every part of our being. It is Jesus who conforms Himself to us.
And finally, we sup with Him. It is only when we surrender our heart to His love for us will we be able to return the love that alone is acceptable to Him.
Obligation and duty will always keep Jesus at arm's length, and it will keep us encased in the skin of the beast. He cannot marry a woman who is obliged to marry Him.Revelation 12:11 "And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb (the absolute foundation of our return to the Father) and by the word of their testimony (we speak Christ and all that He is in us) and they loved not their lives to the death (we forsake any thought that we exist independently from Jesus Himself, knowing that all that we are is no more nor less than Jesus Himself)."
Jesus insists that His bride come to Him while she is still blind. He will marry a woman who considers herself His equal, equal in heart, in mind, in soul and who loves Him, not for His greatness of position, or for the mercy He has shown her, but who loves Him in an intimacy of equality - who "sees" Him by faith as the One who fills her heart.
And it is out of that intimacy of union, we in Him, and He in us, that the manchild of Revelation 12:5 is born.
Faith is that which walks in the reality of all that is unseen, now, while it is still unseen.
Faith makes everything God speaks in the New Covenant personal, right now.
God put the skin of the beast upon us. It is God who will remove it. And He will do so when we "see" all that He is in us. When God removes that skin that still limits us in this world, many will be astonished and amazed at what they see. But for those of us who "see" Him now in all things, both inside of us and outside of us, we will see nothing different at all. There will be no shock or surprise.
When we see in reality, we will see the same thing that we now see by faith. There will be no difference.
This "seeing" is a miracle of the Holy Spirit; and He overshadows you right now for that purpose.
