It is often painfully hard to share a testimony such as I promised on our last blog so I diverge a bit tonight with something God laid on my heart today. When I am not feeling quite so raw I hope to share my testimony dealing with Florian's interpretation of the scriptures quoted in my last post. That said Florian and Joian know of my call to prayer and it is there in prayer I come to see some of the deeper things of God as He works out the old nature and the New into me. Please allow me to share something that I think wonderfully testifies to the depth of Christ and our place in Him.I want to share something of that which I call "My Merkabah" Hopefully after reading this you might find your self riding in this same Merkabah which is the Hebrew term for God's flaming chariot. The Merkabah is metaphorically described most notably in Ezekiel 10, where the prophet is given the vision of the angelic vehicle with the spinning wheels within wheels. Also mention of these supernal chariots is found in the Book of Jasher where Enoch is carried away and in 2Kings chapters 1 thru 7 where Elijah is mentoring his pupil Elisha. Listed below are five other scriptures that help finish the picture of God's awesome flaming chariots.
♦ "The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels: the Lord is among them, as in Sinai, in the holy place. " (Psalms 68:17)
♦ "Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of the wind:" (Psalms 68:17)
♦ "For, behold, the LORD will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire." (Isaiah 66:5)
♦ "Behold, he shall come up as clouds, and his chariots shall be as a whirlwind...” (Jeremiah 4:13)
♦ "And I turned, and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and, behold, there came four chariots out from between two mountains; and the mountains were mountains of brass." (Zechariah 6:1)
Like everything else in God there is the carnal counterfeit and so it is also with the mysterious "chariots of fire." From ancient Jewish teachings found in the Kabbalah to modern New Age thought the counterfeit is explored and even experienced. I myself had an occurrence where I tasted of the counterfeit one night when I got off course in prayer and began to explore that which I shouldn't have. Thankfully God in His mercy pulled me back and instructed me to never go there again. With His warning He also said He would allow me to know the real flaming chariot as I dwelt in Him. I believe even today I am being carried in His glorious Merkabah.
This brings me to yesterday where I brought up the subject of the "Merkabah" in a message on a forum where most of the participants have left Christ and His Cross to explore and embrace New Age thought. Many of these eschew the idea that the Cross is pertinent in our lives today, thinking we have entered a new age where we can now walk in the illusion of our resurrection. In this they haphazardly leave the cross behind. That is such dangerous territory and with that sobering thought in mind, please allow me to share a couple of excerpts from two forum messages I wrote yesterday dealing with the Cross and Resurrection along with the "wheels within the wheels" of the Merkabah. I pray you are blessed by these writings and stay to the end where God allows me to tie the chariot to the Cross.
Jack & Joian
This is a rebuke of a number of forum members that have, earlier in the discussion, been ripping me for my remaining with "the Cross as central to my life."
My friends you will not separate the cross from your resurrection. In order to dissect you must first kill and that is what you do with Truth by separating the cross in your life from your resurrection.
Yes, there is indeed a deeper call and that deeper call will never leave behind the Cross of Christ. As the Cross eternally finds it's place in the very heart of God. And if the One True God finds His place in you, you will find that the Cross of Christ will ever be there.
And I'll let you in on another secret and that be, should you ever leave the Cross you have like wise left the hope of resurrection. For the Cross is so closely tied to the promise of "our salvation to the utmost" that it is perfectly proportionate to the same. Our resurrection is progressive and as we die to self, Satan and the world we equally are being resurrected in perfect proportion to our dieing. Walk around the cross and you delude yourself into traveling in a circle of the lowest bestial plane of man's existence. You can feed and dress up the beast in you but it will not carry your soul afar, but only give you the illusion of a journey to God when it is going in the opposite direction.
The "second death," resulting in resurrection, is the "Cross" and work your way around it like you guys have, and you will find yourself face to face with it again and most probable on the other side of the grave.
"Going on to perfection" without the workings of the Cross of Christ in your life is the worst of pretense and folly. You guys are still walkin around in your meat suits calling yourselves "equal with God and I AM's." Surely there is nothing more blasphemous that a "creation still in the works" can proclaim before God. It is the "half formed lump" telling the Potter "I will form myself" or worse yet, proclaiming "I am finished"
To even look more deeply into the cross, there are "Wheels within the Wheels" of Christ and His Kingdom as we were in Him 2000 years ago and today He is in us. We hung on the cross with Him and were resurrected with Him. Today He is in us as we experience our crucifixion and resurrection by the power of His Spirit in us ........ the "wheels within the Wheel." I call it the Merkabah, God's flaming chariot or even Ezekiel's fire. These revelations are painfully and gloriously gained as God works the old nature out and the New in day by day, week by week, year by year. There is some practical shoe leather to this walk as it is not an illusion or a dream. The illusion and dream of this New Age continuum is the enticing spinning wheels of another sort and it never lifts one into Him.
"The Cross eternally finds it's place in the very heart of God. And if the One True God finds His place in you, you will find that the Cross of Christ will ever be there."
God bless,
Jack
This is the last message written after some discussion of the "wheels within wheels of the Merkabah" and it's relationship with the Cross. I pray you are starting to glimpse the concept of the concentric wheels in God.
Staying with the themes of the "wheels within wheels of the Merkabah" and the Cross, someone in this forum discussion mentioned they were in Christ 2000 years ago when He was crucified. I thought to reply at the time that we were in Him even before that. Years ago, I had the blessing of sharing numerous visits with George Hawtin. Tonight I think back to the wondrous anointing that flowed into our conversations as we discussed the wonders of our Saviour and Lord. That said, below I have copied a message by another favorite author of mine who writes beautifully of Christ and His Cross and he quotes my dear old departed friend, George Hawtin. These two anointed teachers understood the "centrality of the Cross" as they penned these words decades ago and I believe this old message is as relevant today as it was back then.
"When HE crucified His Son, He crucified YOU, because He had placed you in Him. All this took place before the foundation of the world. The world itself cannot contain the full truth of this precious statement, "I am crucified with Christ."" Hawtin
CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST
"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2:20). What is this that Paul says: "I am crucified with Christ"? What does the apostle really mean? In what sane and solid sense does he use these hitherto un-heard -of words? Saul of Tarsus, we have his own word for it, had never seen Christ in the flesh, nor His cross either. He had not been in Gethsemane with Christ like Peter, nor on Calvary with Him like John. The two thieves might have said, "We were crucified with Christ," but how could Saul of Tarsus say it? For he was still at home in his own country; he was only as yet an aspirant to Gamaliel's school when Christ was crucified; and the crucifixion of Christ was long past before Saul had set a foot in the city of the crucifixion. In what sense then can he say, and say it so often and so boldly, "I am crucified with Christ"?
Nearly half a century ago Lloyd C. Douglas wrote a best selling religious novel called THE ROBE. Paul Rees, in reviewing the book, points out that its readers will remember that Marcellus Gallio was the Roman tribune who was supposed to have been the officer in charge of the actual crucifixion of Jesus. When Marcellus returned to his quarters after the crucifixion, he made a confession to his Greek slave Demetrius. He confessed that he felt dirty and ashamed. When Demetrius tried to console him by reminding him that he was only obeying orders given him by Pilate, Marcellus asked, "Were you out there?.. . Were you there when He called on His God to forgive us?" And the rest of the story is concerned with the strangely persistent way in which this Roman noble was haunted by his sense of guilt for having crucified the Lord. He, who was supposed to be upholding the law by executing a guilty man, was somehow condemned by that man's innocency and made to feel guilty himself. "WERE YOU OUT THERE," he asked. It is a fair question that Marcellus put to Demetrius. And the answer is "Yes." WE WERE ALL OUT THERE! Whether Roman or Greek, whether Israelite or Gentile, we WERE there when they crucified our lord.
Yes, the Christ was crucified "for us" --- on our behalf --- but Paul goes deeper into the mystery that is Christ and says that if we want to understand the deep meaning of the cross, we shall have to see, not just Christ dying for us, but also our identification with Him, we will have to see ourselves on that cross dying with Jesus. You see, IF JESUS MERELY DIED INSTEAD OF US, then Jesus will merely rise instead of us. Selah. Pause and think about that ! The scripture declares that we are crucified with Christ so that we may rise with Christ. If there is no participation in the cross, there can be no participation in the resurrection. George Hawtin has given beautiful expression to this precious truth in his article, THE CHRIST LIFE. He writes: "Every man and every woman will have to face the cross. If there be no cross, neither will there be a crown. We will have to face it in our own lives and, if I am not mistaken, we will have to face it every day we live. 'For to me to live is Christ, and to DIE is gain' (Phil. 1:21). Death to ourselves will be the greatest death we ever die. This death will never be accomplished by our vain struggling and trying, but it will be accomplished in that blessed hour when the Holy Spirit reveals to our hearts the truth that He revealed to Paul: 'I AM CRUCIFIED with Christ.' The world itself cannot contain the full truth of this precious statement, 'I am crucified with Christ.' We will never GET crucified nor will we ever have faith to crucify ourselves. We will never go to an altar and accomplish this act by faith. The lesson we must learn, my earnestly seeking friend, is simply this: Before ever there was a world or a sinner in it, God Himself by His almighty power placed ALL MEN IN HIS SON JESUS CHRIST and then, having done so, He crucified Him and, when He crucified HIM, He also crucified ME, because I was in Him. 'When HE crucified His Son, He crucified YOU, because He had placed you in Him. All this took place before the foundation of the world. All men died IN ADAM and, because all men died in Adam, ALL MEN live IN CHRIST, because God has placed all men in Him. 'For as in Adam ALL die, even so in Christ shall ALL be made alive' (I Cor. 15:22). 'But,' you ask, 'why is it then that all men are not saved?' The truth is that all men are saved, but all men have not yet believed, because God has not yet opened their eyes. All Christians are crucified with Him, but few, oh so few, have ever been told that crucifixion is an accomplished reality ---accomplished by God Himself and left for us to accept and believe. Once the believer grasps this truth and seizes upon it by faith, then he understands that all of the old carnal realm with all its terrifying specters was a paper tiger, an alarming, petrifying panic, a phantom, a dead lion, no more real than a nightmare. My brother, my sister, in that good and glorious moment when you see God by His almighty power placing ALL MEN IN CHRIST, yea, even before the world began, and, having done so, He sent Him to the cross to be crucified, then you will know that, when Christ was crucified, YOU were crucified, for you were in Him. Then you will join with Paul and every participant of the revelation, saying, 'I AM CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST.' Then you will be able for the first time in your life to RECKON YOURSELF DEAD UNTO SIN, BUT ALIVE UNTO GOD" --- end quote.
A most wonderful and significant event, completely passed over by the vast majority of Christians, occurred at the time of the crucifixion of our Lord. In the purposes of God extending from Paradise lost to Paradise regained, the time came when all three of the characters (God, Adam, the serpent involved in the ancient drama in Eden MUST meet again --- this time AT THE CROSS! You will understand a great truth when you see how it is that Christ, Adam, and the serpent ALL MET AT THE CROSS. Let me unfold for you this deep and blessed mystery which transpired on the hill called Calvary. Yes, Christ, the manifestation of God in flesh, the consciousness of God in our spirit, was present there at Calvary. But Adam was also there in flesh, old Adam, the self-consciousness of man in the soul---he was not there in the flesh of Jesus (the last Adam), but represented in the flesh of one of the thieves crucified WITH HIM. Furthermore, the serpent was there, that ancient serpent, the power of the carnal mind, the law of sin and death in our members--this serpent was manifested in the flesh of the other thief crucified WITH CHRIST. Three and a half years prior to this event Jesus had encountered the serpent in the wilderness of Judea, the temptation came in these subtle words, "IF THOU BE THE SON OF GOD, command that these stones be made bread" (Mat. 4:3). And now, on mount Calvary, while drinking in obedience to the Father the last bitter dregs from the cup of suffering and death, the satanic voice is heard once more taunting Him through the lips of this jeering malefactor: "IF THOU BE THE CHRIST, save Thyself and us!" (Lk. 23:39). Eby
Today there are those precious ones that are called in this age to share Christ, His Cup and His Cross and how blessed I am to know a small handful He has given to me. It is these that continue to carry all mankind within them as they "fill up that which is lacking." These surely are the "saviours on the mount" spoken of in Obediah. From Christ slain before the foundation, to Calvary, to the present day, they know and experience "the Wheels within the Wheel." They have been chosen to ride upon God's awesome chariot. This is also my Merkabah, the flaming chariot of fire, and it is Christ that drives it through the Cross and into Resurrection Glory.
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church Col 1:24
Oh, how I love Him today,
Jack
( I added a few words to these excerpted
forum messages for continuity sake)
