WE MURDER TO DISSECT

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A couple posts back Florian and I were trading some comments and I gave an account of the one time in my life when I tried to prophesy. Tonight I am reminded of another of my faux paus. This has to do with another occurrence in this same church. It took place when they finally let me take the pulpit on a Sunday morning to give the message.

I studied and prepared for weeks and I was as a cat on a hot tin roof when I walked up to that stage to preach my first ever Church sermon. I mean I was anything thing but comfortable and little did I know that my lack of comfort would grow with each sentence of my well prepared message.

Now, you talk about a lack of anointing. Sheeesh! I put on a first rate demonstration of such, that Sunday. Today I can still, remember looking out into the congregation that morning and thinking how astounded these people are with my performance or lack there of. If I thought I was uncomfortable, they would have found hell more agreeable than having to sit through such a lackluster diatribe as I was giving. With sweat rolling off my brow and my shirt soaked I was searching hard through the crowd for just one receptive face. It was then that I caught a glimpse of my wife. She looked absolutely mortified as she gave me the slashing motion of "hand cutting throat" which we all know, means cut it off ....... cut it off now!

I went on to preach for twenty more minutes. LOL

Today I look back and stand in wonderment of God's grace as he kept me from being swallowed up by the organized church. I could preach powerfully in the jails and prisons and be immensely blessed with my work with different factions of societies outcasts, but in a church meeting or an organized church function things always seem to go south when I ministered. Truly, as with Moses it would take decades on the back side of the mountain before I would learn that I can do nothing in my own strength but only when I am weak does God move. So it was today as a I awoke from a few days where the Heavens seemed as brass and I languished in some harsh depression. I have been through enough of these seasons to know that oft before the dawn of newness of life come the darkest of times where we are emptied of a little more of self and a little more of our strength. I know many of you dear saints know of this pattern.

So this morning I awoke a with a new joy in my heart. However I was suffering a different kind of pain and it was an underlying discomfort that I knew would only find it's release by writing about my precious Jesus. This morn I really had a topic in mind but as I started to gather material I found my heart stirred toward a different direction. This was caused by a couple of messages I read by our friends Cardinal and Florian. Joian and I have always desired to find ways to allow our brethren to share so I love it when such opportunities arise as they do within the framework of the following message which I will begin with a quote from Wordsworth.

"We murder to dissect."

How often over the last year have I seen, with many, a desire to dissect God and more so Jesus with the end result being the belittling of the Atoning work of our Lord and Saviour. These confused souls divide Christ Jesus, to where they claim it is not "Jesus the Man" we are to cherish and give preeminence to. Do they not know, Christ Jesus is the "God Man" and the dissecting of "Jesus" from the "Christ", is surely but part of the procedure of the lowering of the Son of God and the elevating of one's own self. With this, does one not crucify Christ anew? I believe so as "they murder to dissect!" If there is one overriding principle that has been forefront from the beginning with regard to my theology, it would be "the preeminence of Jesus Christ." I can remember my good friend Mike, in whose home I first met Jesus, tell me early on, "it's all about Jesus." Those four words have stuck with me for thirty five years. They have served me well and I know of no greater measure of Truth, even today.

I believe one of the simplest ways to discern error and truth of a message or messenger is to see if there is preeminence given to Christ Jesus. Lately I have seen much undo emphasis being placed on our relationship with the Father by some that try to cut the Father from the Son. This downgrade of the Son and elevation of the Father at Jesus expense is accomplished with the seemingly innocuous exercise of dividing the Son of Man from the Son of God and also the separation of the Christ from the figure of Jesus. I even warned one our readers a couple weeks ago that this exercise is often the beginning of slippery slope that usually doesn't end well. From this point of separating, often the Cross and Atonement are frequently downsized and Jesus becomes little more than another Master alongside the Master's of the other world religions. I have seen it too often and it truly is heartbreaking to watch the first steps taken into complete apostasy. As we tread the last days of this age I often exclaim that it certainly doesn't take long for one to slip into darkness.

Now, I really don't worry too much whether someone takes more of the orthodox "Trinitarian" view or professes more "Oneness" as some time ago God spoke into my heart a profound word about trying to understand the mystery of the Godhead. He enlightened me with the thought of, "what is "one" compared to "three" or for that matter what is "nought" or "all." What are increments and what is the value of a number in the Kingdom of Heaven where the Infinite holds sway."
That did it for me!

Great logicians and mathematicians have shown us over and over that some things cannot be conceived and that there are truths that lie beyond that which we can prove. When ever logic becomes our god, then there is no God as our union is broken into two.

So it is with me, that I refuse to divide the Father from the Son and make them two. I believe only that the Father is Jesus outside the ages. and Jesus is the perfect expression of the Father within the cosmos. That makes it simple and simple is good as our Lord demonstrated such when He held a little child in his arms, and declared, "of such is the kingdom of Heaven."
Jesus also said, "I and the Father are one."

I occasionally peek in on a forum where Florian has been trading thoughts with a person that has for a couple of years tried to downgrade Jesus by separating Him from the Father. This message excerpt by our brother blessed me this morning and I believe it echos some of my thoughts on the Son of God.

"Our sonship has its origin in the Eternal Sonship of the Only Begotten One. Man was made in God's Image- this Image is Christ. He is the Blueprint and all things were made in Him.

When man fell he fell short of the Glory (Nature) of God and became blind to the Father's Heart and true Nature, while through the devils deception he developed a mythological 'god' in his carnal mind (that's the essence of sin, which is called the offense of the world/cosmos.) bringing forth works of lawlessness (another term for sin, which is called failure or missing the mark in the Greek.)

Man was absolutely blind to the Father, worshiping all kinds of idols. Only One Who lived in the fellowship with Father could bring the Truth about Him to us. All the prophets, angels and so on could not do it, for whatever message they brought mankind twisted and perverted it. That's why the Incarnation was necessary.

The Son entered our fallness, refusing to believe in our mythological deity, holding on to His knowledge of the Father's Heart, holding on to it even unto death. And when He rose He raised all humanity back into its original home- Father's Heart. When Christ returned in the power of Holy Spirit He came to take us where He is , in the Father, Who is our Home.

This wouldn't have been possible if Jesus was only a man like us, but is actually the whole point of Him coming in the flesh (our darkness), sharing His knowledge of Abba's Heart with us right in our mess.

We could post scriptures without end on this topic and I could post a whole book of scriptures that show that even in the OT there was a understanding of the Eternal Nature of the Son. But its not my point to convince anyone ........

In the end its all about Father's Love, and I have come to believe that Father is not a title, but the essential Being of God. Which in my opinion means He must have always have a Son. In other words there was never a time when He was just God, but He was always Father. I know I might get some flak for this but this is what has been revealed to me." (Florian)

Later on in the morning, after Florian's message, I would read this by Cardinal as she shares, in her unique way, the workings of Jesus Christ in us.

Another interesting hair -splitting is He told me when I first came to Him as I was reading the Word one day, that I was not actually learning these things as if thru my own mind's works, but rather that He in me was remembering who He was in the heavenly realm, and allowing me the co-knowledge of it as it came, thus He quickens our mortal bodies at the same time.

So we don't know what we will be like when He appears, but we know we will be like Him. He descended into us as we were formed in our mother's wombs and took on the same spirit of forgetfulness as we did to "sleep" in the dust realm of mortality. If He didn't then Christ in us would be fully manifested from birth, instead of a seed that has to be fed, watered and grown into maturity in us.

He also told me at that time, all these years ago, that He had "set" the time, just like we set an alarm clock, that He would begin to awaken more and raise up in us, in the 7th day, just as we get up off our beds. The Head has to raise up first as it's a physical impossibility to get up off your bed (out of the grave of this body) without your head raising up first.

As the HS had come upon Mary and she had brought forth the Son, so we would birth the Word also. He is literally turning us inside out, like a garment. (Card)

Jesus (Yah-shuah) is His name. "Yah-shuah" means Yah (the Father) is salvation. Yah incarnates to redeem us. The Father in Jesus comes and suffers our fate and I believe He does so even today. Oh, how He loves us, never to forsake us but sharing all that we experience.

In closing, I pray the next time you see someone trying hard to separate the Father from the Son by some vain reasoning or intellectual treatise you might ask, "does this person give preeminence to Jesus or is he or she downsizing our Lord and Saviour with their message?"
It's often subtle but the Spirit is capable of showing us when one is spiritually murdering to dissect. The carnal mind loves the business of dissecting and thus also, the death that comes with it.

Oh that we should learn the simplest truths of our walk; that when we embrace and give Jesus preeminence in our lives He gives to us in return, the unfathomable depths of the Father's love toward us. So, so simple yet so hidden from the proud and the wise of this world.

Yours in our sweet Lord Jesus,

Joian & Jack

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