And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars: and she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered. And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born. And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne. Rev 12:1-5Now the Jew's feast of tabernacles was at hand .... then went he also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret. John 7:2,10
In our last blog we looked at these scriptures quoted above in part, as applied to the events of the world and also to that which we are witnessing as far as the signs in the heaven above. I wrote, "I am not much on external signs, but with a peripheral view of my single eye for Christ I do notice the current events of our tumultuous world."
So today lest we ever lose sight of the greatest of events taking place, we must refocus inward where Christ and His Glorious Kingdom ever cometh in greater measure until all our days and earthly dimensions are used up (Luk 17:20,21). There is I believe fast approaching, the time when we will no longer look through a glass darkly but we will see Him as He is even as within a mirror (1Cr 13:12). The path to such fulfilment is an inward journey and very much a hidden journey. In one measure it seems to be such a long sojourn as we suffer the corruption and fallen state of this world where it's temporal treasures when garnered only fade with disappointment. Praise God, for even in a deeper measure, on our journey home, we often savor a foretaste of God's resurrected glory that is released in a myriad of objects and events that make up creation. And we can thank God for those very special and perfectly appointed times of supernal enjoyment that cause us to hunger and thirst for the whole of the world raised in Him ...... a place where every sorrow and tear of heartbreak is ever forgotten as it is replaced with a supernal and indescribable joy.
Also within our sojourn what great wonder and comfort we experience, as we come to realize that the deepest judgements we suffer along with the most glorious victories we enjoy are shared by our Christ. These shared events, that make up His works, are very special because they have been detailed and designed for only you.
Yes, of wonder of wonders, Jesus in precious intimacy shares all that we experience. As the Man of Sorrows, Jesus carries our pain. As the Lord, Mighty in Battle our Lord stands strong within us. As the restorer of Peace, our Prince give us rest in the midst of tribulation. As Faith's Author,Finisher and the Way in between , our Christ is the friend that sticks close, never forsaking us. As the Deliverer with an arm not short, the King of Kings procures and shares our victories with unspeakable joy. As the Resurrection, the the Little Lambkin slain raises us from our death. And finally in the consummation of every thing, Christ Jesus, the Fullness of God in Creation carries us within Himself, as He sits upon the throne as God Almighty, where we become as One and as All.
I know something of this Jesus today but I thrill to know more of Him tomorrow. My greatest hope is to be raptured and consumed in awe and joy, when He is finally All I Know.
Lastly, a most amazing aspect, of these designed and shared events of our lives, is that they were ordained before the foundations. Then, while in Christ, we viewed our appointed lives from different and fulfilled perspective as the Cross was raised in the the Heart of God. Because we saw the glorious resultant end of our walk on earth we sang and shouted with joy. So shall we again, and even today.
"When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy" Job 38:7
Jesus is not a "sow a go man" but a "Sow and Grow Man." He sows Himself within us as the smallest seed and waits as a silent and suffering servant until we are quickened to Him who is buried deep within us. Then He shines, waters and tills the soil we are made of, until that seed He planted within us grows up to become the Greatest of All Trees, under which we and all creation find rest. This Jesus is the Small Seed. He is the Caring Gardner. And He is the the Great Tree of Life that grows up from within and then covers us. He is that which was inside that becomes also the outside.
The Kingdom of God is like a great circle where Jesus is not only the beginning and the end but the perfect and raised expression of the whole. In the highest and deepest realm of Christ there is neither beginning nor end, as both past and future have already taken place. When we can accept that our end in Christ, has already occurred even before the birth of our earthly sojourn, then we shall not fear death. I read hardly anything from the extra books outside the cannon, but this quote stood up and caught my attention yesterday.
"Blessed is the man who reaches the beginning; he will know the end, and will not taste death!" Book of Thomas
I do believe there is a place to be realized, where we will find ourselves amidst the peoples of the world and with the Shekinah Gory abounding from us, we will proclaim that we have returned from our beginning. We will point to that which clothes us and which never spots nor grows old as the clean robes of our Christ Jesus. We will share how we have found rest and joy in Christ's love from everlasting to everlasting. Then men and woman and children of all races and backgrounds will desire to know this Jesus, the Christ. What a day this shall be! Let the trump sound even today!
"Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in My holy mountain ...." Joel 2:1
"Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." 1Cor15:51,51
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"In the days when the seventh angel is ready to blow his trumpet, the mystery of God will be completed, as he had made this Good News known to his servants, the prophets." Rev 10:7
"For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church." Eph 5:31,32
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I certainly didn't expect to write all the above this morning, as I was feeling a tad bit battered when I awoke. As I contemplated going back to bed and pulling the covers over my head I thought, "No, I am close to empty but there is still a few grains of meal in the barrel and a splash oil in the cruse so in a gift of worship I shall write. If there was none that ever read my words I am convinced I would still type them for He whom I love above all. For me writing has become worship.
So finally we get back to the lead in scriptures quoted again at the top of this blog. I thought of how the greater Truth of all scripture is to be found as it is applied to the Kingdom within. In the last post I pointed to the signs in the heavens as proclaiming the events of Revelation 12 and then shared how we as sons, much unobserved by the world, secretly make our way to the Feast of Tabernacles as did Jesus two millenia ago.
With out belaboring the point much further it seemed the Holy Spirit brought to my attention a message, from that, which I believe is probably the most anointed and maybe the most important writing one could read from our book list on SONSHINE. I speak of and share from "The Antichrist in Man" by Joseph Salmon. With this quoted below, I believe Salmon shares the deeper and greater truth of Revelation 12. Scripture can be demonstrated in the stars and even in the world about us, but lest it take place within us it is of no account or benefit, as we grow up into the Head which be Christ. I pray this excerpt blesses you and give you a taste of this remarkable writing recorded in the year 1647.
"That man that will view the breadth and length of a city at once, must not always be walking around in the streets; but he must assay to get up to the top of some mountain that lies above it, and so the city shall be discovered to him, with its breadth and length. Even so it is with the spiritual Babel, which is in you, O Man! even the wisdom of the flesh. You must be taken above it, before you can truly and really discover it."
".......St. John tells us, Rev. 12:7, that when the woman had brought forth her manchild, which was to rule all nations with a rod of iron, the woman upon the birth of this manchild fled into the wilderness. And when the woman was in the wilderness, then says John, I saw war in heaven, Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels (and what's all this to me?). Truly Christian, methinks this war in heaven is a sure symptom of the day of the judgment, the end of this world in us, when God by His own power brought forth this man Jesus in us, and has given Him power to rule and reign in this woman, or weak passive Christian. The soul presently upon the birth or bringing forth of Jesus in it, is immediately in a wilderness, or lost in itself, and lies as one amazed at this sudden work of the Lord. In this bewildered condition of the creature, Satan he gages war upon it, shoots his fiery darts at it, pursues the woman with Herod, and seeks to devour both Christ and the Christian also.
Now therefore Christian, know that your soul is this heaven, where the great battle is fought. You being in a lost bewildered estate, as not knowing which way to escape the woundings of Satan, and the fiery darts of the wicked, but stand as a senseless, lifeless mark for your spiritual enemies to shoot at. But Michael your spiritual prince, Christ Jesus, He fights for you against the dragon, that whore, that Antichrist, that labors to devour you, so that you are the poor passive that lies stone still, while the serpent stings you, and the dragon exercises his cruelty upon you, till at last this Michael, our Prince Christ Jesus, has by His own power and strength, cast out, and so routed this dragon, this old serpent, vs. 9, that now his place is no more found in heaven or in your soul. Thus you may see Christ judging the whore, this serpent in you, insomuch, that now this loud voice is uttered from the heaven, or the soul of the saint, as in vs. 10: "Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ." Whereas before, nothing but the dreadful voice of hell, wrath, anger, fury and judgment; nothing but wars and rumors of wars heard in your soul. Yet now the day is come, Christ is come to judgement in us, and has condemned the whore in us. Now the voice of salvation is heard in you, whereas before you apprehended God, as David did sometimes to have shot the arrows of his wrath at you, and to have battered your soul in pieces, by the thundering cannon of his wrath. Yet now you see there is a cessation of these tumults in you, and now you see that sweet messenger of God, the eternal Spirit, drawing near towards you with its white flag of peace, joy, comfort, and salvation, bringing comfort unto you by telling you your warfare is accomplished, your iniquity is pardoned, and you have received double at the Lord's hands for all your sins, (and then further) now strength is come also, which is another part of the voice of heaven, alas how feeble and how weak, faint, and unable was the soul before the spiritual resurrection of it? for the birth of this child Jesus in it, is the regeneration, or new birth of the Christian.
The wilderness the woman fled into is that mortified dead, lost estate of a Christian; the grave where the soul is buried to every living action. And the overcoming or conquering of the dragon, or the spiritual serpent, the wisdom of the flesh; is the resurrection of the saint, or that spiritual day of judgment of the whore in us. Now as Jesus raised up Himself by the power of the Father from out of the bowels of the earth, so by the strength and power of this Jesus, who is the resurrection and the life, a Christian rises out of this dead condition; and so her mortal putting on immortality, and corruption putting on incorruption, here is death swallowed up in victory. The Christian now as he has formerly been planted with Christ in the likeness of His death; so likewise now in the likeness of His resurrection. It bears now no longer the image of the first dead Adam, but is risen in the likeness of Christ, out of earth and flesh, which formerly he was involved and buried in, and by his rising again, overcomes the dragon by the blood of the Lamb, kills the great Goliath, the wisdom of the flesh, and this is all by the strength of the strongman Christ Jesus who is entered into this temple, or the heart of man, and silences all these earthly rumors and commotions in him; and also is the second part of the voice from heaven fulfilled, now is come not only salvation but strength.
And then thirdly, the Kingdom of God, that's come also, and the power of His Christ. Our Savior taught His disciples while He was in the flesh, and knew Him only after the flesh; I say, He taught them to pray, "Thy kingdom come," so that the kingdom of Christ, in that sense, was not yet come to the disciples. Even so it is with every poor Christian that has attained to no more knowledge than the flesh of Christ can teach them, that do not know Christ any other ways, than by the beholding of His fleshly substance, as Christians do in all outward and fleshly ordinances, that see no more or know no more of Christ, than bread, water and wine, and outward forms and order can teach them. The Kingdom of God is not come to them yet. While the woman was in the wilderness, the Kingdom of God was not come in her; but when she, by the strength of God was risen, and had overcome by the blood of the Lamb; then she cried, "now the kingdom of God is come." The woman was fed in the wilderness, vs. 6. In our low and lost estate, God feeds us with milk; because the kingdom of God, Christ in the measure of the Spirit, is not yet come to enable us to bear stronger meats. In the wilderness or weak condition of the saints, God feeds them with manna; but when He brings them into Canaan, He then compasses them about with the flowings of milk and honey.
This Canaan, is Christ, the true rest of a Christian, the kingdom of the Father in the saints, who draws up the soul from these low dispensations, by degrees, as it were, till he has seated it in Himself, into spiritual discoveries of His excellency; so that now the soul prays no more in the imbecility of the flesh, "Thy kingdom come," seeks no longer in fleshly forms and ordinances for the kingdom; for it is already in them, and they live in the enjoyment of it. Now is come salvation and strength, and the kingdom of God, and the power of His Christ. The dragon and his angels, they fought to establish their kingdom in the soul; but the Lamb overcame them, and set up His kingdom in the Christian; and the kings of the earth as namely, the powers of the creature bring all their glory and honor into it."
"Thus you see that the whore shall be destroyed, in the last day, at the second coming of Christ in us"
All Glory be to Jesus, the Loving Conqueror of our souls.
Jack & Joian
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