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"Teaching the things concerning the kingdom of God..."
FROM THE CANDLESTICK TO THE THRONE
Part 112
THE SOUNDING OF THE
TRUMPETS
(continued)
And he opened the bottomless pit;
and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit (Rev.
9:2).
The bottomless pit or the
abyss signifies the human heart! As soon as the abyss is unlocked it
begins to belch forth columns of dirty blue-black smoke just like the smoke of a great
furnace. This smoke displays a movement, a
tendency coming out of the abyss. It is that which comes forth from the deceitful nature
of the heart, for the heart of man is deceitful
above all things, and desperately
wicked (Jer. 17:9). There are indeed wicked, vile, and
corrupt things that come out of the heart, as Jesus makes plain in Matthew 7:18-23. In
this writing, however, we want to look at the deceit of the heart and the things that arise from
that deceit. The deceitfulness of the human heart was
first revealed amidst the mysterious mists of the long ago Eden. God
had told Adam that if he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he would die. The
serpent disagreed and said, You shall not surely die! Eve,
Paul tells us, was deceived by the serpent! Adam
then followed her in her transgression. Can we not see by this that the whole
dreadful realm of sin, sorrow, darkness, error, and death came through deception! Satan
was a liar right from that earliest beginning! The deception caused man to become
joined to the delusion that is in the lie! Adams consciousness of himself, of
God, and of the true nature of all things, was now birthed in a lie, and joined in both
mind and body to the dust realm instead of the spirit realm he became separated from God
in his thinking, speaking, and acting. A few of the many things that arise out of the
deceitfulness of the heart are ego, thoughts, imaginations, desires, perceptions,
attitudes, interpretations, ideas, concepts, suggestions, opinions, propositions, and
divinations. All these, and more, constitute the smoke that
arises out of the pit!
Smoke is a cruel enemy that fills the
air with darkness and penetrates the lungs of men and women, filling them with deadly
gases, cutting off the oxygen supply, and endangering their lives. It
is the deceitfulness of the heart by which the truth of God is turned
into a lie, and it was by that lie
that man lost his life! The
smoke ascending out of the pit is the lie! It is the lie about God, the lie about
truth, the lie about reality, the lie about ourselves. It
is the human consciousness, the natural mans distorted perception, analysis, and
definition of all things, pouring forth out of the abyss in thought, word, and expression.
THE SUN AND THE AIR DARKENED
So
thick and murky is that smoke that it blots out the light of the sun of the glorious, illuminating truth of Christ,
and darkens the air of
our spiritual understanding, causing men to find themselves alienated from the life of
God. The
very atmosphere in which man moves is made fuzzy by the smoke, permeated with that
negative energy which is borne along with the thoughts, imaginations, perceptions,
concepts, words, and actions and becomes an oppressive atmosphere for all who walk in that
realm.
It is interesting to note that the pit
didnt have real fire, only strange fire! It
does not say that the smoke came from real fire, only that it was as the
smoke of a great furnace. The
smoke appears to be from a great furnace, a great power, but as
the smoke denotes that it had characteristics like the smoke from a furnace, but it
was merely a figure of speech, a parabolic comparison. The
power behind the smoke is not what it appears to be, it is not real power, but a facade, an imagination, an
illusion. This clearly reveals that the smoke is a
deception, a false idea of the power of darkness. When
the man of sin is revealed within us there arises a smoke out of the abyss of our heart as of the smoke of a great furnace. There
is no furnace, but the smoke is a symbol as of the
smoke of a furnace. The
sun and the air are darkened, the smoke clouds our perception of reality, the
understanding of the spiritual realm of Gods heavens is obscured by the smoke, it
creates a smoke-screen, creating the inability to think clearly or understand
spiritually. It is the deceitfulness of the heart
smothering the understanding until we cannot see the truth of Christ. The
air is the realm of the firmament, or a dimension of heaven; therefore the air signifies
the spiritual atmosphere, and the spiritual atmosphere of the realm where we walk in God
becomes darkened by the smoke of the pit. The atmosphere or world of the carnal mind is
darkened by the smoke, clouding the thinking, impairing the vision, veiling mans
perceptions of spiritual realities until he can see neither where he is or where he is
going. Simply put, it is carnal
understanding! It is spiritual
darkness!
If you go to a bar there is an
atmosphere there. If you go to a brothel there is an
atmosphere there. If you go to a rock concert there is an
atmosphere there. If you go to a museum there is an
atmosphere there. If you hike in the mountains there is an
atmosphere there. If you go to a Baptist church service
there is an atmosphere there. If you go to a Pentecostal church
service there is an atmosphere there. The atmosphere at a Catholic mass is
altogether different from the atmosphere at a Charismatic meeting. Every
realm has its atmosphere! When you enter the presence of a son of
God who knows the truth as it is in Jesus, who walks in the wisdom of the mind of Christ,
who expresses the unconditional love of God, and dwells in the glory of God there
is a clear, powerful, victorious, confident, peaceful, transforming atmosphere there!
Plutarch, the great Greek biographer,
once wrote, I had rather a great deal men should say there was no such man at all as
Plutarch than that they should say there was one Plutarch that would eat his children as
soon as they were born. He preferred to have men deny his
existence rather than have them hold an unworthy conception of his character. Carrying
this thought into the spiritual realm we may raise the question as to whether it would be
more pleasing to God to
have His existence denied or to have men hold a distorted and unworthy conception of His
character. We may not be able to answer that
proposition with certainty, but the fact is that in this world far vaster multitudes of
men hold distorted and unworthy concepts of God than deny His existence! There
are fewer atheists in the world than religious folk who continually malign and slander the
character of our heavenly Father!
It is helpful to understand how men in
ancient times viewed their God; the way in which they conceived of Him who created them. Would
that we could go back to those ancient days in India or China or Japan and see the hideous
idols with their grimacing countenances, their devouring teeth, their many arms and sharp
claws, something of the devouring, hateful nature of their deities or go back to
the cruel Assyrians or Babylonians or Egyptians and the monstrosities, the tyrannies,
which they worshipped as gods. The people of Israel knew that there was
only one true and living God Yahweh. But the idea that God was a loving God
was alien to them for the most part. Until Jesus came even they did not know
the heart of the Father! They knew God according to the Law. To
them God was Yahweh, the Law-giver; harsh, demanding, and vindictive, throwing lightning
bolts off of Sinai. Yet, there was a reason why God did not
reveal the fullness of His nature to them at the beginning! In
the day when God called Abraham the world was mad, licentious, idolatrous, intensely and
irrevocably evil as far from God, truth, and righteousness as it is possible to go. When
you have a son, a prison, or a culture that is in a state of rebellion, riot, or civil
war, wildly and hopelessly out of control, you must first, before anything else, restore
order! You have to get
their attention! Then, when order is restored, you can
proceed to show favor and restore or rehabilitate them. That
is what God did with Israel through the law! He brought forth in the earth a people
whom He saved from the utter corruption of the civilization of that day, and wisely He did
so with a strong hand! They
werent ready for the next step yet Jesus. In
the fullness of time God sent forth His Son! The
Old Testament world stood before the thought of God as we sometimes stand before a summer
thunder-storm black, flashing with lightning, crashing with thunder, terrible and
awesome and with fear they bowed in the dust. They conceived that God was exacting
and full of wrath. God punished people and destroyed all
His enemies. But that God loved them? God
would accept their sacrifices, certainly. God would even put up with them, and
they would propitiate Him and appease Him (or so they thought!), but they did not in most
cases truly love God!
But
have we really made that much progress? The same beloved John who wrote so
extensively of Gods marvelous love left us this solemn warning, Little
children, keep yourselves from idols (that is, false gods, or false ideas and
representations of the true God) (I Jn. 5:21). Do
we have false ideas about God? I fear we do! Most
Christians say that God is all-wise, all-knowing, and all-powerful, and then turn around
and deny it. They say that God so loved the
world and that Jesus is the Saviour of all men and the Saviour of
the world and then turn around and say that only a few will be saved while God sends
the vast majority to suffer the excruciating pains of fire and brimstone for all eternity
without His feeling any concern for their suffering totally impotent to win them to
Himself, and eternally without mercy! They affirm that God is all-powerful,
and then turn around and say that God has provided salvation for all men, that
God is trying to save the world, that God is pleading with men to
repent, but that dirty old devil who blinds and possesses mens souls is so much more
powerful than God that he will carry away captive into eternal hell countless billions of
men for whom Christ died! More preachers major on hell and
damnation than emphasize His all-encompassing love, His ever-enduring mercy, and His great
and glorious purpose of the ages. Not only does such a message not reach
mens hearts with the goodness of God that leads men to repentance, but multitudes of
Christians live under a sense of sin-consciousness, condemnation,
and fear of God, ministered to them by the preachers!
Little children, keep yourselves
from false ideas of God. False
ideas about God! How the world and the church are filled
with them! Many who read these lines have gone
through several rounds of smashing idols, false images of the Almighty, and will probably
continue to drop false ideas until Christ is fully formed in them. Many
people view God as a schoolboy did:
the sort of person who is always snooping
around to see if anyone is enjoying himself and then trying to stop it. Then
others make God out to be a tyrant, or a vengeful, wrath-filled FIEND. But
the Bible knows no such God! No more terrible insult was given to the
God of all grace who came in Jesus Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not
imputing their trespasses unto them. The story is told about a little girl. After
she had heard her father preach a sermon on the awful wrath of God, and that the unsaved
would go to a red-hot, sizzling, burning hell the moment they died, and that they would
twist in agony and torment forever, without mercy, this little girl said, I wish
Jesus were as good and kind as my father. God does bring judgment upon sinners
swift, strong, effective, corrective judgment but never meaningless, sadistic torture. All
such crude notions are just SMOKE OUT OF THE PIT WHICH DARKENS THE SUN AND THE AIR!
More than two and a half centuries ago
there echoed through the halls of Americas churches the voice of a dynamic and
prolific evangelist. His name was Jonathan Edwards. The
sermon for which he was most famous drew hundreds down the aisles, weeping and trembling
in fear, caused by his vivid descriptions of their alleged fate. His
famous sermon was called Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. It
happened on the evening of July the eighth, 1741, in a rural church house in Enfield,
Connecticut. Tradition has it that
Jonathan Edwards was substitute speaker that evening. Since
communication was rather slow in those days, it was always a good idea for a visiting
preacher to keep a just-in-case sermon ready at all times, even if he wasnt
scheduled to speak. The spare sermon in Edwards
saddlebag proved useful when the scheduled speaker for the evening failed to show.
When Edwards strode into the pulpit that
night to deliver his sermon, the congregation had no idea what they were about to witness. Neither
did they know that the words they were about to hear would drive them to their knees in
gut-rending fear! There is no doubt that that message
caused many a nightmare and sleepless night. The sinner, Edwards explained, is
clutched in Gods outstretched hand, hanging by a frayed thread over the flames of
hell raging beneath him, with God standing ready to snip the thread at the slightest
provocation, sending the sinner plummeting into the excruciating agony of the endless
flames. The audience was assured that one day
God most assuredly will release
His grip, and the sinner, screaming and kicking, will plummet helplessly into the
torturous depths of eternal hell fire.
So vivid was Edwards description
of the horrible fate awaiting any who had sin in their lives, the parishioners could
almost feel the heat, see the smoke, and smell the sulfurous stench of hells
vengeful flames. Stephen Williams, who witnessed the
occasion, wrote that before the sermon was finished
there was a great moaning and
crying out through the whole house. One cried, What must I do to be
saved? Another lamented, Oh, I am going
to hell! And yet another wailed, Oh, what
shall I do for Christ? Williams said the shrieks and
cries were piercing and amazing. The people were absolutely shot through with STARK, NAKED FEAR! I do not hesitate to tell you
that these are false ideas about God! THIS
IS SMOKE OUT OF THE PIT OF THE DECEPTIVE HEART OF CARNAL-MINDED MAN, DARKENING THE SUN OF
GODS GLORY AND THE AIR OF SPIRITUAL UNDERSTANDING!
David Wilkerson once wrote, Ive
known families in which the children cowered in the presence of a hard, mean, abusive
father. They played happily until their dad came
home. But
when they saw him come through the door, they ran straight to their mother and clutched
her apron. I never saw them go near their father,
except when he demanded something of them. They never crawled into his lap or asked
to be hugged. They dreaded being in his presence. I
believe this is one powerful reason why so many Christians dont want to get close to
their heavenly Father. They dread drawing near to Him because
they sense theyve failed Him somehow. They have a nagging feeling they havent
measured up to His standard, theyve done things wrong. All
they can conceive of Him is that Hes full of consuming fire, ready to judge and
condemn them. Thats not His nature! We
cant judge our heavenly Father by the measure of our human fathers. Thats
not who He is! The question for all of us today is, how
can we not want to be near a Father who writes love letters to us
who tells us He
yearns to be with us
whos always ready to embrace us
who says He has
nothing but good thoughts about us
who assures us, Behold, what manner of love
the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God!
The sons of God have been called to
proclaim a full salvation, a salvation that includes every man that has ever lived, and
every man that ever shall live! God is raising up in us, His
firstfruits, His full salvation salvation in spirit, soul, and body! That
is the fullness of the full salvation! Full salvation you dont
hear that preached in the churches today. They have what they call Full
Gospel but in reality it is only about one-tenth gospel. Its
not full its full of something, but not gospel! Gospel
means GOOD NEWS. What you get in
most so-called gospels today is a little bit of good news, and the rest is You
better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, Im telling you why
Jesus Christ is coming and is He mad! So
you get one-tenth good news and nine-tenths bad news, and they call that FULL GOSPEL. No
its not!
It is time to come aside from the crude
beliefs that teach myths to children in Sunday School, showing them pictures of the devil
with horns and his demons around him shoveling coals into a fire, with people screaming
and the fire never going out. They picture God up in the sky, with a
long white beard and angels with wings and halos, floating on clouds and playing harps. This
picture of God and heaven is as primitive as the mother in Africa who sacrifices her new
born baby to appease an angry god! Oh, yes! MORE
SMOKE OUT OF THE PIT!
Those of us who grew up in a legalistic
religious system, know that many times sin was preached about on Sunday morning, Sunday
night, and Wednesday night. Sin was preached good and long and hard
and loud, and we came away with a sin-consciousness. But
a careful study of the New Testament makes plain that the power of Jesus Christ and His
blood removes even theconsciousness of
sin! For
the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can
never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers
thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to
be offered? Because that the worshippers once purged should
have no more conscience (consciousness) of sins. But
this man (Jesus), after He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God. Whereof
the Holy Ghost also is a witness to us: for after that He had said before, Their sins and
iniquities will I remember no more. Now
where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin (Heb. 10:1-18).
God has given us a new mind, even the
mind of Christ! Christ has made an end of sin, He has
taken away sin, He has borne all our iniquities, because of His sacrifice for sins He no
longer remembers our sins and is not holding them over our head. The
mind of Christ in us will also take away our sin-consciousness! The
Holy Spirit is giving us a change of vision and anytime the scriptures speak of
vision they are talking about our understanding. One
of the greatest hindrances in the lives of the Lords people is double-mindedness. A
double minded man is unstable in all his ways (James 1:8). To
be double minded signifies a double vision. Its two visions at once. It
means a vacillating back and forth between the flesh and the spirit, between what God says
is true and what we feel in our emotions.
Double
minded people hear the word of God, experience the
moving of the Spirit, get all built up in the inner man, and then somebody gets up and
preaches about the devil, preaches about the weakness of the flesh, and begins to lay the
law on them, Dont do this, dont do that, and creates a whole
system of legalism, beating them to death with man-made rules and traditions, and their
victory is all swept away. In one
of his books, Philip Yancey tells the story of a prostitute with a drug habit who had
reached the end of her rope. She
knew she needed help desperately. Someone suggested that she go to church
and get help. This was her answer: Church? Why
would I ever go there? Im already feeling terrible about
myself. Theyd just make me feel worse! Oh,
yes! She
may have been a prostitute, but she knew more than most Christians about religious
sin-consciousness!
I read the testimony of a man who said,
Religion drove the fear of God into my heart. When
I head the term God Id
never break out into a smile or begin dancing. When someone mentioned God to me, I
recoiled in dread and my inner child would shrink. This was not surprising to me. God
had always been an enemy. Not just an enemy, but THE enemy! I
could run from my human enemies, but I had nowhere to hide from my Divine enemy. He
sees everything I was told as a child. He will find you wherever you may be! I
still remember the morning, twenty-one years ago, when my best friend was frantically
chased by his religious school teacher who set out to discipline him. The
frightened boy locked himself in the bathroom while his teacher yelled, God will get
you in the bathroom too! That day, as a six-year old child, I
learned that God hangs out even in the bathroom so that He can zap us at any given moment.
I can sympathize with that poor man! I
remember coming up as a little child under the legalistic teachings of the Pentecostal
church. I came from a Mennonite family, but my
parents had received the baptism in the Spirit and had left the Mennonite denomination. My
father became a Pentecostal preacher and was the pastor of our church. As
a young person there was very little we could do, because just about everything was
considered to be of the world. We werent permitted to go to
movies, dances, ball games, or even the county fair. Every
Friday they showed a movie at school. Admission was fifteen cents. I
skipped lunch one Friday and used my lunch money to go to the movie. It
was a dog story, something like Lassie Come Home or Rin-Tin-Tin. A
girl told my dad that she had seen me at the movie. I
had to get up in church on Sunday morning and publicly apologize to the congregation for
my sin and ask their forgiveness. We were told that we had to live right
and measure up to all the self-righteous standards of legalism, or we could not enter the
presence of the Lord. Oh! How
I longed to live in the presence of God! I had a heart after God from my earliest
memory. My soul cried out for reality, for life,
for glory. But the air was dark to me, the smoke
from the pit obscured the heavens and choked the life out of me! The
sun and the air were darkened because of my weaknesses and failures and the emphasis on
sin- consciousness and the law of condemnation made the heavens as brass and God seemed a
million miles away. In my imagination, in my vain, religious
imagination, I thought that somehow my Father couldnt love me because of what I knew
was in me, or He was judging me, I wasnt good enough for Him, I wasnt worthy
to stand in the glory of His presence or even worthy of His blessings. The
sun of Christs glory and the air of my spiritual understanding were darkened because
there was this man-made standard I had to live up to, and, of course, I always
failed!
Just a few weeks ago I received a letter
from a dear brother who shared his heart with me. He
wrote, I grieve for those who have gone all their lives trying to serve God, but
never coming to the reality of His life in them. Setting
their sights on dying to go to heaven. My
mother and father met in Bible School where they attended four years each. Then
they were missionaries for a while. They
were Holiness. They taught me all about God to the best
of their own knowledge. But it made me run from God! There
was no way anyone could live up to that outward standard. Those
in their church simply faked it, or else went insane trying to live the Christian
life in an outward manner. Now I realize this was all Gods
doing to show us the error of that way! I was never running from God, I was only
running from an erroneous concept of Him.
There
are hundreds of thousands, probably millions, around the world today who have experienced
physical abuse. This abuse comes most often from parents
or spouses. There are nearly the same amount who
have experienced sexual abuse. And millions more who have suffered
verbal and emotional abuse. There are parents who are angry, who dont
know how to love and nurture their children. They
heap verbal abuse upon them with constant threats, often yelling or screaming at them for
little reason. They constantly demoralize the young
ones with denigrating statements like, You cant do that, Youre
no good, Youll never amount to anything! But do you know that there are also
thousands, maybe hundreds of millions, who have experienced spiritual abuse? Spiritual
abuse is rampant throughout religious circles today!
Spiritual abuse is that which others do
to us, or we do to ourselves, when we no longer sense and feel and totally understand Gods unconditional
love for us, that God is not a
vindictive tyrant out to punish us, but He is our heavenly Father who deeply loves, cares
for, and nurtures us so that we can grow spiritually and become
all that He has planned and purposed
for us. When people represent God as a God to
fear, who is watching our every move to reprimand us, judge us, to cast us into eternal
doom and damnation in a fiery hell if we do not keep all
His laws and commandments that is
spiritual abuse!! People who have been spiritually abused
cant believe in the unconditional love and acceptance of God because they have, in
their memory system, confusion and distortions about God. False
ideas about God! Smoke out of the pit! Can
you not see the mystery? When preachers preach a message of
sin-consciousness, how God hates sin,
because of His infinite holiness He cannot tolerate any sin, and His hand is againstthe
sinner that is a vicious, blasphemous lie and it is spiritual abuse! When
our consciences are conditioned (brainwashed) to feel terrible guilt, condemnation, and
separation from the favor and blessing of God over the smallest failure to measure up to
Gods standard of holiness that is spiritual
abuse!
We have a whole religious culture today
that lives and thrives off of the negative realm of legalism. There
are literally millions of Evangelical, Pentecostal, and Holiness people who love the kind
of preaching that constantly steps on your toes. I
call it perversion, myself. Out in the world without the spirit of
Christ there are people who cant receive any kind of gratification sexually or
otherwise unless they are beat upon or beating someone else. They
are aroused by either receiving or inflicting pain. Norman
Elliott describes it so well in one of his books. When
we find a person who is in love with sickness and delights in pain, we say he is mentally
ill. There
are people of that sort. When they delight to have pain inflicted
upon themselves we call them masochists; and
when they delight in inflicting pain upon others we call them sadists. We
say they are perverted, their energies and goals have become turned about, upside-down,
inside-out, and directed toward ends for which they were never intended. They
are sick.
Such perversions can be refined;
they are not always as obvious as physical whipping. Once
I attended a meeting high in the mountains in a little tar-papered shack. The
preacher held the listeners in terror for over an hour as she whipped them with words of an impending hell, the fall of brimstone
that would burn but never consume, the inherent sinfulness of their nature that could
only result in such a holocaust. Yes, there was the call to repent, and
to repent, and to repent meaning to beg forgiveness. From
what I could learn, all those who were present were members of the little mountain sect
and the service was normal for them. It was not long before people were
literally screaming to God for mercy, and the time came when some were writhing on the
floor in apparent agony as they continued to cry for mercy. The
picture of God that must have been etched on the sensitive minds of the little children
who were present can only be imagined.
After the meeting we met the
preacher and some of her flock and told them that we were at a nearby church-campgrounds
for a week-long series of meetings, and we invited them to attend if they desired. A
few days later I was speaking when I noticed three or four of them enter the room. They
sat far in the back and listened. That day I was talking on the theme that the
love of God is broader than the reaches of mens minds. A
remarkable thing happened. The people became positively angry! It
was reflected in their faces and the way they shook heads at each other. That
was not the gospel to them! They had become so accustomed to verbal
beratement, mental beatings, fear and terror that they had come to enjoy it! It
was not too long before they left the meeting. One wonders how they could enjoy heaven
when they had habituated all their attitudes and feelings toward hell!
end quote.
It
gives me no joy to find it necessary to say these things, but the simple truth is that
such people are spiritual
deviants. It is spiritual
perversion. Their teaching and preaching is
naught but billowing smoke out of the pit of hearts full of deceit which puts a devilish
twist upon the word of God, turns the truth of God into a lie, and grotesquely distorts,
deforms, and disfigures the image and character of God. In
the spirit realm, people come into the assembly of Gods people and expect the
preacher to just beat them up with the word of God, and they call that good preaching! The
preacher gets great satisfaction out of how hot he can preach it, and the
people get all excited the harder he lays it on them! If
you did not grow up in that kind of a system you may be unaware of that kind of abuse, but
it is abuse! That
kind of activity stems from a spirit of anger, it comes out of a spirit of hate, and it
originates from a perverted notion of who and what God is. It
comes from worshipping Yahwey the lawgiver from mount Sinai, the angry God throwing
lightning bolts from His fingertips, just waiting to zap you on the head at the slightest
infraction.
Now, there is a side of God where He
finds stern discipline necessary, and He is fully capable of correcting and chastening His
sons as well as the whole creation. But I tell you today that GOD IS NOT AN
ABUSER! A normal, balanced, wise, and loving
parent does not go around with a scowl on his face breathing out threatenings, berating,
slapping, and beating His children all the time. If he does he is an abusive parent with
a vicious personality and a violent temperament. Jesus
picked up little children and His disciples said, Wait a minute! They
thought He was too important and busy to be concerned about little children who probably
werent capable of understanding the deep teaching of the kingdom of God anyway! Jesus
replied, You wait a minute suffer the little children to come unto me, for of
such is the kingdom of heaven!
Jesus
put a face on God, the firstborn Son of God was the image of the invisible God! He
only castigated the wicked rulers of the people, the misguided, self-righteous and
hypocritical religious leaders. But He ate with sinners! He
went into Simons house and here came this woman a prostitute. If
you were a preacher, put yourself in that position. She
gets down and begins to anoint His feet (which could be construed as caressing!) and
drying them with her hair, and He did not get that agitated look on His face, squirming
uncomfortably, wishing she would hurry up and leave, nor did He turn her away. He
talked to the immoral woman at the well. She was shacked up with a
man who wasnt her husband! He never said a word of correction or
rebuke to her about her lifestyle. He didnt remind her that she had
to acknowledge that she was a sinner, and leave this bum, before she could ask for Gods
mercy. Oh, no! He
just told her He had some living water and would like to give her a drink! He
told her that when she drank of this water that it would become an artesian well within
her, springing up unto eternal life! He imparted no sin-consciousness to her
He just offered her the unconditional gift of transforming life! Isnt
it wonderful!
Jesus
gave not one word of condemnation to the adulteress the Pharisees wanted to stone. Neither
do I condemn thee, go and sin no more! Instead of joining the condemners,
reminding her that she really was guilty and deserved to die, He simply spoke a word of
release from sin into her life. Oh, the beauty of it! He
showed infinite mercy to the sinner and the ungodly, and He took the little children up in
His loving arms and blessed them! He
didnt beat them over the head with a stick or with the word of God. Children
need love, nurture, counsel, and example. Jesus loved people! He
came not to call the righteous, but sinners. And He didnt win them by beating
them about their sins and dangling them over the fires of hell. Jesus
was no Jonathan Edwards! He won them with unconditional love,
mercy, and goodness.
It is a mystery too deep to fathom, but
God in His great mercy honors His word on whatever level it is preached, and in spite
of the intent and character of those who preach it. Paul
proclaimed this great truth when he wrote to the Philippians, Some indeed preach
Christ even of envy and strife; and some also of good will: the one preach Christ of
contention, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my bonds: but the other of love,
knowing that I am set for the defense of the gospel. What
then? Notwithstanding,
every way, whether in pretense, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea,
and will rejoice (Phil.
1:15-18).
It is a fact that multitudes of men have
been turned to seek and find God even by words that are pitiful mixtures of truth and
error and preached even by men and systems of reprobate minds. Their
children are born of mixed natures as was Ishmael, truly born of God by the Spirit, yet
born of Hagar, the Egyptian bondwoman, through the fleshly word, the word of God mingled
with the ideas of men. The many and varied erroneous ideas
about God and His kingdom, contorted representations of truth and reality, each bring
forth spiritual expressions of their religious lineage. Some
of these unfortunate children are born completely paralyzed spiritually and others are
still-born, conceived by a totally dead word. Those who preach the word of God as a dead
letter of literalism, legalism, and
carnality, void of spiritual understanding or the breath of life, fill the earth with
children of God having inherited an Egyptian heart, weaknesses, deformities, and pathetic
imperfections.
I do not doubt for one moment that many
who read these lines were first conceived in their spiritual life by a defective
word! Only as each of us is
miraculously and supernaturally healed can
we hope to come into the image and likeness of God as His sons! How precious the knowledge that
regardless of the poor and wretched condition of our early conception, GOD IS A GREATHEALER! He
can heal the embryo in the womb, or He can heal the child of tragic birth. As
this great healing work takes place in our lives, through the gracious dealings and
faithful processings of the Lord, we are dramatically and gloriously transformed in our
spiritual lives. Gone are those religious
spirits, bondages, customs, speech, mannerisms, methods, practices, fleshly efforts, false
doctrines, static creeds, empty rituals, ceremonies, and ordinances, lifeless programs,
dead works, and denominational hype which once characterized all our understanding,
attitudes, and activities. All the marks of Babylon were upon us
not impressed merely from without, but genetically reproduced within us by the very
Word that conceived us!
Today, my beloved, I point you to CHRIST
THE HEALER! Think not for one moment that Jesus
Christ is the healer only of diseases of the body! He
has come to cleanse His church, to sanctify and purify His called and chosen elect, to
purge and refine and make every whit whole those apprehended to be His sons. I
declare to you today that HE IS THE HEALER AND RESTORER OF HIS FAMILY! He
purges out of His kingdom all things that defile and offend. Listen! The
great and wonderful mercy of the Christ receives those who have blemishes, and His power
heals all who humbly come unto Him. Think of how He put up with the
unspeakable carnality of His very closest disciples for three and a half years! But
in due time they were changed, healed. Have you received the call to sonship? The
Holy Ghost is closely examining candidates for this ministry. The
qualifying time is NOW. The in-part ministries of
the church age may get by with blemishes, defects, and deformities, but the King-Priest
ministry destined to deliver the whole creation from the bondage of corruption must itself
first be freed from every vestige of carnality, weakness, limitation, sin, and death,
transformed into the image of God. Faithful is He that calleth you,
WHO ALSO WILL DO IT! Arent you glad!
With this exhortation fresh upon our
minds let us consider some events from the Old Testament that are reminiscent of the
vision John beholds here in chapter nine of the Revelation. John
saw the abyss, and the smoke pouring out of the abyss. Then
he saw swarming locusts coming out of the smoke, to torment men upon the earth. I
would remind you that when Moses was sent to deliver Gods people out of the bondage
of Egypt there was a plague of locusts sent into the land of Egypt! The
plague of locusts was directed at one of the gods of Egypt, Serapis, protector from
locusts, who was shown to be powerless as the plague of locusts covered the land,
devouring everything that grew. There was also a great darkness that
came upon the land of Egypt, a darkness so dense that it could be felt.
It is time to stop, look, and listen! The
imagery of what transpires when Christ opens the abyss corresponds with the imagery of
those plagues in Egypt! All the plagues God sent by the hand of
Moses upon Egypt were designed to get Gods people out of Egypt! These
symbolisms reveal the great truth that something similar to what happened in Egypt is
happening here in the book of Revelation! There is indeed a great similarity, but
there is also a vast difference. You see, my beloved, the plagues of
Egypt were sent to get Gods people out of Egypt, whereas in the revelation of Jesus
Christ it is not merely getting us out of the bondage of our spiritual Egypt, but getting
Egypt out of us! That is the mystery. From
the Old Covenant to the New Covenant everything is opposite. In
Moses day the Lords called and chosen people were in Egypt and He moved to
bring them forth out of the house of bondage.
Today,
through the blood of Jesus, we are free! We have been called out from under the
taskmasters of this present world! We have been separated unto God and His
high purpose! Yet we find that there have been
some gods in the hearts of Gods elect! There have been idols, false images,
false ideas about God and truth, natural reasoning, carnal understanding, human ways of
looking at things, literal interpretations of spiritual realities, residues of old-order
religious concepts, doctrines, methods, anointings, orders, and fleshly ways
from which our hearts have not been completely purged. As
we follow on to know the Lord it becomes more and more clear to us that many of the things
we have cherished even to this day, did not come from God! We
have all been taught by man. To one degree or another we are still
walking about in the smoke of the pit, in a darkened atmosphere. We
are still in the process of our faithful Fathers dealings to purge, purify, cleanse,
refine, and purify our hearts!
We can only fully know God as we see
Him as He is! We can only see Him as He is when all
the smoke of the pit has cleared away! We have been like the little girl that
was diligently drawing a picture of some mysterious creature, who, when asked by her
father what she was drawing, said, I am drawing a picture of God. Well,
said her father, you cannot draw a picture of God because no one knows what God
looks like. Well, replied the child,
when I am finished with this picture, they will know. We
smile at this and well we might, but is her answer more simple than the vanity of men who,
not having seen God in the spirit and by the spirit, describe His characteristics and, not
having known Him by the spirit of truth, take pride in their explanations?
The reason there is darkness today is because of the false doctrines and dark traditions of the church systems. No wonder Gods people are full of unbelief, filled with doubts, and overwhelmed with fears. No wonder they magnify the works of the devil and declare him more than they declare God. They know not the day in which we are living, because of the smoky darkness of their minds! They walk about in the swirling smoke, receiving death and feeding on darkness all about them. But God has called you, and raised you up, my brother, my sister, as a light this very day, that you might dispel the darkness and remove these heavens that men have been dwelling under and establish something completely new in the earth, a new heavens in which the Sun of Righteousness arises with healing in His rays. Bring forth in your life a new likeness, the image of God, that you may declare HIM that is supreme throughout all the earth and that He may reign in every heart. Behold the dawn
!
But the popular churches are still lost in dreams. They have not yet awakened. They know not of the dawn! But we who are of the day, and who are not lovers of the drunkenness of false doctrine nor sleepers of the night, have a higher heritage. We are not of the night, nor of the darkness. Therefore let us not sleep as do others (I Thes. 5:5-6). We who have received the love of the truth are heirs to a higher calling. We have privileges, and we have duties to perform. We must be about our Fathers business! There has been a parting of the ways. God has called upon us to forsake the shame and error of the harlot systems of man, to look up, to arise and shine. Our light has come. The glory of the Lord is rising upon us. The day is at hand! The night is far spent. We must go forth and lead the way for all who will follow!
To be continued
J. PRESTON EBY
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