You’ve no doubt heard the old adage, “What you don’t know, won’t hurt you.” But what if that time-honored bit of ‘worldly wisdom’ is a lie? If lies are repeated endlessly, people mindlessly start believing them. That draws them into a dangerous state of delusion. But no matter how much lies are repeated…they will never transform into Truth.
God’s Word Is Sent To Restore Everything Sin Destroyed
Much of what the world system foists on us as, ‘truth’ or ‘wisdom’ or, ‘common sense’ directly contradicts what God has revealed. The above statement is a good example. Ignorance doesn’t really protect or save us:
Deuteronomy 18:18-20
“I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My Words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I command Him. It shall come about that whoever will not listen to My words which He shall speak in My Name, I Myself will require it of him. But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My Name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.’”
1 Samuel 2:3
“Boast no more so very proudly, do not let arrogance come out of your mouth; for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and with Him actions are weighed.”
The real Truth is: ignorance of true Reality can, and often does, kill! Much of today’s world is, by deliberate choice, profoundly ignorant of God’s Biblical revelation. But disciples will not authentically be able to fulfill their calling, if they follow that worldly, Word-ignoring trend.
Isaiah 66:1-2
“Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. Where then is a house you could build for Me? And where is a place that I may rest? For My hand made all these things,thus all these things came into being,’ declares the Lord. ‘But to this one I will look, to him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My Word.”
If we aren’t well-versed in what God says, how can we ever transform into His Word’s image and likeness? The Word is our Creator’s Self-revelation. The Word reveals Truth and Reality as God created them to be. It reveals Truth concerning God’s perfect nature and the laws governing His universe, and Truth concerning the human race as it relates to, and compares with, His perfect nature.
So because God sent His Word to place His self-revelation before us…then, at the end…when the time comes for us to give an accounting for our lives on God’s Day of Judgment…pleading ignorance will be no defense. Even if we are totally ignorant at that time, it will be an ignorance that we deliberately chose for ourselves. Our choice to ignore and bypass God’s revelation will condemn us. It will be the proof of our willful, deliberate, defiance against God! And that is why our Master gave this warning to the world:
Matthew 12:33-37
“Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good? For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. The good man brings out of his good treasure what is good; and the evil man brings out of his evil treasure what is evil. But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the Day of Judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.” (Emphasis added.)
The message given by our freely chosen ignorance is:
“I don’t acknowledge You to be my God. I have declared myself to be free of the ‘Headship’ of Your Word. Your Word doesn’t matter to me. I don’t take Him seriously. I replaced Him with things I think are truer and better for me. So in relation to You, and Your Word, I declare my status to be that of: ‘exempt civilian’”.
If God is all that He claims to be, and Truth really is what He said He created it to be…such people will suddenly be slammed with the realization that by rejecting the Headship of God’s Word, they decapitated themselves and chose death over Life. And they have forever separated themselves from the only one that could have saved them! Like it or not, God’s Word is the only Source of Life, Truth, Righteousness, Reality and Salvation! And since they choose to reject and ignore their Salvation, the place and status reserved for them will be far removed from God’s Kingdom and the Inheritance that the Head was sent to share eternally with those that accepted Him as their Head, and served as His living members.
Matthew 24:42-51
“Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming. But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into. For this reason you also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.
“Who then is the faithful and sensible slave whom his master put in charge of his household to give them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes. Truly I say to you that he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But if that evil slave says in his heart, ‘My master is not coming for a long time,’ and begins to beat his fellow slaves and eat and drink with drunkards; the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour which he does not know, and will cut him in pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
We’ve had ample opportunity to know our Creator’s nature and ways and standards of righteousness (Rom. 1:18-32; Ps. 119). In revealing Himself, He also revealed the corresponding nature of His Creation and the laws that govern it and maintain its order. We also received the commandment structure needed to keep us bonded to Him and that would enable us, by its accurate coordinates, to navigate precisely and exactly so that we could ‘dock’ with our proper God-ordained destination. The Word tells us what we need to know about becoming synchronized and living in harmony’ with our Creator. It’s all in His written Word…which reveals and explains what His living Word, who abides within His disciples, is going to be doing to them…in them…and through them.
The Agenda of God’s Word and His Disciples
For disciples, to synchronize and harmonize and be ‘echad’ (as one) with God, is not one option among many. It’s the only option. To reveal and proclaim our Master is the essence, purpose and destiny of any true disciple. To do that, God’s Word must provide and share everything He is and has, with them, the way husbands are to give of themselves to their brides. But it goes much deeper even than human marriage. Disciples must be just as one with their Master, as the Master is one with His Father! The love the Father and His Word share with each other is utterly selfless and single-minded! That is the kind of love disciples are equipped to share and live by. It is the same selfless love that the Father shares with His living Word and Holy Spirit!
John 15:9-11
“Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.” (Emphasis added.)
John 16:14-15
“He (the Holy Spirit) will glorify Me, for He will take of Mine and will disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.” (Emphasis added.)
John 17:22-26
“The glory which You (Father) have given Me (Your Word) I have given to them (My disciples), that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.
“O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me; and I have made Your Name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” (Emphasis added.)
Beloved, can you see how close our Master intends to be with us? He’s not here just to be ‘with us’ or, ‘near us’ or, ‘around us’. He is here to be our Life! He’s here to be ‘echad’ (as one) with us’. That is why disciple training is so important. Our minds, wills and hearts must be trained to synchronize and harmonize with Him and to live and move as one with Him, just as He lives and moves as one with the Father that sent Him! Our Master, God’s living Word, never develops an independent ‘mind of his own’. He never operates out of radical independence, never, ‘makes up His own mind’. He is the eternal, perfect Image and Likeness of His Father. The mind and heart of our Messiah (Christ) is the mind of His Father. And that is the mind that the Holy Spirit is continually transmitting into us disciples, as well!
1 Corinthians 2:15-16
“But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ.” ( Emphasis added.)
If you’re truly a disciple, God’s living Word has already become one with you spiritually speaking. His Spirit and your regenerated spirit are fused together, according to the New Covenant which in reality is – the Eternal Covenant actually fulfilled:
Ezekiel 36:26-27
“Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.”
Ephesians 1:13-14
“In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory.” (Emphasis added.)
This is the awesome New Covenant Reality that the gift of the Holy Spirit makes possible. And in the Last Days, this is what will emerge as the conflict between Darkness and Light intensifies. Disciples are endowed with this awesome Blessing – ‘Christ in us, the Hope of Glory’ (Col. 1:26-27). But that’s just the beginning. The Holy Spirit also equips them to operate out of His presence in us and manifest Him…in the midst of this fallen world. This is truly, life at a supernatural Heavenly level. It is the life-level that is natural for God’s utterly pure, holy, righteous image and likeness of the Word, humanity. The Holy Spirit makes us into ‘living stones’ and forms us into God’s Holy, New Covenant Temple here on Earth. We are a living, moving Temple, capable of reaching out to, and taking in, the whole world.
This is why we must willingly, actively agree to be trained and disciplined by the Holy Spirit so that He can teach us to walk out our new nature, identity and purpose in daily life. (This is where our Follow Me ‘Marching Orders’ listed elsewhere in this website come into play. Read them again and imagine what it will be like for you to have that kind of interaction with your indwelling Lord taking place in your heart at all times.)
Disciples must embrace and respond to this awesome initiative of God’s grace…and continually receive and use the Spirit-given ability that empowers us to reciprocate by responding to our Master with the same wholehearted selfless loving acceptance He always gives to us. That is why in other parts of this website we compare our life with our Master to a ‘dance’. It is like a ‘wedding dance’ we joyfully perform with Him…with unspeakable devotion, gratitude and…total abandon (See the article entitled, ‘The Arena of Testimony’). Our Master’s commandments are like ‘dance steps’ that He teaches us with great loving patience and tenderness. And once we learn the steps, we are able to dance with Him with beautiful, flowing synchronization, before the unbelieving world…in The Arena of Testimony.
A Major Reason for the Union of The Head and His Body
When Adam and Eve fell into Sin and tried to hide from God (Gen. 3), Father sent His Word after them. We saw that His purpose was not to punish or seek revenge. Judgment and punishment will take place after our time in this life is over. But until then, God is intent on reconciliation and restoration. Our Master’s purpose was and always will be – to honor His Father’s Name and Authority. He is always in the process of doing His Father’s will.
So He is progressively drawing God’s Creation back under God’s full Dominion. And His disciples are at the cutting edge of this restorative process. God’s wholehearted restoring love…embodied in the members of His living Word, is bringing the human race back to its original pristine status and purpose in God’s Plan. By the time the love story between God and humanity reaches its end, Father will have exactly what He intended to have from the beginning. And the full manifestation of His living Word’s perfect, completed work of Redemption, will be displayed all across the universe. Then all eyes will see the fullness of the Truth. All Authority in Heaven and on Earth have truly been given to God’s living Word. And it will be obvious to all that He has completely fulfilled His awesome God-given commission. His enemies will, by that time, have been completely overwhelmed. Father will cause them to be a ‘footstool’ for His feet. Creation, including God’s own beautiful human image and likeness, will be completely restored. The end will be the beginning; the beginning will be restored and eternally manifested once more, by and in, the end. That is how perfect and wise and incomprehensibly thorough and wholehearted our God truly is.
If you respond wholeheartedly to God’s initiatives, you will reflect His wholeheartedness back to Him. The more your life testifies and proves that you are united to your Head, and that His Resurrection Life is working within you, the more you and your fellow disciples will be regarded as ‘aliens’ by the rebellious people around you. To a world full of decapitated people, if you submit to our Messiah as your ruling Head, you’ll be derided and labeled as, ‘religious lunatics’. Nevertheless, our perfect God remains wholehearted in His intent to come after all fallen people and restore them, if at all possible. And the heart of every true disciple must reflect and embody God’s redemptive love back to Him, and out to the rest of the world.
When God first sent His Word to restore the human race, there were only two humans. But then they reproduced as God made them to do. Now there are multiple billions of humans scattered across the globe…and more coming all the time. So this requires God’s Word to reach out on a much vaster scale. Now He needs a world-wide Body through which to bring His Life-giving Restoration.
A world-wide Body requires many members to share and release the life, nature, character and disposition of the Head. Through His members, the Word can connect with people that still do not know Him through the face to face encounters they have with His disciples. And His disciples can also reach out by literary communication or through the electronic media over the airwaves, or through cyberspace. It can happen in a variety of ways, but such connections must take place if the Word is going to be able to pierce, penetrate and impregnate the fallen men and women of this world and redeem and restore them to what humanity was before the fall of Adam.
God’s Restoration Through Perfect Love
The Restoration God so passionately wants us to have, reveals and manifests His perfect, selfless Love, blazing eternally in His His heart. Creation was meant to share eternally in the Love God shares with His own living Word and Holy Spirit. He intended to have a vast, enormous, multi-layered Creation with countless numbers of levels of varied creatures that would receive and reciprocate and share His endless Love and Provision. And that is how it will be at the end.
Sin grossly disfigured and mortally wounded Creation’s original pristine perfection. But God is not deterred. He is able and willing to do whatever it takes to restore His image and likeness back to the original perfection. And since there are so many humans in need of His Restoration, God’s Word pursues the fallen decapitated human race, just as He did Adam and Eve in the Garden, through His ‘image and likeness’ disciples, His many-membered Body.
The entire world is our Commander’s Objective. He is here to take back the universe, including our planet and all that live on it. And as His disciples, once we learn to live, think, act, react and interact as one with our Master and Head, we can serve as His living, human revelation, manifestation, and Love-giving embodiment. In the imaginary scenario of the military base and the commanding general we considered in Part I of this article, the general actually was the ‘head’ of the troops under his command, they served as his ‘body’, through which he fulfilled his plans and objectives. So must it be with God’s living Word and His disciples. Because of the enormous stakes underlying the war in which we are engaged, there can be no ‘games’, no false pretenses, nothing shallow or untrue. The Word of God, who is the Creator and Sustainer of every speck of Creation, must be All in all that we are and all that we do. He is Creation’s two-fold Owner. He owns it all by the right of Creation and He owns it by the right of Redemption. So He most definitely is, ‘The Head’ of us all. And the Life and Righteousness that is in the Head…must be seen also throughout His Body.
We Are Not To Be Part of the Problem; We Must Embody The Solution!
If you are called to follow your Lord and Master, you are automatically commissioned to be a living example, a demonstration, of His Restoration Mission. That’s why we must all be trained to think and live as one with His indwelling Presence and His objective. He is here to overcome all satanic evil with His eternal, Heavenly Good. So we must allow Him to remove every trace of former satanic evil from us. We are to think as one with Him and live and identify with Him at all times. He is our eternal Life from now on. We died to every other option. From now on, wherever He is, so will we be. Whatever we do, it will be Him, doing it in us and through us. Now we’re equipped to abide with Him in two realms simultaneously. We are with Him as He reigns eternally with His Father at the Throne of God in the highest level of the Heavens…and He is here with us as we carry out the assignments of our deployments here on Earth in the time and space world of physical creation.
Colossians 3:1-4
“Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.”
This is why God’s Word and Holy Spirit are so grieved when people, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, reject their Head, God’s living Word. They unwittingly make sure they remain decapitated and continue to remain at a great distance from the living Word even though His Father sent Him to reunite them to Himself:
Mathew 23:37-39
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling. Behold, your house is being left to you desolate! For I say to you, from now on you will not see Me until you say, ‘ Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’”
If this is what is happening in so many of God’s chosen people, how much more is it happening in the other, idolatrous self-serving families of this fallen world? This is why disciples are naturally rejected and scorned by people whose policy is to reject or ignore God’s living and written Word. Those that want nothing to do with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and His Word and Spirit, will also reject and spurn ‘aliens’ like us who worship and obey Him as our one and only God and Source.
The world will try to silence and disenfranchise the Word’s disciples. And even if they do manage to hear what we have to share, they will refuse to take their need for God seriously. So His Redemption and its benefits will not be applied to them. This is why the fallen world and the disciples will always occupy opposite sides of the enormous spiritual chasm that separates the proponents of the world system and the citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven.
But the world’s antagonism, enmity and disfavor must not deter us. We are not here to seek their approval. We are here to obey, love, serve and embody our Master who has come to save them. He never changes! He will not stop reaching out to those that do not know Him…until the time for the Judgment comes. So whoever hears His warnings and takes to heart what He has revealed and given to the world, He will embrace, redeem, cleanse and restore. And that is what matters more than our temporal popularity and comfort.
This is why we must gain ever-deepening understanding of our God and remain open to whatever He wants to do to us, in us and through us. If we are coordinated and synchronized with His Word, God will keep reaching out to others through us. So we must be ready to share whatever our Master wants to give to the people that are ready to receive…while there’s still time for them to discover His Truth and align themselves with what His Father sent Him to do on their behalf.
We need not apologize for continually referring to and sharing what God has revealed in His Scriptures. It is our firm conviction that no man-made philosophy, theology, religious ritual, organization or government has the power or authority to save us and make us into brand new creations. Therefore the enemies of God’s Word must not be allowed to prevent the disciples from doing what God has commissioned His people to do, which is to proclaim and lift up our risen Messiah…so that He may be seen and heard on the Earth and draw all men to Himself. That’s why we must be aliens in this world.
Just as a person or a group of people that are on a sinking ship are not able to save themselves or any of their fellow passengers, neither can decapitated creatures do anything for other decapitated creatures to help prepare them for God’s awesome impending Judgment. If you’re going to help rescue people from the Titanic, you can’t be one of its passengers or crew. You must be able to come from the ‘outside’…and be equipped to be part of what has come to rescue them. You must operate out of your own state of salvation with those that need what you have. That’s why we must be alien to whatever is part of and pertains to, living and depending on…the Titanic.
Since God, the Creator of all things, is the only one that can supply what we all need to be saved from our Sin-corruption and its impending fate, He works in and through those that are already rescued, and through them, continues to reach out to the others that remain trapped and doomed. God has been trying to reveal this to the world for centuries! His revealed Truth shows us the means He has provided for our escape. His written Word leads people to the living Word. Our Messiah, the living Word that is the Way to freedom – In Him is Salvation. He IS the Good News of Salvation! And He gives us the coordinates we need to navigate accurately, safely and effectively to eternal union with God.
Disciples must be ‘aliens’. They can’t be part of the condemned portion of the human race. They must be able to be and do something altogether different from what is ‘normal’ to this sinking world. We must be equipped and trained not only to give the message of Salvation to Head-less people, we must BE living demonstrations of God’s Salvation message – displaying the visible effects of God’s saving, redeeming, Life-giving Love as it transforms our lives!
Acts 3:6-7
“…Peter said, ‘I do not possess silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you: In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene—walk!’ And seizing him by the right hand, he raised him up; and immediately his feet and his ankles were strengthened.”
Our Master’s indwelling Life and Love is what abides in us. We are His living members. We embody and share Him with those that do not yet know Him. How can we be effective testimonies to the decapitated world if we too are Head-less? No, we must be bond slaves to the living Word of God. We must be equipped and prepared to PROVE that Heaven’s risen Lord is actually OUR Life and our King, living and working in us. Then He can display the difference to those that do not yet know or believe Him, from what they are able to see coming out of us.
2 Corinthians 12:9-10
“And He has said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.’ Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” (Emphasis added.)
This is the New Covenant way through which God has chosen to complete and perfect the salvation of the fallen human race. It is a ‘God and Sons, Incorporated’ Restoration Project. God’s Word guides the Serpent’s ex-victims and ex-captives safely through the demonic minefields. He will be their Protection, Provision and Ultimate Triumph throughout the ongoing battles that will continually rage between Him and the Father of Lies, until Father says, ‘Time’s up!’
The ongoing struggle, between the Word of God and the Serpent is always for the spirits, hearts, souls and eternal future of mankind. So the more clarity we disciples have in understanding these issues, the more authentic, legitimate and practical will our own ‘repentance’ be. And the more effectively will our Lord be able to reveal who He is and what He is here to do, through us.
True repentance, as required by God’s Word, leads to total agreement with and obedience to our Master and the objectives His Father sent Him to accomplish. And when that happens, our lives become living testimonies to the fact that our Messiah has truly routed and vanquished His demonic enemies and broken their power over us and that is what proves that we are His own, that we are citizens of His Kingdom and not at all of this world. This is how we can serve Him. Through us He will fulfill the promise He made to the Serpent so long ago:
Genesis 3:15
“And I will put enmity between you and the Woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise Him on the heel.”
God’s Strength Will Be Perfected In Our Weakness
God’s plan is to transform disciples into His Word’s image and likeness. But that doesn’t mean we become ‘supermen’. We remain what we are, frail, needy, mortal men and women that have been delivered from slavery to Sin and to the Serpent. So the world will see us as we are, but it must also be able to see the risen Lord operating from within us and producing His awesome, supernatural, mind-boggling Fruit through us. That is the Messiah-revealing transformation that must be obvious to those that knew us in the past. Our closest family members and friends must be astounded at the changes they see appearing in us. God wants the whole world to see His Son in us…with their own eyes. He wants them to see how beautifully our Master transforms people into new image and likeness of God creations. So it must be obvious that we disciples are clad in our Lord’s spiritual ‘obedience uniform’, abiding ‘under His command’, at all times.
Our original horizontal worldly ‘polarity settings’ must be completely reconfigured and switched over to vertical, Heavenly settings. We must actually die to our former living death citizenship and identity ties to this world and its system. That will take us out of this world’s system and economy completely and convincingly. And that is what will cause us to be ‘aliens’ to the rest of the world. The decapitated people of the world and its system are, naturally, in it for themselves. They are spiritual orphans, condemned to do everything themselves, for themselves. Because of the decapitated way in which they view everything, they always feel compelled to strive to get as much as they can out of this world and amass it for themselves.
But disciples are regenerated sons of God and co-heirs with God’s living Word. Our economy is the perfect Eternal, All-Sufficient Covenant Faithfulness of God. He has already given us every spiritual blessing that our Master has restored to us. And God maintains that Treasure for His own who are citizens of His eternal Kingdom of Heaven. So we already have everything, eternally, thanks to our union with God’s living Word. He contains the Fullness of the Father and He is our indwelling Life. So we can afford to rest, rejoice and endure anything we may have to face during our temporary deployment in this fallen world. We are not here to see what we can get out of the Titanic! We are here to try to help as many as possible to get off of it! We are not here to take and grab; we are here to share from God’s Abundance that is being given to us. We can afford to do that since there is no end to our eternal Inheritance and the Original Blessing that Yeshua has restored to us. This is why He tells us:
Matthew 10:24-39
“A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master. It is enough for the disciple that he become like his teacher, and the slave like his master. If they have called the Head of the House Beelzebul, how much more will they malign the members of His Household! Therefore do not fear them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.
“Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven. Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household.
“He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.” (Emphasis added.)
Disciples are living testimonies to God’s Truth. The very presence of such Spirit-filled people exposes and discredits the lethal fog of demonic delusion in which the fallen world is enshrouded. The results that come through the disciples’ ‘faith life’ will be evidence that it is impossible to derive real life and lasting well being from any created alternate source. Created things are all equally needy and dependent on their Creator. There is only one God…only one Source. Aside from God’s living, creative Word, there can be no other!
This is where that demonic, ‘What you don’t know won’t hurt you’ adage can, and does, kill everyone that falls for it! There is only one God…only one Source…for anything that is Real, True and Good! His work of Creation and Redemption is finished. So if you are not united to His Word, ‘The Head’…you’re dead! So disciples must be weaned of all radically independent thinking and assumptions and practices and the false worldly information and practices they engender. We must die to whatever leads to eternal Death. This is what Scripture’s Exodus Pattern reveals. This is why our Master keeps us far away from what is shallow, temporary and flaky. This is why the Cross must kill any former connection with and dependence upon the sinking, mortally wounded, Serpent-dominated world system. That’s why it is good for us to be aliens in this world. Ponder the following texts and you’ll see what the issue really is:
1 Corinthians 6:9-20
“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.
“All things are lawful for me, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything. Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them. Yet the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? May it never be! Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a prostitute is one body with her? For He says,“ The two shall become one flesh.” But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.” (Emphasis added.)
John 17:6-13
“I have manifested Your Name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your Word. Now they have come to know that everything You have given Me is from You; for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me. I ask on their behalf; I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom You have given Me; for they are Yours;and all things that are Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine; and I have been glorified in them. I am no longer in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your Name, the Name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are. While I was with them, I was keeping them in Your Name which You have given Me; and I guarded them and not one of them perished but the son of perdition, so that the Scripture would be fulfilled.” (Emphasis added.)