eating the fruit of contradiction: the anti-Christ spirit (3rd installment)

ANTI-CHRIST: ANTI-YOU

The subtlety of the work of the enemy is, in all honesty, a mastermind work.  The imperceptible manipulation of truth, and insidious nature of its effect within the body is so interwoven that only the God of power can gather us all to the simple purity of His gospel.  I write the words I write here not from a sense of urgency, nor from the need to dispel “heresy” from within the church.  I have never trusted God in His ability to lead His body as much as I do inside this revelation!  That’s the whole POINT!  We can finally rest in His sovereignty, and it has freed me to simply share the journey in writing.

As I’ve gone deeper and deeper into the knowledge of the delectable grace of the good news, I have run across so many errors in my former thinking that kept me from His heart.  In this post I want to address how the anti-Christ spirit is working overtime to blind us to who we truly are.  His ploy has always been, and still is, to deprive humanity of our identity.  As much teaching as I’ve heard on this subject throughout the years, it surprised me when I realized that I was STILL being deceived.  I was sure that I’d come into the full knowledge of my “identity in God”.  But therein was the problem; that very language spoke to living in awareness of the former separation that was the result of my sin.  My “identity in God” was my new identity now that I’d surrendered to His will, and learned to “die daily”. Consequently, when religion and my good efforts were not dynamic enough together to overcome the patterns of death that I attributed to that separation, my only logical conclusion was that I was still in fact separated.  Sure, I’d been taught that I had been RESTORED to my edenic identity, and that only God was able to turn sinners into saints.  The only problem was that it was STILL, though not explicitly declared, a turning that was conditional on MY performance.  Righteous performance; performance that supposedly “leads to life”…but performance none the less.

One of my favorite portions of scripture is Paul’s emphatic heart-spill in Philippians 3: 8-11.  It was the heralding call of movements I’d been involved in, and spoke to some longing in my heart for a “sold-out” , all or nothing kind of devotion to the One I love.  I’d heard it taught definitively as the ideal declaration of the true christian.  I count all else as loss, no matter the cost, I WILL love the Lord my God with every facet of my life.  I’d heard it broken down into the way we use our finances, the use of our time, the stewardship of relationships and thought-life.  The emotion of the passage drew my heart, and the way it was unpacked for me in every lecture or sermon broke it.  It seemed that even as a respected leader in my community, a person people came to for advice, a mentor to many…I still didn’t love God like Paul.  I was far from attaining to that moral perfection, and I feared I would always be.  My freedom came to me in a moment; in a simple word from the voice of truth Himself.  I sat one day speaking to God of all my ill-achievements.  I reminded Him how much He had forgiven me for, how much I was coming to Him to be forgiven for, and apologized for all that He would have to forgive me for in the future.  In His unfathomable kindness, He broke into my monologue. “LEVI…you are NOT a sinner.”

“But….no…no, yes I am.  Don’t You hear all the things I’m saying to You?  Aren’t You supposed to be all-knowing?”  No answer.  The silence was very clear in that moment.  He had said all He needed to say, and it rang in my spirit like an empty cavern.  The word of the Lord to me that day started me on a journey of discovering a gospel that made the heart-spill of Philippians 3 accessible to me.  It gave me hope, and proved to me that Paul and I were not all that different; he just understood it a long time before I did.  In silencing and warping the grace of God within the church, the enemy has accomplished a travesty that it’s time received its rectification.  In Philippians 3:1-7, I discovered the key to exactly what Paul was speaking of in verses 8-11.  The reason God chose paul to preach the good news to the Gentiles was because of what exactly it represented, and how desperately scandalous the messenger needed to appear.  In the first portion of Philippians 3, Paul opens by warning the believers in Philippi to beware of those who were still preaching the circumcision (the law) as righteousness, calling them “dogs” and “evil workers”.  He then enters into a montage of his achievements as a law-man, saying “If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so.”  He set the standard for BOTH sides of the argument, proclaiming himself as the most righteous and revered of those keeping the law (which was truth), so that he might speak from authority as the proponent of the gospel of grace.  THIS is the context from which he speaks saying “But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ.  Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord…”.  Paul was not speaking of a former life of SIN in that which he counted as loss.  He was not talking about all the secular music he had laid down, nor of the indulgence of a non-fasted lifestyle.  He was not saying that even the sacrifice required of him in this following after Jesus was counted as rubbish in comparison to knowing Him.  HE WAS TALKING ABOUT THE LAW AND HIS SELF-EFFORTS.  THAT was what he counted as loss.

I’m not sure how we missed this.  Verse 9 is very clear, saying “…not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith…”.  He prescribes the loss of self-effort as the ONLY WAY through which we come into the saving knowledge of Christ! (“…that I may gain Christ, and be found in Him…”)  Once again, the context of scripture proves itself, and the grace of God triumphs.  However, most of us would wonder about verses 12-14 of this same chapter in light of these statements.  It would SEEM that paul was saying that he DOES still have to fight the flesh, and strive toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.  This is most certainly how I’ve heard these verses taught the majority of my life.  However, looking at verses 10-11 that directly precede this passage, it becomes more clear.  In the original greek text of the word, the separation of headings and sections DO NOT exist.  These were personal letters to the believers of individual cities with whom Paul had personal relationship.  Verses 12-14 are the response to the subject matter of verses 10-11, and there is no separation between them.  The entirety of those four verses reads “…that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.  Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has laid hold of me.  Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ jesus.”  Paul was speaking of the LITERAL death of Christ.  He was not saying that he pressed toward the “fellowship of His sufferings” as we have been taught.  I wholeheartedly disagree with the doctrine that tells you that God expects you to walk through suffering so that you may know Him; to sacrifice anything that you might experience His life in you.  That is EXACTLY what Paul said he counted as loss!  Jesus died so that you do not have to.  He was speaking of ACTUALLY sharing in the physical sufferings of Christ, and dying a martyr’s death, that he might ACTUALLY be raised from the dead as Christ was.  It was HIS longing, and call, to die for the sake of the gospel and to experience the resurrection from the dead…which he will. (1 Thessalonians 4:16)

Now, what of the portion in which he says “Not that I…am already perfected”?  That does seem to say that he is speaking of pressing toward a moral perfection to which he had not attained.  However, the word used here for “perfected” in the original greek is the same word they used for a person who completed a race, and is the root from which we get the word “martyr”.  Often these people would literally push their bodies to their physical limit, completing the race, but forfeiting their life as the consequence.  Paul was speaking to greek christians in the city of Philippi, who all well understood the olympic language of the day.  Even “pressing toward the goal of the prize” was pointing to the same athletic imagery.  He was assuring them as the apostle they revered that he had not been shown of God that he would die the martyr’s death soon.  He was not pressing toward a moral perfection, because he believed it had already been done in him by the one sacrifice of Jesus.  In polluting passages of scripture like this one, Satan has been relatively successful in divorcing the church from the truth of the cross, and subsequently keeping them bound to a false identity.  If we BELIEVED we were not sinners, and that sin had REALLY lost its dominion, the church of God would look a lot more like the bride He gave His son to marry.

The anti-Christ spirit has always been about using lines of delineation; the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; jew or gentile; sinner or saint, etc.  It is his most effective way of destroying the family of God, because he knows that a house divided cannot stand.  When one is good and the other is bad, it makes room for those who identify with either side to be at odds with the other.  The righteous are better than the wicked because WE please God.  The Jew is better than the Gentile because WE have the law.  It, without exception, creates division.  It is the very REASON God told Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree in the middle of the garden, and it is how they forfeited the innocence of ignorance.  The glory of the cross of Christ is that it did away with ALL the contradictions…and I mean ALL of them.  It gave us permission to come back into our TRUE edenic identity; to live according to its finished work; to be guiltless; to have no more shame; to be equal with one another, and ONE with God.  To eat of the tree of life, whose fruit produces immortality, and be in our intended state of pleasure forever.  Let’s explore this reality and its implications a little further.

The contrast of the cross, in comparison to what we’ve tragically believed for so long, is concentrated for the most part in one word: inclusion.  In past posts, I’ve discussed the problem with believing that verses which reference carrying your cross mean to “die to yourself” in order to attain to the will of God for us in our character, morality, and holiness in general (Taking up the cross).  John Crowder says this: “Let’s never water down the completeness of the cross by saying that Jesus’ work was not enough to perfect you, and now you’ve got to perfect yourself.”  We were INCLUDED in the cross of Christ, co-crucified and co-resurrected.  There is no more dying to be done for someone who is already dead.  We ARE a new creation, not becoming one.  Another of my favorite verses in scripture is Hebrews 10:14, which reads as follows in most translations: “For by one sacrifice He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.”  The only problem with this translation is that in the original text, “those who are being” is not there.  It reads, translated exactly, “By one offering indeed He has perfected forever the sanctified“.  In the Mirror Translation, it reads “By that one perfect sacrifice He has perfectly sanctified sinful man forever.”  The tense of the verb used for “sanctified”, in combination with the word used for “perfectly” in the original greek, suggest an action completed in the past; the effects of which continue into the present and eternity.  He was the lamb slain before the foundations of the world, outside of time, who stepped into time to prove it within our frame of reference.  According to this verse from Hebrews 10, there is no delineation between who is sanctified and who is not, and there is no implication toward a further cleansing or “process” in which a person becomes more like Him.  

If the anti-Christ spirit can prevent us from understanding the ultimacy and totality of the cross, he will effectively prevent us from ever knowing who we truly are.  The challenge then is finding it within ourselves to lay down agendas and the doctrinal pillars we “stand” on, fully trusting that the God of the universe is faithful to lead us into all truth.  The fear of “heretical teaching” never set any man free, and hardly speaks of trust in a good and omnipotent God.  That being said, I’d like to address another powerfully controversial subject of scripture.  Before I get into it, I want to say that I do NOT associate myself with any “camp” of doctrine or denomination.  I am not a Protestant, a Universalist, a Baptist, a Trinitarian, a Methodist, or a Charismatic.  I will not be linked to any title that could in any way denote a devotion to a SINGLE set of ideologies wherein I am unwilling to hear another view, and “immovable” in my convictions because I am convinced no one else could POSSIBLY have it more right.  God has transformed my perspective enough times in my life that it would be asinine to call myself anything other than a Son and a Lover.  Period.  Since I’ve abandoned my rigidity as a believer, the Lord has opened my eyes to things I NEVER thought could be true…which is how I know it was God.  In 1 John 2:2 it says “And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.”(emphasis added)  The brevity of this statement is paradigm shifting.  Most would say “YES…He died for the whole world, but the whole world will not be saved because they will not turn to Him.”  I can see how that is very possibly the reality, and I am not proclaiming that I am taking a final stand on either point of view.  However, when you look at scripture as a whole, I would like to propose that the opposite is just as probable, if not more.

Isaiah 45: 22-23 says “Look to Me, and be saved, all you ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.  I have sworn by Myself; the word has gone out of My mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, that to Me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall take an oath.”  Because of the nature of God, the reality that He IS truth, He literally BINDS Himself to His words in swearing by His own existence.  If He was NOT to keep them, in their exactness and totality, He would cease to be the God He claims to be.  If He violates His nature, He violates His deity.  So what do statements like this one from Isaiah 45 really mean?  Looking a second time at 1 John 2:2, a widely known verse, some of its original language can help with bringing clarity.  The word used in 1 John 2:2 for “propitiation” in the greek is “hilasmos” (“hilasterion”), and is the greek rendering of the hebrew word “kapporeth”, which refers to the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant.  Hilasterion can be translated either as “propitiation” or “expiation”.  While both terms accomplish the same reality as far as the purpose of the verse, the one most commonly used is a perfect example of perspective OF God that influences life IN God.  While propitiation (being acquitted from the wrath of a judge by way of an atoning sacrifice) utilizes expiation as its means, it most directly points at the wrath of God as its motivation.  One propitiates a person (makes them favorable), and one expiates a problem (removes it).  Expiation speaks primarily to restoration, a tragedy resolved within the rescue, not the deferment of punishment.  I believe it is the more accurate term of the two concerning translation.  Now, if I were to say that a primary goal of the cross was to restore mankind to our edenic state, most would agree with me.  If I were to say that a primary goal of the cross was to defer the wrath of God from human kind, most would agree with me there as well.  The problem is, those two statements are contradictory.

To accurately grasp the picture I am about to paint, we have to abandon the “well my preacher said…” spirit, and allow the simplicity of truth to lead us forward.  I am in NO WAY saying the wrath of God was not poured out on the cross; that reality is clear as day in scripture.  What I AM saying, is that the wrath poured out was not originally pointed at us.  God was there (omnipresent) in the garden of Eden when sin was imposed on man.  Sin originated in the heart of the liar, and when he deceived Eve, he gave her the capacity to allow its emptiness to reign in her heart.  Reaching for the fruit was an outward manifestation of an inward state that is sin…not the sin itself.  The anti-Christ spirit shared itself with Eve, and she partook, and sin came in.  THEY WERE INNOCENT.  God did not come looking for them in anger, even as He knew full well what they had done.  His words were “where are you?”…like a daddy looking for his kids.  He blamed the liar, not the children.

My brother gives a very simple analogy that speaks to the heart of the issue.  It goes as follows:

Perhaps I tell my little girl that she is not allowed to take candy from strangers              on the playground.  I tell her that the consequences will be dire, and it will hurt her badly.  One day, she’s playing by herself and enjoying the monkey bars.  An unmarked white van pulls up, and a strange man rolls down the window to offer her some candy.  She says, “No, my daddy told me I can’t take candy from strangers”.  The strange man then proceeds to tell her “But look how good it is!  And your daddy just doesn’t want you to taste the GOOD candy…the candy that the ADULTS get to eat.”  In my daughters innocence and wonder, she wholeheartedly believes the man.  She doesn’t stop to think about how her daddy wouldn’t lie to her like that because she is too overcome with the possibility that THIS candy might be the best on the earth…and she isn’t allowed to have it.  So, she takes it.  The candy contains a chemical that knocks her unconscious, and the kidnapper takes her limp body into his vehicle.  He takes her to his basement, chains her up, and does unspeakable things to her.  Then, he proceeds to tell her that she’s in the basement, going through what she’s going through, because SHE took the candy.  She was told not to, but she did anyway.  She knew better.  It’s HER fault that she’s alone, and her daddy is mad at her…thats why he hasn’t come to get her.  THIS IS HOW WE TEACH THE CHARACTER OF GOD.

When God came as a man to die on a cross, He wasn’t coming because someone had to pay.  YES, an atoning sacrifice was required, because the WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH.  But Jesus did not block the arrow that the Father had pointed at our spine, dipped in poison.  He didn’t take punishment…He bore our iniquities.  What does that mean?  It means He became sin (the governing entity of emptiness) and died, so that we could live governed by the spirit of Life.  HE CONDEMNED SIN AND SATAN, not humanity.  He included humanity in His death and resurrection…ALL of humanity.  In John 12:28-33, it says “‘Father, glorify Your name.’  Then a voice came from heaven, saying, ‘I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.’  Therefore the people who stood by and heard it said that it had thundered. Others said, ‘An angel has spoken to Him.’  Jesus answered and said, ‘This voice did not come because of Me, but for your sake.  Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out.  And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.’  This He said signifying by what death He would die.”  Jesus, echoing the thundering voice of His Father, declared that AT THE CROSS the world was judged, and the one who took authority over it in the garden was cast out.  The word for “world” in the greek is “kosmou”, from the root “kosmos”.  It is where we derive the term cosmos, and it entails the entirety of all that exists.  And what was the judgement of this world?  “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth (resurrection and ascension), WILL DRAW ALL PEOPLE TO MYSELF.”  Merely concerning the reasoning of the sovereignty and ultimacy of God, the ultimate salvation of mankind makes the most sense.  It is the refusal to approach this possibility within the church which the anti-Christ spirit utilizes to produce yet ANOTHER line of delineation that divides the house, and the house is divided if ALL the kids think they aren’t in the family.

Another passage in scripture that has been rightly taught, but unfortunately ill-applied, is Peter’s vision in Acts 10.  Verses 10-15 read, “Then he became very hungry and wanted to eat; but while they made ready, he fell into a trance and saw heaven opened and an object like a great sheet bound at the four corners, descending to him and let down to the earth.  In it were all kinds of four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, creeping things, and birds of the air.  And a voice came to him, ‘Rise, Peter; kill and eat’.  But Peter said, ‘Not so, Lord!  For I have never eaten anything common or unclean.’  And a voice spoke to him again the second time, ‘What God has cleansed you must not call common.'”  Peter goes on to explain the vision in verse 28; “Then he said to them, ‘You know how unlawful it is for a Jewish man to keep company with or go to one of another nation.  But God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean.”  We have been taught this passage as the beginning of the inclusion of the gentiles into the plan of God, and that is indeed what is being said.  However, in the stupor of religion (anti-Christ spirit), we have misread the breadth of what God actually accomplished in the cross.  You see, the Jews KNEW they were the people of God.  They had been engrained since the dawn of their culture with the covenant of Abraham, knowing that God had ordained them the chosen people.  THEY kept the law, the prophets came from THEIR blood…only they knew God.  For Peter, a good little torah-keeping Jewish boy, the vision of the sheet was a LIFE CHANGING revelation.  God was not simply saying that the gentiles had the option to be included because of the cross; they had always had that option.  There are, in fact, several accounts in old testament scripture of gentile people joining the Jewish Nation and keeping the law; doing the “things” required of a human to know and follow God.  NO…God was saying that they WERE now included.  That the cross of Christ had accomplished the salvation (rescue) of humanity, ENTIRELY APART from the law (“doing” to be righteous).  If God told Peter to call no man common or unclean, then how is it that we have adopted the concept of “saved and unsaved”?  Because we have been cataclysmically influenced by the anti-Christ spirit, and lied to so that we have to keep doing it for ourselves.  In my humble opinion, maintaining the vernacular of “saved; unsaved” is entirely unbiblical.  Rather, there are those of us who know, and those who don’t know yet.  They’re already included, just like we were when we were yet sinners (Romans 5:6-8)…THEY JUST DON’T KNOW.

Romans 5:18 says, in the Phillips Translation, “We see then, that as one act of sin exposed the whole race of men to condemnation, so one act of perfect righteousness presents all men freely acquitted in the sight of God”.  And again, in 1 Corinthians 15:22-23, it reads in the Mirror Translation “In Adam all died; in Christ all are made alive.  All are individually made alive in the order of Christ; He is the first fruit and in His immediate presence we are personally revealed as His own.”  In both passages, ALL MEANS ALL.  Even in the greek.  I find it funny that as humans we have no problem at all condemning everyone in the human race because of what Adam and Eve chose in the garden, but that we do not operate by the same tenacity when deciding who gets included in the cross of Christ.  The anti-Christ spirit wants to keep the church in a “holier-than-though-but-humble-about-it” sense of nobility, when we are just as included in Jesus as the other people who fell short.  The anti-Christ spirit robs us of our true identity in giving us a false one, just like he did in the garden.  It is from that place that we make decisions, and form opinions, that are inconsistent with our TRUE identity as partakers of the divine nature.  Simply put, we start TRYING to be like God (good behavior, “righteous” actions, etc..), instead of realizing we ARE like Him.  The anti-Christ spirit puts requirements on the “unsaved” before they get to be “saved”, and enforces them through the voice of the church across the earth; even though we were all rescued from the kidnapper without requirement placed on us by the God Himself.  Then, it takes those salvation requirements and attributes them to (lies about) the character of God…JUST LIKE IN THE GARDEN.  The anti-Christ spirit isn’t doing anything new, we just never really knew what he was doing.

The root of condition-oriented faith, “saved; unsaved”, right or wrong, is shame.  Adam and Eve hid from the God who loved and breathed life in them as soon as they saw their nakedness.  Not because they were naked, because they knew it was the consequence of choosing the wrong tree.  As long as we feel responsible for what happened to us in the garden we will NOT be able to receive the cross, to receive the good news, for what it truly is.  We will live fulfilling the will of the accuser of the brethren, who creates dividing lines, and makes up prerequisites to our faith calling them “standards of holiness”.  If we don’t begin to understand the absolute absurdity of the grace of God, and if our hearts are not allowed to revel in it, we will never know who we are.

But therein lies the good news.  He is the head, we are the body.  He knows what He’s doing.  He IS grace, not just extends it.  Now that, my friends, is the gospel we were saved unto.

NEXT POST: ANTI-CHRIST: ANTI-PURITY 1 John 4:19

eating the fruit of contradiction: the anti-Christ spirit (2nd installment)

ANTI-CHRIST: ANTI-CROSS

In Hebrews 12:1-2, we see a very widely misunderstood picture of what it means to follow after Jesus.

“Therefore, we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame…

The reason I am quoting this passage is because I want to convey, on a minor scale, the subtle operation of the anti-Christ spirit. Most of us have often heard this passage preached in the context of a motivational message concerning the importance of laying down your life, your rights, and (the pinnacle motivation of the religious spirit) FIGHTING YOUR HORRIBLE SIN. We love to couple this passage with portions like Luke 9:23-24, the requirement of carrying YOUR cross to follow Him, for the double whammy cutting edge message on holiness. Well…hate to burst the bubble, but it’s neither cutting edge, nor the heart of God. Not only has the church been preaching this self-sacrificing doctrine for centuries, regardless of the prophetic lingo we opt to utilize, but we’ve become the agent of hell in our dogma concerning it.

Luke 9:23-24 (and its duplicates, Matthew 16:24-27; Mark 8:34) is hardly a message to the believing church that unless you walk the way Jesus did you cannot follow Him. Let the first person who has adequately lived a life as sinless as our Saviors speak against me in this, because otherwise…THAT message makes following Him an unattainable reality. Jesus was not pointing to a physical OR spiritual death required of those who believe. He was pointing to HIS death that was the salvation of all mankind. To carry your cross means to wear the weight of the sacrifice made FOR YOU. Scripture tells us that we were crucified with Him (Gal. 2:20). That means its YOUR cross. To deny yourself means to give up trying to save yourself. We often forget to consider the context of those whom the Lord was speaking to during His ministry on the earth. I realize His words are eternal, but those hearing them (and thus the issues to which the Lord was speaking) would not have been the same had He been born in Siberia in the 1800’s. He was speaking to torah-keeping Israel, who were living a life of self-righteousness by way of sacrifice. The essence of His words are applicable to every person throughout the whole of time, but without considering the context, we will interpret them wrong 100% of the time. This is why Jesus said “whoever desires to SAVE HIS LIFE will lose it…”. The “take up your cross” words of the Messiah were a proclamation that the cross of Christ was the END of the law, not that you still have to do “your part”.

In view of that reality, Hebrews 12:1-2 takes on a whole new meaning. The word for “weight” in the greek here is “onkon”, meaning “a burden; an encumberance”. The entire chapter preceding Hebrews 12 is renowned as “the hall of faith”, and details the faith (pistis: to be persuaded; come to trust) of those who have gone before us, who looked with longing into the reality we live in…THIS side of the cross. Thus, the “therefore” of verse 1 is the mortar that settles the way we are to approach “running the race”; on the foundation of their motivation: FAITH. Their reality however was beneath the burden of law, which was given to reveal sin and prove our need for a Messiah (Romans 3:20; 5:20). So, “therefore…let us lay aside every weight” can only be referring to the what was the burden of the forerunners verses 1 & 2 of Hebrews 12 are built on. Laying aside every weight means to lay aside every encumberance and condemnation of the law.

Building on this truth, laying aside “the sin which so easily ensnares” takes on a new meaning as well, or at least new in comparison to common church though and teaching. We must remember that we are EXPECTED by God to take all of His word through the filter and lens of the cross of Christ. So, simply put, this verse is not encouraging the fight against sin but rather the awareness of righteousness. Here is where I’m going to lose most of you, if I haven’t already. There is more dogma surrounding the guilt of humanity and our indebtedness for sin than any other topic in Christendom. This is of no surprise, however and merely aids in the logic of my point that the anti-Christ spirit is primarily in operation within the church; he is called the accuser of the brethren, and unfortunately we have been his cheerleaders. Romans 8:2-3 says “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh…”. The thing “the law could not do” was make us righteous and end the dominion (sovereignty; control) of sin. The law was given to reveal sin, which was within the confines of the law the sovereign of humanity. The law was not given to condemn humanity, but to show sin for its true colors as an evil dictator. As its subjects, and as with the fall of any kingdom and its ruler, we were destined to its fate. When Jesus came “He condemned sin in the flesh”. He came as a man (flesh) to win man back. The greek term used here for “condemned” is “katakrino”, meaning “to judge decisively as guilty”. The Lord Himself was there in the garden when sin (the governing entity of emptiness) was imposed on mankind, and he came as one of mankind to restore our righteousness (the governing entity of the Spirit of life). My point is that, concerning the heart and mind of God, MANKIND IS INNOCENT. He made His judgement on the cross, calling sin the transgressor and condemning it in His flesh…not men (John 3:17; 12:47)

Returning to Hebrews 12:1-2, in light of these truths, we can begin to rightly understand the reason Christ came, and consequently see the deception of the anti-Christ spirit. When the author of Hebrews wrote “looking unto Jesus” in verse 2 of chapter 12, the word used for looking in the greek was “aphorao”, which means “to look away”. he was not simply saying that we must be determined to look at Jesus; set our will like flint to keep from sin and “have eyes only for Him”. He was exhorting us to look away from the system of the law that ended with the proclamation of John the Baptist (Luke 16:16), and to ALLOW ourselves to be captivated by Jesus; to be distracted by the finished work of the cross that He endured from the lie that we have any payment due for “sin”, or that we could ever have paid it anyway. In his translation of Hebrews within the Mirror Translation, Francois Du Toit says it like this:

“Look away from the shadow dispensation of the law and the prophets and fix your eyes upon Jesus. He is the fountainhead and conclusion of faith. He saw the joy (of mankind’s salvation) when he braved the cross and despised the shame of it. As the executive authority of God (the right hand of the Throne of God) he now occupies the highest seat of dominion to endorse man’s innocence!. (“Having accomplished purification of sins, he sat down…” Heb 1:3, Isa 53:11)”

The deceiver has used all of the verses I’ve discussed over the course of church history to bring us to the precise opposite revelation they were intended to. He has dumbed down the grace of God in mixing it with the law (the mixture Jesus called lukewarm and said makes Him vomit), and caused a hideous religious dogma in our leaders based in “upholding the standard of righteousness” and “fighting the heresy of sloppy grace”. The outcome? A body in shambles, controlled by sin, and upholding a standard of unrighteousness that leads to death.

It is time for a revolution. But we have to stop pretending we’ve figured out God to get there.

Next Post: Hebrews 10:14; Philippians 3:1-14; Galatians 2:17-21 ANTI-CHRIST: ANTI-YOU

eating the fruit of contradiction: the anti-Christ spirit

I am learning that the entirety of the gospel is a dangerous instrument when it is not perceived through the lens of the true grace of God.  It is indeed a two edged sword, cutting in whichever direction it is brandished.  Because of that knowledge, (and having been on the receiving end of the religious, dogmatic, legalistic swing) I am diving head first into the sea of what “grace” really means.  Although the subject of this particular post is not directly addressing the matter of grace, it is most certainly a byproduct of it.  This blog post carries the potential to be unbearably long, so for the sake of the sanity of those reading this, I’ve decided to break it up into several.  I love to body of Christ, and want in no way come across as though I am criticizing her, nor merely focusing on her “problems”.  I long for her to be whole, secure in her identity, and free of her chains.  I believe the misinterpretation of  His grace, “Godliness”, and subsequently the spirit of anti-Christ, to be a good majority of why she is not yet entirely unbound.  My desire to address this issue came from the experience of a dear friend of mine, who will go unnamed.  Without revealing too much about him, he has an incredibly pure heart, and is one of the few carrying the TRUE forerunner message in our generation.  I am grateful for every expression of the heart of God within the body, and honor each “stream” for their diligence in stewarding the knowledge of Him in the way they’ve understood it.  I do not however feel it necessary to swallow the bone simply because there is meat to be had, and am decidedly resolved to speak truth as it is revealed to me, regardless of the reaction it may produce.  That being said, I can say with confidence that we have yet to understand as common knowledge within the church the actual meaning of the forerunner spirit and message.  This young man is one of the few who does.  Upon feeling called to a certain community of believers who have given themselves to the pursuit of global evangelism, he moved his entire life to the city they call their home base.  It is safe to say that he does not agree with most of what they teach, their methods, and consequentially their understanding and practical out working of the gospel.  He solely joined them in obedience to the word of the Lord, and has done a phenomenal job of maintaining humility in service and heart.  On a certain occasion, he was driving with another member of the community, and listening to music that he had chosen and thoroughly enjoys.  The artist coming through the speakers was one who very obviously does not live a lifestyle of “surrender to the Lord”, and who finds most of her fame through the exploitation of controversial dress, lyrics, and lifestyle.  The passenger in the car heard the song, and began reprimanding my friend for sowing into the jezebel spirit.  He spoke condescendingly, and involved other members of the community.  Word spread, as it often does in a religious environment pretending to understand love, and people began treating him differently.  Leadership took it upon themselves to publicly “correct” the issue at hand without incriminating my friend by name…you know, they did it “in love”.  Several times in the presence of the entire community leaders addressed the destructive nature of secular music, detailing the harm done to the human soul upon listening to it, and the detriment of partnering with hell in such a way…going as far as to use the specific name of the artist they had been listening to in the car that day.  In other words, indirectly “unveiling” to him that he was, indeed, fraternizing with the anti-Christ spirit.  The young man called me a few days later in distress.  He had been obedient to the Lord, only to find himself ostracized and alone in community.  He is an incredible man of God, full of passion and radically anointed.  He now stood the spiritual “inferior”, however unspoken those words may have been.  The overall attitude and response of those around him made a loud enough statement.  Against my advice, he stayed in the community and continued serving them.  He is a better man than me.

The reason I wanted to open with that story is because it is a simple and yet compelling picture of the deception we live in as believers.  I will not argue with you whether or not secular music that does not glorify the Lord is actually partnering with hell.  I will tell you I think that’s one of the most small-minded things I’ve heard since I left that type of community, but I will not argue with you.  The very spirit he was being accused of bedding with was in actuality what those accusing were in full, albeit unwitting, submission to.  Satan, and every foul thing that proceeds from him, LOVES to accuse the brethren…and they love to use the “word of God” to do it.  Scripture says that the deceiver comes as an angel of light.  This does not mean that he makes sin, and all his ploys, attractive so we’ll do it.  That is so obvious, it’s not even revelation.  It means that he uses the truth of God, and things of a supernatural nature, to deceive humanity.  He was once in the ranks of the heavenly host; he knows ALL about what we’re trying to figure out.  I want to make an effort to challenge the current and common ideas concerning the anti-Christ spirit, and I will most likely offend SOMETHING that you’ve held on to for dear life as long as you’ve been breathing.  Please remember as you go here with me that I am not trying to jump on the “I’m right, you’re wrong” band wagon.  I’m actually trying to COMPLETELY DO AWAY with that process of thought.  I am just beginning to scratch the surface of the scandalously good grace of God, and the revelation that we have been afraid of our inheritance for far too long.  I am COMPLETELY willing to hear the Lord tell me I’m wrong, in whatever fashion He may choose to do so.  But, until He does just that…I’d like to invite you into discovering the depths of the love and wisdom of our God right alongside me.

ANTI-CHRIST: ANTI-MESSIAH

This spirit of the anti-Christ is not the spirit of Lady Gaga, nor is it the spirit characterized by any slew of “sin”.  The spirit of the anti-Christ is just that…anti Christ.  Now the problem with a statement like this one (spirit of the anti-Christ) is the dogmatic doctrinal connotation it carries with it from years and centuries of pointed teaching.  Because we have been taught to approach the gospel as “sinners”, we have then defined the antithesis of the saving knowledge of the good news as sin.  Therefore, since we were saved from our sin, the spirit that hates the One who saved us must primarily propagate the love of sinfulness and the partaking of it…right?  While it is true that the out working of unrighteousness is indeed a part of the kingdom of darkness, I want to suggest that it is not Satan’s foremost device in binding the earth to blindness.

To rightly understand the operation of the anti-Christ spirit, we much first rightly understand the operation of the One it opposes.  When a counterfeiter of currency goes about creating his forgery, he does not study any former counterfeit, but rather the authentic note itself.  It needs to appear on its face to be the bona fide currency it imitates.  It even needs to withstand exceedingly intimate inspection.  The gospel of Jesus Christ is the sincere currency of life, and the counterfeiter has wielded its potency to obtain his ambition since the dawn of time.  In the account of the “fall” of man in the book of Genesis, chapter 3 verses 1-5, it says

“The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made.  One day he asked the woman, ‘Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?’ ‘Of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,’ the woman replied.  ‘It’s only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat.  God said, “You must not eat it or even touch it; if you do, you will die.”‘ ‘You won’t die!’, the serpent replied to the woman. ‘God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.'”

When the author of Genesis calls the serpent the “shrewdest” of all the animals, the Hebrew word used is “arum”, meaning “crafty, shrewd, or sensible.”  However, the english language is built upon germanic and latin foundations.  English is considered to be a linear language, far more literal & widely varied in its word usage.  Hebrew is called a conceptual language, utilizing descriptive context surrounding specific words to imply meaning (i.e. – “You are beautiful” becomes “You are as a sunset”).  Greek is also a very linear language, and the translation most widely used to convert the scripture into English.  The greek word used here for “shrewdest” is “phronimos”, which more accurately dictates the original Hebrew intention within the word.  The word phronimos comes from the same root from which we derive the english word diaphragm.  The diaphragm is a muscle that involuntarily regulates your breathing.  In light of its root, phronimos could more accurately be translated “personal perspective regulating outward behavior.”  It basically means to be controlled from the inside out.  In the context of the deceiver, it entails that his internal perspective WAS and IS his identity.  The conversation following this statement with Eve was his willful effort to imprint her with his identity.  So, to do just that, he utilized the word of God to cause her to doubt her God-like identity.  He accuses the heart of God, using His very word, to misrepresent the intention of God and rob humanity of their identity in Him.  The truth about Adam and Eve, and by extension ALL of humanity, is that the were made like God.  When the accuser said they would “be like God, knowing both good and evil”, he was appealing to the seed of doubt he had planted in them (“Did God really say..?”).  The lie was in that being like God never included knowing evil.  God had never known evil.  The word used here for “know” in the greek is “ginosko”, and is the same word used when Mary the mother of Jesus doubted her immaculate conception, proclaiming she had not known a man.  It denotes not only first hand experience, but also an intimate and experiential knowledge.  He used the truth, that they would indeed know (ginosko) the contradiction between good & evil, to indirectly challenge the kindness of God within the heart of the woman.  By saying “God knows that your eyes will be opened…”, as though He had withheld the complete truth from them, he knowingly tainted the goodness of the God who breathed life into them.  For them to know both good and evil would not make them like God, as He cannot know evil (He cannot do evil), and they were already created in His likeness.

The outcome of the fall of man (commonly referred to as the “fall from grace”, interestingly enough) was not primarily characterized by the action of man; it was decided by the source of the action, and the result of its completion.  We tend to think of sin as the list of actions associated with the “do nots” of scripture.  However, the greek word for sin is “harmatia”, defined on wikpiedia.com (sometimes secular sources provide far more agenda-less information) as “an injury committed in ignorance when the person affected or the results are not what the agent supposed they were”.  It is used throughout much of secular greek literature to denote “a hero’s fatal flaw”, and most directly refers to the consequential misfortune of the action taken, not necessarily providing delineation between the “right” or “wrong” of the action itself.  As a matter of fact, it was often used to describe the rightful action a hero had to take because of moral obligation that lead to misfortune.  Biblically speaking, the real meaning of harmatia should sound something like “an inward element of deficit that produces unrighteous action”; it is literally the governing entity of emptiness that plays heavily into how a person lives their life, not primarily the lifestyle they live.  Throughout the generations of church history most have associated “worldliness” with the anti-Christ spirit, saying the church must strive to be “in the world, but not of it”; to die to our desire to fulfill selfish longing, and live a life consecrated to the Lord.  Anything lesser has been carelessly thrown into the “anti-Christ” category.  It is the primary reason the new-age movement, the homosexual population, and the abortion doctors are keenly aware that they are unwelcome in the church by some unspoken law of “we’re right, you’re wrong”.  I am OBVIOUSLY not saying the actions taken by those portions of society are good nor Godly.  But we have theologies CENTERED around the rise of the anti-Christ detailed in the book of Revelation, most of which have been misconstrued to a degree that incriminates humanity in THIS day based on a fear of what will happen in that one.  

The spirit of the anti-Christ is not primarily manifested in “worldliness”.  I regret having to say it, but I believe it is primarily manifested currently within the church itself.  The reason I believe this is relatively simple when it is rightly understood, but unfortunately most reading this have been too offended already, and forfeited any desire to journey with me into it.  The phrase “anti-Christ” does not, contrary to popular church belief, mean “anti-Jesus”.  As a matter of fact, it is the very gospel OF Jesus this wicked spirit has wielded to accomplish its purpose since the dawn of the church…and regrettably used to ensnare the body in subtle deception.  “Anti-Christ” actually means “anti-Messiah”, or “anti-Anointed One”.  This is why the church has missed its rise in our midst while we were out witch-hunting, as it is the very spirit who cultivated a misunderstanding of the messianic work and role of Jesus, and (by that same token) blinded us to its own true purpose.  The intention of the anti-Christ spirit (it is my resolute conviction) is to blind the church of God to the true grace of God, and restrict them in a nearly undetectable manner to the law Jesus came to fulfill.  It plans to keep the body of Christ beneath the supposition that WE ARE TO BLAME FOR OUR SIN; to coral a body of “sinners” into its buildings every sunday to learn about how far they are from how God wants them, and how much they still have to do to get there.  It wants to come up with good strategies, and dreams of global transformation to distract from the only revelation that will actually accomplish it.  It longs to cultivate shame within the heart of the bride, and utilize a system of “repentance” as her only way out of never being good enough (that is EXACTLY what the sacrificial system of the law was).  It intends to mix the grace of God with the law of the old testament, in unbelievable subtlety, to keep us needing a savior instead of having our Messiah.  It’s not nearly as concerned with keeping the world “in sin” as it is with keeping the church in religion.

Next Post: Hebrews 12: 1-2 ANTI-CHRIST: ANTI-CROSS