In the introduction to the book Life After Death by William Landon, he lays the foundation of a discussion of the actualities of the human soul, particularly life after death. He addresses ‘problematic verses’ and apparent inconsistencies that we will or have encountered in reading the scriptures. When this occurs, we need simply to wait and see how the Lord brings the needed clarity. This will prevent us from either throwing the bible out or trying to make things fit to our way of thinking!
I too am one of those many followers of Christ who is living more and more in the realm of not needing or having to know or have ALL the answers. We will receive the understanding from God when we need it. As Jesus said to his disciples, “There are many things which I desire to share with you, but you cannot bear them yet.”
In this dynamic tension of things not gelling or fitting together, our very real adversary the Devil is only too quick to oblige us. To quote Bill, “One of the ways Satan tries to trip us up is by giving us knowledge we are not equipped to constructively handle. This is what happened in the Garden of Eden: You shall not surely die, ‘the serpent said to the woman. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good from evil.” (Genesis 3:4)
“How Satan trapped humanity through the temptation of Adam and Eve in eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was to get our ancestors to take on an understanding they were not ready to receive constructively. The lie of the serpent was that Adam and Eve were ready to receive the knowledge of good and evil. In reality, the fall came as a result of humanity taking on a kind of knowledge that they did not have the right kind of life to use properly (a spiritual life and not just a physical/psychological life)." Case in point: my wife once heard that if a child is exposed to pornography at an early age when s/he is not emotionally or psychologically mature, that the child’s nervous system can actually become permanently impaired. If we are to subscribe to the truth that God is love, we must believe that he knew, in his love for them, that Adam and Eve were not yet ready to receive the knowledge of good and evil.
As a side thought here, later in Genesis 3 God says, “Behold the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.”
The kicker here in my thinking is that the knowledge of good and evil was not evil, but it was the motive behind obtaining it apart from God’s timing. There was NO need to be like God, but there was a need to be one with Him, to be joined to Him. That knowledge they obtained via the serpent was a loaded gun so to speak without, as Bill alluded, the ‘right kind of life’ to handle it.
My pondering on all of this has significant ramifications far removed from the Edenic story. In the instant, click-of-a-mouse knowledge-infused Internet-charged world in which we live, is there this same propensity within our flesh to think that through obtaining ‘knowledge’ we can circumvent having to wait or trust God to prepare us for that which we need to know?
That’s what my daughter said as she tried for the umpteenth time to get the new external hard drive we bought her to work on her Mac notebook! I/we love our precious daughter more than anything (and if our son ever reads this, we love him mucho as well) and we we’re ready to go the distance to resolve this problem for her before she headed back to Montreal. Where we bought the hard drive was in a city that is about an a 50 minute drive from us, so in the flurry of trying to resolve this dilemma my wife took our daughter to a PC store here in our city, the guy tried a new usb cable, bingo, it worked. They got home only to hear, “it doesn’t work,” what we said! Long story short, the problem wasn’t with the external hard drive or the USB cable, our daughter unknowingly had hooked it up to her Mac using the wrong USB cable, she had used her boy friends USB cable that works with his camera-DUH! Problem solved, IT WORKS!!
This may not be the perfect illustration but, how is it any different really if we who are in Christ and have become a new creation, to try and live out the rest of our lives here on Earth trying to make outer laws, (the wrong USB cable) Mosaic or contemporary laws, rules, regulations work in governing our lives?
I want to encourage anyone who is a follower of Christ or who has had any kind of encounter with God to take the time to read a great book, which I can not say enough good things about. I free download is available here.
I’m sure as read again what I feel Father is (reassuringly) speaking to my heart, I will be putting up additional thoughts.
“Coming down the mountain, Jesus swore them to secrecy.”Don't tell a soul what you saw. After the Son of Man rises from the dead, you're free to talk." They puzzled over that, wondering what on earth "rising from the dead" meant.”
Without Christ being fully formed in us, not just having been raised from the dead within our spirit, but having His very life formed within us as us there is at best a form of godliness but definitely no power. There is so much witnessing to the truth, but so little of the Truth Christ in us as us evident. Jesus said, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father” is that true of you and me? The disciples that had witnessed the out working of the Word that had become flesh, but they were yet to discover that that same Word was going to be fleshed out in and through their very lives as well.
Even after Paul’s miraculous conversion it appears that in the face of such an incredible eye witness encounter with the resurrected Christ, he too needed that reality to be worked into the warp and woof of his life. So much testifying of the Christ is pointing to a Jesus that is in us but not as us, which was what we were apprehended for in the first place, you know, Jesus being the first born of many sons forth coming.
I can only speak from where I’ve come, where I’m at and where I see myself going in this journey of discovering what it means to live loved is that the habitual sin ingrained fear learned habit patterns in my life have frustrated His grace. It is only in discovering an increased depth of His love and life being deeply rooted and established in us as us that we too can say as our brother Paul did, “None of this things move me.”
The Father’s intention is not in identifying us with what the Scriptures say, but making us one with the One who spoke the scriptures, wherein lies the power. I am learning and growing in an increased knowing the reality of my name Richard, Father has not given me a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound mind!
“So get rid of all uncleanness and the rampant outgrowth of wickedness, and in a humble (gentle, modest) spirit receive and welcome the Word which implanted and rooted [in your hearts] contains the power to save your souls.”
The residual affect of sin within our members is something that is stimulated through the impetus of the father of lies within our flesh, trying to keep our soul fear-bound. In harkening to his subversive taunting, our soul is temporarily cut of from the “implanted” (engrafted) Word of God that has the power to further release, actualizing within us, the saving, restoring work of God’s grace. Without the secure, true knowledge of Whose we are (totally accepted and unconditionally beloved sons of God), this diabolical, unnatural, inclination will divert His life being fully formed within us, within our soul! I love the following quote and somehow believe it flows congruently with my thoughts: “In other words, the work of Christ is finished and yet to be realized. It is reflective of the “already, but not yet” tension of the Kingdom of God.”
It is of utmost urgency to have revealed to us our true point of reference, and it is this: “he that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” In the miracle of being received by God the Father, birthing us, our previous state, being “by nature … children of wrath, sons of disobedience,” we were instantly translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son.
This implanted (engrafted) Word of God to which we have been joined is our only hope of outwardly becoming all that is contained from within our only source of life, Christ in us. Our salvation is for the purpose of saving all that we are, spirit, soul and body, being presented to the Lord, perfectly. Our common adversary, Satan, fully knows his impotency in stopping us from responding to God’s initial offer of saving grace, but knows full well he can still wreak confusion within our life, within our soul, by using the residual lingering stain of fear to continue his purposed manipulation of keeping our souls alienated from God our Father.
I love how our brother James puts it: “But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.” It is important to understand that this wisdom that James speaks of is inseparable from the Father’s love!
He (our Father) relentlessly appeals to the inherent soul-alienation within the child of God: “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly."
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.” -- Helen Keller
“(The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens)”.
God warned Adam and Eve that they could freely eat from any tree in the Garden, but not from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God said, “for in the day you eat of it, you shall surely die”.
My question is this, did they really die spiritually or were they cut off from the only true source to become, be made fully alive spiritually? Remember they had a body made from the dust of the earth, then God breathed into that dust (clay) the breath of life making man a ‘living soul’, but their spirit was yet incomplete to my way of thinking because the Tree of Life (also in the Garden) pointed to that which would have made them complete.
Our brother Paul addressed this very issue, “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
“To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.”
A door had been closed to them so that there was now no way to have access to the Tree of Life. “Therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the Garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.”
What I am about to quote here from my good friend and brother Bill Landon from his latest book, “Life After Death” is so pregnant with thought provoking wonder, I couldn’t help but add it to what I see as being the truth.
“How Satan trapped humanity through the temptation of Adam and Eve in eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was to get our ancestors to take on an ‘understanding’ they were not ready to receive constructively. The lie of the serpent was that Adam and Eve were ready to receive the knowledge of good and evil. In reality, the fall came as a result of humanity taking on a kind of knowledge that they did not have the right kind of life to use properly (a spiritual life and not just a physical/psychological life).”
“There is nothing wrong with this as none of us are omniscient. Unfortunately, many people fall into that trap of feeling that they must come across as being all-knowing so that their position will be believable. In doing this what usually happens is just the opposite. The “all the answers all the time” position weakens the truths contained in people’s positions because any error that may be found in their position gives one the idea that maybe it is really “none of the answers any of the time.’ My view on this is that none of us has the right to expect anyone to have all the answers. All we can do is to assess every position from the conformity of that position to the standard of truth we elect to use. In this way, we can take what shows itself to be true and reject whatever fails the test. At a minimum, we may “put on the shelf” the things that we can’t definitely prove or disprove.”
If knowing answers to life's questions is absolutely necessary to you, then forget the journey. You will never make it, for this is a journey of unknowables - of unanswered questions, enigmas, incomprehensibles, and most of all, things unfair.
We who preach the gospel must not think of ourselves as public relations agents sent to establish good will between Christ and the world. We must not imagine ourselves commissioned to make Christ acceptable to big business, the press, the world of sports or modern education. We are not diplomats but prophets, and our message is not a compromise but an ultimatum.
"So maybe when we "congratulate" one another for our brilliant abilities in sharing Life we should refrain and instead say, "I love seeing Jesus being so real thru you!"
Christianity is not about learning to live within the lines; Christianity is about the joy of coloring.
We must see all the brothers and sisters as equals if we are to grasp the reality of Jesus' statement "My Father and Your Father". There are NO junior and senior kindergarten children in the Father's household.
Knowing Christ is a living, spontaneous knowledge. This is not an understanding that you possess so much as it is a knowing that possesses you.
And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness!
I trust those visiting here will wade out into the waters of the Father's amazing grace, and likewise experience the unfolding reality of His total unconditional acceptance. Upon this unmoveable and secure footing we move on into His higher purposes for our lives.
Sometimes we have to live with some uncertainty and chaos before a new order can take shape.
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