Our Hardware Lesson

Our Hardware Lesson
Let us be Calm and Brave

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Mission

The Church as a whole has a different mission from the overcomers. The Church's mission is to get saved and then get other people saved in order to get more membership. It is to empower the Church (i.e., leaders) so that theoretically the whole world would become Catholic, or Baptist, or Pentecostal, etc.
This eventually translates into political power, as we see from a study of Church history. The goal is to give political power to men while presuming that those men (leaders) are submitted to Jesus Christ. The problem, as King Saul's example shows clearly, is that as men gain political power--even Christian leaders--they tend to act like King Saul and assume ownership of that which is God's.
Kings are supposed to find out the will of God and then implement it as a steward. But kings inevitably become corrupted by power, regardless of their religious affiliations. They usurp power by taking the place of God and ruling by their own will, expecting God to rubber-stamp their decisions. Such behavior is justified on the grounds that "God made me king." In other words, since God made me king, He has given me the right to do as I please, and He will back me in all that I do.
Or, as Nixon would say, "If I do it, that makes it legal."
This is how King Saul acted, even though he prophesied as an Old Testament Pentecostal. It is how the popes of the Roman Church acted very soon after coming into power. Their moral corruption is well documented by many cardinals and bishops throughout the centuries who wrote histories of the Church.
The mandate of the Overcomer is different. First, I do not believe that God will empower the Overcomers in an in-the-world manifestation until they are perfected. That is, they must fulfill the Feast of Tabernacles before they are fully qualified to rule the earth. Otherwise, it would only be a matter of time before they too would succumb to the temptation to move from steward to usurper.
Yet there is much to be done in the present time. Obviously, we are to teach people about the Feast of Tabernacles in order to understand the true path to perfection. We must understand that the Feast of Passover is insufficient in itself. Likewise, the earnest of the Spirit given through the Feast of Pentecost is insufficient. Only Tabernacles can give us the fullness of the Spirit by which perfection comes.
Secondly, we must recognize that the time will come, as Daniel tells us, that the saints will be given the dominion (or "adjudication") over the earth. Dominion will be transferred from Babylon to the Overcomers (Dan. 7:27). The (Stone) Kingdom will then grow until it fills the whole earth (Dan. 2:35). The Roman Church believes that it will fulfill this prophecy, but it was established under the administration of King Saul and Pentecost, not David and Tabernacles. So the Roman Church proved to be the extension of Imperial Rome known as the "little horn" of Dan. 7:8, 20.
The key problem to understand here is about usurping the throne of God. A usurper is an "antichrist," one who rules in place of Christ in the sense of a usurper, rather than of a steward. And this has to do with rulers doing their own will, instead of seeking to do the will of God.
When we speak of "the will of God," we cannot separate this from His law (Rom. 2:18). Whatever God says to do is a law, whether we call it that or not. God's law is the expression of His character, often with the added feature of teaching and training. It is not unlike the house rules of a parent, who is responsible to teach the children right from wrong and instill in them a sense of responsibility for their actions.
Laws are not given as an end in themselves, but as a training mechanism to renew our minds (our thinking) and to bring us to the place of obedience. One cannot separate law from obedience, for law demands obedience, and whatever we obey is a law by definition. We cannot claim to be obedient to God without compliance to some law that has expressed His will.
Immature children are given laws because their own wills naturally want to rule their lives. Children are not born compliant to the will of a parent. They must be trained to be obedient. As long as the child's will differs from that of his parent, he needs a law, and that law goes against the child's sense of personal freedom to do his own will. Only when the child's will becomes one with the parent does the child no longer need a law to tell him what to do. This is the point where the child reaches spiritual maturity and does the will of the parent, not because of any external law, but because the law is written on his heart.
This is precisely the purpose of Passover and Pentecost. Passover puts the believer (by faith) on a journey from "Egypt" to the Promised Land. Pentecost keeps a person on the right path as he hears God's voice, learns His will (law), and learns obedience as he is led by the Spirit. Pentecost is the big training ground that brings us to spiritual maturity.
An overcomer is ultimately one who goes beyond Pentecost into Tabernacles, where God no longer needs to command him to do this or that, because the overcomer does the will of God by nature, and no longer by command. This is the point where he/she is fully qualified to speak the will and law of God and to expect obedience from the rest of mankind. In other words, overcomers are called to rule (Dan. 7:27) and to judge the world (1 Cor. 6:2).
That does not mean the overcomers are called to condemn the world, but to establish the standard of righteousness and define unrighteousness, injustice, and sin (crime). The world has had its own standard, based upon the will of man, but the overcomers are called to know the will of God and to establish that new standard. It is called the law of God.
The law will remain the standard of right and wrong until mankind no longer needs it. When all men do the will of God by nature, they will no longer need to have the law imposed upon them. They will be spiritually mature. As Isaiah 26:9 says,
"When the earth experiences Thy judgments, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness."
The Overcomers are to prepare themselves by life experience, study, and prayer, to know the will of God, so that they may present it or clarify it to the rest of the world. To know His will, one must live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God (Deut. 8:3; Matt. 4:4). One must know the law, the prophets, and the royal records, as well as the New Testament Gospels, Epistles, and the book of Revelation.
The mission of the overcomers is to bring the will of God into the earth, so that injustice is first restrained and finally eradicated and replaced by God's love. There is much that can be done even during the time of Babylonian jurisdiction, but for the most part God has been using the opposition of Babylon as a training tool for the overcomers.
Babylon was given jurisdiction because of the sin and rebellion of our forefathers, as the prophets clearly tell us. But we are now approaching the time of Babylon's fall, where the whole system is falling under its own weight of sin and financial unrighteousness. Seeing this, we ought to be alert and to prepare ourselves with diligence for the work in the Age to come. A new administration is coming, and with all due respect, it has little to do with Mr. Obama or his cabinet of Babylonian experts.
We must understand, however, that becoming a believer does not qualify anyone for rulership--nor does a Pentecostal experience (however valid)। God is looking for a man after His own heart. He is looking for the few who know His heart, His will, His mind, and know how to apply it as Jesus would.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

uh-oh. It said "failed to publish"... oh well.

messianicdruid said...

I thought I made a mistake once, but I was mistaken.