It's Like it....but it isn't.... : - the Tree of GOOD

Revelation 3:9 I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars—I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you.
Genesis2:16 And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."
Genesis3:5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
Genesis 3:24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
Hebrews 4:12For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. 13Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.






Genesis4:3 Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. 3 In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the LORD. 4 But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, 5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.
6 Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? 7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." .......The FIRST MURDER......


Genesis 16 :1 and 2 Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, "The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her."

Galations 4:21Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says? 22For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. 23His son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way; but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a promise.
24These things may be taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves: This is Hagar. 25Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children. 26But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother. 27For it is written:
"Be glad, O barren woman,
who bears no children;
break forth and cry aloud,
you who have no labor pains;
because more are the children of the desolate woman
than of her who has a husband."[b]

28Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. 29At that time the son born in the ordinary way persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit. It is the same now. 30But what does the Scripture say? "Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman's son."[c] 31Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman.


The Bible is full of battles between the similar, the like, the almost the same.
Here is a power battle. Moses first demonstrating his calling with the People of God Exodus 4.....then with Pharoah and his magicians.Exodus 7ff.
Matthew 13 :24-30
The Parable of the wheat and the tares
24Jesus told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. 26When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
27"The owner's servants came to him and said, 'Sir, didn't you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?'
28" 'An enemy did this,' he replied.
"The servants asked him, 'Do you want us to go and pull them up?'
29" 'No,' he answered, 'because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. 30Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.' "
The 1st Commandment Deuteronomy 6:5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

Matthew 25 The Parable of the Ten Virgins
1"At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. 2Five of them were foolish and five were wise. 3The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. 4The wise, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. 5The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep.
6"At midnight the cry rang out: 'Here's the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!'

7"Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. 8The foolish ones said to the wise, 'Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.'

9" 'No,' they replied, 'there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.'

10"But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut.

11"Later the others also came. 'Sir! Sir!' they said. 'Open the door for us!'

12"But he replied, 'I tell you the truth, I don't know you.'

13"Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.

Psalms12:6 "The words of the LORD are pure words;
As silver tried in a furnace on the earth, refined seven times."

God's filter system, His Word -Refining programme is happening every second of every minute of every hour of every day, of every year, of every century of every millenium.
He is choosing between....
between ....
between.....


The above passages can scare us to the core. They can terrify us. In fact, I guess all of us that have let these passages do their work on us, have been terrified into much frantic activity. Trying to pray more. Trying to get to more meetings. Trying to read the Bible more.

But the passages themselves contain their own secrets. "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him".

Jesus brings forth His Life within you.

He sees our doings. Our attempts. He honours the heart that was behind them, but as when angels came to visit in the Old Testament, and people hurriedly prepared lavish offerings, they kind of accepted them, but did this by setting them on fire and in a moment all the lavish preparation has gone up in smoke.

The real work is His Life in you. Believing on this Life. Doing, the next step that He calls you to in the obedience of faith....but really just simply "believing on this life"....that it is enough to get us where we desire to be.

Really the whole answer lies in the Old Testament in Commandment No. 1
Because this inner passionate burning love for God has this understanding and Trust that

He is God
that He knows how to get us there
How to make us fit to relate with Him

In Deuteronomy the answers weren't all spelt out yet, Jesus the lamb had not come

but it didn't matter...because the LOVE knows God the Father has it all in hand....

that He isn't as the devil lied to us in Genesis 3:5...some ugly person leaving us bereft, so we have to "as orphan Gods" make it on our own, by having to choose our own way amidst incredible obstacles of deciding ourselves between the good and the bad.
Passionate burning love, coupled with the full intensity of our strength, linked to our souls, our mind,earnestly trying to seek out , unravel His ways.....
this kind of love .....which makes us God-hangers on

(any human would soon tire of this...it'd get too much...but God can handle it, He is such a Fire Love Being Himself...He's not English)

The love has driven us already

to take of our first fruits
to take the Fat PORTIONS

to already have done this and separated it out, long before Cain is even thinking about what on earth he can spare for his offering.

What I'm saying is love finds its own way. It's already bought the spare oil from the shop. It's not thinking "I want a better offering than you!"....it's thinking there's a wedding on, I have an invitation, the Master has not come yet, I've got a Pentecostal oil lamp....but the charismatic Oil show is running low....what shall I do? So long ahead of time, you've been down the shop....used the special unlimited cheques the Bridegroom left you when He gave you the lamp....and you've purchased yet more of this wonderful oil.

The Bridegroom comes.

The Spiritual Flash Photo is taken. A moment in time. You've been earnestly waiting this moment. Because Love does. The photo shows an outer reality based on the inward one....LOVE.
The foolish virgin can do nothing. It's too late. Her photo shows a lamp, yes, but the oil is kind of pretty low now....certainly not enough to go up the dark road to the wedding celebration.

Then there's Cain and Abel. Cain:A few measly pickings from a great harvest of corn, versus Abel: the very fat offerings

from the FIRST fruits lambs. (There's only one FIRST FRUIT - hence the name). Except Abel wasn't into the versus......it was Cain who thought the whole versus up.

Abel was just....well....simply driven by love.


This blog is about the levels of Christian maturity. If you haven't got the main point of the next section...you may have some left-brain theories about what Christ living as you may be.....but you haven't got the real thing if you don't get this: don't get hung up on the next few lines ...wait for Ephesians. Here we go:
The psalms of Ascents describing the stages going up the hill of the Lord
The 3 main Jewish feasts which are further subdivided

The East to West approach through the Tabernacle ending in the Holy of holies

The Vision of the River in Ezekiel, where the person enters deeper and deeper into a river

The Book of John which unlike the other " synoptic gospels" is written from a spiritual topographic viewpoint, beginning with being born again and going right through to Union.(Topography describes maps like the London Underground that are not exact in miles but the approximate shape and order of stations are accurate.)



The Book of Romans..................
All these are written from the point of view of the delusion of the "independent self" , or locked up leftbrain, devoid of God's life, making a trek inwards into God.


This'll BLOW YOUR MIND

Ephesians is actually more accurate....

From a spiritual point of view.
It works outwards!!

Imagine a human egg subdividing. Imagine a brain being formed in greater and greater complexity. Imagine a "grain as small as a mustard seed, yet that grows to be a massively large shrub". Imagine leaven or yeast , here,Kingdom leaven, multiplying itself exponentially and spreading through dough.

This is the power of Ephesians chapter 1 and 2.

This is true NOW of YOU. It was true the very first minute you were born again. And actually since the Cross 2000 years ago, it was also true.

Only one problem. The Tree of Good.

All of us operate from an inward programme, a mesh that runs all our surface thinking.This mesh is something like the mesh they use in skingrafting for new skin to adhere to. Or perhaps a mesh on which to grow plants from seed in a favorable environment. It is situated just below the bits of you that talk to me, but not as far down as your born again spirit.
Because of the way we are brought up, this "mesh" is a performance mesh, a Tree of Good mesh, onto which we attach all our understanding of how the world operates. I can tell you all about the Christian stages of maturity being based entirely on grace. I can tell you that from the moment you receive Christ's life in your spirit, Ephesians chapters 1 and 2 is true of you. But you will hear NONE of this. Because you can only hear through the filter of your "performance based" mesh/through the filter of your "Tree of Good" mesh. This bit of you understands everything in terms of steps up into the Presence of God, like A Levels, then a degree, then a Masters.But the Tabernacle of God HAS NO STEPS. They are forbidden by God. Human performance is not what "entry into God's Presence is about"

For more on this performance-based mesh read more on Frank Lake's Cycle of Grace illustration and Mark Stibbe's "Orphans and Heirs"

Ephesians, unlike any of my other descriptions of approaching God above,works from the point of view of Reality. Everyone , but everyone, locked into our left-brain "what we see hear touch taste smell" thinking has trouble with Ephesians. And for this reason, God has revealed these other descriptions or stages in entering into God. This is only for the sake of our understanding.It is almost like humoring a person, while the real stuff is going on behind the scenes.



Ephesians is what is really going on....it's just that none but our spirit would ever believe it.It's too fantastic. For this reason God has given us the gift of tongues, of speaking in the languages of men and angels. God by the release of the Holy Spirit , does a complete conscious mind bypass. When we speak in tongues we speak these sort of mysteries directly to God without our performance - based filter continually butting in. This was our spirit becomes strong, without our ever so clever but at the same time everso dumb filter system kicking in, and arguing all the time over what it thinks is possible. With God all things are possible. Period.



So what happens in practice is that a person gets born again and feels very close to God.That's because it is true. He/she is in fact close to God. He or she is awakened in their spirit to having been inserted INTO CHRIST right there at the throne on the Right Hand of God the Father. Through nothing they ever did. It was grace!


Another time we are conscious of this is after receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit. For some this may be at the same time or as in my case, later on.


Or we may experience the Throne Room reality in Key of David meetings or similar where you are.....



No the problem is then twofold. Our surface thinking mesh tells us that it's all complete rubbish.And our church environment....our pastor....our church friends....put a whole fresh mesh of performance-based Tree of Good onto us. Heirarchies. Pecking orders. "oh. it's not quite as simple as just relating to Jesus" stuff on us. Jesus PLUS **** = salvation.
Beware church friends! They may be just about OK in meetings, but if their performance-based mesh is not fully destroyed yet, they are dangerous. How dangerous? As fast as they are there to "encourage you as the Day draws near", they are in fact there to pull you ever so subtly to the Tree of Good and away from the actual Living Presence of Jesus, which in other posts I have described as church operating from the Melchizedek Order, described in Hebrews Chapter 7.


This subtle bewitching process is described in Galations and especiallyChapter 3:1.
Is it possible to run church from Ephesians realities? Humanly no. But this is what the Holy Spirit's current work is, to form and birth a completely different church, a third level church.

Do you see now why a thirdlevel church is possible? Unlike any other learning based human institution which is a gradual step by step process, Ephesians is declaring God's reality.
From the moment you receive God's heavenly life you are connected with the Throne of God.The Baptism in the Holy Spirit experience transfers this reality to a group of people when they gather in the Name of Jesus. The culture of heaven which is praise and worship. Which is faith and the ACTIVE expectation that God is present and wanting move today among His people TODAY...not the millenium.

People speak of Revival as creating an "Open heaven". Imagine an open tube between the surface of the Earth and heaven, or a ladder up into heaven as Jacob saw.

More than anything else...Revival may depend on the destruction of the "Tree of Good".
Living from the Knowledge of the Tree of Good and Evil is a Lie from the Pit of Hell. Everyone knows about the Tree of Evil bit...but churches are plagued with the Tree of Good.
The Tree of Good Is Not the Tree of Life
Jesus was baptised in the Holy Spirit and made Himself fully available to the Life of the Father.
He only did what He saw His Father doing. One part of invading Earth with the Kingdom involved addressing sicknesses and diseases....another and simultaneous part was
ADRESSING and BINDING the Tree of Good
Deliberately healing on the Sabbath.
Not "turning up on time" either for the Feast of the Booths or for Martha when Lazarus died.
Speaking to people no one should speak to - the Samaritan woman......etc etc....
Now, in the Church God has given the gift of Discernment and the ministry of prophet. In the last hundred years since these were widely reintroduced again, most have been listening to God within the confines of the "Tree of Evil"......by far the most dangerous and hidden realm is the "Tree of Good". It is like the Kingdom but has no part in it.It is like the passage concerning Abraham and Hagar his maid above. It is helping God along.
But it is not the Life of God.
This blog post is called "It's like it....but it isn't..."
the phrase "It isn't " is directly related God's Name The I Am.
The Tree of Good IS NOT. It is not the I am of God. Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.
The third level church moves in the Ephesians 1 revelation of being seated in the heavenly places with Christ,
of having our lives hidden with Christ
of moving here on Earth
Him as me.
The Tree of Good as the passages above show try to usurp the life of God. It is vicious like Cain against the very manifestation of the life of God, Abel, actually murdering him.....before murder had even been thought up!
I put on Facebook that it was the Tree of Good...the political wing and the religious wing, that conspired together to murder Jesus. By far the most insidious obstacle ....the Ancient Door...of Psalm 24 that needs opening in Peter Stott's messages Part's 1-4 of Open Wide Ye Gates
is blocked today
by the Tree of GoodEphesians 1 and 2 declare all the spirit realities of what is true about us when we meet Christ. The third level church begins here. I began in this reality, because it was preached in my Baptist church pulpit, and because brothers recommended Watchman Nee "Sit walk stand" and "the Normal Christian Life". On April 6th 1972 I was baptised in the Spirit among a whole group of teenagers in Great Kingshill, Bucks in an an upstairs house belonging to my friend's parents the Lucases. At first, nothing happened, while everyone around me spoke in tongues immediately.Being quite locked up in my left-brain, being raised with an extreme intellectual inquisitiveness,then and there I had to learn from the outset 2 key Kingdom principles.
The key of Faith. Having asked Jesus to fill me with His Holy Spirit, as it says in the Bible, faith believes it has received and begins thanking God that He has heard. As soon as I did that, I "felt" God filling me with His Spirit. Faith in His promises comes first. But manifestation is real, and is up to Him.
Moving beyond the Tree of Good. Secondly, God deliberately wanted to move me beyond the restrictive mesh filter of my mind, so on that day, at that minute He broke in in this way. In little old suburban Britain, not too many miles from London, in a quiet, perfectly reasonable little house surrounded by others in a close, God spoke to me, surrounded by my peers and said this. "Will you take a step of obedience?"
"I want you to yell Hallelujah at the top of your voice." That's not reasonable. That's not English. That's not the UK's Tree of Good. But I did. And this for me was my Toronto, 22 years early.
I was utterly utterly drunk in the Spirit. They had to help me downstairs. And on that basis I was able with others in the summer term to preach into the atheistic intellectual, but pretty drug fuelled atmosphere of Dr Challoners Grammar School Amersham.
(Our first headmaster had been unable to contend with the drug habits of the upper school and had had a complete breakdown). Later, our head boy , David Foster became a Christian, and an active Christian union formed.
Beware! Yesterday's Tree of Life becomes today's Tree of Good. We do not live from yesterday. We live , Christ as us, from His spontaneous life received when we were born again.
We then, as Basile Schlink taught, enter into a battle of faith, to see the very union that we have entered into at the level of spirit, grow and be born in the rest of us. This Kingdom that Jesus described as a mustard seed, as a leaven, this buying of fresh oil for the whole of us.
When we are born again, the throne experience is ours, but the rest of our lives are about the rest of us , our soul and bodies being regenerated by the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead. If the throne experience of Ephesians 1 and 2 is not real for you...make it so. This is your Holy Ghost birthright. How are you ever going to be a thirdleveller, if you don't get the third level seed in the first place? It's this throne seed that's going to permeate your whole existence until you too become mature, rooted and grounded in the love of Christ, passing the same tricks onto other hungry people. That is why Ephesians is written the other way round, with the rest following in its logical order: chapters 3,4,5 and 6.

The flaming sword that guards the entrance to the Tree of Life in Genesis 3, is not after your spirit. Your spirit is already hidden with Christ in God, if you are born again. No the flaming sword of the Hebrews 4 word of God is aiming for the rest of you.....to slice you away from that horrible Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil "performance based mesh" that has, at its root, the very arrogance and spirit of the devil himself. The lie of the independent self....which isn't independent at all...it is the devil's misuse of God's own life (Satan can create nothing remember) turned in on itself.....self for self. God's Life is self for others.
Some like Bonnie Morris, or Stephanie McEntire, describe the process as the whole of our being entering into the Love that entered already into our spirits when we were born again.The Tree of Good stultifies.
We see this in the area of creativity. Someone makes a great film from the passionnate originality of their soul. The sequel then follows to cash in on the brand name of the first. It is often cobbled together by committee, working from the Tree of Good. The Tree of Good takes the external recipe of the first, without its inner life. Like the Madame Tussauds images on this page, it has the likeness of the real characters.....
BUT the TREE of GOOD ........ IS NOT. It does not contain the Life of the I AM.