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Carry Your Cross
The Passion of the Christ is the Catholic crucifix – a suffering man hanging from a cross. To watch it is to be caught in the wrong place. I understand that the movie had an overwhelming effect on people, that is the purpose of the crucifix. That is not the purpose of God. In my gut I always knew that I did not want the power of that image against my heart.
There are two ways to view the cross, the first is of God, the second is the imagination of evil.
The first way to view the cross is as Jesus said, “Follow Me.” But we cannot comprehend His words apart from the gospel Paul preached. Any “gospel” that does not come out of Paul's gospel, the way of seeing that Paul's gospel requires, cannot be our reality.
The gospel of Christ preached by Paul is a mystery; that means it is known only by those whom God opens their eyes to see. And what do we see?
The way of the cross splits all humanity and all Christendom into two groups of people: those on the outside of Jesus looking AT and those on the inside of Jesus looking out, bearing His same heart. The truth is, all creation was on the inside of Jesus; He carried everything to death. The difference, though, is in the knowing. Eternal life is to know God and to know Jesus Christ whom God has sent. Eternal life is NOT anything else.
The purpose of the crucifix is to bind people to the outside looking at things they cannot understand and in the imagination of their minds.
But when we are on the inside of Jesus looking out, we know that we have always been inside of God, always. And we know that when Jesus said, “Follow Me,” He meant to walk just as He walked.
No one looking at the way of the cross from the outside will ever know how He walked. That gift is given only to those on the inside of Jesus looking out.
In this letter I hope to change my definition of the cross and my definition of the death of Christ.
Let's start with death.
I read a phrase recently, and I know the entire realm of thinking out of which it comes.“True life only comes out of death.”
I am so sorry, but true life only comes out of God, and there is NO death in God.
What is death? First, death is a curse. It came into the experience of creation entirely as a curse in consequence of disobedience. Death is the enemy, the last enemy that will be defeated. And in the end, death is cast into the lake of fire. The soul that sins shall die. The gift of God is living forever, that is, not dying.
Now, here has been our problem. We have always viewed death as some thing. We've almost given it the same definition as that given to a living entity. In other words, death, in the human imagination, has become its own creature. Looking back, I find that I have at times written out from that untrue image of death.
I thought to do a complete word study on “death” and the “cross” in the New Testament, but the moment I read the Strong's definition for the Greek word thanatos, “death,” my questions were answered. Death is so simple to understand. And the simple understanding of death answers everything.
Death is cessation, an ending. Something is, and then it stops and is no more.
Let's give a clear picture of death. Look carefully at the following sentence.
Death is no more.
Do you see that period just after more? At that point the sentence ends. Now, look carefully from the period on to the right side of the page. Does the sentence continue? Does the period stretch across the page as if it is something? No. At that period, the sentence ceased. The sentence is no more.
Interesting, but there are a number of Greek words translated “destroy” or “defeated” in the King James. All of them mean simply “to cease,” or “to annul.” God is not violent.
To imagine death as something inherent deep inside the heart of God is to declare two things about God. It declares that there are places and facets inside of God that are temporary, that come to an end. Second, since the only things that God requires to cease are things objectionable to Himself, then saying that death is in God is saying that there are things in God that are sinful, that are abhorrent to Him, and that must be destroyed.
Here is our problem. We seek to know the Lord. In seeking to know the Lord, we receive revelations about things we do not really understand. From those revelations, we create cute little sayings that sound “right” to us. Yet we have never learned to speak only what God speaks concerning Christ our life. The problem is God never says such a thing. Thus the statement, “True life only comes out of death,” is in open opposition to what God actually says about both life and death.
That is why it is so very important to speak only what God speaks concerning Christ our life.
I read a familiar cute Christian saying on Facebook recently. “No local fellowship is perfect.”
Wow. Now, that used to be something I imagined was true. But because I have been speaking what God speaks concerning Christ our life for six years now, the phrase sounds to me coarse and dark and totally false.
For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.
All of His ways concerning me are perfect; He has never led me wrong. (My unchanging confession.)
Every local body of believers is perfect in two ways. It is perfected forever for real in all the perfection of God AND it is the perfect place designed by God in which to form Christ in us. When we speak what God speaks, we know there is no other factor, no other way to view the local body of believers.
The original cute phrase simply leaves God entirely out in the cold. The speaker can explain “what he means.” The problem is that God in Person in us in fullness right here right now is nowhere near his explanation of what he means. And that is an insurmountable problem.
What, then, is this very life-filled thing inside of God that He calls, “the Lamb slain”?
In all the wonder that fills an infinitely wondrous God, room after room of glorious qualities and expressions, there is no room inside of Him more Wondrous or more Holy or more filled with Living LIFE than the room I want to peek into with you, the room God calls, “the Lamb slain.”
God is love. Love must have a lover. But God, bringing His lover out of Himself, loses her. He loses her.
Love suffers long.
Sinful acts, and sinful persons acting out of sin, by their very nature MUST BE temporary. They must cease. Death is not “punishment.” It is simply that what is objectionable to God cannot continue. It must cease. Death is the certain consequence of sin. Sin causes death, that is, cessation; death does NOT cause life.
Love must have a lover. How can God bring forth a lover out of Himself knowing that she must cease?
No. There is a whole other dynamic inside of God operating all through the creation scenario. In fact, I suspect that creation itself exists only inside of God inside this Life-filled and Living room that He calls, “the Lamb slain.” Inside this Room that we call “Jesus.”
The way of the cross splits all humanity and all Christendom into two groups of people: those on the outside of Jesus looking AT and those on the inside of Jesus looking out, bearing His same heart. The truth is, all creation was on the inside of Jesus; He carried everything to death. The difference, though, is in the knowing. Eternal life is to know God and to know Jesus Christ whom God has sent. Eternal life is NOT anything else.
Creation does not exist separately from the dynamic workings of this unique aspect of God Himself.
God cannot, nor is it His nature to endlessly bring forth lovers only to lose them, and then bring forth more, and lose them. That possibility does not exist. Yet Love must have a lover.
Therefore, God brought forth His entire creation inside the Lamb slain.
And I saw in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne a scroll written inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals. Then I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and to loose its seals?” And no one in heaven or on the earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll, or to look at it . . . “Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open the scroll and to loose its seven seals.”
And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent out into all the earth. Then He came and took the scroll out of the right hand of Him who sat on the throne . . .
And they sang a new song, saying: “You are worthy to take the scroll, and to open its seals; for You were slain, and have redeemed us to God by Your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and have made us kings and priests to our God; and we shall reign on the earth.” Rev. 5:1-10
You see, here is our problem: the curse. The soul that sins shall die! The curse sits upon all mankind, filling or minds and our hearts. We cannot continue; we must cease. That's why people say, “True life comes out of death.” They see themselves as evil, they hate the way God made them, and they expect His curse upon themselves.
We CANNOT solve our problem. We CANNOT cause ourselves to cease. Physical death happens because life in the body ceases. After the cessation of life in the body, the body is eaten by various sizes of creatures and returns to dirt. The human spirit “died” in that it's connection to the heavens ceased. Yet man continues as a living soul, disembodied and spirit-less, wandering in the darkness. Man CANNOT cease.
Man CANNOT cause himself to cease. Nor can He cause the way of living that MUST result in cessation to cease. Even in cessation, man continues wandering and lost in the shades of gray.
Now, some believe that when unregenerate humans die, they cease utterly. Some also believe that in the end, God will cause the devil and his angels also simply to cease. I don't see either one because of what God says. God says that EVERY knee will bow and give homage to Jesus. God says that all creation will be given back to God fully restored by Jesus. God does not bring forth in order to lose what He brings forth. God does not make in order to unmake. All glory belongs to Jesus – All.
The Lamb slain. The form of “slay” used here is found only in these two references to the Lamb slain in this chapter – present perfect tense, “having been slain,” made perfect in the present moment. The more general Greek word refers to the sacrificial slaying of an animal and the poured-out blood. No sacrifice ever slayed itself.
A sacrifice is a substitute death.
Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Romans 6:6-10
Jesus did not cease upon the cross. He very much continued on. Even in Hades, the place of the dead, He continued speaking as the very human Word of God and brought many out of Hades with Him with newly living spirits into the heavens. Jesus' physical body was slain, nothing more. “God” did not die upon the cross.
Jesus was slain by the violence of human wickedness. Cain killed Abel. Note that the LION, the mighty victorious Warrior, is a Lamb having been slain. Jesus swallows up all human wickedness into His physical body.
There is only one sacrifice for sins and it ain't you and me.
There is only one sacrificial death and it ain't us dying.
God created me inside the Lamb having been slain. Therefore the moment I see myself in that Lamb I AM passed from death to life. Not only have I escaped death utterly and completely, but I have escaped ALL of that thing that God required to cease.
The Lamb slain is a place of Living Reality inside of God that takes everything that MUST CEASE and causes it to cease – all without losing a thing. We know it's reality by faith.
Only one thing is lost in all God's creation – only one thing in one moment of time – the mortal physical body in which Jesus walked for 33 ½ years.
For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.
By one offering we are translated instantaneously out of death, out of cessation, out of the curse, out of “the soul that sins shall die” and into unending, immortal LIFE.
For whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.
This place inside of God inside of which we were originally created, the Lamb Slain, this one offering for sin forever, then REQUIRES AN ANSWER to the most significant question in Christianity. The problem with the most significant question in Christianity is, of course, that no one asks it honestly. Yet it MUST BE asked, and it MUST BE answered, fully.
Since the old creation ended in its entirety with the death of Jesus' physical body, and since the new creation, spoken into existence by Jesus in John 17 and birthed brand new as Jesus' resurrected, incorruptible physical body is real and complete, since we are already perfected forever, since we are already glorified just like Jesus before God right now WHY do we see none of it? WHY do we not know the full reality of full reality?
Now, I say that no one asks the question honestly. Yet you will find that all deception in Christianity IS a dishonest attempt out of unbelieving hearts, hearts that do not engage with God Himself, to give an “excuse” for this seemingly utter failing of what God says to be true.
Our physical bodies should not die. Rather, they should be swallowed up in the incorruptible, immortal, resurrection life of Jesus. That is the gospel! Let's talk about that resurrection life for a moment.
The resurrection Life that re-created a new incorruptible physical body as Jesus came “back to life” came entirely out of the Father, out of His very bosom. The resurrection body of Jesus came out of God-life. It came out of the words Jesus spoke in His prayer in John 17, speaking the Kingdom of God into being. Those words were not dead or dying, how can we think such a thing? Jesus said, The words that I speak are Spirit and they ARE LIFE!
The path of the just shines brighter and brighter until the coming day. – The Daystar arising in our hearts. – But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. – But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.
The death of Jesus did not cause His resurrection. Jesus' resurrection did not come out of His death. The death of Jesus' physical body constituted for God the cessation of the entire old creation. That death was a one-time account: Jesus dies no more.
Resurrection life comes right out of the bowels of God. It is a new creation that has NO relationship with the old. The old has ceased; it is no more; it is gone forever.
Do you see that period after forever? Does the sentence continue? In the same way, the death of Jesus' physical body on the cross is the period by which the old creation ceases.
Thus Love can bring forth His lover AND win her heart.
The Lamb slain is the only way Love can bring forth His lover, which means losing her, AND win her heart. That's why we were created only inside that Lamb. And that is the answer to the question.
You see, the Covenant is God filling us full with Himself in Person. The Covenant is shared heart with God.
We can never “see” the new creation until God wins our hearts.
Very few people ever fall in love with God in Person inside themselves. Those who do are called the firstfruits of the Covenant, the firstfruits unto the Lamb.
Many people say, “The new heavens and new earth are full and complete right now.” Yet they plan to die. Their folly is clear. Here is their problem: they have not fallen in love with the God who fills them with ALL of Himself. Those who have fallen in love with God think only of breaking the curse of death and violence and casting all of it off of all mankind. They love as He loves.
My title is, “Carry Your Cross.” There is a definite reason why I have not arrived at that thought.
Yes, everything I have described up until now is found in Moses' Tabernacle in the wilderness; it is found in our walk into the Holiest of All, but it is ENTIRELY behind us.
The Lamb Slain appears in the Tabernacle path the moment we enter the gate into the outer court. It is the brazen alter. The brazen altar is the sacrifice by which the old creation ceases – the Lamb slain.
This room in God, the Lamb slain, the Altar of Sacrifice, is a place of great dynamic and Living workings whereby all that is placed therein is caused to cease while the individual involved continues on brand new. In other words, when we place our sin and the crying lusts of our flesh into the Lamb, something incredible happens. He, by His very nature, causes those things to cease. When we do not place our sin and our flesh into Christ – and leave them there, then we ourselves are trying to make to cease what becomes more and more of a horror inside of us – and that we can never do.
Take any crying wickedness you may find inside your body and place it into Jesus, seeing Him personal and real. Say to Him, “Lord Jesus, this awful thing belongs to You. My flesh is Your flesh. You are responsible for me.” You do that in faith, in the expectation of God, refusing to see any part of yourself outside of Him and – you are transformed into His image from glory to glory, as He says.
That is the Lamb Slain, the Brass Altar; it is entirely behind us.
When Jesus said, “Carry your cross,” He was not speaking of our “need to die.” He was not speaking of difficult things by which we “learn” to come to the “end of ourselves.” He was speaking of something utterly, utterly different. As different as day is from night. He meant, “Follow Me.”
The old has ceased; it cannot be found; it does not exist.
Yet God must still win our hearts. God cannot possess His lover without first winning her heart.
I want to bring in here a paragraph I read on the Internet. Understand, that I am not speaking against the brother who said this, nor am I speaking against anyone who, reading something like this, receives life from God. The point is the removal of the curse from off the experience of man on this earth. To engage fully with the heart of Father God filling us full with His Person requires turning our backs on what is, for many, “good” Christian experience.
For us, the “good” is the enemy of “all fullness.”
Where does love hide? It hides in the Cross of Jesus Christ, who eternally was, but was never human until his incarnation as the God-man. Angry at Him, we each one drove in the nails with our hatred of who we were and our hatred of who He was for exposing it by simply being Himself unfettered with sin’s alienation from the Father. Everyone who has ever lived had a hand in putting the savior to death, but only that death it turns out can save us.
I reject this thought absolutely. There may be some true things in it, but the problem is the seeing. Reading it now sends horror all through me. This is written by someone who imagines that they are there on the outside of Jesus. And yes, they are utterly in death. To be outside of Jesus looking at Him is to be in darkness. No one, seeing in this way, can ever know Him, especially to pronounce some “definition” of who and what He is.
I am NOT on the outside of Jesus killing Him with my hatred. Jesus did not die “because of” our sins. The death of Jesus' physical body on the cross was God revealing to us inside of our present sense of lostness the Living Reality of the One in whom we were created. So that we can KNOW that all separation from God, all wandering in lostness, IS ceased.
Put your own name in the blank instead of mine. I am inside of God, and God is inside of me. There is no God without Daniel Yordy inside of Him; there is no Daniel Yordy without God inside of him.
The altar of sacrifice is BEHIND me, and by it I KNOW that I have nothing whatsoever to do with death or dying or anything except God in me and me in God, which is life in life in life – unto ever increasing LIFE.
This reality is eternal, because God is only now; it is infinite, because God is only present.
By the Lamb slain our unreality vanished. By His resurrection, our reality is eternal and complete.
May I suggest that you read Ezekiel 8. Let me bring in a few verses here.
Furthermore He said to me, “Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations that the house of Israel commits here, to make Me go far away from My sanctuary? Now turn again, you will see greater abominations.” – – – So He brought me to the door of the north gate of the Lord’s house; and to my dismay, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz.
Weeping for Tammuz is the next to the last abomination being committed inside the house of God, the worst is worshiping Apollo - Ra the sun god.
Tammuz is the Babylonian name for the Egyptian Horus, the single-eye that you see proliferating in all pop culture all around us in every direction. (Interesting, but the single eye and Monarch butterfly “transformation” are, in this world, so utterly perverted and evil, bringing upon, especially the younger generation such a slavery under darkness that we cannot imagine – and those two things are specifically what God is revealing in us now in light and truth and love.)
Tammuz is the T, the Tau, the cross. Tammuz is the crucifix, weeping over the “dead one.” “Oh, look what we did, that is our sin there killing the dying one.”
Weeping, weeping over sin, weeping, weeping over death.
That is why I will not watch The Passion of the Christ.
Turning the Lamb slain into an abomination. Turning Man as God revealed into “God the Sun.”
We do not weep for Tammuz.
Tammuz/Horus was the one crucified “for the sins of the people” long before Jesus walked this earth. It was He who said, “Except you eat my flesh and drink my blood, there is no life in you.” The cross, the T, was Tammuz.
That fact causes many to say that the Christian message is just a made-up copy of the pagan rituals that were developed long centuries before.
The truth is, Satan originates nothing. All he ever does is take that which is most holy and twist it, pervert it, turn it inside out and upside down so that foolish people look at the truth and say, “Oh, that's just like what those evil people do, so it can't be God.”
Whatever God is magnifying in the experience of His elect, that very thing the enemy magnifies in perverted form in modern culture.
Yet here's the deal. The primary reason he does that is not to delude those who are already in his clutches, but rather, to twist the thinking and practice of those who belong to Jesus, to get them to “worship Tammuz” in the temple of God – and thus the image of the crucifix.
You and I exist only in Jesus. When Jesus said, “Here am I, I and the children whom You have given Me,” I was there inside of Him. The fact that I was seven before I came to know that doesn't mean a thing.
Go looking for Jesus' dead body; will you find it? No, it does not exist, and neither does any “old me.” Any “old me” there may have been vanished as surely as that body vanished, swallowed up by life. It is life that causes death to cease, not the other way around!
The reality of the Lamb slain, the altar of sacrifice, is NOT the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant is entirely the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Ark of the Covenant, the Acacia Wood, is the resurrected flesh of the Lord Jesus, His flesh and mine.
Thus before we can leave the Ark of Acacia Wood, we must see it entirely through the resurrection.
What about “carry your cross”?
We walk just as He walked. “Follow Me,” does not mean, “Walk just behind Me.” We are never “just behind” Jesus; we are only ever inside of Him and He inside of us. But that's just it.
Jesus walked filled with God; God is the One who carries His enemies inside Himself, stumbling in their way, carrying them all the way through that transition Place of Life bringing forth Life, all the way into goodness.
God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself; God is in us, reconciling the world to Himself.
When God says to us, “May I share Christ with you?” He is asking of us to be the same reconciliation, to be a member of that reconciliation, by which He carries all of His creation into life.
When we believe that every circumstance, every pressure, every difficulty, every “waywardness” we feel and go through, that God IS using all of that to reconcile the world to Himself. When we believe that we contain inside our hearts that very real and special Room in God, the Lamb Slain, that, by willingly drawing into ourselves the failings of others, in love, and by the Lamb Slain, they cease. When we believe that our tender compassion, our light touch, our kind words are God Himself going out from us as the goodness of life. Then we ARE “carrying our cross,” we are a member of His body, a member of this wondrous faculty of God that causes the darkness to be no more and yet brings the person into life.
I will make a new covenant . . . I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”
The Ark is the wooden box, the human flesh, that carries this Covenant. We received the fullness of this Covenant the moment we entered the gate and beheld the Altar of Sacrifice; we signed the Covenant by the brass washbasin, by the water of baptism. Our ignorance of that Covenant meant nothing.
As the Ark of the Covenant, however, we are no longer having this Covenant “happen to us.” The Covenant “happened to us” in the Outer Court. In the Holy Place, we learned what it meant in the heavens, in the Spirit. Now, as the container of that Covenant, we carry this ministry of Christ out to all creation.
Through the Christ who fills our hearts, the Covenant – all “sins and lawless deeds” vanish. If God does not remember them, they do not exist. If God does not remember them, how can we, regardless of how bad other people's actions may make us feel?
Through the Christ who fills our hearts, the Knowing of God, eternal life, extends itself out as rivers of living water.
Now, here's the deal – and this is so very, very important. It is the difference between life and death.
When I was told over many years that “carry your cross,” meant, “You have to die, brother,” that meant two things to me. The first thing it meant was that “I” was bad. The second thing it meant was an absolute horror. I could not do it; I could not die. I always got up the next morning, and it was always me facing another day.
Inside that darkness, though I cast myself with great struggle and wrenching “surrenders” upon the Lord over and over through much difficulty over many years, not without periods of running and hiding and wanting God to stay far, far away from me (which He never did), even though, yes, through all of that, I did learn of Him, that He is tender and kind – yet none of it was a joy, none of it was life, and none of it was EFFECTIVE in me or anyone else.
It is darkness that benefits no one, ever. The life that I came to know came in spite of that darkness, because God is good; it did NOT come because of that darkness.
I have no self to “come to the end of.” I have no “me” that is even “dead.” Listen, I am not dead. The dead “me” vanished with the physical body of Jesus. It does not exist. People who say, “You're just a dead man walking,” are perilously close to the Tammuz stuff.
I am alive unto God.
And the period at the end of that sentence does not mean “cessation,” it means absolute and Today. There is nothing else.
Yet now, when I know that I am utterly alive unto God, that I am flesh of His flesh, that I am a member of His body, that He reveals Himself in all that He is through me, what a sea-change difference it makes. I now walk in utter life; death does not exist.
That means that as difficult things happen to me, as people fail me or treat me badly, as I stumble and fall, as everything that can go wrong does go wrong, I walk through those things entirely different from how I walked through them before.
Let's say someone speaks ugly at me. I draw them into the Lamb slain who fills my heart. Their “sinful self” ceases, and now I carry them, KNOWING that God in me carries them, KNOWING that God and I together are redeeming them in tender love, KNOWING that, unbeknownst to them, LIFE has grabbed hold of them and carries them all the way into LIFE!
Here's what I find – I can do that.
Always before the thought of “Bad me must die,” crippled me, and all I could ever do was hide.
Now I walk knowing that I am filled, saturated with God Himself in Person. I know that all that He is, all that He does, He is and He does through ALL that is me. When I look at myself, all I see is joy and the expectation of God. Even in the press of difficulty, I know that there is nothing else there.
I am the container of the resurrected and very much ALIVE Lamb-Having-Been-Slain.
I am the Ark of the Covenant.
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