"What...you have righteousness apart from the Law?"
"What, Jesus bore 39 stripes to remove us from the 39 major sickness groups?"
"What....Christ in Us the hope of glory...what the £^%*&!"£! are you on?"
"What...you believe you're not going to die?"
In a tin tabernacle whose first meeting was inaugurated early last century by Smith Wigglesworth, on Thorney Island,Emsworth, I prophesied about the last curse to be lifted. It was around 1981. The meeting went kind of quiet.
I have never before or since reached so deeply into my spirit for something so far out sounding in any prophecy. Yet here it is, in this article.....to be grabbed on our insides. Because that is where everything starts. If we live from our left-brain, nothing ever changes. From generation to generation.
The movers and shakers.
The dreamers.
The major scientists and entrepreneurs....
DO NOT
HAVE NEVER lived from their left-brain. The left-brain is only the tool for rolling out the details.The articulation. The step by step plan. And you may have noticed...the Lord does not roll out His plans too far ahead.
It is as it was in the Old testament Principle, though now in the Spirit.
"Walk forward 6 paces. Then sacrifice...wholeheartedly...bloodily...Walk forward another 6 paces.Then sacrifice....." etc etc.
The Curse, It's Purpose, and Overthrow (Part 2)From: Daniel Yordy www.dyordy.com
In the last letter, we looked at the first four parts of the curse that came upon mankind through Adam. In both Genesis 3 and Romans 8, God says that the curse is for our sakes. But we understand that "for our sakes" has a double purpose. The first purpose is that inside the curse, we learn the affliction and the sorrow that is very much a part of our Father and which can be learned no other way; and second, that in casting off the curse, we come to know Christ as our life.
But we cannot lift a finger against the curse in the guise of Adam, a self, separate from God, trying to do what God says. That very mentality keeps us bound under the curse. To believe that we carry Adam's rotting corpse - a fallen human nature - unable to be free from it, is a curse indeed.
It is only as we embrace our union with Christ, He in us and we in Him, that we are an empty vessel, made clean by the blood, separated from Adam by the cross, the reflection of Christ's person in this world.
To know Him, in intimacy, in togetherness, in a shared life.
But God is a fighter, and He in us casts off the curse as the illusion and the non-thing that it is.
Here is the problem. The curse is our comfort blanket. It is warm and fuzzy; it is familiar. We are so accustomed to the curse that to think in terms of its absence is almost to be 'non-human.'
You will discover that the strongest defenders of the curse are fellow believers in Jesus. There are whole sermons preached on how wonderful and good death is. In so many Christian funerals, death is exalted as most precious, second only to Jesus Himself.
It is never viewed as the most vicious enemy we have, more anti-Christ than Satan or sin.
Death is over-rated.
Like Goliath, shouting and beating his chest against the armies of God while they hide behind their tents, convinced that no one could go up against such an enemy - death will kill you! Yet one little boy presumes against the giant. God is with him. He does not pray. He does not cry, "Oh God, please, if it be Your will, speak to me." No. He knows God is with him and he with God. That is enough for David. He also know that this giant blasphemes God and that the armies of Israel shame Him. Goliath is already dead in David's eyes.
But who are David's opponents? His brothers. The ones who know that the present illusion is the only reality.
Death is over-rated.
" . . . the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel." 2 Timothy 1:10.
"For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, 'Death is swallowed up in victory.'" 2 Corinthians 15:53-54
Before we look at the last three parts of the curse, let me point this out. The New Testament answer to the curse of Genesis 3 is found in Romans 8:18-23 and Revelation chapter 12. These are the two "heresy" passages of the New Testament. Yet, if they are not central to our understanding of the gospel, then we do not understand the gospel. If Romans 8:19 and Revelation 12:5 are not at the center and heart of our definition of the gospel of Jesus Christ, then what we have is not the gospel, but only a shadow. That doesn't bother Jesus, He is our Savior, and He brings us all the way through to Himself.
But somewhere along the line, those two verses become our central focus and we realize that the sacrifice of Jesus has nothing to do with going to heaven and everything to do with redeeming this earth and all creation.
Continuing with the parts of the curse:
Part 5: Genesis 3:17 "Cursed is the ground for your sake . . ."
God is favor. To be in God is to be in favor. To be surrounded by God is to be surrounded by favor. Adam lived in favor. He knew no shadow of anything else. Everything he put his hand to prospered, as Solomon says of the godly in Psalms 1.
That favor vanished with the curse. Now, everything Adam tried to do failed. He put out his hand to receive and got poked by a thorn. He worked hard to grow a bit of garden, like I do, and weeds grew and then the bugs ate the weeds!
I want to get right at something here. We imagine that because we "trust in Jesus for where we will spend eternity" we have "faith." Yet all of my Christian life, I have expected the curse.
Faith is what we expect, not what we hope for. We 'hope' God will bless us; we expect the curse. And in so much Christian thinking, including the thinking I lived in for many years, to expect the curse is to "be godly" and to expect blessing is to be manipulating and using God for our selfish benefit.
And things going wrong, things not working out, seems to be normal. Our whole mind, the whole construction of our thinking processes, works out to the curse. We expect it; and we speak what we expect.
And God does leave the curse upon the way of thinking I lived in for most of my Christian life - that I was a self, separate from Christ, and that I had to "hear" what God says and "do" it.
But to live in union with Christ - He is my life, I have no other life - is to live in the expectation of God.
To expect God is to expect favor. To expect favor in Christ is to expect God.
Our thinking is conditioned to expect not favor. Therefore, we are also expecting not God.
There is never an absence of faith in any human being. Every descendant of Adam is filled with faith. We are made to expect. And we receive what we expect.
Most Christians expect the curse. That's why they receive it.
To expect not favor is to expect not God. We receive fully exactly what we expect in every direction of our lives - health, weight, finances, relationships, work - all the way through. To expect God in heaven only is to expect not God.
The curse is there for our sakes, not to live in it, but to wake up one day and to realize that if my theology has left me in the curse, maybe my theology is really screwed up. The curse is there so that we know to get out of it and into the tree of life. Not to embrace the curse, defend it, and seek to live under it.
". . . who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ." Ephesians 1:3
"Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Matthew 6:10
Revelation 12 deals with this part of the curse. Verse 16: "But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon had spewed out of his mouth."
I do not understand what this means. I know it is not a physical occurrence, that is, a physical splitting open of the ground. It is referring directly to the final moments of the curse upon the earth. When the earth itself turns from the dragon to the woman and sacrifices itself for her sake. It's almost like one of the major themes of the fairy tales. Look at the fairy tales, how the curse is lifted, and you will see a reflection of the truth. God speaks through stories.
The curse sits like computer viruses in our brains. We think little thought scenarios, and we speak out of those thoughts. If we will just stop and look at those things, we realize that our thoughts and the words we speak from those thoughts are nothing other than the expectation of the curse.
As I was waking up last Sunday morning, I had a dream. In that dream I could see so clearly. This thing is so simple. All we have to do is change the way we think. To think as God thinks and to see as God sees. It is so simple. God expects Himself; He never expects anything else.
When I awoke, it did not seem quite so simple, but I know that in my dream, I saw reality, and in my waking thoughts, I am yet wrapped in illusions and darkness.
Part 6: Verse 19 ". . . For dust you are, and to dust you shall return."
Death - physical death.
Death is not real separation from God. There is no such thing as separation from God. The 'separation from God' that man presently experiences is God's blessing, it is the skin of the beast, the last part of the curse.
When the skin of the beast is removed, sinners will be sinners in all the presence of God. It is a lake of fire. It is a time of purification.
Yet death is a form of separation, a separation in our minds, in our thinking, in our expectation.
We expect to die. No matter how many times the gospel promises us unending life, we do not expect it. We expect to die.
Jesus says to Martha in John 11, "He that lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?"
But Martha cannot believe - "Yah, someday." But her mind turns away.
"The wages of sin is death"
"In the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die."
Physical death is the penalty for sin.
God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Yet, all those who are in heaven are without their physical bodies. They are only partly there. That realm of heaven in which the saints of God live is temporary, it is passing away. Those who are with Jesus are right now pressing back towards earth. They want their bodies back. They want to live as humans again. Their present hope is focused upon us.
We are humans, we will forever be humans, that point of union between Spirit and dirt, between the breath of God and the Earth - a living soul. Forever fully the sons of God and forever fully the sons of Abraham. The idea that we will live forever in heaven is cooked up by defeated Christianity, clouded by the curse, it is not taught in the New Testament. We are made for earth and we are made for heaven. Of all God's creation, we are the only created beings who live in both at the same time. And we are able to "go back and forth" (an inadequate phrase) to live in heaven and to live in the earth and to enjoy all the fruits and experiences of both.
This earth belongs to me and I have no desire to go anywhere else until I see it redeemed and transformed into the full expectation of God.
"And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many . . ." Hebrews 9:27-28
This is one of the most misquoted verses in the Bible. Listen next time you hear someone quote verse 27. Notice how they drop that little word "as." It is rather inconvenient.
"As - So." Because of one, then the other. Christ was offered once as my sin offering. Jesus kept my appointment with death. Since I have only one such appointment; I do not have another.
Revelation 12:11 ". . . and they did not love their lives unto the death."
The only way out of the tree of knowledge is the tree of life.
The only way out of the curse is Christ.
If I love having a life of my own, separate from Jesus, me, responsible for myself, then I will die.
But if He in me and I in Him is sufficient for me; if Jesus is my life and I have no other life, then, in this great paradox of God, death is swallowed up in victory.
Philippians 3:10-11 " . . . 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."
2 Corinthians 5:4 "For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life."
Notice the order Paul gives us in Philippians 3. For so many years I had it backwards. I thought that we had to start with being conformed to His death before we could ever fully know Him. How wrong I was.
It all begins by knowing Him - fully and absolutely. Knowing that there is no distinction, no separation between me and Him. Jesus is my life. Even when my emotions are all screwed up, even when I am caught in sin, I do not look at myself as some separate entity, bowed under guilt and shame. No. My sin is already swallowed up in His sin offering, I am washed clean by His blood, and my emotions are simply Jesus sharing His own agonies - the cup that He Himself bears - with me. As we know Him in us, we know, first the power of an endless life, then we know the fellowship of His sufferings, we share His emotions and His pain, then our union with Him in all things causes us to be made conformable to His death.
And thus death is defeated.
We groan, not to die and go to heaven, but we groan and labor, that our mortal bodies would be instantaneously swallowed up by life.
This is the goal of the believer as taught in the New Testament. When was the last time you were in a church service where the pastor led by the Spirit in you to groan for the resurrection, the transformation of our bodies? Yet Paul says this is the normal Christian life!
To defeat death. To cast if off. This is the game plan of God - the end game. This is what God is doing in those sons who insist on all that God speaks.
Delay is no more.
I will continue with the 7th part of the curse in Part 3 of this series. The 7th part, being clothed with the skin of a beast, is the most significant part of the curse.
The skin of the beast makes the curse part of the human DNA. To cast it off is to be caught up to God and to His throne.
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