5. Masquerade
God tried the lesser means of bringing everyone guilty and silent before Him so that they would, having stopped all the useless and unnecessary prating, be free to enter into Christ. But the lesser means, the law and the Old Covenant, has failed. Thus God must use the final means to bring the entire world guilty and silent before Him.
5. Masquerade
This letter is a necessary sequel to the previous letter. Nothing has more power to convince people that Jesus is wrong than the love of the world, the masquerade of faces. Loving the performance, the lying, and the violence of men causes the majority of our brethren today to break the Father's heart.
No one can ever know God the Father arising inside of them through Christ in their hearts except each individual person, Christian or non-Christian, admits, without recourse, that he or she is WRONG.
Wrong about self, wrong about God, wrong about “rightness,” wrong about accusation.
God gave the law for that very purpose; it was not enough.
Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Romans 3:19
Everyone is dishonest; everyone is lying. Anthony Lloyd Weber's song “Masquerade” in Phantom of the Opera is so pertinent. “Masquerade, pretty faces on parade. Masquerade, hide your face so the world will never find you.”
Here is the same thing in the story of man.
Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. And they heard the sound of the Lord God . . . and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?” So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.” Genesis 3:7-10
God gave the law to persuade the human race that we are guilty before God and therefore should be silent.
Yet, even after such clear and explicit persuasion, look at how many proclaim the law in one form or another, “All that the Lord says I will do.”
Everyone knows they are not; everyone knows they are a sham, a fake, pretending, pretending, pretending, including you, dear reader, unless and until you abandon your fake self utterly and proclaim Christ Jesus as your only self.
“Pretty faces on parade.”
God tried the lesser means of bringing everyone guilty and silent before Him so that they would, having stopped all the useless and unnecessary prating, be free to enter into Christ. And I don't mean being “born again,” I mean living in Jesus only by faith alone, having abandoned your “self” entirely as a useless and hopeless cause.
But the lesser means, the law and the Old Covenant, has failed.
Thus God must use the final means to bring the entire world guilty and silent before Him.
The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. 2 Thessalonians 2:9-12
I am very concerned for God's people that we be grounded in the truth as the New Testament actually teaches concerning the deception and lying of this world. Let me state, as clearly as I can, what I believe about this world, what are the underlying assumptions upon which I place all factual understanding of the events of this world and how they work.
. . . that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world . . . Revelation 12:9
We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one. 1 John 5:19
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 1 John 2:15
This is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. John 3:19-20
The world . . . hates Me because I testify of it that its works are evil. John 7:7
If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. John 15:18-19
. . . the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service. John 16:2
It sure seems to me that the Covenant I signed with God and that God signed with me, each binding ourselves to the other in full and perfect union, is fairly clear about the world.
Now, remember that neither the earth nor individual people are the world. The world is the spirit and system of interaction between people in this present age. John said, well into the age of grace and salvation, that the entire world, all of it, lies under the ruling sway, the lying grip, the overshadowing dark spirit of the wicked one.
Here's the deal. This is my base assumption, that the world is lying. Thus everywhere I look, I see sound, logical, and overwhelming evidence that the world is lying about most everything.
In complete contrast, someone who has decided that Jesus and John were lying and that the world is the depository of truth and right thinking looks around at everything they hear and see in this world and sees “sound, logical, and overwhelming evidence” that the world is basically telling the truth about most everything.
God is after something, and it is not the destruction of people. God is after silence; He wants the pretending to end. Jesus does not complete the purpose for which God sent Him until the last knee has bowed and the final voice speaks Christ alone. Jesus cannot win until He persuades the pretenders to be quiet.
There is no progressive decrease in the lying, however. Rather, it is the opposite. God Himself, in order to demonstrate His mercy, has ratcheted up the lying to a fevered pitch in order to succeed at His necessary goal of bringing all the world guilty and silent before Him.
Let me define the beast of Revelation 13. The beast is all human government. God set the beast into the affairs of man in the garden as an essential element in the consequences of Adam's sin.“Your husband shall rule over you.”
The beast is the enforcer of the curse, as Paul and Peter make clear in their comments on human government. We do not fight against the beast with the weapons of this world; such an exercise serves only to increase the power and destruction of that beast. In fact, those who fight in the natural are simply making themselves one more head of the beast, one more enforcer of the curse, one more evil operating in this world.
But neither do we worship the beast, as most of our Christian brethren seem hell-bent on doing.
Pledging one's heart with an oath of the mouth in allegiance to the battle flag of one's nation IS worshipping the beast, full and complete, along with all the other ways in which people exalt their human government.
The image of the beast is primarily television news, along with all the other elements of brain washing and propaganda found throughout television broadcasting, movies, education, and other forms of media.
The Christian school in which I taught for a couple of years participated fully as the image of the beast towards the children entrusted to us, brainwashing them with lies about this world in complete repudiation of the testimony of Jesus and John, and doing so more effectively than anything I saw in the public schools.
But the great delusion that God has sent, in order to succeed in stunning everyone into complete silence as the realization dawns on them that they are, in fact, GUILTY of the very worst offence in the universe, is the pretend nation and government of Israel.
This is the clear teaching of the New Testament; that's why the New Testament is an illegal book in most countries of this world, including the United States. The government of Israel is seeking, right now, through the United Nations, to gain the power to extradite any person from any country to stand trial in Israel for any speaking of anti-Semitism.
The greatest crime of anti-Semitism, to their minds, is to speak that Jesus is the Christ.
Please understand, I am not the one who inserts this issue into the glorious reality of our union with Christ and His revelation through us. – God is. This is a big deal to God; He is the One who has, from the beginning, inserted this enormous contradiction into the affairs of men for His purposes alone.
All things that exist, both as they really are AND as they appear to be in delusion, exist only for the purposes of God, either directly or indirectly, as He bends all intentions of evil towards the final working of goodness. I neither believe nor practice negativity; I see the negative entirely as bending towards the outworking of the positive. BUT – I will not deny the negative, especially since my Father sees fit to fill the pages of the New Testament and the reality of our present lives with its expression.
For that reason, I must know where the negative fits and why and how.
Now, those teachers who state that “the Bible says” that the restoration of Israel as a natural nation is God's fulfilment of His promises to the children of Israel are being explicitly dishonest. They grab a phrase here and there, tear that phrase out of context, and use it to sweep aside all the many clear and specific verses in the Bible that tell us exactly what God says in both of the two covenants He made with the House of Israel. Then they stare at you ready to pounce on you as a heretic if you dare to mention what God actually says.
[I have removed portions of this letter because all alternative views on the Internet are being attacked. I do not want this word of Christ our life to vanish from the Internet because of a small part of the truth, even though that part is important.]
God has a purpose for this delusion, however, and it is the salvation of all.
No one can come to the Father except through, not “by,” the Lord Jesus Christ. And coming through the Lord Jesus Christ is to believe and confess that Jesus, the All Speaking of God, speaking me as goodness right now every moment, is right and, conversely, “I,” that is, any “I” of my own self, am wrong.
Here is the replacement for the law, God's second attempt to prove to people that shutting up is a great idea.
Then a third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation. He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. Revelation 14:9-10
The love of Father will prevail. Everyone must become guilty and silent in order for Christ to be acknowledged by all as Lord of all. You see, Christ is always speaking all beings, human and angelic, into existence every moment entirely as goodness. No individual who has turned his or her or its back on that good speaking of Christ in order to live in the exaltation and accusation of “my” self will ever turn back around into that constant and overwhelming goodness without, at the same time, turning their back on “my” self.
God will give all a very good reason to turn their back on “my” self. – “I am wrong.”
Think of that. The human being exists by the good speaking of Christ; the human “self” exists by accusation. It is the accusation that must go silent; the moment it does, self ceases. But man must speak, as God must speak, thus the speaking of the human must become the good speaking of Christ alone.
The relationship between the two covenants, Old and New, is clear. When people read the Old Testament promises of God to the House of Israel, they put blinders on, reading only the promises they like and ignoring the promises they don't like.
The biggest promise God made to Israel in the Old Covenant is death, death if they did not keep their side of the agreement.
All Jews broke the Covenant; all died.
For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us. 2 Corinthians 1:10
All the promises of God to the House of Israel are found only inside of Christ. In Christ all died, according to the promise. In Christ all are made alive.
For on the one hand there is an annulling of the former commandment because of its weakness and unprofitableness, for the law made nothing perfect . . . Hebrews 7:18-19 – The Old Covenant was annulled.
For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. Because finding fault with (the Old), He says: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord. Hebrews 8:7-9
The problem comes in with the idea that the Church of Jesus Christ is a Gentile church. There is no such thing as a Gentile church. The Church is the same House of Israel all the way through the Old Testament story.
Read Romans 11. The meaning is clear. The olive tree is Israel. You and I, formerly Gentiles, having been put to death upon the cross of Christ, have been grafted into Israel, “contrary to nature.” But you see how the metaphor of the olive tree changes in meaning. We have been grafted into Christ.
And all, Jews or Gentiles, who come to God through the one death of Christ are grafted into that same olive tree, that same House of Israel, the same Christ Jesus.
Show me one line in Romans 11 that suggests that God deals with the natural Jew apart from Christ.
The promises of death are fulfilled in Christ. – The promises of life are fulfilled in Christ.
Concerning the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. Romans 11:28
One man in all of the human experience is honored by the Father according to the flesh. That one man is Abraham. “Because you have done this thing and not withheld your only son from Me.” Isaac and Jacob are simply extensions of Abraham in God's sight. God honors Abraham by bringing the natural descendants of Jacob into Christ.
God knows who those individuals are, we don't, nor do they.
[Portions removed.]
Listen to those things that are of vital importance to the head voices of this world. You can be sure of this, those topics are lies, as Jesus and John said.
“Honest Abe” Lincoln is one lie, vaccinations are another, the popular narrative of WWII, written by the victors to hide their own criminal and evil deeds, is a third.
The actual events of 9/11 were never investigated BECAUSE the world cannot seek or know or believe or speak the truth. And when one believes one lie, then believing further and further lies becomes vitally necessary.
Here's what I think. I think that when people, Christian or non-Christian, discover how false all the narrative of their lives and all the beliefs of their minds in this world really are, some of them will come to grips with the brilliant possibility of going silent, of turning around from all the accusation and face into the good speaking of Christ always carrying them.
But here's the thing. They will be able to do so because they will see you and me, of their same kind, living in this same world, who are singing the Song of the Lamb and no other song. They will see that there is, indeed, a way out.
That way out is Christ Jesus our life – alone.
[Portions removed.]
The Song of the Lamb, as it goes forth through us upon this earth and into all the concourses of the universe, has three parts. The first part is all the goodness of Christ spoken into us every moment, out of which we exist. That same word is the word that we speak. The second part is you and me, created as we are in the likeness of God, content with ourselves as we find ourselves to be, stumbling and foolish, carried entirely inside of Jesus.
But the third part is found in these words of Jesus.
The world . . . hates Me because I testify against it that its works are evil. John 7:7
I testify against the world that its deeds are evil – therefore the world hates Me.
There is nothing that the government and nation called the United States of America hates more than the Lord Jesus Christ BECAUSE He is always declaring how false they are.
If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you.
. . . the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service.
We cannot sing the Song of the Lamb without, through the same words, exposing the lying of this world.
Why are the two witnesses gunned down in the streets of Jerusalem, Israel?
For the same reason that Jesus was crucified and that John the Baptist was beheaded and that Zechariah was stoned before the altar and that Isaiah was sawn in half and that Jeremiah was thrown into a pit and that apostles and prophets were persecuted and killed inside that very same city.
They testified against the government and nation of Israel that its deeds were evil.
Why? – For destruction? – No.
That every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
No one can enter into the good speaking of Christ by which they are created and sustained any other way.
No one can sing the Song of the Lamb without first ceasing their own song of self-rightness, of accusation against God.
We sing the Song of the Lamb.