B3. An Unacceptable Fantasy

The telling of fantasy stories has become mainstream in books, in movies, in comic strips, and in lengthy television series. Each of these imagined fantasy worlds contains its own rules of operation. A well-written fantasy will remain true to those internal rules established by the author.

Inside the creation of fantasy tales, entire magic systems are normal. And each new fantasy world created requires its own developed magic system. Those who enjoy fantasy accept as “real,” in the moment, any well-designed system of magic. Most magic systems are developed as some sort of violence, physical or mental, the power to dominate. Only in a few, including J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth, are found powers to do good, to encourage, to impart wisdom, to heal, and to cause life to spring forth.

The Resurrection “Trope.” Resurrection is not unknown in modern fantasy, people coming back from the dead. In one such series of which I read only the caption, the “resurrected” were now powers of religious darkness – which is what the evil one wants people to think. At other times, the “resurrected” one remembers nothing, gains nothing, and just continues in hopeless confusion. In The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf is raised from the dead and returns brand new, as Gandalf the White, with even greater power to encourage and with an even firmer purpose.

Hundreds of millions of people world wide, watching these shows, have no problem with such a happening inside the fantasy genre.

What If? What if I were to write my own “fantasy story,” set in the near future, with its own fully defined system of spiritual power? What if I were to write a story spanning twenty years of time, with its characters living through the final five years of the Age of God’s Patience and the first fifteen years of the Age of Tabernacles?

A similar series of books was written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, titled Left Behind. These were turned into a set of movies. There were certainly things in them that could be called “magical.” Yet all fantasy stories written, including all Christian fantasy, including Paradise Lost and The Divine Comedy, present a world based entirely inside the knowledge of good and evil.

The Weak and Incapable. What if I were to write a “fantasy story” based entirely inside the Tree of Life? And what if I were to create the “magic system” for my story as every Word of the Gospel fulfilled? What if I were to create as characters in my story Christians on this earth loving one another with pure hearts fervently?

I just picked up a new fantasy book at the store to skim its premise. The first paragraph began with a character that had survived a military training program that was designed to “weed out” the weak, the incapable, and the unlucky. The war of good and evil cannot tolerate such humans. Yet those are the very ones God has called into His Kingdom, rising up through faith into life, swallowing up all death.

My Point. My point is this. We are calling forth a world that, to present human thinking, can be only fantastical, a “fantasy” that almost all would deride and reject in its telling.

The next four chapters of this text are a description of “the Patterns of the Kingdom,” arising now into the Age of Tabernacles. I want to bring the “magic” of every Word fulfilled, of the Spirit poured out without limit, of thousands who are JUST LIKE the Lord Jesus Christ walking this planet, into practical reality, into a form we might be able to see, at least its outline. I am also positioning us as a power that humans, and Christians, do not now consider, the power to CALL God into our world, a power that silences all other calls.

An Unacceptable Story Device. I want to come at our “fantasy” story from a different angle. There is another “trope” in story telling called “deux ex machina.” This is when the characters of the story are about to lose everything, inside the climax, the great “showdown,” when suddenly a power completely outside of the storyline enters the picture without warning, rescues the main characters and resolves the conflict. The use of deux ex machina is rare because it is hated by all readers. Yet it does show up occasionally with ill effect.

The actuality of a “God” arriving at the critical moment out from the sky to “save the day” for Christians, either by jerking them out of here (the rapture) or by zapping all their enemies with external power, is a climax to God’s story that would be unacceptable to everyone, including myself, including God.

By Man Also. The question in everyone’s heart, including mine, would be – What was the point? What was the meaning of our lives? If all God had to do was zap, then what gives? We think this way because God thinks this way and because He fashioned us like Himself. Jesus won our hearts because, not only did God make us by His design, but He came into our world as one of us and prevailed entirely as a human.

By man death, by man also the resurrection from the dead (1 Corinthians 15). We want a Salvation and a Life that comes out from our hearts now, out from the reality of our lives. Our Story very much includes a Savior, more than Christianity allows, but a Savior on the inside of us fulfilling all Word through us, not a “Savior” external to us.

Every Word Fulfilled. I want every Gospel Word fulfilled as God means it inside my experience in the gathering together of Christ Community. That is the magic of our Story.

Our world is saved only through Christians giving thanks inside of and for the sake of all things, speaking good Grace into all, calling all things into goodness, and doing it together. This was our necessary task from the beginning, to turn God’s creation into the path of goodness through our faith in the Life of Jesus inside of us. If that is true, then God’s Story cannot be resolved any other way.

But then we ask ourselves, what is our Story really about? What kind of a Story is our great and unacceptable “fantasy?”

A Fantastic and Real Story. For those who know how to read it, the book of Revelation depicts a story so fantastic, so deep, so overwhelmingly powerful, that the telling of it will fill the legends of ages to come. Yet here is the thing about this fantastic story; it is REAL.

Revelation tells the story of a group of humans on this earth, alive right now, who love the Church so much, their fellow Christians across the earth, that they prevail with God against all hatred, all accusation, all contempt, against all demonic powers, all human sorcery, and all murderous intent. It is the story of a small group of people who win the hearts of many to LOVE. John’s vision depicts a LOVE Story, the Story we are writing now into our world, the Song of the Lamb.

The Point of No Return. Typically, in a great story, the climax is near the end, when the winner has won and the fight is no more. Yet a great story will also include a prior experience that can be called “the point of no return.” Prior to that moment, the hero is just considering the task; after that moment, it’s go all the way to victory or perish. That dramatic moment in Pride and Prejudice is when Darcy proposes and Lizzie refuses, right at the middle of the story. That poignant moment changes everything. Darcy’s eventual “victory” would never have come without it.

In a real sense, we are writing two fantastical stories at once. The first is the adventure story with death as the enemy and resurrection as the climax and the end of all struggle.

A Love Story. The greater part of our story, however, is a Love Story. In this love story, the resurrection is NOT the end, but only the means to the end, the point of “no return.” Jesus, having won our love, now must win the love of His Church through us, which outwardly means that we must win the love of our fellow Christians.

Because the resurrection of our bodies is the means to that end, we include, in our fantastical novel, the first fifteen years of the Age of Tabernacles, the season of winning the love of the Church. I don’t know of anyone on this earth who is looking for such a fantastical story to become real, nor who would believe such a thing if you told them.

A Great Happening. Let’s try to make practical, now, the points of this lesson.

A great happening is and will be taking place, I believe, over the next few years. This happening must begin with a Pure Spirit Word spoken into the heavens of the Church and into the ears of thousands. That Word will not be unlike the first Word God spoke into His Gospel path, to Abraham, “Get out of your country – and go to a land which I will show you.” Or through Joshua – Follow the Ark of the Covenant into all the life of Christ, “for you have not been this way before.”

The purpose of this great happening is Jesus proven faithful and True. That proving has two parts, the first is every Gospel Word fulfilled and the second is unlimited Spirit out-poured.

The Apocalypse. Yet the Spirit out-poured is not the “Spirit upon,” as was before, but rather as the Love of God shed abroad in the hearts of many. Neither will the expressions of Grace, the effects of Energeia, coming through such hearts be “temporary” as in past ages, but permanent, setting the lives of millions of people into a World of Life that remains.

The difference between the World of Life arising among believers in Jesus all across the earth and the former “world” of good and evil collapsing in ruin around everyone else will be staggering. It is this great contrast of LOVE versus death that God calls the Apocalypse, the Revelation of Jesus Christ.

From the Bridge to the Patterns. This text, Symmorphy VII: Completion, is for mature sons of God who are bringing forth that World of Life out from their bellies, and out from the Word of Christ made personal. That World of Life is also called the Kingdom.

As mature sons, we want the Words that are Christ Jesus, the Pro-Thesis of God, the Pattern and Design to so fill our minds and hearts that our every thought, every step we take, and every thing we do, will come out from that Pattern in beauty and in Joy. This very much includes the Victory in which Michael and his angels participate with us, for Victory is the very fabric of that Kingdom. And the culmination of this Great Apocalypse is the resurrection, our very bodies swallowed up by LIFE!

Reading for Next Time. The next lesson will be the first of our series of twelve patterns, titled 17.1 “Our Jerusalem.” The pattern is “Inhabiting the Site,” the verse is Romans 8:28-30, the ruling verse of the Bible. The point is that God has a PLACE wherein His Kingdom is to be built. That place is heaven-earth, or heaven upon earth, which we call “Jerusalem,” the City of God. All of our design must be in terms of the reality and the beauty of God’s setting.

Since this is the first of our pattern lessons, we will develop more accurately the layout which each pattern lesson will follow, which will be added to Lesson 13.3 “Considering the Patterns.” You could peruse Chapter 6 “Inhabiting the Site” in Symmorphy V: Life in preparation.

Let’s Pray Together. “God our Father, for Jesus to be proven faithful and True inside the mighty Purpose for which You sent Him into us, He must bring forth many more sons just like Himself. Father, we would be right in the center of Your demonstration that You speak the Truth, and that Your Word returns to You having fulfilled it’s Purpose.

“We give ourselves, and every moment and circumstance of our lives to You, oh God, that You might be free to turn the straw of our humanity into the gold of Your Love flowing out. We know, Father, that You make us to Love just as Jesus loves, that You move through us now to draw all believers into Jesus and to reconcile the world to Yourself.

“God, our Father, our lives are Your Story of Victory and Your Story of Love, the very shape and fabric of Your Kingdom. And inside of that Victory and that Love, we place here inside Your presence all our brothers and sisters in Christ, all whom You have given to Jesus across the whole earth in this hour.

“Father, the beast raves in triumph even as ruin flows into the lives of everyone everywhere, and the dragon is furious because he has no more place in Your Church. In the midst of this darkness, Father, we cast off the veil of ignorance that blinds all. Father, show Yourself mighty through us. BE Your very Love shed abroad and poured out from these hearts we share with You.

Father, Your Kingdom is rising up in Triumph everywhere because You always answer us.”