14.3 Seized
© 2017 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
And her child was seized into God and into His throne (Revelation 12:5).
We do NOT play the mind games of unbelief with the Word God speaks as so many do. We respond to every Word God speaks as Jesus Personal in us, “Let it be to me according to Your Word.” And then, having asked, we are not as the unbelievers, rather we are convinced that we have received all that we have asked.
Revelation 12:5 is talking about me, Daniel Yordy, right now, and you as well, if you will believe. God has seized me into Himself and into His Heart, the throne of heaven.
Action Released. In this lesson, I hope to place God’s Pro-Determination into its place in the Covenant. Let’s define Pro-Determination (noun) and Pro-Determined (verb). Pro-Determination is that quality of Energeia, life-force, zeal, inside the All Here Now Being of the Almighty that executes the Will and Purpose of God. Pro-Determined is the Action of God released. Pro-Determined is Jesus passing from us as God-Knows us, through us as God’s appearance or image.
And I see now why “Pro-Determined” and “Symmorphosed” ended up together in the outline. The two cannot be separated. God Pro-Determined to Symmorphose me with Jesus!
Intensity of Present Action. Pro-Determined and Symmorphosed are both action verbs. God has become real to us as we know that He is All Here Now and Personal in us, thus we know these two Actions of God only as Actions continuously taking place in the present moment in us. “Predestination” is an idea that places God far away from us into the murky past and not a present Action in us.
To be Symmorphosed is the essence of the Being of God and thus Pro-Determined is the intensity of the Action by which God is what He is – One who lives IN and reveals Himself through other persons. Since Symmorphy seems impossible to us, we must know God’s Determination causing Him to be our only reality.
I Chose You. Pro-determined is the Action of God appearing again in His creation in human flesh, now you and me, God appearing to His Church, seizing all who belong to Jesus into LIFE, into that knowledge of God which they are afraid to enter.
Here are some more of the Covenant verses that denote the Pro-Determination of God. You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain (John 15:16). – …you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the opportune time (1 Peter 1:5). (We will include the context of this line when we get to the inheritance.)
The Ark Made Visible. Salvation “ready to be revealed in the right moment” is this passage of Father out into His creation once again, this time through us. That is, first through us now to His Church, and second through His Church to all creation forever.
Then the temple of God was opened in heaven, and the ark of His covenant was seen in His temple (Revelation 11:19). John’s vision is heaven’s view of Paul’s gospel – you are the temple of God (1 Corinthians 6). “Was opened” and “was seen” means Christ in us made visible to the Church. God never “leaves” the Holy of Holies, but rather, wherever the Ark is, that is the Holiest.
Seizing the Church into Life. That she should be holy and without blemish (Ephesians 5:27) is the Church now herself the Holy of Holies, God’s Covenant now the heart of each member. God is determined to do this, and He is determined to do it through us.
I am attempting to make clear to us what God is doing and about to do so that we might grasp, somehow, the meaning of being seized in His grip. God and us together are taking this revelation of God as He is through our flesh into His Church. His intention is to seize His Church into all the fullness of Christ – millions of Spirit-filled believers alive now on this earth.
Poured Out. God has us. We are a done deal. For that reason, in this revelation of God, we are not the object of God’s consuming passion – our brethren who will not enter the Holiest are that object of His Desire.
In this view, just as God does not think highly of Himself, but abandons all concern for the cost to Himself and recklessly plunges into the rescue of His people, so God expends us in the same way, for Wwe are one Pperson together. God does not “think highly” of us as Himself, but pours us out without consideration for our breathless anxiety, for the sake of His Body, which is the Church (Colossians 1). Thus, even in the midst of our own trauma, we REST utterly inside the grip of His Determination.
Confidence. This is how Jesus walked for thirty-three and a half years, and especially for the last three and a half years, and even more especially through the walk of the Atonement. Jesus did not consider Himself, whether He was “going to make it or not.”
And I realize that we cannot appreciate the trauma He was thrust into by taking on the form of death in this world. Jesus knew that the Father was recklessly pouring Him out, Father and Him together, for our sakes, regardless of the awfulness of any step. It was Jesus’ CONFIDENCE that the Father was one with Him in all things that made the Father visible through Him.
A Traumatic Experience. God revealing Himself to His Church through our human flesh inside this present age is a traumatic experience for us just as it was for Jesus. Yet this ACTION of God is the fulcrum, the turning point of the Covenant, when what is “not,” becomes what IS.
Now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. 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. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation (Hebrews 9:26b-28).
This transaction that removes ALL sin from God’s people comes now through us, through our eyes, through our own seeing of our brethren, even as we are thrust into difficulties.
Now Turned Around. You see, I have heard this “Apart from sin” presented as the BARRIER intended to keep God’s people OUT OF the Holiest. If you still commit acts of sin, that is all the EVIDENCE you need to KNOW that Jesus is separate from you.
For He made Him who knew no sin to be our sin, that we might be the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21 – modified). Only as we boldly place our outward appearance, whatever God wants to call it, including “sin,” into Jesus as His own doing, BOLDLY seizing His LIFE as our own are we become this turning point for His Church. All sin IS PURGED; the absence of sin is in our eyes.
Now turned around, we show the Church Christ to them.
Show the House to the House. Son of man, describe the temple to the house of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities; and let them measure the pattern (Ezekiel 43:10). Show the house of God to the house of God, that they may realize they have not entered into the Holiest; and let them measure Christ made visible through you.
This line has been reverberating in my spirit, God calling me forward – Show the House to the House. Show the Church to the Church. Show God in you to those in whom God is. Let them measure the pattern, let them see the boldness by which you speak Christ as the only life you are. Yet this is much more than Christ as us, for the House is a many-membered body.
Into the City of God. This is God’s Pro-Determination, His passage through the Veil now our flesh. God enters His Church IN His Church to show His Church by His Church what He is all about.
So David went and brought up the ark of God… to the City of David with gladness (2 Samuel 12). So God brought the Ark of His Covenant into His City, the New Jerusalem, with GLADNESS.
Show the House to the House – that they may be ashamed of their iniquities; and let them measure the pattern. – The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this (Isaiah 9:7b), God’s Pro-Determination.
The Purpose of Shame. Now, God is not interested in “shame” except as one momentary action behind the decision to forever abandon ourselves as separate from Christ in any way. Those who continue in shame do so because they hate being God’s appearance. They remain in rebellion, demanding that God change their appearance to look more like “God” is supposed to look like. Those who see the falseness of their own life trying to be a “good” Christian, step instantly out of their shame and into Christ as all that they are.
Yet just as God gave us Jesus by faith so that we might “measure the pattern” without seeing, so God gives us to His Church that they might see and believe.
Christian Community. So what does God’s Pro-Determination to symmorphose me together with Jesus, to show His people His dwelling place, what it is and how it works, have to do with me right now? “Show the House to the House” means Christian community in some form.
When David sought to bring the Ark into Jerusalem the first time, he did it the wrong way and got in trouble with God. When David went down again to bring up the Ark with gladness, he did it God’s way, that is, HANDS OFF! Carried by the Levites signifies our being carried by Jesus. In other words, it is God’s Pro-Determination that accomplishes this entrance of God into His city, into the Holy Place.
I Am Determined. I am determined to establish and to be a part of an expression of Christian community out from which will come many more communities of Christ just like it in substance, though each unique in form.
The Christian communities of which I was once a part were established by Sam Fife, outwardly a little man, but inwardly of unlimited, constant energy and fierce, undiminished passion. We were glad to have been caught in his whirlwind, for he showed us God as we had never known Him. Yet Sam Fife placed the entrance of the Ark on the cart of human ability to obey, flesh putting flesh to death, and many put their hands to that Ark to keep it away from the dirt of their humanity and many died.
I Can Do Nothing. I am a little man as well, but inwardly. I am more tired than ever and without ability to accomplish my determination. “I” can’t do it. I have NO outward resources, NO physical or emotional strength, and NO inward ability to “lead.” Yet I am as determined, I think, as Sam Fife ever was. Yet I can do nothing regarding my determination. Except one thing. I am very good at making plans and developing my plans to their full extent in my own mind.
Over the last few weeks, God has said to me, “Stop it. Your ‘plans’ become an imposition on those with whom I have chosen for you to walk.” And so I must set aside even my good ideas. Yet my determination remains unchanged. And determination waits for nothing.
Seized into God. For years I found myself often in the book of Ezekiel, weeping over a calling I could not understand. Here is my calling – Show the House to the House.
And my DETERMINATION, though it is stripped of ALL ability and ideas, still burns as fiercely as it ever did. My determination is the very symmorphy of God in me, and by God’s Determination, I WILL BE planted in a Community of Christ, and WE together WILL show God’s precious people what LIFE, age-abiding LIFE really is.
Fire inside of fire inside of Fire. Grip inside of grip inside of Grip. I am seized into God, into His Heart AND into His Church. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.