17. The Anti-Design - Again

When I wrote “The Anti-Design” in Symmorphy V: Life, I was attempting to be specific and categorical because I was writing to teach. In these letters that have become a series, I am writing to learn. For that reason, I want to ramble my way through the specifics found in the earlier anti-Design layout, in order to discover what sorts of truths we might find hiding here or there.

And so let’s start with “The One Verse to Rule Them All” – Genesis 3:1 & 4b-5.

“Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’? – You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

These words are incredibly subtle, sleight-of-hand – miss-direction. The power of these words in their utter specificity shows a most brilliant mind, complex thinking, and a deep understanding of psychology, a psychology of being that we must conclude belongs to angels as well as humans as well as to God, for otherwise how would the serpent have known exactly what to say?

What is the first thing the serpent does, that is the second part of the first thing?

He quotes the Bible, Genesis 2:16-17. Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. More than that, he wants Eve to speak for herself the word God speaks.

But then look at where the serpent places the word God speaks. We can now see what the words “Has God indeed said,” are actually doing. Those four words said in that exact way are the specific and only means by which the serpent so very subtly separates the Lord Jesus Christ from the words God speaks. “Has God indeed said,” carries in itself the serpent’s re-definition of “the Bible.”

Modern Judaism is 2000 years of endless argument written and spoken over the meaning of Moses’ words, without ever believing that those words might be God speaking to them. In fact, the modern orthodox Jew has taken those arguments so far away from believing Moses that they have created an entirely different religion than the direct faith in God held by Abraham, Moses, and David.

Then look at Nicene theology, an endless argument beginning with why Jesus has to be “God.” Yet the “God” they make Jesus to be is anything but. Because Nicene theologians believe in Jesus, they stay much closer to the Bible. Yet where is there in any Nicene argument the certain knowledge that these words ARE, in fact, the Lord Jesus Himself alive inside of them and written upon all the pathways of their own hearts?

And the approach to the Bible through the serpent’s lens of thinking – Has God indeed said – has worked in Christian thinking to separate Jesus from being those words, placing Him into an image of a tiny and fairly irrelevant humanoid demigod. Christians are not as far removed from the gospel as the Jews are from Moses, but the same way of thinking is found in both.

There is an excitement in Christian theology to debate and define and declare, to parse and to place and to punctuate the words of the Bible without ever calling those words the Lord Jesus Christ entering into them through “Let it be to me according to Your word.”

Judaism has departed far, far away from Moses because Moses is not Savior. But because Jesus is Savior and Salvation, Nicene Christianity is not as successful in removing its adherents from Him.

In essence, the serpent was saying to Eve, God has spoken His word as mental ideas only, ideas for you to discuss and debate.

Let me give you my understanding of R.C. Sproul’s definition of “the Bible.”

– The “Bible” is God’s instructions to us so that we can know what God wants and what God doesn’t want. Then we try our best to do what we think God wants, and we try our best not to do what we think God doesn’t want, with the underlying assumption that we will not be successful either way, that is, that “sinless perfection” is entirely beyond our reach. –

Now, let me say all of that in four short words – Did God indeed say?

I just love digging out the specific understanding of the falseness. Let me set against it these four things I listed in “Saved inside of Lostness.”

1. Submit to each one in gratefulness for the Love of God outpoured from them to you.

2. Know yourself where every Word God speaks fits into its place inside the pattern that is Christ.

3. Show your brother and sister that every Word is Jesus alive in their hearts.

4. Show Father to each one by little acts of kindness and gentle words of encouragement.

Number three – show that every Word is Jesus alive in their hearts – is the absolute removal of “Did God indeed say?” It is “number three” only because I placed first the source in us out from which such a knowing comes. In fact, I will change the order of 2 and 3, for we must know that Jesus IS every Word inside our hearts before we are even able to put every Word into its intended place.

And in fact, that is exactly what we see happening to the word God speaks as it is affected by removing that Word from the Lord Jesus Christ. And in fact, that is what the tree of knowledge is all about – the words of God as mental knowledge separate from the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ inside of us. Words that are to be implemented by the human by “hear” and “obey,” that is, pretending to “hear and obey,” for neither one is actually happening. Paul was hearing and obeying better than anyone else in all human history even as he was murdering Jesus again.

So – let’s look at the serpent’s “translation” of the Bible. – You shall not eat of every tree of the garden.

Do you see what the serpent’s translation does? It effectively hides the tree of life from Eve.

I saw that exact same thing as I was doing the JSV translation of Hebrews. Hebrews 10:19-22 is the tree of life, a powerful and overwhelming declaration of the sinless perfection inside of which we walk and connect with our Father in all ways. The translators could not remove Hebrews 10:19-22, though they did make it a bit murky with their wording. Nonetheless, they could more easily alter the wording coming after that tree of life through the remaining chapters and by so doing they were completely successful at hiding that incredible LIFE from the eyes of the readers from then until now.

The purpose of the serpent and of all Nicene theology is to hide the tree of life from believers so that they read right over it without even noticing its existence. And they do that by turning the word God speaks into ideas for discussion without receiving it as Jesus Himself fulfilled in all fullness all through their own hearts.

But let’s look at all of the serpent’s question as a whole. – “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?

 All of those carefully selected words stated in that specifically designed order were for an overwhelming purpose of the serpent. He imagined that he “NEEDED” something to happen next. And he crafted his words so carefully in the desperate hope that they would procure his desired result.

In order to understand the result that the serpent hoped to get, we must back up just a bit to the moment when he first perceived Adam and Eve in their place.

We are talking about the highest of all angels, anointed of God as His covering over all the works of His hands. We are talking about the leader of all heavenly worship, all music and beauty, all wisdom and strength.

We are talking about one incredible being, the most incredible in all the universe. And we are talking about a being coming every moment out of the good speaking of Jesus, living in and by the Holy Spirit of God upon whom there is no shadow of evil or turning.

No, he does not know God as He is, but neither does this great being know that which is contrary to God. Yet he has heard that this newly created man and woman ARE “what God looks like” and intended for the revelation of Father seen and known to all. He is, to put it mildly, intrigued. But his curiosity, as large as himself, is a bit miffed, that is, the first slightest of shadows begins working unknown deep inside of him. You see, if these newly created creatures are “what God looks like,” are they greater in their being than me?

Then he sees these two tiny, weak, and very limited creatures. Compared to his intelligence, they have the thinking capacity of a worm. Compared to his beauty, they have the beauty of a slug. And compared to his strength, they have the staying capacity of a vapor.

The image of God? – What God looks like? – Really?

You see that almost the exact same thing that would happen deep inside of Adam was happening inside this angel only minutes or, at the most, a few hours before.

The difference is that the shadow of sin that began inside of Adam was unthankfulness, whereas this same shadow of sin beginning deep inside the angel was envy. Yet I hold fully to my claim that, even though envy began in time before unthankfulness, unthankfullness, not giving thanks, remains the source of all evil, not envy.

And I hold to that for a very heretical reason.

Because of Paul’s specific words, and because I know of no other verse in the Bible that refutes Paul’s words by standing above them, I draw this heretical conclusion.

Neither the serpent nor Eve were in any danger of falling into sin and death up until the moment when Adam took the fruit of knowledge from Eve’s hand. More than that, since God leads us always inside the celebration of all that Jesus is and means, Adam, in the brief moment before his teeth bit into the fruit, was being led entirely inside of God’s intentions and was in no danger at all.

Touching the fruit did not put Adam into danger. A simple flick of his wrist would have instantly separated Eve and the angel from the veil of shadow that had briefly come over their hearts and minds.

I am satisfied for my self that when Jesus said that no truth was in the devil “from the beginning” (John 8), He was speaking of the moment that envy appeared in the angel’s heart and not of Himself as the source and sustainer of everything. And when Jesus said that the serpent was a murderer “from the beginning,” He was not then suggesting that death came into creation through any being other than Adam.

To “murder” someone is a momentary action, and the first actual murder was Cain killing Abel, a metaphor of the works of the human always killing the lamb of Christ. As a momentary action, however, murder can be committed only by a created being who has set up a barrier inside his or her own bubble against the good speaking of Jesus always sustaining them.

No one was “murdered” until Adam’s teeth pierced the fruit of knowledge, and that action was 100% of Adam alone.

[Those who claim that God created the devil as evil are making this assertion. – God, who knows evil all through Himself in the same way that He knows good, took some of that evil out from Himself and embodied the evil in this created being, Satan, who is not “fallen” at all, but is evil in substance out from God. More than that, because Jesus is always the in-between, this evil part of God is spoken by Jesus Himself every moment sustaining the devil as evil. Satan, then, is just another form of Christ. – To say, then, “Oh, no, that’s not what I mean” is self-delusion. More than that, I have seen every one of these dark assertions inside the words of the preachers who teach this awful accusation against God.]

So – back to my heresy, or rather, back to our discussion.

The envy deep inside of the angel grew rapidly from a slight shadow to a deep all-encompassing fog, as he watched this oblivious pair meandering romantically through the garden and drawing ever nearer to his place next to the tree of life. By the time the serpent was able to speak to Eve the fog had grown so great as to choke him.

But – before stating his purpose, let’s look a bit more at the meaning of his envy.

That mighty being, in all of his glory, beauty, and wisdom, had truly believed all through the time of his existence that he was revealing God to all of creation under his covering. And he was – but only a bit. The serpent’s glory was only a small and outer bit of God as He is. Nonetheless, the serpent’s belief regarding himself, the story of self inside his bubble of spirit self-awareness, perceived his own revelation of God as to be most, if not all of “what God is.”

And thus the statement of God, “Here is a created being designed by Me to contain and to reveal all that I am as I really am,” could only have been quite off-putting to that glorious being. Of truth, the serpent had zero knowledge of the humility of Christ as the revelation of God. He knew nothing about a Man stumbling under a cross He could not carry.

God was not yet known.

Essentially, the serpent NEEDED, all through his being, to PROVE GOD WRONG! And the “choke” of that fog was that he knew that he could not do any such thing himself. Man was the master, and only man could challenge the word God speaks. Only man could “disprove” himself as the image and likeness of God; only man could place the most glorious angel of heaven as that image.

By man – death. By man – life (1 Corinthians 15).

Here, then, is what the serpent NEEDED. He needed the human to speak the curse first. Then, he needed man to eat the law, thus eliminating Jesus as that Word [You are severed [separated] from Christ whoever seeks to be justified in law; from grace you have fallen away (Galatians 5:4.)] And he needed humans to exalt his heavenly glory and greatness in their own eyes as “what God looks like.”

And so here again are his first words to Eve. – “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?

 These exact words are stated in this precise way in order to elicit from Eve the thing the serpent desperately “needed” first and that is, the serpent needed Eve to speak the Bible, but to speak the Bible as the curse. The serpent, in order to satisfy his desperate envy, needed the human to place the word God speaks as curse in the sight of the eye.

And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’”

Notice that the curse is the last word in Eve’s mouth. It is also the last word of the Old Testament.

The Christian practice of continuously muttering cursing against one’s self in one form or another is more important to the evil one than I had ever realized. Thank you so much, Pastor Joel, for the precious gift you gave to me. Indeed, a precious result of that gift was that our marriage relationship became good and rich as a result of our practice of what he showed us.

You see, when we were sitting in Lakewood Church, I had zero interest in parsing intellectual doctrinal ideas, as too many do when they listen to Joel. All I wanted was to receive the things God had for me, that is, Christ alive in my heart.

Because Eve spoke the curse, she was now open to being hit as hard as the serpent could hit her with the lie. But before looking at the bold and bald-faced lie the serpent threw at Eve, let’s mention the issue too many “preachers” bring up. – What was Eve doing talking to the serpent?

The same thing the members of your congregation are doing talking to you!

People love to denounce Eve as the guilty one; in fact, some have become offended with me because I place the blame where Paul placed it – upon Adam.

Eve was utterly inside of God, in fact, Eve was an expression of God’s thoughts becoming her. Yet when God speaks forth any person out from Himself, we know that He then releases that person from His “control” even while always leading them inside of His goodness.

God was always leading Eve, and He was always leading her in triumph. At no point was she ever out of the way, for no sin or death had yet entered any part of God’s creation.

More than that, the serpent was anointed as the ministry of God. Eve was walking in heaven, entirely in the Spirit of God. This mighty angel, called and anointed by God, should have been speaking truth and life to her. The fact that he was not was something never known before.

Eve trusted the preacher, as well she should have.

Recently, I heard someone say that Eve got into trouble because she was “researching” out the “truth.” In other words, this preacher was arguing that if you seek for God yourself separately from the neat little package of “truth” he was giving, then you were following Eve into deception.

These are very common interpretations, all designed to keep the sheep in the “right” fold.

It is a strange thing that I have observed in historical fiction as well as in present life, that the enemies of Christ will use the verses that warn against the enemies of Christ in order to force their rule over the woman.

When someone waxes strong with “Depart from Me, I never knew you,” which they always point out away from themselves and towards their intended target, I see someone (now, though I didn’t before) who has no fear of God whatsoever and is most willing to use “the Bible” in order to control the congregation inside of his own deception.

You never here me say towards anyone “Depart from Me, I never knew you,” because I have always taken those words most seriously and cannot use them against anyone except my own need to find myself inside of God.

I speak the words “God is determined to conform me” because I find “Depart from Me” to be the most awful possibility and because I have failed utterly at “pleasing God,” and because I will rush in where I clearly don’t belong and seize hold of what I have not earned.

“God, I will climb into Your pocket and hold on tight until You do in me whatever is needed for me to stay.”

Then, many like to point to the fact that Eve “added to” the word God speaks by saying, “neither shall you touch it,” which God did not say. And of course, I’m sure you noticed that the serpent’s “quotation” was not precisely accurate either.

However small or great Eve’s added words were to her in that moment I cannot tell. But what I do want to share is my own experience over decades.

I have a Bible. And I have held to my right to know what God says to me in that Bible as my own possession. Never has the idea, that I should surrender my right to know for myself what the Bible says, ever entered my mind.

Yet through all the years I was in the move of God fellowship, I also trusted the preacher and the mighty anointing of God upon him or her. I trusted the preacher, and I trusted the words on the pages of my Bible as I could see clearly what they said. And I would sit there, as an Asperger’s man, all torn to pieces inside because all too often the preacher was twisting the words away from what they said to use them for his or her own purposes. Finding fault with the preacher was not in me, but neither could I dismiss the words on the page of my Bible.

I lived in this agony for years.

And if you think this problem was because I was in some “cult,” think again. For the twisting of the word away from what God says to what the preacher wants the words to mean is far greater in every other part of the Church than it ever was inside that fellowship. I have sat there and listened to real perversions and abuse of the words on the page of my Bible by preachers in “acceptable” main-line and Spirit-filled churches that have simply left me in horror.

You cannot adhere to Nicene theology without exercising the continuous mental practice of forcing the words on the page to say something different from what they say. And so I have been admonished more than once and with great intensity that I was making a grave mistake in trying to “read the Bible for myself.” That I should seek out a preacher who would show me what I am supposed to believe.

One last thing in this letter – we will have to save the “one verse to rule them all,” Genesis 3:5, for its own letter.

Here we need to consider the open lie. – “You will not surely die.”

No one ever wins big with a little lie. To win big, one must LIE big. This is a well-known principle of those who manipulate people with words.

The huge lie of September 11, 2001 was already fully prepared before the event happened, and the ideas of that lie were in the mouths of the newscasters by the early afternoon of that day when NO investigation had taken place and no one could possibly know what had happened. In fact, by about 1 in the afternoon, the elements of the lie were being spoken – Osama bin Laden, the big, bad boogie-man. Every statement of fact spoken by the newscasters in the first hours prior to bin Laden’s name was first spoken has been erased from the official record and thus from everyone’s memory.

If you’re going to win a huge prize by lying, you have to lie really, really big. People will suspect you if you lie small, but they cannot believe anyone would lie so big.

To this day, millions of people, and especially Christian people, continue to hold to that lie in spite of all the evidence. And the reason they do is that they simply cannot believe that anyone, and especially God-bless-the-American-government could ever lie like that.

“You will not surely die” is such a bold and in-your-face LIE, so clearly the very opposite of what Eve knew God had said, that Eve, trusting the preacher, could not process it.
And so I have seen, when the preacher would read the words, and then turn and speak the opposite of what those words just said. You are mesmerized by the anointing of the speaker, and most people are unable to process the disconnect, so they just believe the preacher.

That happened big-time in the last service I attended at Lakewood. It was not Pastor Joel speaking, but the preacher read one of the most powerful verses in the New Testament – that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, for as He is, so are we in this world (1 John 4).

I was sitting there thinking, “Cool. All right. He’s going to preach union with Christ.” But he then preached his entire sermon as the very opposite of those words. “You should be as He is, but it’s so very clear that you are not. Therefore, get with the program and pretend to be ‘like Jesus.’”

The lie was too big for most of the people in that congregation. They trusted the preacher – and he was a good man, anointed of God. And so, in their minds, everything he preached was based on the word God speaks, even though he spoke the exact opposite of that word. I spent the entire 25 minutes in unrelenting pain.

So it was with the serpent and Eve. Eve “read” her Bible with the serpent, then the serpent, drawing from those words, preached the exact opposite, and Eve did not know what to do except to believe what she was told.

The direct lie is not subtle, not at all. And as such, it serves its psychological purpose of misdirection to cause the hearer to fail to notice all the subtle and hidden lies coming in next.

That’s how it works. And so it has been in every single realm of Christianity I have known until now, including the circles of union with Christ and present grace.

And me? I am nothing more than an incapable man driven to know what God means by what He says and unwilling to live anywhere else but inside of Jesus.

Now, as I have thought more about the big lie of the serpent – You will not surely die, I have realized that these words are the source of death as salvation – “when we all get to heaven.”

You see, people will say that death is not really death. On the contrary “the only way into life is to die first.” For that reason, death is not death at all, rather death is “life” – you will not surely die.

Those believers who desire Jesus alone, when they die, they are most certainly tucked into the safety of Christ. But they are dead, which, by definition, means they no longer have an essential part of themselves as the image of God; they are NOT whole. Thus, they are waiting, as we are, for brand new physical bodies so that they can be part of the revelation of God to creation.

But the LIE that “going to” heaven, that is, death, is the goal of the believer, that “eternal life” is to be without a physical earth body, is a really big lie, an in-Your-Face contradiction of what God says. And as such it is incredibly effective at turning God’s people away from Jesus’ definition of age-unfolding life, which is knowing Father. Thus they go into death with an extremely limited knowledge of God and so they must remain until their time comes. At the same time, they are no threat to the serpent’s success while alive.

Death is death, the splitting apart of heaven and earth, and life is life, the full union of heaven with earth and of the human with the Father. Death is not God’s desire or intention, though He bears with it until He has a people who will believe what He speaks.