22. Opposing the Ten

Death is a BIG deal in the rule over all human thinking. And human blindness and thus ignorance of the heavens make Christian thinking about death to be confused.

Then the words of the serpent, “You will not surely die,” add even further to the confusion. Do we die; do we live? Is death real living; is life only dying?

The gospel promises us unending life. In fact, the promises of the gospel do not allow for any Christian to die physically. Yet we still continue to die. This fact, then, that we still die physically, turns Christians away from believing the words of the gospel more than any other thing.

And thus our reality is split into two things far separate from one another in our imaginations. We have conveniently called those two things as “this life” and “the next life.” And the RULE of those split apart and, to the Christian mind, inconceivably different and opposing realities, simply dominates all Christian thinking. I am amazed at how that RULE has vanished from my thinking.

Let me share with you a layout that I thought through while I lay awake in the night.



Wow, as I sit here looking at this, I realize that this is an accurate and fixed definition of the universe created by God as held in the minds of almost all Christians. – That God designed this present age as entirely NOT NOW and the next as an age without faith and without hope.

Let’s start with the realms of not now. Every time I have shown another Christian, and especially a “teacher of the word” any wonderful verse in the New Testament in which I live, the immediate and only response that is or can be given is “NOT NOW.”

This response of “NOT NOW” is found in union with Christ and present grace teaching along with all others. In fact the entire grace message is predicated entirely on “not now.” To almost all Christians, the wondrous things written in the New Testament are for ONE PLACE ONLY, that place of pure bliss I have titled “Harps on Clouds.” And all the ten most important verses as well as the fulfillment of the Covenant in our lives is entirely not now.

The “wide space of NOT YET” is the play of the human mind, each individual hoping and thus living in the story told that “my death is far in the future.” Death, and thus all the promises of God fulfilled, is definitely and utterly NOT YET. This wide uncharted space, then, is a convenient buffer of the human imagination.

In this thinking, death is absolute and utter. Death is first a vast and impenetrable barrier between this “present life” of not now and that “next life” of instantaneous human perfection without any need for faith. But look at that – “God fulfills His Word in our experience, faithful and true, ONLY through our death, only on the ‘other side’ of DEATH!”

Then Death is also an instantaneous carriage. – You die you fly; you die you fry.

Again, I am being stark and even harsh in my presentation. I am also being honest about how I once perceived God’s reality for the human experience.

Finally, Death also contains in itself a mighty and impassable wall between Bliss and Lava for the Protestants and between Bliss and Purgatory and Lava for the Catholics. And thus far, that is the ONLY difference in the thinking and doctrine of Protestants, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, deeper truth, present grace, and whoever else you might want to throw into the mix. Ultimate reconciliationists remove only the boiling lava, replacing it with a larger gray shadow, otherwise everything remains exactly the same as the model shows.

More than that, all share the exact same idea in their heads about WHO goes to one place or to the other and all take their idea from the bastardized version of the ruling verse. Now, I have seen this version in someone’s actual writing, so I did not invent it. Nonetheless I know that it is the only wording found in the thinking of almost all.

For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to go to heaven or to go to hell (Romans 8:29). (The diagram above is the rule of these bastardized words over all thinking.)

All Christians are in full agreement on the doctrine that the ONLY people who will find themselves instantaneously in pure bliss and human perfection immediately upon death are the ELECT. Almost all Christians are in full agreement that everyone else finds themselves instantaneously in total torment immediately upon death. The Catholics, in remembering the only understanding held by early Christians, like to hold out for an in-between place for failed Catholics in good-standing with the church, but who were not successful at pretending to be like God.

Now we come to the next purpose of looking at this layout, and that is the differences in the four groups I have listed in the “NOT NOW” box regarding the definition of “the elect.” And, of truth, this is the only real place that Christian sects differ from one another, and that is, the definition of “the elect.”

In Roman Catholic thinking the “elect” are Catholics who are in good standing with the church (that is, who keep the sacraments and give lip service to the Pope, etc.) AND who are successful in the eyes of other humans at pretending to be like God. All other Catholics in good standing who are not so successful have to go to Purgatory where they will be purged of their inability to pretend before they can enter human perfection.

Pure Calvinism is the belief that God chose the elect AND never tells anyone who that might be. The elect are secure, guaranteed to awake out of death into instant human perfection (and, of truth, this outward and forced human perfection is almost everyone’s definition of “heaven”). Except you do NOT know if you are elect or not. For that reason, you should do your very best to pretend to be like God your whole life. EXCEPT many who are so successful, not being the elect, will drop instantly into torment anyway. Whereas many who are not at all successful at “the Christian life,” but are the elect, will go instantly into human perfection anyway. In all practical terms, it really doesn’t matter. God already decided, regardless, and the rest are toast.

But pure Calvinism is better than Arminian Calvinism. Pure Calvinism states that the elect are utterly secure regardless, but no one knows who the elect are. Arminian Calvinism agrees that no one knows who the elect are; they disagree, however, as to whether the elect are secure or not. Arminian Calvinism states that you might be the elect, but the elect are not secure, therefore you are required to be successful at pretending to be like God as well. Arminius taught that even the elect can go to hell.

Baptist Calvinism is different. Baptist Calvinism began during the second great awakening in the early 1800’s with the assertion that we CAN KNOW if we are the elect. That is, if we are born again, then we ARE the elect and thus totally secure. Thus, to the Baptist, if someone whom they thought was born again and secure, goes off the deep end into practicing willful sinfulness, then they were never actually born again.

The phrase, “once saved always saved” as the Baptists define it is not Calvinism, for Calvin taught that you cannot know that you are the elect.

But of course, all of this thinking exists only and entirely inside the fantasy realm of “NOT NOW.” And thus, however one might define “the elect,” that definition results ultimately in the same thing for all – having the “right ticket” when you hit the awful wall of DEATH.

Calvin said that you don’t know if you have the right ticket or not. The Baptists say, “Oh yes we do, we have the right ticket. And our ticket guarantees us instantaneous human perfection the moment we hit the wall of Death.” Arminius says that even if you have the right ticket you still might fry instead of fly.

And all of them operate inside the fantasy world of NOT NOW inside of which they hold all things – giving an account, works being tried, God fulfilling His Word, receiving the promises, eternal life, Christ their life in glory – far away from themselves on the other side of NOT YET.

So what is our reality completely separate from this psychotic realm of Christian unbelief?

Here is a picture of how I see myself in my present reality now and forever. This is out from Romans 8:29 as it reads and as it has become to me now.




The other way of thinking and all the issues of contention inside of it have no meaning whatsoever in this place where I live. I cannot answer the question, “Can a Christian lose his salvation,” because every single idea inside of that question has no meaning; that is, every single idea inside that question is found in one realm only, “not now – not here – not yet.”

I know Jesus alive in my heart HERE and NOW. Everything else I might know is found inside of that knowing. If some issue or contention is not found inside of Jesus alive in my heart now, then I am so uninterested that I cannot even hold the concepts in my mind to know what they might be. And inside of Jesus alive in my heart every Word God speaks in the Bible finds its full and complete fulfillment in my life today, but through my active faith and participation – Let it be to me.

This letter is titled “Opposing the Ten.” In my earlier look at the “verses” that might be used to oppose the ten most important verses of the Bible, I selected one opposing verse for each of the ten. That list is useful, but only as a representative list. In other words, each of the opposing “verses” is joined by other verses wrongly used as well as arguments constructed from differing verses or even with no reference to actual verses.

For example, to oppose “love one another,” in order to cherish contempt for other Christians, any Bible reader can find hundreds of different verses quite useful to emphasize “my superiority” and “your loathsomeness.”

I want to go briefly, now, through each of the ten and show the thinking inside the minds of Sister B and Brother A that strikes down any present faith towards God regarding the ideas of our Salvation. Or, we should say, the woven fabric of the human soul that prevents the inter-weaving of God’s ideas.

We have seen that the serpent used the Bible but altered the words just enough to hide the tree of life. And so, the ruling verse of the Bible does keep its place in serpent thinking, it’s just altered to hide the tree of life with an always effective, “not here – not now.”

Here is that thinking. For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to {{{be conformed to the image of His Son – not here and not now, but only by the instantaneous human perfection provided by death, so it really means –}}} go to heaven {and since those not predestined to fly will fry, then it is also right for us to add} or to go to hell.

“Not here – not now” is all that is needed to hide the tree of life – already symmorphosed with Jesus, sharing the same form.

Yet look at that, exactly as I had surmised. The word “symmorphosed” is replaced with the word “to go”; “to go” is death. And thus death is the only thing that comes into Christian thinking when they read “conformed to” – instant human perfection by the curse of death.

And so “Did God indeed say? (Let’s talk about what “conformed to” has to mean since it is obviously not happening now.) You shall not surely die. (Death is salvation, by death, you will instantly know and live by whatever this might mean – or not).”

A complete comparison between the ruling verse of the Bible and the one verse to rule them all would show us many striking points of opposition. Now, however, we want to look at the other nine ruling verses and see how they are contradicted in much “Christian” thinking. That is, what are the “arguments” that drive these verses out?

The Nine
Anti ~ Filled with all the fulness of God. ~
This is one of those several non-verses in the Bible. It is not a “heretic” verse because no heretics even consider it (individuals who do regard it are typically found in mental asylums). It is blocked by things like Paul’s statement in Romans 7, “in my flesh nothing good dwells.”

Augustine defined “being filled with God” for all Christians. Let me paraphrase what he meant. “When I am filled with God, I will be a better and a superior person. Because I ‘see’ that the person I am right now is loathsome and contemptible, I know that I cannot be filled with God.” In essence, the rooted belief in an arrogant “God” and the agreed contempt of the human work together to cause Ephesians 3:19 to be the embarrassing verse, the verse no one ever talks about.

Then, “Christ lives in your heart” just naturally follows the reasons why we mask over “filled with God,” pretending it’s not there. – Jesus is far away. – And so, “Jesus in my heart” is not actually removed, it is just dimmed down to a “child’s” belief on the one hand and a figurative statement on the other, never anything literal.

More than that, those who accept that Christ is “inside of us” always partition themselves, putting Christ in one place and all that they are themselves in another place. This is real mental gymnastics. Out from this mental impossibility, they say, “Step out of the way so that Christ can be seen and not you.” Hello? The sheer meaninglessness of that statement never concerns them. Why? Because they agree with Augustine. “Christ is superior; I am of myself and I am a loser.”

In my experience, “filled with God” was a definite possibility for this life, something to aspire to in the present, but still, put into the category of Not Yet. After Sam Fife’s death, Augustine’s argument prevailed in polite discussion and “filled with God” pretty much disappeared.

Anti ~ Rivers of Spirit flowing out. ~
I do not know of this verse ever being mentioned or considered in non-Spirit-filled Christianity. It’s one of those verses placed into that large and useful catch-bag of “We’ll know what that’s all about after death makes us instantly superior.” Yet it is one of those verses that catches the heart of those who see more in their Bibles and desire to know God’s Spirit.

In the Pentecostal realms, then, “rivers of Spirit flowing out” are definitely part of the present Christian experience. Nonetheless, they are limited and confined into two specific boxes. One box is that of “power-house” healing ministries, to whom everyone comes hoping to “get touched.” The other box is the present-day experience of exuberant and laughter-filled worship, services I have attended a couple of times. God is definitely moving, but the experience does not change anything in the rigid box above, the realm of NOT NOW.

The idea that rivers of Spirit ARE flowing out of us because we believe in Jesus – even though we don’t “see” anything is not considered by anyone I have known. You see, the huge block still rules – “You can know these rivers, but only if you try.”

More than that, the contempt in which the human frame is held and the lust for a superior Christ work together to create the same accusation against Christ in us as was leveled against Christ on the cross. Here is one line spoken against me inside my present time of writing. – “God does just about everything apart from you, Yordy. He doesn't need any human consent. Nice that you are freeing creation. I've read about some in prison for Christ that could use your help. Go at it! They are being tortured, could use prayer.” –

“A superior God does NOT need fleshy humans.” – This is a rigid belief in almost all. I was 20 when I first heard Sam Fife say that God needs humans in order to fulfill His purposes. I think that was my first real SHOCK of “blasphemy” against all my “Christian knowledge.”

Anti ~ Casting down all accusation. ~
“I have a sinful human nature” MEANS “I am my own source” MEANS “I am my own god.” This belief, held by almost all, creates only a continuous stream of accusation. “I am bad.” For that reason, I chose this verse, spoken over and over by the Christian, as the continuous expression of “I am bad.” – Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us! For we are exceedingly filled with contempt (Psalm 123:3).

But what about those who get a revelation of “I am good,” yet continue inside the rigid framework of death as Salvation? You see, “I am good,” is just as false as “I am bad.” Both, in fact, are the same thing, for both see only themselves as their own source, and thus, their own god. I say, “My heart is good; my heart is filled with Jesus.” Jesus alone is the continuous source of my rightness. Both, “I am good,” and “I am bad” are, in fact, accusations against God, that He lies, that Christ is not sustaining us by every Word that He is every moment.

But casting down accusation includes that accusation that is against our brethren. I know of few more favorite topics among my fellow Christians than speaking evil against other believers in Jesus – how they are “in trouble with God” because they are not “like me.”

All who accuse self, God, and other Christians stand before Constantine’s cross erected as a mighty and impassible barrier. In front of that imaginary “cross,” they weep and wail over sin, always running to the altar or to the confessional. I see, now, that this false cross, the “crucifix,” an “ever-dying” Christ, is the barrier between them and the “superior Christ” ascended into the sky far away from them inside their imaginations.

Anti ~ Christ is our only life. ~
Crucified with Christ? You certainly can and ought to be.

I chose this verse as the antithesis to Christ our life, a hard line that is easily misread. – Therefore, put to death your members which are on the earth (Colossians 3:5). This line is then taken separately from the one death of Christ becomes – The crucifix, an endless and ineffective cutting of one’s self. Of truth, separated from – One sacrifice for sins forever – and – Christ dies no more – this line becomes the horror of satanic mind control in Christian practice.

I can see now that always trying to “cut away the bad” was, in fact, the cause of my cut-to-pieces soul that God healed through my years with John Eldredge. Of truth, what other people might have said or done had little to do with my being torn apart.

The “apparent” ineffectiveness of the cross, then, is all that is needed to hide the tree of life on the “other side” of something that is not there. Yet to say that “Nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ” is to accept that “I” am not god, that I do not sustain myself. And I am able to accept such a radical idea only by my acceptance of “It is finished.”

But look again at these words – “God does just about everything apart from you, Yordy. He doesn't need any human consent.” The one saying such a thing is actually saying, “I am my own entity far away from God; I am my own god.”

Stepping through the cross is a very good idea. But Christ my only life is even better.

Anti ~ Enter all of God boldly. ~
The belief in the total depravity of the Christian is what allows people to hold themselves and others in complete contempt and to hold Jesus and the Father far away as “superior” and thus arrogant Beings. The favorite verse to denounce self and others that I have known is – The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9). The fact that Jeremiah was speaking of hearts not filled with Jesus has no traction, because “Jesus” is a faraway and limited Being.

To enter all of God boldly requires a true heart in full assurance of faith – hearts sprinkled from all consciousness of sin.

But living only inside of all of God means that God is our source. You can’t be your own “god,” your own source, you can’t be responsible for yourself inside of all of God. And this is why Christians rush back to some form of law and of required human performance – it’s how they maintain their illusory “god-ness.” “My heart is deceitful and desperately wicked” is the overwhelming human defense against being sustained by every good word that is Jesus.

Anti ~ Walk in absolute confidence. ~
I walk in confidence only inside one way of thinking. I think, more and more, that God ALONE is the continuous source of ALL that I am, as a fountain of life upwelling as me through Christ my only life.

Human performance is the outworking of “I am my own source; I am my own god.” The Bible is filled with verses that can be interpreted as a requirement for human performance. – You shall therefore keep My statutes and My judgments, which if a man does, he shall live by them. – All that the Lord has spoken we will do (Leviticus 18:5 & Exodus 19:8). The fact that Paul ELIMINATED this essence of the old covenant in Galatians 3 escapes most everyone. The Old Testament is powerful when Christ our life is not known.

Yet human performance is known best by the Myth of Sisyphus, always trying and never ever succeeding. Human performance always eliminates confidence, since “self” is the “source.”

Anti ~ Love one another. ~
Few Christians ever have, for God alone is love. To love one another is only to God one another, that is, Father Himself in Person.

Contempt for self requires contempt for others, which is arrogance. A Christian who says “My heart is wicked” cannot ever love anyone. And so these phrases from “Jude” are descriptive of the many similar Bible verses that allow the Christian to despise all those “other so-called Christians out there.” – These [people] are spots in your love feasts – clouds without water – raging waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame – These are grumblers, complainers, walking according to their own lusts – hate even the garment defiled by the flesh.

“If Christ is not my life, then it is obvious to me that I am not seeing Christ when I look at all these losers.”

Anti ~ Set creation free. ~
This is a tough one, because Paul placed these lines as essential to the very heart of his rendition of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Yet the idea is so contrary to everything believed in Nicene Christianity. For that reason, this is the “heresy” verse. Anyone who believes in any present fulfillment of “the manifestation of the sons of God” has to be a heretic!

Consider this belief held strongly by almost all. “Mortal men will never rule over God's kingdom.” Everything in this line is thought inside of nonsense. Here is what it really means. “You will NEVER love one another while in your body of sinful flesh. Therefore, you must die and “go to” heaven where you will be instantaneously perfected. Only then will you love one another.”

But the opposition to our setting creation free is far more greatly embedded in the theology of death. If creation is split forever between human perfection without faith and human misery without hope, then “setting creation free” has no meaning at all.

Judas was the “son of perdition” in Jesus’ life. I am convinced that Jerome is the “son of perdition” to the Church. It was Jerome who sowed the tare of the pagan Roman belief in unending torment in hellfire into the translations of the Bible. The early Greek church did not know such a thing. In the end, only one Greek idiom, which no one can understand, is the ONLY Bible phrase upon which unending torment could be based in full defiance of Paul’s gospel, and that is the idiom “aiōnas aiōnōn” found in John’s much-abused vision. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever (Revelation 14:11 and 20:10).

Because of the false guilt of sin in the soul of the Christian unbeliever, this idiom, “aiōnas aiōnōn,” the ages of the ages, (forever and ever) is placed as the absolute rule over all words contrary to it that are found in Paul’s gospel. It is the guilt in the human soul, all the hiding from God, that accuses God of being a demon, the highest angel of heaven as the image of “God.”
Jesus said that the barriers of hades will not keep the Church of Christ out, for as Jesus we will seek and we will save all that is lost. The horror of self-accusation may continue forever, but no one will remain inside of it.

Anti ~ Live inside of Jesus and Jesus inside of you. ~
Nothing is more important to the evil one than to drive any wedge he can between Jesus and us – Get away from that tree! – that is, the tree of life.

In response to something I put on Facebook – “anything we say about Jesus, we must also say about us” – in the context of Jesus as the only source of all that we are, someone sent me an email. I will have to paraphrase their words. “Jesus is God; I am not God. I must know; do you say that Jesus is God or not?”

Do you see how everything is twisted? By saying that Jesus IS all that I am, I am saying that “I” am not my own source, I am NOT my own god. By saying that “Jesus is God; I am not God,” the Christian is actually saying, “Jesus and God are far away from me; I am my own entity, a lowly and despicable human. I am my own source; I am my own god.”

Anything that places Jesus NOT inside of ME and that places me NOT inside of JESUS is anti-Christ. I simply do not see their purpose.

Any verse, then, that is used to separate Jesus from us, that we are coming out of Father through Christ Jesus every moment, is anti-the tree of life. Here are two, as they are wrongly interpreted. And that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the time. – So we are always confident, knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. – We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord (Acts 3:20b-21 & 2 Corinthians 5:6 & 8).

The serpent leaves the “Christian,” then, with a “superior” but tiny, impotent, and faraway “Christ.” We have left the serpent in the dust where all that unnecessary nonsense about being our own “god” belongs.