4.2 Definitions of God
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
The primary nonsense of the Nicene Council is that they attempted to define the Man, Christ Jesus, by using how they imagined “God” to be as their definition. You see how foolish that was. If they could not know God, how on earth could they use “god” to define Jesus? The only “god” they knew anything about was Adam’s agreement with the serpent to define “god” by high angelic attributes, making God a “Thing” “up there.”
We do not define Jesus by “God,” for we have no idea what God is. We must begin to know God by knowing Jesus, a Man, for we do have some dim inkling of what a man/woman is.
The Shadow of the Serpent
But in this lesson we want to pencil out how God is defined by Christianity and all mankind – not the repetitious liturgies, but the real core definition people hold in their hearts.
It is VITAL that we clarify every false image of “God” and leave it behind before we venture into speaking of God as He is. If any shadow of the serpent remains within our definition of “God,” then we will continue to read God by that definition. God is entirely different to one who sees a high angel as God’s image versus one who sees Jesus the Man as God’s image. In fact, this IS the great war of heaven, between these two images of what God looks like, an angel or a man, a war raging in the minds of Christians.
The “THING” Called “God”
In upcoming sessions, we will explore how false definitions made their way into Christianity as the Apostles warned, another “Jesus” taking full place in Christianity by AD 325.
In this lesson, I want to remove the murkiness regarding several aspects of the serpent as the definitions of “god.” I want to make the “THING” too many Christians hold in their minds as stark as I can. And I will attempt to counteract this false image by representations of how you and I know this One who lives in our hearts, this One who tells us to call Him Father.
But first a factor greater than the serpent has entered my understanding as to how God is defined in this world.
Another Force
Yes, most humans, including most Christians, define God by the image of an angel, a “God” who is the biggest thing in heaven, a heavenly “form” emanating lights and perfections, a “God” who sits above, dictates and controls, and pronounces judgment against.
But I now see that another force rules even more over the human definitions of God, particularly in Christian thinking. It is this other force that turns the minds of Christians away from what God says and onto a “place” they call heaven. I now realize that this view of “heaven” is not the greatest blockage turning the minds of Christians away from Christ.
Death is our greatest enemy, the creator of all anti-Christ.
Death Is the Way to “go to” Heaven
I see a popular verse God never says quite often on Facebook. “Jesus is the only way to heaven.” Let’s get real. Death is the only way to heaven. People can have Jesus all they want, but they will not “go to” heaven except it be death that takes them there.
And no Christian I have ever known wants to go to heaven. They will fight with all that they are, they will spend their entire fortune, they will even kill others in order to stay away from heaven and to remain alive on this earth. Death rules. Death rules over how most Christians define God, the Bible, Salvation, and all things.
Heaven-Only Is Death
And living in heaven-only is the curse; it is living IN death. Yes, just as we are carried inside of Christ all the way through death and into life, so all those who have died remain carried. Yet life has not yet come into the appearance of creation, life that swallows up and eliminates death.
No Christian in heaven-only right now, carried utterly inside of Jesus, wants to remain in heaven-only. Every Christian who has died wants, with all the desire of their beings, to live again, to walk this earth again together with us. Every Christian who has died wants to be full humans again, living in both heaven and earth at the same time.
Death Rules
But we will explore victory over death in Symmorphy III: Kingdom; here we are looking at the role death plays in forcing a false definition of God.
The primary objection against Christ as our life comes from this thought, then – “But you will still die!” This underlying assumption is the real foundation beneath calling heaven-only “our home.” Death, then, rules over the definitions of God.
That through death He might destroy him who had the power of death . . . and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage (Hebrews 2:14-15).
The Fear of Death
The “fear of death” is NOT “being afraid to die.” And Jesus did NOT destroy the power of death so that we could “be brave as we die.” To FEAR something is to put that thing front and center as the rule over all things.
By the fear of death, “God” is completely separate and other. By the fear of death, “God” is far away and high above. By the fear of death, “God” controls everything and everyone – you sin, you die. By the fear of death, “God” is impassive and selfish. By the fear of death, “God” is limited and bound.
Clarity of Understanding
Let me share this: I have been blocked on this lesson for many days, I thought because I was not sleeping well. Most of this lesson up until now, including the entrance of “death” in defining “God,” however, I wrote without full clarity of mind. But last night the verse from Hebrews 2 on the fear of death came into my understanding, and as I considered it inside of the Spirit of God, three terms that have been murky all my Christian life came into full clarity. Those terms are death, heaven, and repentance (turn around). We will look at these in upcoming lessons, but here we want to see how death rules over all human definitions of “God.”
By Death
Death rules. Those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
It was death that turned the hearts and minds of the Christians of the early church away from the revelation of Jesus Christ, year after year, until by the ’sAD, Christ our only life was hardly even remembered. It was death that presided over the fall into Roman darkness. – I will kill her children with death (Revelation 2:23). And it is by death that Christianity knows and defines the two most critical terms in this course, God and Salvation. People even claim that death is the source of life!
Separate
By the fear of death, “God” is completely separate and other. Every element of the curse is contained inside the word “death,” including the skin of the beast God placed upon the human race. That beast skin blinded humans so that they can see earth only, so that they can no longer see heaven all around us, utterly part of earth.
Thus death very quickly caused “heaven” to separate itself from earth in the imagination of the human mind and to drift away into some place completely other than this solar system. And with “heaven” went “God.” Death separates, and thus by death “God” must be separate.
No Connection
A “God” who is separate has no immediate or personal connection to humanity, let alone to the rest of creation. This separation continues in defining Jesus; there is a “God” part of Jesus and a “man” part of Jesus, but these parts are completely other. Thus most Christians are Deists; they imagine that creation operates outside of the Person and Being of God. They imagine that you and I are separate from the Person of Jesus; put on the Lord Jesus Christ makes no sense to most.
~in contrast~ God all in all – in Him we live and move and have our beings – it is God who works all in all – all things are of God – filled with all the fullness of God.
Far Away
By the fear of death, “God” is far away and high above. This driving of heaven far away and high above, an experience testified to by the myths and legends of all primitive people groups, took “God” with it in the human imagination.
You see, the air we breathe is more than a metaphor of the spiritual heavens; it is also the location of the spiritual heavens. God in heaven MEANS God breathed in and out, our life. God in heaven MEANS that we live and move in God, literally. Our physical bodies are more in heaven right now, literally, than they are on earth. Only the soles of our feet are on earth.
But death has driven God far away and high above in the human imagination.
Upside Down
Death has also turned humans upside down in their imagination, so that what is low to God, they call high, and what is high to God, they call low. Thus, their imagining of a “God” high above the human race is, in fact, the definition to God of the serpent. Death places the low serpent high above and calls it “God.” God hates what humanity calls “high,” and what God loves, humanity despises as low. Yet by death “God” is defined as the very thing God hates.
~in contrast~ I am meek and lowly of heart – lo, I am with you always – always take the lowest place – He humbled Himself – filled with all the fullness of God.
Controlling
By the fear of death, “God” controls everything and everyone – you sin, you die. This “high-above God” a thing God hates, the serpent as God’s image, is then imagined to exercise manipulative control over everything. In fact, the primary definition of “God,” in the Western mind at least, is someone who gets His way in everything by snapping His fingers, much like Thor or Zeus. This arbitrary “God” decides the fate of all humans, and controls what comes into everyone’s life by His whim.
An accusation came against me on Facebook: “The Bible says that your God committed genocide” (Noah’s flood).
Die Sinner!
Yet this definition of “God” seems to be supported by a God who says all sorts of seemingly opposing things. Consider the words of Jesus: I will kill her children with death. This is why Paul’s gospel must be our rule, especially over John’s obscure vision. – By one man death came upon all.
Out of this definition of a controlling “God” comes the greatest accusation against Him – if God is Love, then why does He send such horrors into the lives of innocent children?
~in contrast~ By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. God cannot sin; He cannot disrespect people. God sets all things free of Himself; He wins all things back by love.
Impassive
By the fear of death, “God” is impassive and selfish. Impassive means “no feelings, heartless.” Thus this “Christian God” can create billions of sentient persons filled with hopes and dreams, can give them no ability to turn to Him, and then can consign them to an eternity of screaming torment without hope, with no thought in His heart of any effort to win them back.
This passionless “God” then calls Himself “just” as He closes His Heart forever against all untold suffering and agony. If such a “thing” were a human, we would know instinctively and without question that we were looking at pure evil. We are – that “thing” is the serpent.
Who Mouths Morals and Has None Himself
I cannot express this selfishness of “God” better than Mark Twain: (Twain 1916 – The Mysterious Stranger, 73-74).
A God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; . . . who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell—mouths mercy and invented hell—mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man’s acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!
Selfish
Twain’s “divine obtuseness” is another term for selfish. I agree fully with Twain regarding this “Christian” definition of “God”; it is despicable. And it is the whips of death that drive this entire definition. The entire session on What Is a God Who Groans in Travail? is devoted to an entirely different picture of God as He is.
~in contrast~ God is love – Love suffers long and is kind – Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows – All things are made subject to Him . . . that God might be all in all. God takes all responsibility for sin and death entirely upon Himself – He became sin and curse for us.
Limited
By the fear of death, “God” is limited and bound. The tiny, limited, and weak “Jesus” most Christians hold in their minds would be laughable if it were not so very sad. You see, death “rules,” not God and not Jesus.
Look across the words of all the thousands of Christians who have asked me to “friend them” on Facebook. Jesus as every Word God speaks, Jesus as the sustainer of all things, Jesus as Savior, Jesus as Salvation, Jesus as the One who restores all things back to God – is not found in the words of almost all. To most, Jesus (and with Him, God) did something a long time ago; this Jesus is far away right now and will “come back” only someday, only in a “tomorrow” that cannot exist.
Let God Be a Liar until Every Man Make Him True
Most Christians pretend to honor Jesus by outward imagination, but they will not believe that He IS, that all things that exist come out of His good speaking every moment. And they especially will not believe that Jesus could ever now live as them, carrying all of their present sinfulness inside Himself, inside of an empty, empty grave. They say “omnipresent,” but death convinces them to reject all practical application of ALL HERE NOW; death convinces them that God’s word is not true unless humans make it so.
~in contrast~ Sustaining all things by the Word of His Power – My Word shall accomplish all I intend – filled with all the fullness of God – the power by which He subdues all things to Himself.
God and Us Together
This exercise of delineating the Nicene “God” is very sobering.
We live every moment inside the God who fills us with all that He is, the God who shares all things together with us, the God who loves us and tells us to call Him Father, the God who binds Himself to us in Covenant Bond as one person together through every Word that is Jesus. And we, knowing that God speaks true, knowing that we ARE IN heaven fully right now, right here on this earth, knowing that all Salvation is revealed now through us, with zero regard for death, doubting absolutely death’s existence – we have turned completely around.
God and us go forth as one person together, making all things good.