21.3 The City of God
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
The question of this session is How Was Jezebel Formed? Let me define what I mean in using the name “Jezebel.” I mean institutionalizing the practice of using “God” or “place” in God to position one’s self above God’s people. When I first read the Nicene definition of ministry in the Church, I was simply flabbergasted at how identical the definition of Roman Catholicism was to the definition practiced in the move fellowship of which I was once a part.
Now the “age of Jezebel,” was the 1000 years from the early AD 500’s to the early 1500’s when the Bishop of Rome ruled supreme over all that was called Christianity. The claim of being the “vicar” of Christ is, in fact, adultery.
Replacing Jesus
Vicar means that Jesus is far, far away, but that “I,” the Pope, am here, now, in His place as the planter of truth in your life. All Protestant churches, however, including all evangelical, Pentecostal, and charismatic Christians, remain in agreement with the Pope, that Jesus is far, far away, and that we live now entirely IN evil, hoping to be saved someday by death. They disagree only on who or what gets to be the vicar, that is, who or what it is that REPLACES Jesus in our present lives.
Let me define the church. The church IS the body of Jesus as He walks this earth right now in Person. Then the claim of the harlot. Jesus is far away, and we must die, that is, “go to” heaven to find Him, meanwhile we have “the Bible” or “correct doctrine” or “the chosen ministry” to replace Him as the source of our ‘truth’.”
The Sack of Rome
You see why I say that Jesus reveals Himself to you, not me.
In this lesson, first, I want to give a brief, but specific view of how Augustine’s City of God served to create this very Jezebel. But far more important than that, I want to conclude this section on the fall into Roman darkness in order to position the questions we must ask, as we turn from that which is not, the questions that establish us entirely in God-Is right now.
In AD 410 the Christian West Goths under Alaric conquered the city of Rome and plundered it, a Rome that had ruled victorious for 900 years. The accusation arose among remaining Roman pagans that Rome fell to the sword because Christianity had made it weak.
The Contention of Western Civilization
Wow. Will you look at that question. Did Rome fall to the sword because Christianity made it weak? That question rules the history of the western world from then until now and, in fact, is at the center of the contention in present day America. How I would love to explore how I see the answer to that question, but alas, that would be an entirely different course. Except to say, YES, absolutely, thank God – and NO, God removed Rome’s season of cruelty because Damasus I had merged Christianity with the cruelty of Paganism. At the start of this great debate defining Western Civilization, Augustine wrote his definitive response: The City of God.
Christ Is Better than Pagan Gods
Wow. I cannot possibly resist this rabbit trail. “Don’t remove Christ from Christmas!” – Okay! Here is what that really means. “Don’t separate Christ from paganism, as Damasus I has taught us.”
Back to Augustine. The City of God is Augustine’s masterpiece, a powerful argument denying the claim that Rome fell because Christianity made it weak. The bulk of his argument concerning a pagan Rome and the true treasures of Christ possessed by Christians, rather than any treasure to be held onto in this world, is true and Biblical. Augustine argued that the pagan gods never did anything good for anyone using the testimony of pagan writers.
Two Cities
Then we come to Augustine’s description of the two cities, the heavenly city of God and the earthly city of this world.
Now, before continuing, I want to share something that came clear as I looked at the beginning and end of Augustine’s The City of God. When I first wrote about Augustine, I compared him to the brother under whose ministry I sat more than any other in my life, Buddy Cobb. In this course, I sought for and found the reason God had placed such a teacher so strongly in my life. I can assume with some confidence that Buddy Cobb has never read Augustine. Yet, using the same strong knowledge of the Bible, Augustine and Buddy Cobb came to the same conclusions concerning what God is all about.
Essential Underlying Definitions
Let me illustrate what I discovered with a chart.
| Augustine of Hippo |
?
|
A strong intellectual grasp of the breadth of Scripture and the salvation of Christ, anointed by God. | The same conclusions as Buddy Cobb. |
| Buddy Cobb |
?
|
A strong intellectual grasp of the breadth of Scripture and the salvation of Christ, anointed by God. | The same conclusions as Augustine, but titled “The Plan of God.” |
| Daniel Yordy |
?
|
A strong intellectual grasp of the breadth of Scripture and the salvation of Christ, anointed by God. | Very different conclusions, and emphasizing very different verses. |
What replaces the question mark in the blanks? The purpose and core of this course – “essential underlying definitions.” What is God? What is Man? What is Christ? What is Salvation? And of those four questions, “What is God” fills the blank.
Your Definition of God
Your definition of God rules your life now and all the course of your future.
So, did God send Daniel Yordy into the church to correct the knowledge of the gospel? Absolutely not. God sent Jesus into you to teach you of Himself that HE, the Lord Jesus Christ, might reveal God as He is, the Father, through you. And I am just the hand in the shadows filling your glass again with the joy of the knowledge of Jesus, your only life.
Inside that definition of “God” that replaces the question mark, however, there is one primary difference that changes entirely both the Scriptures emphasized and the end conclusions.
What Is God?
That primary difference is this.
| A God who punishes the majority of His creation in hellfire forever. | versus | A God who carries ALL through Jesus back into restoration to Himself. |
The first is the emphasis and delight of Jerome and the King James Bible and all who hold tightly to it; the second is the gospel according to Paul, who loved the word ALL.
Many today who hold to the second definition of God have also wandered away from Scripture into other avenues. Preston Eby is not one of those. Preston Eby and Sam Fife ministered the revelation of Jesus Christ together for a season in the late 1960’s. Both refer to the other in their later teaching, but never by name. They parted ways entirely on this question – What is God?
Extending the Comparison
I love the fact that Preston Eby, even as an elderly man, continues to write the same revelation of Jesus Christ with all joyous enthusiasm, and entirely out from Scripture. In fact, you could put Preston Eby in that same chart together with Daniel Yordy and all three columns would be worded the same. And you could put John Calvin in the chart with Augustine and Buddy Cobb, and all three would be the same. The difference is entirely the essential underlying definitions.
In order to understand Augustine’s City of God, along with John Calvin and Buddy Cobb, then, we must extract the specific definitions of God that must be factual in order for punishment in hellfire to continue forever.
Essential Concepts
A God of eternal punishment must:
1. Be separate and distant.
2. Sit as a judge above all.
3. Determine all things by good versus evil.
We must compare that immediately with our definitions.
1. A God who creates all things inside of Himself.
2. A God who bears all difficulty as His own travail.
3. A God who determines all things by a Man laying down His life for His enemies, making them His closest friends.
We are not speaking of peripheral things, but essential.
The Great Contest
Augustine defines the great contest of the ages out from his definition of a God who is separate, who sits above as a Judge, and who judges all things by good versus evil. Thus everything is split in this world between those who obey this God and do good versus those who disobey this God and do evil. And most of all, the atonement of Christ is LIMITED, especially since Jesus, also, is far away, absent from the earth; and the entire determination of God rests upon those who choose to go to heaven versus those who choose to go to hell.
What is NON-EXISTENT in Augustine, Cobb, and Calvin is the knowledge of the tree of life, of Paul’s gospel of Christ our only life, or of our living entirely inside of John 14:20.
A Wide Breadth of Scripture
Now, please understand that underneath the teachings of Augustine, Buddy Cobb, and John Calvin is a wide breadth of Scripture, and by that constant reference to Scripture, under the anointing, they are convincing. Yet their definitions of all things can be found entirely inside the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; they never knew the tree of life, even though all three loved Jesus.
What happened in me when I changed my definition of God from that held by Buddy Cobb to that held by Preston Eby? Exactly this. An entirely different set of verses, powerful verses at the core of the New Testament, began to arise in my “grasp of the breadth of Scripture,” at the center of which are two overwhelming concepts – Father and living IN the love of God.
No Salvation outside the Church
We must look at one last thing, however, before we can escape from Augustine. Inside of his City of God was the argument that there is no salvation outside of the church. If Augustine possessed my definitions of “salvation” and “the church,” then we would be in complete agreement. Rather, he defined the church as all those Christians who acknowledge and submit to the Bishop of Rome, and he defined salvation out from the same words I would use, “Except you eat My flesh and drink My blood, you have no life in you” (John 6). But he defined those words, not as Jesus present now in us, but as the sacrament of bread and wine administered by a set-above priest recognized by the Bishop of Rome.
Power Over
And although the Archbishop be among the bishops as an elder brother, who hath the care of his brethren, and to whom they owe obedience because he is over them; yet the patriarch is to all those who are under his power, just as he who holds the seat of Rome is the head and prince of all patriarchs; inasmuch as he is first, as was Peter, to whom power is given over all Christian princes, and over all their peoples, as he who is the Vicar of Christ our Lord over all peoples and over the whole Christian Church, and whoever shall contradict this, is excommunicated by the synod." (Council of Nicaea)
"He who is separated from the body of the Catholic Church, however laudable his conduct may otherwise seem, will never enjoy eternal life, and the anger of God remains on him by reason of the crime of which he is guilty in living separated from Christ." (Augustine)
The Source of Connection
Regardless of outward appearance, the structure of all organized Christianity comes out of the exact same underlying definitions, and that includes the move of God fellowship of which I was once a part. In the end, this “City of God” is a top-down hierarchy in which a set-above ministry takes the place of Jesus as the source of connection between “fleshy Christians” and a far-away God.
I realize that I have opened many lines of inquiry into the nature of Augustinian Christianity, lines of inquiry I don’t really want to complete. My purpose is not to show you Augustine, but Christ Jesus, the One who fills you NOW with all of His glory.
The Real Dividing Line
We have spent five sessions covering the fall into Roman darkness. We have done that primarily to see the definitions that once RULED our knowledge of Christ and our reading of the Bible, iron-clad definitions that remain upon most of our brethren.
And at the center of Christian darkness – as well as the center of all Light from God – is the definition of Christ Jesus, for we know What is God only by knowing Christ our life. And the center of the contention, the dividing line between Christ and anti-Christ is this question. Can we, humans walking this earth right now, be just like Jesus – or not? – Who do you say that I am?
God Is So Very Different
When I first spoke Augustine’s words into audio in November 2011, the witness of my spirit told me that I was speaking darkness, in spite of the fact that all my brethren insist that those words are the truth. Yet I did not then really know precisely what was wrong with those words. I have continued to write about Augustine and the Nicene Creed in order that I might know.
But it has been writing these two courses, Purpose and Essence, but especially Essence that now, as I read aloud those words once again, I see so very clearly, phrase by phrase, how God does not say these things, but how what God says is so very, very different.
Two Worlds
One could argue, “These phrases are similar to things God says; we argue out from what God says to arrive at these conclusions.”
Certainly, one can argue such, if they wish; I would rather know Father and Jesus Sent as They are. And, having removed from my thinking, by the grace of God, all Nicene definitions (some of which have been gone for almost 40 years), as I speak only what God speaks about Himself and about me, here is what I find.
The words may be similar, but the worlds in which those words exist are as far apart as day is from night. One world places Jesus in our hearts; the other places Jesus far away from us. There is no question which world I choose.
The Purpose of God
Let me restate the central point of Symmorphy I: Purpose.
God purposes to be seen and known by His creation through His image, through human beings, His elect. Man is the appearance of the substance of God for all created things to know who and what God is; man is God-revealed.
A family of people walking together, loving one another with a pure heart fervently, is what God looks like. God has not appeared to creation until this family appears, first inside this present age as the fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles in the life of the church, and then in the Resurrection as the incorruptible appearance of God.
Christ Is Family
This family of people, the community of Christ, walking together through all that it means to be humans inside this heaven/earth, loving one another with a pure heart fervently, is what EVERYTHING is all about.
All creation, and every circumstance of human history inside this heaven/earth, is the travail of God, our Father, determined to be seen and known by all. Determined that all, from the greatest of the angels to the tiniest amoeba, would know the Heart of Father.
This family of people, this community of Christ, is the real City of God, the real expression of Christ in creation. Christ is a many-membered body; Christ is family.
The Day of Tabernacles
That City of God begins upon this earth only out from the fulfillment of the first Day of Tabernacles in the life of the church. To know what that means, I recommend you read my book, The Feast of Tabernacles, as well as George Warnock’s book, Feast of Tabernacles.
The most wicked concepts coming out from the Nicene Creed are a far-away Jesus as well as the idea of a God over there and a creation as something entirely other than God. Nothing is except entirely inside of the Spirit of God; all things come out, every moment, from the good speaking of Jesus. All difficulty is the travail of Father to be known.
Jesus IS Always Here
What I am getting at is this. God is NOT absent; God is in no way separate. Inside of all the darkness of 2000 years of an in-part church, Jesus has been here all along, planted in the earth, planted in the darkness of the soil of His church, living as each one whom the Father has given Him, living all through death and into life. And on the third day, early in the morning, as the first light of joy spreads across the earth, as the fulfillment of the final Day of the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus will arise again in us.
Jesus IS and has always been Lord. We ARE and have always been His physical body.
The Fabric of Creation
We cannot, therefore, come up out of the darkness of an in-part church without, first, grappling with the answers to three most important questions.
What Is a Fathering God? What Is a Sustaining Word? What Is a Life-Giving Spirit?
The answers to these questions fill the fabric, all the warp and woof of all creation. Once we possess a clearer understanding of what these three questions might mean, then we will be able to know this City of God, a woman clothed with the sun, and this many-membered Christ, a manchild caught up to God and His throne.