9.2 Confidence Tricksters
© 2019 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
In order to be effective, we must be clear. God is NOT known. That’s a given. And the fact that God is not known is NO individual person’s fault. God becoming known is as the birthing of a child through travail, it is as the beating of hammers, beating a lump of gold into the Mercy Seat, that “shape” of God whom we can know. God becoming known is as the ekenosis of Jesus, calling an invisible God into visibility, in appearance as a family of people loving one another with a pure heart fervently.
The problem, however, is not the ignorance of God, but rather, the hard forehead of false confidence that, “I know (the serpent’s words) – let me tell you what it’s all about.”
The Tabernacle Model. Just as Jesus looked out from His confusion upon the cross and spoke, “Father forgive them, for they do NOT KNOW…” to the worst confidence tricksters of His day, so also do we. God will give us what we ask as we win our enemies into love.
But just as Jesus was clear out from the agony of love regarding the fakery of the Pharisees, so we also must be clear, out from the same agony of love, regarding the fakery of the preachers and theologians of Nicene Christianity today. And in order to understand their hardness against the Lord Jesus, we must use the Tabernacle model, the way of our Salvation through three entrances into knowing God. The way through the Tabernacle is the model or structure upon which all the writers of the New Testament placed the truths of the gospel.
Three Entrances. The first entrance is the gate into the outer court, and as you and I entered that gate, we embraced the real meaning of the sacrifice of Jesus as we were born again. The second entrance is the Door into the Holy Place. As you and I entered that Door, we embraced the living bread and the light of the anointing as we were filled with the Holy Spirit. The third entrance is the wide-open Veil into the Holy of Holies, and as you and I passed through that Veil, our flesh now the flesh of Christ, we embraced our full union with Christ.
Yet before each one of these entrances into the next place God has for His people to run with all joy into knowing Father now, there stands an array of these preachers of Nicene Christianity who are determined to keep God’s people OUT!
Backs against God. Let’s have our picture clear. Picture each one of the three entrances in Moses’ Tabernacle. These three entrances are a straight path into the Holiest, which represents our full knowledge of Father filling us with all of Himself.
In front of the gate into the outer court, picture a several-row arc of men in black robes, their backs towards the Tabernacle, and in front of them is the camp of Israel. These men forbid their people entrance into a personal knowledge of God, but point them towards a salvation found in the ritual and ordering of the “camp,” whether it be Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, etc. These are the same as the Pharisees of Jesus’ day who ordered the people under their control not to hear Jesus, their Messiah.
Forbidding Entrance. In front of the Door to the Holy Place, then, there stands another several-row arc of men in grey robes; their backs are turned to the Holy Place and before them is the bronze laver. These are men who are born again and have some personal knowledge of Christ, but they forbid their people to enter into the knowing of an outpoured Holy Spirit and point them instead to the Bible, to knowing the “correct” Bible ideas.
In front of the Holy of Holies, in spite of the wide-open veil, picture another smaller arc of men in white robes. To their backs is the Holiest, and before them is the Altar of Incense. These are men who are filled with the Spirit, but they forbid their people to enter into union with Christ now, keeping them occupied with “the dealings of God” in a way contrary to God.
Do NOT Eat of Life. As we suggested, we are distinguishing between ignorance-of versus hardness-against. Many ministries in these three arenas of the Church are meeting the needs of their people inside what they know without knowing that there is more. Yet I can show you clearly individual ministries in each of these three arcs of opposing men who make effort to denounce anyone entering into God’s next place for them.
And just as the serpent did in the garden, seeking to turn Adam from the tree of life, so they also turn God’s people away from life and towards some element of “God” that they misuse, turning what was meant to be a step on the way into life into the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They forbid God’s people to eat of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Opposers. I know little about those in the great ritualistic churches outside of Christ Jesus, and thus we will focus on the other two groups of opposers inside the knowledge of Jesus.
Let’s start with the most virulent of these opposers, the ones standing just in front of the Veil, convincing God’s people that they are NOT ALLOWED to live inside of all the fulness of God through faith right now. These “capable people” are not just born again, but they are filled with and anointed by the Holy Spirit. They have eaten the Bread of truth and have walked in the light of the Spirit. Yet now they stand in-between the Veil and the Altar of Incense pointing the attention of God’s people away from LIFE inside of God and towards the endless and fruitless “struggle against sin.”
A Serpent upon the Church. I attended a large Spirit-filled Church recently. The man who preached told us to open our Bibles to 1 John 4. He then read the verses containing these words: As He is, so are we in this world. I was so excited; I thought he would preach union with Christ!
He did not. Rather, the preacher began with the serpent’s first words, the absolute assumption that the words God speaks are ideas for the mind and not Jesus Himself entering our hearts. Thousands of good Christian people, all who knew the Lord in the power of the Spirit, were with this preacher in their minds. And well they should have been. He was anointed of God, and I have personally received good words spoken to me by my Father through his preaching. He was “clothed in white,” so to speak, yet a serpent was in his mouth that morning.
“You Should Be.” He began by saying (in so many words), “You SHOULD BE like Jesus – BUT – you, so clearly, are not.” The preacher had just called God a liar, in His very face, and no one noticed, for the accusations were known by all as “standard Christian thinking.”
Then, after establishing that God lies, the preacher spent the next twenty minutes alternating between three great concepts. The first was the image of the super-Christ, a “Jesus” of miracles and outward virtue, far above these fleshy Christians. The second was a condemnation of these thousands of fleshy Christians before him for not measuring up to such an “image of God.” And the third was a mighty exhortation that, if they “loved Jesus,” they would now pretend with all their might to be like that fake image.
Control over Flesh. I spent that time in complete horror; I could not escape. I felt as if I was reliving the garden scene all over again. I saw the face of the congregation, thousands of wonderful Christian people, as the face of Eve, imagining that these false words were the very words of God.
Right there behind the preacher, so to speak, was the possibility that God speaks the truth, the Lord Jesus, and that this entire congregation of people ARE His image now. To accept that, however, would have been for him to get on his knees before that congregation, overwhelmed by the glory of Christ. Instead, he persuaded everyone to turn away from the Jesus filling their hearts with glory to the “dealings of God” that might make God’s “false” words true – someday. In so doing the preacher kept full control over their flesh.
Intellectualizing the Bible. The next group of opposers are the ones standing just in front of the Door, convincing God’s people that they are NOT ALLOWED to experience the fullness of the Spirit flooding into their souls, causing them to know Christ by the Spirit.
These “capable people” are born again, but they have limited themselves entirely to a knowledge of the sacrifice of Jesus in outward form, as something long past and something someday. And now they stand in-between the Door into Christ and the Bronze Laver, pointing the attention of God’s people away from a knowledge of Christ by the Spirit and to an intellectual knowledge of the Bible as the only meaning of being “Christian.” They teach God’s people that they can know exactly what God means by using their intellects to decipher the Bible.
The Calvinists. Although the arguments of John Calvin are found just as much in those conmen standing in front of the Holy of Holies, we also see that, typically, those preventing God’s people from entering the Holy Place are primarily Calvinists. And worst of all, those who have translated the Bible into English over the last five hundred years have also been, primarily, Calvinists without the knowledge of the Spirit. We will look more at the travesty of “Bible translation” in the next lesson, along with the sadness of Eve.
These men in the outer court decry everything of Christ known inside the Holy Place as being “deception.” They thrust at God’s people instead, their own “vast” intellectual knowledge of the Bible, never finding life inside its pages.
Life, what Life? Let me refer to one of these, that is, to R.C. Sproul. And let me make this clear, regardless of being confidence tricksters, and regardless of the hardness of their backs against the Lord Jesus and their foreheads against God’s people, these men do belong to Jesus, they are our brethren, with some fruit of Christ in their lives.
Sproul, in his book, Knowing Scripture, presents the desire of people to find “life” in Bible study as a puzzle. He has no idea what “life” is, no knowledge of Christ Jesus alive inside our hearts as every Word God speaks. To Sproul, “life” must mean “excitement.” And so, he speaks against pursuing such “excitement.” Then, through his entire book on “Bible study,” he never once discovers “My Words are Spirit and they are Life.”
Quenching the Spirit. These who quench the Spirit turn the entire Bible into the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, as do the opposers before the Veil. And all of the blockers are seeking to prevent God’s people from eating of the tree of life. That is, they refuse God’s people to eat of the Lord Jesus Christ becoming the only life they are. These hardened men denounce as “un-Biblical” the realities of Christ known by those who live inside of the Holy Place.
Here, in essence, is how these opposers define 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 and even contrary to God. –
The Knowledge of Good and Evil. It is the task, then, of these confidence tricksters, as they speak the same words of the serpent in the garden, to turn God’s people away from eating of life by offering them a “better” way to “serve God,” the way of human performance, the way that leads only to death, no matter how “right” it sounds.
And thus, each of these three substitutes for life are three different aspects of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The first aspect of the tree of knowledge is form and ritual as the “way” to God. The second aspect is “the Bible” as intellectual knowledge of God’s “truth.” And the third aspect is turning the “dealings of God” into the normal Christian “life,” as a rejection of being God’s image.
In the next chapter, we will look more at these three things as they shape the thoughts inside of Christian’s mind, thoughts that strike down knowing Jesus as He is.