50. Proposal - Precedence - Proof

The audio is from the Zoom meeting and thus is an extended version of this chapter.

© Daniel Yordy – 2021

As David and Solomon said, God has placed His testimony throughout the natural creation and inside the many patterns of human reality. For that reason, we can look at something as secular as a dissertation and realize that the human mind must follow God’s patterns. God’s patterns come first; human thinking seeking to understand must follow those patterns.

A doctoral dissertation in education has three parts of about equal length. The first part, the proposal, sets out the research the educator intends to conduct, with all the where, why, and how explained. The proposal places the need for the research into the present state of education. The second part, then, goes through the current research already conducted on the various parts of the proposal, weaving in the testimony of many different educators as a background, while also showing the need for this further step of research. Finally, the third part is written after the research has been conducted. It sets forth the findings in a statistical manner and ends with the conclusion of the research.

Of truth, there really is no other valid way to prove something true or not true.
God designed one path only for Him to enter into His creation to be known by all created things. That one path is through human faith, and specifically, faith in the Word God speaks.

In His prayer in John 17, Jesus repeated twice one of the most telling statements in the Bible. – that the world might believe that You sent Me – that the world might know that You sent Me. If Jesus had said, “That the world might believe/know that God is telling them the truth,” it would mean the same thing.

You sent Me – Your Words are true – same thing.

Who is it, then, that God has to convince first before the world will know? He has to convince us who are His passageway through the faith of Christ He placed inside of us.

And so we are the third part of God’s great dissertation that Christ Jesus is faithful and true, that when God speaks, His Words are true and good, regardless of any outward appearance. We are the research/proof part.

Very simply, Jesus is the beginning, that is, the source of the creation of God, as God’s Pro-Thesis, His set-forth purpose right from the start. Jesus is God’s proposal – this is what I intend to do and to accomplish through creation. Here are My reasons; here is the setting; here are the conflicts and obstacles.

Then, God’s precedent actually has three parts, first, the testimony of God with the Old Testament people of faith. Second, in sending His Son into the world to demonstrate a Man walking in union with the Father, and third, the taste of Christ found throughout church history for those able to look past the outward appearances.

For instance, there is the brother who lost his wife and children at sea on his way to America, and the words he penned that became a Christian hymn – “It is well, it is well with my soul.” These are the many testimonies that the Word God speaks is faithful and true.

You and I, then, are the third part of God’s great dissertation, God’s final proof of Jesus faithful and true.

We could say it this way. Jesus as the Tree of Life was God’s proposal. Jesus as the Lamb Slain through the history of His people was God’s precedent, His “literature review.” And Jesus revealed as He is through us as we are is God’s proof, His final demonstration that He is telling us the truth.

I am including this chapter on this topic because I want to set in front of us just how big of a deal this final PROOF is to God.

The Apocalypse is what EVERYTHING is about.

The Apocalypse is when the cover comes off and everyone knows that everything God says is always true and good – everyone knows that God sent Jesus, same thing.

It is the “cover,” that is, present outward appearance, that everyone presently uses to treat God’s words as less than true or good. – “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

And, as God is now opening our eyes to see Jesus as He is, we realize that the only cover there has ever been is the cataracts over the eyeballs.

Yes, God is absolutely determined to prove Jesus faithful and true in all that He speaks in our human lives of flesh, right here on this earth and right now in this age. But that is not His only purpose; rather, it is His one means to the fulfillment of His desire.

You see, the only thing through which Jesus is proven faithful and true is our faith, and it is our faith, the faith of the Son of God inside of us, through which alone God Himself can enter creation to be a personal part of the life of everything.

Our contention with God concerning His Word is God’s contention with us concerning His passage through.

The Proposal
God’s proposal does not come from His mind, but from His Heart. As such, it’s not just an interesting “idea” God wants to pursue, but that which is the depths of His desire.
The Calvinist translators could not accept a God who wants something with deep desire that He does not have. For that reason, they changed the Greek word meaning “desire” into something entirely different. They turned God’s desire into “the will of God,” something cold, calculating, and distant, a reflection of their own hearts.

But we know exactly what God desires because we know what Jesus wants. “Father, I desire that those whom You have given Me might be with Me where I am.” And where is Jesus? – “Know that I am inside of the Father and you inside of Me and I inside of you.”

Let’s come at this question from a slightly different angle by paraphrasing David’s words in Psalm 8. “What is man that You are always thinking about him? What is the son of man that You always want to visit with him?”

God’s proposal, what God wants, is to be part of our lives, intimately, closely, and continually. And God is part of our lives when we acknowledge Him, that is, when we “VISIT” with Him.

When I am feeling raunchy and UN-anointed, when I don’t want to write anything about God or about myself, when I feel what I used to define as “God far away,” I stop immediately, I look inside myself, and I say, “Father, you are sharing even this with me.”

And in that moment I know such deep, deep satisfaction, and I know that I have touched the satisfaction of God. I know that God my Father is content, for I have acknowledged Him, I have visited with Him, I have called Him part of my life.

The satisfaction I feel, the deep and certain rest, makes me very glad to be a son of man, just like Jesus, to share God’s life with Him.

God presented His proposal so clearly in Genesis 2, and as He always shows Himself, by placing His own agony and desire into Adam, that God and Adam might want the same thing. Adam was alone, and he WANTED a companion of his same kind.

The satisfaction that Adam felt, when God brought Eve to him, is the very satisfaction God feels, when we acknowledge our union with Him.

God wants a companion of His same kind.

When it dawned on me recently that I have known the same voice visiting with me through the course of my life, not often, but regularly, every couple of years, maybe, and in deeply meaningful ways, when I realized that this was the same voice that Abraham knew throughout the course of his life, something changed inside of me in my knowing of the Father.

The first thing God said to Abraham was, “Get out of your country.” The first thing God spoke to me was, “My son,” followed not many months later with, “Will you surrender all that you are to Me, right now.” That is – “Get out of your country.”

Then, the first entrance of God through BLOOD into the lives of His people is found in these words. – You shall put the mercy seat on top of the ark, and in the ark you shall put the Testimony that I will give you. And there I will meet with you, and I will speak with you from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim which are on the ark of the Testimony, about everything… (Exodus 25:21-22).

I will meet together with you; I will speak together with you – back and forth, reciprocity, two VISITING together.

It is the blood upon the Mercy Seat that takes us out from our former country.

God’s proposal, His Thesis set forth from the beginning, is spoken by Jesus in John 17, just before Gethsemane. We have studied those words in Symmorphy III: Kingdom, the prayer that birthed the Kingdom, the words of Jesus through which the New Creation came into existence.

In that study we saw how many times Jesus spoke of the world, and we likened the world to the womb of a mother when it is time for the baby to GO. “GET OUT OF HERE; you do not belong here any longer, you belong in another world.”

This gives us a more specific and accurate definition of the Biblical word, “world,” in its negative meaning. The world is any relationship between two humans that does not include acknowledging God as part of that ongoing relationship.

Now we can also better define “evil.” Evil has two dimensions, smaller evil and bigger evil. Smaller evil is any human not including God as sharing life with me. And bigger evil is any two humans relating together not including God as sharing life with us.

Evil is nothing else. And these two things are very, very evil and the cause of all pain and loss, all cruelty and debauchery.

The next and final chapter of this study is titled “The Joy of God.” The joy of God is a world where every human includes God as sharing life with them and every two or more humans, in relating together, include God as part of their friendship.

God just wants to be part of our lives, a declaration found shouted from one end of Scripture to the other, that is, for those who have ears to hear the Father speaking.

The Precedent
I spent a couple of years in 2014-2015 writing the literature reviews that were to be part of the doctoral dissertation of educators seeking a PHD. I justified “ghost writing” such things by the realization that these are people who are superb educators, but who may not be skilled at writing. All humans are gifted in some things and not in others, that’s why we need one another.

I found a real knack at writing this middle part of a dissertation, as if I was made for such a thing. And I gained so much from it. In my estimation, each literature review I did, of around thirty pages long, was equal in study and learning to each three-credit course I took in graduate school. The understanding I gained is of great value to me, and, in fact, that experience came just before I began to write Symmorphy I: Purpose in the form of a graduate-level textbook.

Because I really like following maps into places where I’ve never been before, I have likened my calling in God as that of a mapmaker. This is the same thing as a writer of literature reviews, that is, one who looks across all that has gone before in order to share with others the way forward.

Time and again, the doctoral student who had put together the rough outline of the dissertation, had no good idea what direction their research should go. Often it was poorly thought through. My writing of the literature review, however, going back over what had been studied before and putting it all together, always created a clear path forward for the actual research and proof, something that the doctoral student still had to accomplish.

And so, if you would look over all my writing from The Jesus Secret until now, you will see that this is exactly what I have done.

I WANT TO go to a specific and definitive place. I WANT TO have Father at home in my life (John 14:23); I WANT TO know God (John 17:3).

In that pursuit, I followed a path set before me by others. After 21 years, I realized that they were not taking me where I will go. How did I realize that? The problem was their treatment of the Bible, of what God actually says. You see, I had found in my Bible a path set before us, a way out of our nightmare and into the knowledge of God, a way I did not understand, a way that those who were setting my path at that time spoke against.

On August 6, 2006, at the very moment I heard the words, “Speak what God says you are,” I KNEW without question that God had just placed me upon the beginning of that way towards all my DESIRE that I had wept tears to know for over thirty years.

And so all my writing from that moment on has been a review of the literature, a study of the precedent, of what has gone before, BUT, for a very specific and definite purpose. That purpose is and continues to be that I might know the path forward into all the knowledge of God, into the revelation of Jesus Christ, into the only place I’ve ever wanted to be – Father at Home in my heart.

I am a word man, but one who knows the necessity of the presence and power of the Spirit.

It is the Spirit who gives life… the words that I speak to you are Spirit and they are life.

Right after God had whacked me upside the head with the first time He said, “Will you surrender all that you are to Me right now,” He spoke a personal word to me out from John 16 – “The Spirit will lead you into all truth.”

As I have shared, I never once thought that this voice was not God speaking to me nor has any thought of doubt crossed my mind that God would not do what He says.

And so, I must realize that fundamental to my design as a human, as the way God made me, is the certainty that what God speaks, He will do, AND He  will do it in me.

The precedence set by God for us to study, then, consists of four different arenas of study (I have added one more to my earlier list). The first arena is God’s relationship with the men and women of the Old Testament. The second arena is the life, ministry, and atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. The third arena is the explanation of the apostles, of Paul, John, the writer of Hebrews, Peter, and James, telling us what the gospel really means. And the fourth arena is God’s relationship with Christian people from the Day of Pentecost until now.

What you will find, then, through all my writing, is a weaving together of the literature review in such a way as to set before our eyes the way forward into the final proof that God is telling us the truth, into the most glorious day in all the history of creation, into the Apocalypse, the revelation of Jesus Christ.

God is telling us the truth, God does in our lives what He says, the proof of Jesus Christ faithful and true – all the same thing, all the third and final part of God’s great dissertation.

The Proof
The PROOF of Jesus Christ faithful and true is found in one place only. The Proof of Christ is found in the Church upon this earth.

To put it very simply, if God does not do all that He speaks in the lives of Christians alive now upon the earth, then God has lied to us from the beginning, just as the serpent suggested.

• Symmorphosed with the image of His Son – in us together right here and now.
• Filled with all the fullness of God – in us together right here and now.
• Rivers of Spirit flowing out – from us together right here and now.
• Casting down all accusation – through us together right here and now.
• Christ our only life – right here and right now.
• Living inside of all that is God, inside the HOLIEST – us together, right here and now.
• Confidently part of all that Christ Jesus is and means – us together, right here and now.
• Loving one another – us together, God among us.
• Setting creation free – us together, God among us, right here and now.
• Living inside of Jesus and Jesus inside of us, and us together with Jesus living inside of the Father, sharing all of life together, deeply, intimately, and continually – us together, right here and right now.

Yeah!

You know, I have been contending with God concerning His Word, that He would do in my life all that He says, for over 45 years now. And I will not stop until tears of overflowing joy are streaming down my face, the face of my resurrected body, together with you.

Is that not what He says? – “I am the resurrection and the life; the one believing into Me, even if he should die, he will live; and everyone living and believing into Me, shall never die into the age. Do you believe this?” (John 11).

Hey Jesus, here am I, pick me, pick me. – Shall never die. – Jesus, I’m jumping up and down, do you notice me?

DO all that You speak in my life right here and right now. – Let it be to me according to Your word.

Jesus, all that God speaks – faithful and true.

This has been me since I was (and still am) a boy.

Let’s drop back from our enthusiasm, now, and look at the proof of God in a more explanatory manner.

The speaking of God begins with “Let there be light,” Christ, the beginning and source of the creation of God.

The speaking of the accuser begins with “Did God really say that,” the beginning and source of all death (that is, the moment Adam agreed with the serpent).

According to Paul, the sin of Adam, the original sin, was the refusal to give thanks, a refusal that I have paraphrased in this way. – “I hate the way God made me; I am ashamed of looking like God.” And again – “I will not have God part of my life, sharing my life with me.”

Just as Adam’s refusal to give thanks came BEFORE he bit into the fruit of death, that is, control over others, so our giving of thanks inside of and for the sake of all things comes before the final proof of Christ – LIFE in the form of the resurrection of our bodies, that is, setting all creation free of us and ruling all things as love.

This is My full completion, that you love one another in exactly the same way that I love you (John 15). – The Church, which is His body, the fullness of Christ who fills all inside of all (Ephesians 1). – That they might be one… that the world might know (John 17).

Acknowledging the immediate presence of God our Father as all our connections together.

This is the only actual proof that God speaks the truth from the beginning.

This is God seen and known.

This is the testimony of the men and women who walked with God in Old Testament times. This is the appearance to us of Jesus in the gospels. This is the gospel preached by Paul and confirmed by John and the other New Testament writers. This is the testimony of the Church, for those who have eyes to see, from Pentecost until now.

 You see, this is why I continue to treat Augustine with great respect, even though one of my chapter titles is “Must We Repent of Augustine.” Why – because I also see the testimony of Christ all through his heart and life. Conversely, this is why I do not extend that same respect to Jerome, the man who sowed serpent seed all through our Bibles, just as Jesus warned us would happen, because I do not find any testimony of Christ in his life.

Thomas Aquinas who made intellectual mincemeat out of so much truth, after he received the infilling of the Holy Spirit in his old age, wrote, “All that I have written is like straw in my mouth.” – the testimony of the final proof of Christ.

Patrick, Martin Luther, Jeanne Guyon, John Wesley – the list is unbroken from Peter on the Day of Pentecost until today. You see, we do not count the mixture, we cover the failure, for who among them has sinned more than we? Rather, we see Christ through all, woven together as the map pointing to us and to the final proof of Christ in the earth.

They’re here, all of them, from Abel to the most recent believer we might know who has just passed on. They are believing God in earnest expectation for our sakes, that God WILL DO all that HE SPEAKS in our lives right here on this earth right now in this age.

PROOF!

The Apocalypse.

The revelation of Jesus Christ faithful and true. – Father at Home in our hearts.