32. Sent as Kingdom

© Daniel Yordy – 2020

Defining Kingdom
In its essence, the Kingdom of God is an ecosystem. “Ecosystem,” as the term is used in the study of nature, is simply the best concept for what the Kingdom is.

Then, I look up the root “eco,” and discover something wondrous that I had not known. The English “eco” comes from the Greek “oikos,” a very familiar word to me since I have been translating the JSV. It means household, family, domestic intimacy.

 So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow-citizens with the holy ones and of the household, the family, the domestic intimacy of God, having been constructed together [as a House] upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone and the secret place or bond, inside of Whom the whole building, being fitted together, is increasing into a temple, holy inside the Lord. Inside of Jesus, you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God inside the sphere of Spirit (Ephesians 2:19-22).

The root “oikos,” or “eco” in English, appears several times in this passage, in different forms, especially in the verbs, “being fitted together – being built together,” and thus is the ruling concept of this passage.

Then we see that the writer of Hebrews ties the word oikos/eco into both the sixth and seventh most important verses.

Christ, however, as Son upon His house, whose house we are, IF INDEED, our confidence, our bold and public speaking {of Christ our life} and the exultant boasting of our hope {that we are just like Jesus – 1 John 3:1-3}, we should hold upon firm unto all completion (Hebrews 3:6). – And having a vast High Priest upon the house of God, let us approach [everything inside the Holiest] with a true heart, in full assurance of faith (Hebrews 10:21-22).

I just changed the wording to “as Son upon” and “a vast High Priest upon” because, no matter how I have studied these verses, I still find that the Greek contains more nuance of meaning than I have seen, even after many times of pouring over the words.

Our definition of “High Priest” inside the gospel of our salvation is “The One who connects.”

An ecosystem, then, is a vast interrelationship of many completely different types of things, both animate and inanimate, working together in wondrous harmony, with each thing inside that ecosystem having its own place of belonging, its own task of giving, and its own distinct individuality. And the thing that connects everything together in such a flow of harmony, place, belonging, giving, and being, is the High Priest, the One who connects, that is, the Lord Jesus Christ. And this One who connects is VAST (mega – great) in His ability to do what He is.

And this One who connects IS every Word God speaks, the voice of God’s expression of all that He thinks concerning each one.

Here, then, is another expression of the Kingdom.

God is; He speaks; we are.

Yet the “we are” includes a togetherness, an interrelationship beyond anything we have known or considered.

Because people don’t know what the “world” is, they also don’t know what the Kingdom is.

The world is that entire interrelationship of all things that constitute heaven/earth, and specifically among humans and angels, wherein each conscious member of that interrelationship operates out from a profound ignorance of God.

The Kingdom is that entire interrelationship of all things that constitute heaven/earth, and specifically among humans and angels, wherein each conscious member of that interrelationship operates out from a profound knowledge of God.

Any observer, then, including every conscious member of this ecosystem, can know an invisible God by the confident faith that God IS showing Himself through all the interrelationships together and that He is doing so through the good-speaking of Jesus.

To put it into its simplest form, then, we say, “God is Love.”

And we also know where the good-speaking of Jesus is to be found – The Word is in your mouth and in your heart.

 Having this introduction, then, let’s bring these thoughts, and specifically, the concept of a complete ecosystem, into our continued study of what it means for you and me to be sent into creation as the Kingdom of God, speaking God as that Kingdom through all the nuances of meaning given to us by Word as Earth.

The Place of Kingdom
The picture of earth together with air, then, is the largest and central meaning of the Kingdom of God. And the best earth word that describes such a thing is the LAND.

I cannot express the extent to which the one concept, the land, expresses the deepest longing and love of my heart. And “the land” meant the most to me when we lived at Blair Valley.

The land is the place where a people dwell. A people dwelling together upon a land, working together to obtain their daily provision, loving one another with pure hearts fervently, this is God revealing Himself as He is.

Thus, everything God meant by “the Promised Land” is fulfilled in being sent as Kingdom.
Our Father, who is inside the heavens, the realms of Spirit, set apart Your name; come Your kingdom; become Your desire upon earth even as inside of heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Release our obligations even as we release the obligations of others. Do not bring us into testing, but rescue us from toilsome labor. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory into the ages. Let it be so; it is so (Matthew 6 – JSV).

Note that this is a kingdom verse, not a contest between good and evil or a contest of “wills.” And as a kingdom verse it is related entirely to a people living together upon a land, gaining their daily sustenance from their work together upon that land.

Consider this line – Owe no debt or obligation to anyone, except to love one another (Romans 13:8).

More than that, this is the antithesis to the curse spoken in Genesis 3. And it is an expression of Christian Community. Notice that it says, “into the ages.” That means the same, then, as David’s claim in Psalm 133: Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! …For there the Lord commanded the blessing—Life forevermore.

A land is not “the land” unless it is inhabited by a people dwelling together in unity.

But look at what Jesus is teaching us. He is teaching us to call the kingdom of God into the human experience. And that kingdom is brethren dwelling together in unity upon a land.

I spent eighteen years of my life dwelling together in unity with Christian brethren upon a specific land. And when I think about each one of those lands, the land of Graham River, the land of the Albuquerque community, the land of Bowens Mill and the Ridge, the land of Blueberry, and the land of Blair Valley, and when I think about the people dwelling together upon each one of those lands, I am thinking of something I KNOW intimately and in vast and specific detail. And as I think about each different land and the specific people who dwelt together on each one of those lands, I perceive how the land itself shaped our life together equally with the particular people who shaped that life together upon that land.

It is clear to me that “the Lord’s Prayer” is a call for the full expression of such a dwelling together upon a land, an expression that continues inside of glory into the ages.

I have written four books on the kingdom, Gathering to Life, The Kingdom Rising, Symmorphy III: Kingdom, and Symmorphy V: Life. This is what we mean by all outward expression of God made visible. And having finished my account of my years in Christian Community, I can now look across all those “peoples upon a land” with remembrance and understanding free of any pain.

Here is something we did not know. Sam Fife presented wilderness community within a “five-year” framework. That is, the system will collapse within five years; if we are living in wilderness community, we will “survive” and then everything will change.

I came to community after the five years, that was in 1977. The mentality did not change. Yet Sam Fife had also presented community as the fulfillment – so we are talking about a huge disconnect in thinking and philosophy.

In my last years in community, I came to believe that everything we built should be permanent and enduring, pleasing and of the highest quality, and that the positioning of our lives upon the land should be well thought out and harmonious. As I look at “the Lord’s Prayer” now, I see that this is exactly what Jesus is instructing us to call forth.

You see, “Release our obligations even as we release the obligations of others” has nothing to do with any “expiation of sin.” Rather, it is how brethren dwell together in unity, similar to how a flock of birds moves together, giving space freely to one another.

Since we know God’s true “how,” as Sam Fife did not, we see the building of Community as something both harmonious in beauty and enduring.

I want to go through the four positive aspects of earth, in our being sent as Kingdom. I will put them into a different order, but only to reflect a present flow of thinking.

The Ecosystem upon the Land (Earth that Undergirds and Protects)
Come Your kingdom; become Your desire upon earth even as inside of heaven.

This letter is about you and me being sent as Kingdom. Then we see that Jesus has a double meaning in His instructions for how we are to pray. We are to call God’s desire to become upon earth inside of heaven. Yet we are, in fact, calling ourselves, for we are that Kingdom God sends in response to our call.

The strongest verse in the Bible that expresses the meaning of earth that undergirds and protects is Ephesians 3:17 – rooted and grounded inside of love. And you know what, in all my study of this ruling verse, we have expanded greatly on the first words of 3:17 and the last words of 3:19. It’s not that we have excluded the in-between, but now, suddenly, we see an entire expanse of reality and understanding opening up to us inside those in-between lines.

Let’s position the whole thing, and then consider the in-between as well as the beyond, which is made bold and red.

I pray that Christ might dwell inside your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, might be fully able to seize hold of, to comprehend together with all the holy ones, what is the breadth and length and height and depth [the full extent of God], and to know even more the surpassing, beyond-all knowledge of the love of Christ, that you might be filled unto and with all the fullness of God. Now to the One who is able above all to do hyper-abundantly more than we ask or think, according to the power energeoing inside of us, to Him be the glory inside the Church and inside Christ Jesus, to all the generations of the seasons of the ages. Let it be so [in me as You speak] – it is so.

This is none other then a further rendition of “the Lord’s Prayer.”

We know God as we know ourselves AND one another; we know ourselves AND one another as we know God. We know together.

And this is talking about a people dwelling together upon a land – rooted and grounded in God.

In Symmorphy III: Kingdom, chapter 19 “The Tabernacles Church,” I set forth the understanding that Christian communities will be scattered among the peoples all across the earth. The majority of people will live in a much looser association than the commitment of Community, nonetheless, the communities in their midst will be the anchor and guide of all society.

This is “being sent as Kingdom.”

And the truth is, even though I talk about my vision of the community of my heart being fulfilled on the Blair Valley property, I know that my vision of community must be found in close proximity to people not living in community, something that would not be in that isolated northern valley. In fact, I would never consider a community there unless the moneys to build a full school and renewal center and to bring people in were continuously being made available.

Then, in Symmorphy V: Life, chapter 6, “Inhabiting the Site,” I apply this first principle of constructing the entire ecosystem of a community upon the land to Romans 8:28-30. That does not mean, of course, that Ephesians 3:17b-19a does not apply fully as well. The primary point from Romans 8:29 is many brethren dwelling together as the image and revelation of God.

Now, I am just placing some ideas onto the page, and not developing a detailed expression of what a full ecosystem built upon “rooted and grounded in love” would be in its specifics. And that’s all I will do here. The truth is, I want my fifth book on the Kingdom to be a journal of my daily experiences in the building of and the life together of a new Community of Christ. I expect that “the One who is able above all to do hyper-abundantly more than we ask or think” is about to do exactly that.

Life from the Earth (Earth that Provides Abundance)
Give us this day our daily bread.

I do NOT believe that Church should be fully self-sufficient, for that is a foolish and limited way to live. Full self-sufficiency does not provide abundance, rather it limits abundance. More than that, it means that everyone will be committed to doing things that do not sing with their own hearts. More than that, Church life should not involve itself with any production for export.

Yet I say that only to set the contrast to the need for any people living together upon a land to gain a reasonable portion of their “daily bread” from that land. There must be a full and continual relationship between the people and the land, and it is animals and plants that are the in-between purpose of that relationship.

Yet when we say “land,” we mean heaven-earth, for this is earth and air together.

For that reason we also say this – There must be a full and continual relationship between the people and the heavens that are part of that “land,” and it is angels and “elementals” that are the in-between purpose of that relationship.

“Our daily bread” is every provision needed for human life from earth and heaven simultaneously. The Kingdom, that is, God-made-visible, is very, very practical, entering into every aspect of human life inside this heaven-earth.

Now, I use the term “elementals” in quotation marks because that is an area of which we know nothing, not even what to call it. Nonetheless, if our thesis is true, then plants springing forth from the earth possess a full and similar counterpart in the spiritual heavens.

We know now by science that a tree has a spirit. Yet this spirit, or energy field radiating out from the tree, even though it contains a knowing, yet it is not conscious, that is, self-knowing. We know this because it has been demonstrated that a large “mother tree” provides an environment of safety and help to a large area of vegetation around it, especially small trees of its same kind, an environment that is not explained by physical molecules traveling through the air, but by electrical frequency.

As we have seen, each one of these double chapters, and especially this one – Word as Earth; Sent as Kingdom – contains a field of study that would require many large text books and a number of related college courses just to obtain an introduction to that field.

Here, I want to bring in another cool thing I saw concerning life from the earth, in Genesis 1.

First, I included Genesis 1:1-2 as an earth verse, but in actuality, it is an earth/air/water verse, with the air representing the hovering Spirit. – In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

The more I have removed the concept of a “God” who knows evil from my thinking, the more I see the many ways that perverse accusation has so twisted so many statements in the Bible, and the more appalled I become.

“The earth was without form, and void” has NOTHING to do with Satan “falling from heaven,” or sin or evil or any such psychotic and fantastical imaginations. And it has everything to do with the entire context of Genesis 1 & 2 and that is a womb/field, waiting for the SEED to be planted, that it might bring forth LIFE.

And here is that SEED, coming out from God and SENT into a heaven-earth that is waiting to receive it. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

John said the same thing this way. – In the beginning [the source, the generation of life] {Christ Jesus} in action was the word, and the word actively was towards God, and God was the word. The same was actively in the source, the generation of life, towards God. All through Him became, and without him not even one thing became that has become. In Him was life, and the life was actively the light of men. And the light is made visible in the darkness and the darkness does not seize hold of it (John 1:1-5 – rough JSV).

Next, let’s include the “explosion of life” verses from Genesis 1, seeing them in the entire context that we have developed thus far in this letter.

Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth”; and it was so…. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, “Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth [in the air].” So God created great sea [dinosaurs] and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind”; and it was so… And God saw that it was good.

Then consider that this is exactly what Jesus is putting into our own mouths in “the Lord’s Prayer,” in calling forth the abundance of life that is the Kingdom of God-made-visible.

Earth that Proves and Reveals
Do not bring us into testing, but rescue us from toilsome labor.

James said that God never tests anyone, because God does NOT know evil. The applicable word, however, is “proving.” God proves and reveals.

It is always Christ Jesus proven faithful and true whom God reveals. Yet you and I are the context, the womb, the earth, out from which such a proving of Christ comes.

Here is the clear expression of that evil from which we require God to rescue us.

Cursed is the ground because of you; through toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it will yield for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread, until you return to the ground— because out of it were you taken. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return (Genesis 3:17-19).

As you can see, our full victory over death is very much a part of the proving of Christ through us in the removal of all curse from off this earth.

Let’s look again at the “proving” verse. That the proving of your faith, more precious than perishing gold, through fire being refined, it [your faith] might be found into praise and glory and honor inside the unveiling, the revelation, of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:7).

It is THROUGH our faith that Jesus proves Himself faithful and true and reveals Himself as He is, the Church, brethren dwelling together in unity, to all creation.

 The negative is the positive in a different form. Here is the positive. “Father, prove Jesus faithful and true through our daily life together and cause all the work of our hands to overflow with the abundance of God.”

Earth that Contains Depths
I am just rambling in this letter, without trying to present anything organized. That’s often a wonderful thing to do, to wander along the creek with your dog, just to see what you might see. Since I have rambled to the limit of pages in a letter, I will make these two sections brief.

Now, the depths of the earth is a metaphor of many things, especially the mining of gold and silver and precious stones. In fact, jasper and sardius, dug out from the depths of the earth, represent the throne of God in the heavens, the authority of God given to us and placed upon our hearts.

At the same time, water with earth is very much a part of abundance and the springing forth of life. Whereas air with earth is more the place of abundance as we have seen.

Nonetheless, it is the depths of water springing up from the earth that I am using at this point, and thus I am referencing the Pro-Knowing of God out from which we come every moment through the good-speaking of Jesus, that is as these depths found deep inside the earth.

And I want to give one thought only regarding the Pro-Knowing of God.

A particular person who is dear to my heart might (and I say that very advisedly, because I don’t know for certain) be caught up in some of the Communist awfulness that is attempting to subject the world to the rule of a small group of rich, evil, white men. As is typical with all Communist revolutions, those doing all the screaming have no idea for whom they are working.

As I considered this dear one, regardless of their circumstances, in the light of our present prayers of calling God into our world and calling the Church into her place, I saw this person, inside the gift of faith, being called out of darkness by the Spirit of God.

As I did, I heard the words, spoken to me once by the sister of a friend of my youth, “He is not like you, Daniel. He has no connection to or interest in ‘God.’”

Then I realized that such a statement is complete nonsense. Every individual human is coming out from God’s thoughts concerning them through the good-speaking of Jesus, and in fact, that is all that they really are. They have one simple problem; they don’t know the God out from whom they come.

As I see this dear one being “called out of darkness by the Spirit of God,” I am doing nothing more than seeing her awakening to her true self, who she really is, in the singing of joy. “This is me!”

Here is another verse saying the exact same thing. – Now have come the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God.

Because you see, the one thing, the ONLY thing preventing this person from being her true self is the false words of accusation bouncing around without reason in her mind. And we have already cast that voice down.

Yet that, in itself, is nothing more than breaking the power of the negative. The words of Christ must fill the singing of the mind, “I am loved, I belong, I have so much to give. I am beautiful, my heart is good.”

Can I say again? This is so cool!

Sent as Kingdom Together
I really had no idea, when I penciled out my outline of chapters, how beautiful “word as earth” would be to me. Earth is the epitome of beauty and inside of earth, the woman is the crown and glory of God’s creation.

For you are our joy and our crown – falling in love with the Church.

Let’s return to the start of this chapter, the ecosystem of God.

You are… the household, the family, the domestic intimacy of God… being built together for a dwelling place of God inside the sphere of Spirit.

“Sent as Kingdom” is neither more nor less than being the HOME of God upon earth inside of heaven. And, we saw that the action verb ruling this expression of Home is “being fitted together – being built together.”

Let’s bring in some more lines from the first part of the letter.

– An ecosystem is a vast interrelationship of many completely different types of things, both animate and inanimate, working together in wondrous harmony, with each thing inside that ecosystem having its own place of belonging, its own task of giving, and its own distinct individuality. And the One who connects IS every Word God speaks, the voice of God’s expression of all that He thinks concerning each one.

– God is; He speaks; we are. Yet the “we are” includes a togetherness, an interrelationship beyond anything we have known or considered. –

I spent eighteen years of my life in the practical experiences of building Christian Community. Very little that is essential to human life together on this earth was separate from the things I did and built.

I can truly say that I am a builder of Community – this is me!

The part of building community that really makes my heart sing, however, is DESIGN. I love designing school courses and buildings and community layout and gardens and paths and everything that could be designed inside such an arena. And I especially LOVE designing HOME.

Since coming to Houston, I realized that the concept of HOME was not familiar enough to me, and so I purchased a number of books, including Sarah Suzanka’s several books, but especially Home by Design, and then Patterns of Home, by Max Jacobson, Murray Silverstein, and Barbara Winslow, which I used in Symmorphy V: Life.

I did the same thing with these books that I did with my Bible for many years, I poured over them, not to “figure them out,” but so that I might draw the meaning of designing HOME deep into my heart, that I might know what such a thing is instinctively.

To design and build together with other precious brethren everything that is part of life together in a Community of Christ, a people living together upon a land, loving one another, that is, to me the greatest, most inconceivable joy I could ever sing.

It is the Lord Jesus, sent by Father through you and me, building the HOME of God.

It is the Kingdom, God just being Himself.