17. I Will Never Die

The raising of Lazarus from the dead is a significant event in Jesus’ ministry. The fact that only John recorded it is odd, but speculating why the other writers skipped this event would be pointless. Yet it was from this act of Jesus that the rulers formulated their definite plan to eliminate Jesus. Their concern regarding the Romans was not wrong. Jesus was really stirring everything up, and the Romans were likely contemplating action. They did not rule for so long by not being on top of everything. More than that, the Judeans were the one people who would not submit and were, in the end, destroyed.

Place and Character. Verses 1-16 of Chapter 11 are simply setting the stage of the story, and I have not included them in The Jesus Secret II. Bethany is not far from Bethlehem, David’s home town, where Jesus was born. This is the hilly country where David kept watch over his sheep.

It is interesting that Martha and Mary came separately to Jesus, and we see that Jesus’ response to each was very different, but also very fitting to their personalities. Of the two sisters, Martha was more rational and Mary was more emotional. Jesus spoke Word into Martha, but wept with Mary, a fitting connection with each.

A Door Wide Open. Martha is straightforward and direct with Jesus. She is a woman of open faith. She has long since embraced Jesus as the Messiah and believes what He says.

“Lord, if You had been here, my brother would NOT have died. NONETHELESS, I know that even now whatever You might ask God, God will give you.” Do you see how she leaves the door wide open for Jesus? She might not have Lazarus rising immediately from the dead in her mind, but she is certainly reaching in that direction with her heart, in fact, much like Abraham towards Isaac – about three miles north of this same area.

No Limit. The point is that Martha has opened herself wide open to God – no limit. – Whatever You mean by what You say. Martha was a practical woman, focused on people’s needs and meeting those needs. Luke’s account of Martha as one who was “distracted” and “worried,” is likely the point of view of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Whereas the teenage John, standing close to Jesus and Martha in this event, observed a more direct confidence.

Jesus then spoke a simple statement, again direct, in response to Martha’s nature. – “Your brother will rise again.”

The Belief in Resurrection. Martha replies with practical theology. “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection in the last day.”

This is interesting, because, as far as I can tell, this belief in the resurrection of the dead comes from one line in Scripture, Daniel 12:1-3. – And at that time your people shall be delivered, every one who is found written in the book. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to enduring life, some to shame and enduring contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and those who turn many to just innocence like the stars forever and ever.

I Am the Resurrection. Martha is not being “intellectual.” She is placing herself and all that she knows in full agreement with Jesus, face to face, that He might speak into her.

Then we have His words. “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?”

And Martha’s response, eyeball to eyeball. “Yes, Lord; I have believed that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the One coming into the world-cosmos.”

I Will Never Die. We cannot continue further without first establishing what will be on the Jesus Secret page. To do that, we must begin with the enflowing of word. As it turns out, this story provides two related concepts. Here is the first.

Jesus is my resurrection and my life. Because Jesus is my only life; I also am the resurrection. If I were to die physically, yet I will live, for death cannot hold me. Yet I have not died physically, and I believe into Jesus, face to face and eye to eye. I will never die. I will not die because I believe Jesus.

I Call the Dead into Life. Now, even though Jesus’ response to Mary was different, according to her personality, nonetheless, we are seeing that the second concept in these statements of faith draws from both Mary and Martha as well as from Lazarus.

Jesus calls for me; I come to Him. Jesus shares my own anger and agitation over death, God’s enemy and mine. My deep indignation against death is Jesus sharing Himself with me. Jesus calls me by name out from death and into life. God gives me whatever I ask of Him. I ask God for life for my brothers and sisters in Christ. The Father always hears me. I call the dead into life. I release my brothers and sisters from their bonds of death, and I let them go, alive and free.

The Premise of the Jesus Secret. Before continuing, I must reiterate the premise of the Jesus Secret. God says, in the binding words of the Covenant, that in my completed state, I am just like the Lord Jesus, whatever God means by “just like.” When I speak Christ made personal as me, I prophesy concerning myself in my completed state. I am calling that which does not presently appear as if it is true. Then, as I speak in faith, I discover that in God, everything is already complete even before it begins. For that reason, I come to know that I am, in fact, just like Jesus now.

When I say of myself, “I am the resurrection and the life,” I am speaking this same Jesus now living as me.

The Judgment Given to Us. More than that, what are we doing when we set forth our souls for our brothers and sisters, just as Jesus set forth His soul for us? We are calling our brothers and sisters out from death and into life and releasing them from us and setting them free.

I did not know, until I filled in the enflowing of word just now, that I would find in this chapter a mighty picture of our ministry forever of sharing Hheart with God. Indeed, this is the judgment given to us upon the throne of God, to call each one out from death and into life, beginning with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

The Jesus Secret Page. After some intense meditation that included a bit of confrontation between the Word and my own lack of seriousness, I came up with the following layout. The first box after the enflowing of word is titled “Shall Not Die.” This is followed immediately by a “Jesus Secret” box, with a direct, eye to eye confrontation between Jesus and the reader. There must be a response from the reader, and so the statement, “Jesus, I belong to You. Let it be to me according to Your Word,” comes after in large print. Then, the larger box at the bottom is titled “The Way of Life.”

But let me take you through my progression of thinking. Here is the proverbial “rubber hitting the road.”

Do I Believe? In the first box, “Shall Not Die,” I wrote this first line. – Do I believe Jesus’ words? Or do I join with those who mock?

Immediately, I found myself being contended with by God. There were two things behind this contention. First, it was triggered by what I had written in translating Chapter 11 into the JSV. The word John used to express Jesus’ emotional reaction to Mary’s tears does NOT mean sorrow, it means anger and indignation.

So why have all the translators chosen not to allow us to know that death made Jesus angry?

“I’m Not Going to Die!” The other part of the contention was my history with the words, “I’m not going to die.” In the summer of 1977, I heard the rumor that Sam Fife was saying just that. At that point, I was unable even to think about such an absurd claim. Nonetheless, it was probably in my first convention at Hidden Valley, while I was still twenty, that I heard Sam Fife proclaim behind the pulpit, “I’m not going to die.” His explanation was that he had been saying for so long that, according to the gospel, we do not have to die, for Jesus has made us free from death, that he had begun to believe it, and thus had begun to confess that it was true.

A Speaking of Christ. Sam Fife was very bold, and his utterance in the anointing was very powerful. You can be sure that, at the age of twenty, I was ready to sign up for such a revolution – to cast down and to eliminate death. In essence, Sam Fife was speaking Christ as I teach you to do. – Speak what God says you are.

Here is what God says. – We will not all die… For this mortality must put upon itself the inability to die… Death has been swallowed up by victory… God gives us the victory through our Lord, Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:51-57). He who lives and believes into Me shall never die (John 11).

A Combative Question. Jesus’ question, then, is combative. – DO YOU BELIEVE THIS?
The problem is that Sam Fife died, killed in a plane wreck a year-and-a-half later. And thus many good people held his “confession of faith,” to have been ludicrous. I did not, for I do not base my faith on passing whims, but on what God actually says in the Bible. Nonetheless, I had certainly retreated into psychological “safety” regarding this claim – “I’m not going to die.” And I had planned to remain “safe” in writing this lesson.

Jesus’ Anger. But then I saw Jesus’ anger, and I was hit right between the eyeballs by my own questions. – Do I believe Jesus’ words? Or do I join with those who mock? And suddenly, my whole perception of God, of the gospel, and of our role in our world right now was transformed – again.

Do you hate death? Jesus did. Jesus hates death with a fiery passion beyond our ability to comprehend. Death is not knowing God. Death destroys everything. Yet what causes death? – It is lying that causes death.

Lying Produces Murder. We are seeing it again in our world today. As Jesus said in John 8, lying comes first, and then murder follows.

I am very angry right now by the horrendous lying being spoken here in the U.S. and around the world, and the deliberate murdering of millions of people that is coming out from these lies. And I am angry at my Christian brethren here in America who give their authority to believing those lies and enabling the murders. When you lie (I say this rhetorically) and then use your lie to murder innocent people, should God not be angry with you?

Not Knowing God. Lying and death fill our world, yet my anger cannot compare to Jesus’ anger against both lying and death. Death is our enemy. Are you angry against death? The Jesus who fills you with Himself is angry against death.

After Sam Fife died, Buddy Cobb removed such thinking from the move fellowship by declaring that if you want to “never die,” then you have to stop sinning FIRST, the same old lie based on the same old false definition of sin and death. Death is not knowing God. The human effort to lie to one’s self that, “I am struggling against sin,” comes out from NOT knowing God. The “struggle” is death itself.

Mockery. LIFE is something entirely different. Life is a Person, the Lord Jesus, and we living inside of that Person, and He living inside of us. And by that means alone we KNOW God, which is life. Then, God Himself takes care of all that we are, including our human foolishness – through our expectation of faith. The truth is, Sam Fife also preached this, though he had faith in the Spirit of life all mixed up with the false cross.

Almost all Christians I know would claim, if pressed, that Jesus did not actually mean “Shall never die.” And thus their response to Jesus is, in fact, mockery.

Shall Not Die. Do I believe Jesus’ words? Or do I join with those who mock? Jesus said, “Will never die.” I believe that Jesus is telling me the truth. I place the immortality of the Lord Jesus Christ upon myself, according to the gospel. I possess all victory over death. Death is my enemy; death is defeated. I celebrate my victory over death. I will not die. I will never die. My body is being transformed into Jesus’ glorious body. My flesh is His flesh; my life is His life. I possess the life of God, the Lord Jesus in my heart. I am the resurrection of life.

This is a tough one, for all the wailing cries of mockery are there in the back of our minds. We keep our eyes upon Jesus.

Eyes Fixed on Jesus. When Jesus prayed to the Father, it is clear from His words that His purpose was to get the attention of everyone upon Him and His actions and God through Him. And we can be sure that every eye in that place was fixed on Jesus. – What is He going to do? Then, we see in Chapter 12 that this action of Jesus in defying death really “upset the apple cart” and led directly to His execution with the same threat leveled against Lazarus. Lying cannot stand the defeat of death.

BUT!!! – This is way, way, way too big for us. We have only ONE option. We must look Jesus straight in the eyes, our whole attention utterly FIXED upon Him.

The Jesus Secret. Look straight into Me, My dear one, for death is an overwhelming foe. I faced death, and through death, I defeated death. My resurrection is the defeat of death; My resurrection is the only life you are. I hate death, My dear one, and the separation it causes and the lying out from which it comes. My hatred of death fills your heart. I hate the absence of the knowledge of God; I hate the cruel things done in the darkness. I have given you victory over death. Celebrate My victory, but keep your eyes ever upon Me, for the lies of death are fierce. Yet death has lost its sting, and the grave is empty. Let Me be the Way of Life in you.

The Mercy Seat. I now have just three slides to prepare to write the final box, “The Way of Life.” At the same time, I am working towards a complete explanation of our authority together as the Mercy Seat, the throne of God, in Symmorphy VI. “The Way of Life” and “Our Authority Together” as the Mercy Seat are much the same thing; this study prepares for that.

Yet, in The Jesus Secret II, the full development of this truth does not come until 1 John and Revelation. What we need here is an introduction, and, in fact, that is what John is giving us by placing this story into his presentation of the way of life.

Principles of Life. Notice also that I have just changed the wording, no longer “the way by which you are led to life,” but rather, the way of life through us. So what specific principles from John 11 apply directly to this WAY of Life coming through us into our world?

1. We call each one personally, by name.

2. We receive each one as they are and identify ourselves with their true self.

3. We speak a shared Word and a shared Spirit to each one according to their person and responses. We weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice.

Calling Forth Life.
4. We “roll away the stone,” that is, we remove the outward impediments, that which would block this one from hearing the Son of God call his or her name.

5. We fix everyone’s attention on the Father, that He alone does the work and that He alone receives the glory.

6. We call the dead into life by name. We call that which does not appear as if it is the only thing true. We speak the knowledge of God into the death of ignorance. We speak life to bring forth life.

7. We release our brothers and sisters from all bonds and obligations, from all that hides, and set them free from us.

The Way of Life. I walk in the Way of Life; the Way of Life, that is, the knowledge of the Father, comes through me. I am the resurrection and the life; the life of God flows through me to others. I call each one by name; I call them out of death. “Be reconciled to God.” I receive each one as themselves and walk with them. I speak the Word they need; I share Spirit with them. I weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. I remove all blockages of faith, whether in myself or in the seeing of each one. I fix my attention on Jesus and through Jesus, the Father. All glory belongs to my Father. I call the dead into life by name. I call that which does not appear as the only thing true.

Our Confidence. I speak the knowledge of God into the death of ignorance. I speak LIFE; life comes forth from me. I release my brothers and sisters from all bonds and obligations. I release them from all that pretends and hides; I set them free of me.

Notice the wondrous agreement of this layout of “steps of life” from John 11 with what I teach. As I said earlier, we do not base our confidence on any passing whim, but on the word God speaks. This powerful passage, coming with such perfect agreement gives us ever more confidence in God with us.

We are just like Jesus; we call the dead into life.

Defining This Way. I just created the Power Point files with titles for the remaining lessons of this study. We are half way. As I did so, tweaking the wording of the titles just a bit, and as I pondered what I wrote in this lesson, I came to understand the Way by which Life will swallow up death in our world today.

Here is the simplest statement. – What Jesus gives of Himself to us becomes truly ours in knowing and experience when we give the same thing to others. – As we call our brothers and sisters into life, with no shadow of contempt, then LIFE will transform us as well.

Reading for Next Time. The next lesson is titled, “Jesus Is Planted inside of Me.” Yet when I look at Chapter 12, I see that it is a continuation of the story of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary, and, in fact, the question of the Greeks comes out from the responses to Lazarus being raised from the dead. In other words, this all ties together. I hope to have Chapters 12 & 13 ready for you to read in the more completed Jesus Secret version before next Sunday.

If a grain of wheat having been planted into the ground should not die, it abides alone. If it should die, however, it bears much fruit (rough JSV). [Note: In my first draft I followed the Greek; in my second, I make it more English.]

Let’s Pray Together. Our prayer this week is metamorphy, our fixated response to Jesus as He transfers Himself to us. And that is what happens WHEN we take Him seriously (the fear of Christ). Jesus transfers His resurrection to us, with Himself.

“Lord Jesus, we keep our eyes fixed upon You as we see You transferring Your resurrection LIFE to be our substance every moment. We see You causing Your mighty victory over death to be the totality of our existence. Lord Jesus, we do not look for life as something we might possess separate from You, for You alone are the knowledge of God; You alone connect us always with the Father.

“Lord Jesus, as we look ever into Your eyes, we know that Your Life is not static, but that it flows ever through us that it might give life to others. Lord Jesus, we belong to You. We are Your body, the expression in our world of all that You are.

“And Lord Jesus, we know Your hatred against death that You also share with us, Your hatred against the splitting apart the comes from not knowing God, and all the lies that cause it. We know that You share with us the same passion to call those who remain in death out from their false submission and into LIFE with us.

“Lord Jesus, we ask that You BE the Way of Life through us.”