14.3 A Highway for God
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
The voice of one crying in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill brought low; the crooked places shall be made straight and the rough places smooth; the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken” (Isaiah 40:3-5).
In other places, Isaiah speaks of a highway for the people; here he speaks of a highway for God. This is the highway of which I wish to know; God making His way by a straight path into being seen and known by all. What is that path for God? And how do we prepare it?
No Neutral Ignorance
Vanity is the quality of being ignorant of the God in whom we live and move and draw our breath every moment, an all here now and very personal God. But vanity never stays as neutral ignorance. In making us like Himself, God gave us brains of reason that are thinking constantly and hearts as bold as a lion’s. Thus in the world, the vanity of not knowing God becomes the vanity of knowing all kinds of things that ain’t so. But in the church we find a far worse form of vanity. In the church we find the vanity of “knowing” God through the image of the serpent, a “God” who is arrogant in His superiority.
Father Winning His Desire
Now, let’s place back in front of us the actual Kingdom resolution of all vanity. That they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me (John 17:21-23).
The complete fulfillment of these words – in outward appearance in our lives on this earth – is the ending of vanity. It is the Father winning for Himself all the desire of His heart.
The Very Best Means
Return to the picture of the thick Love Fire that is God in which we exist. Picture all the tiny swirling atoms that makeup our reality swimming around in this Lake of Fire. How does God pass from His heart into the knowing of these tiny masses of swirling electrical particles called humans and angels? God will never “appear” in His own “visible” form to either heaven or earth EVER. God has no such form. Such a form would be idolatry, stealing from God His invisibility.
So, God, in His great wisdom, choosing the very best means to arrive at the very best ends, has stated that He intends to appear to creation through a bunch of humans walking together, loving one another.
God’s Highway
Now, Jesus spoke, creating IN Himself, the very essence of this group of people. That they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us. – That they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one. This is God’s highway. This is Father’s entrance into being seen and known by all.
This is blasphemy.
John Calvin burned Michael Severus to death. That was historical knowledge to me until I ascertained what Severus actually taught about Jesus – the same as I. Then it became personal!
Isaiah’s List
But let’s look through Isaiah’s list more carefully. You see, we are not concerned about understanding “vanity.” Our concern, the concern of the Kingdom of God, is to end the vanity of not knowing God, a vanity inherent in the unbridgeable difference between God’s reality and ours, to bring that vanity to an end forever.
Prepare the way of the Lord.
(1) Make the highway straight (in the desert).
(2) Fill in (lift up) the valleys, the low spots.
(3) Cut through and bring down the high spots.
(4) Even out the curves in the road.
(5) Place a smooth surface on all the roughness.
The Hebrew Meanings
Let me bring in the Hebrew meanings in a simplified manner. Prepare means to turn (in the right direction); straight means to be smooth, straight, or right; the way means way, road, journey; highway means highway or path. Both valley and mountain/hill means the same as in English.
Exalted is a poor choice for what to do with the low spots. The Hebrew word means to lift up and to carry. Brought low means brought low – but think, meek and lowly of heart and He humbled Himself. Crooked means crooked, but both in regards to a path AND as regards to a deceitful heart, dishonesty. Straight means a level place or uprightness. Rough means rough, but smooth means a valley or a plain.
A Highway Construction Project
Once, driving through Montana, we saw the construction of a freeway alongside the original highway which we were on. They were cutting through a ridge of a thousand feet, chopping it in half, and using the debris to fill up the valley to the same level – a vast undertaking. Truly, Isaiah’s description fits modern highway construction.
This is the picture God gives us of the preparation of His path through us to be seen and known by all. God wants to end vanity more than we can comprehend. But He can do that ONLY through us. God cannot be seen and known in any other way than through a body of humans walking together in love.
Shattering the Image of the Serpent
I am finding that this picture we have created, of our existence inside a Bath of Fire Love, making that reality “visible” in our mind’s eye, can become distractive to us. Let’s use it for only two purposes: first to understand vanity, and second to cement the CONFIDENCE in which we walk. God does not want us to rob Him of His invisibility by creating mental pictures. He wants us to walk in CONFIDENCE.
The first task in building God’s path is to shatter the lens of the serpent, to break to pieces all seeing of “God” through the exalted superiority of arrogance. Two things are required to shatter the image of the serpent. Blasphemy and ripping out the tare of Jerome’s deceit.
Four Parts of Highway Construction
But let’s backup just a bit. I want to look at four critical things in this highway construction project on which Father and us are working together. First is turning the highway straight towards the goal. Second is bringing down that which is high; third is lifting up that which is low. And fourth is making the rough places smooth.
This is the exact layout of God’s working in me through the years of my life. Every one of these four is a shattering of the lens of the serpent as the image of God, and the replacement of that false image with God’s real image, you and me walking together in love. And God always begins with blasphemy.
Turning the Path
Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. The word “prepare” is translated “turn” more often than “prepare.” To turn is God’s exact meaning. Everyone has God’s path going in the WRONG direction.
This task is my calling in God, to set before God’s people God’s destination, the point towards which He is headed, and then to make the path from God’s here to God’s there as straight as I can and as free of debris as I know how.
Everyone, including the serpent, has their face set on ascending into heaven (I will ascend into heaven – Isaiah 14). God has His face set on showing up on earth through symmorphy.
God’s Destination
Here is God’s destination: that they also may be one in Us – for all shall know Me. God’s destination is Christ Jesus revealing Father to all through a community of people walking together on this earth, loving one another with pure hearts fervently. This community of people, family, fellowship together inside the fellowship of God.
It is my intention to so break your face from “heaven” as a destination and to so set your face on Christian community on this earth as your destination, that you think of arriving only there and for the next thousand years. Why would we “go to” a realm in which we already live fully?
The Blasphemy of Symmorphy
God’s path is to full Symmorphy, God living in us, walking together as one Pperson with us, revealing Himself as He is to all through us. Yet most of our brethren are going in the other direction! How do they break from that false path to turn onto God’s path?
Let me define “blasphemy,” not only as I am using it, but as all Christians actually mean it to be. Blasphemy is claiming to be the image of God as a human and not the serpent at all. Blasphemy is stating, “I will be the image of God, just like Jesus as He walked this earth, just like Him in all ways, right here on this earth. I am and I will be just like Jesus in full union with Father, in fellowship with Father, and as Father revealed through me, in this body of flesh before the resurrection.”
To Be Like God
Think of the twisted Christian argument: If you want to be like God, you will become arrogant like the serpent who wanted to be like God. Clearly they are thinking of the serpent as God’s image, a “God” who manipulates and controls everyone – as they also wish to do.
To be like God is to love as God loves, to take the lowest place, to carry the burdens of others, to forgive as God forgives.
God gave me this acclamation when I was 21 years old, that I would be just like Jesus in my life on this earth. Just as we must ask Jesus into our heart to be born again, and just as we must ask Jesus to immerse us in His Spirit to enter the Holy Place, so we must ask, and declare, to be made now just like Jesus as He walked this earth – before we can enter the Holiest of all.
Requiring “Blasphemy”
This is what Jesus was really after when He required blasphemy of His disciples in John 6. He required of them that they shatter the image of the serpent as the image of God.
When I was 21, I heard Sam Fife preach a word that we are equal with God, face to Face and heart to Heart. That word was total blasphemy to me. Yet I was caught in the hand of God and I could not rest. I did not rest until God showed me by His Spirit and from His Word that it was true. God took me through a number of deeply penetrating exercises with Himself until He proved my heart to me that I would rather blaspheme and die than not to be with Jesus. That I would rather shatter the image of the serpent.
The Core of the Covenant
Here is the image of God: And being found in appearance as a Man, He humbled Himself.
But when I made that commitment as a young man to the Father’s goal, the road ahead was twisted and turned, filled with lows and highs, and cluttered with rough debris. I had no idea how I would ever be like Jesus, I just knew that God does what He says.
One final point in the turning of the path, in setting the Father’s goal before our eyes. The core of the Covenant is this: We are made just like Him as we see Him as He is. We enter this level of the Covenant ONLY when we agree with God against all Nicene Christianity.
Bringing Down the High Places
Once our path is turned in God’s direction, the high places in that path must come down. In actual highway construction, the high places come down first, because it is from their broken debris that the low places are lifted up.
There is NOTHING in the heart of a Christian more OFFENSIVE to God than the constant whining claim that “I will learn to please God; I will obey Him.” Every effort of the Christian to “please” God or to “obey” God is a rejection of the cross and a rejection of Christ our only life as the only thing from us that God accepts. To “cease from our own works” is to cease all effort to “please” God – effort that produces ONLY the road-covering debris of an arrogant and superior self-righteousness.
I Will NOT Be “Pleasing” God
I came down to the absolute realization that I will never please God, that I will NOT be “making it” at age 41 and out from a brief, but direct communication with Buddy Cobb. I left that fellowship in the frozen realization that I would never know God by Buddy Cobb’s scheme of “hear and obey.” Yet inside of that profound knowledge and my full acceptance of that fact of reality, I refused to let go of Jesus (I did not know – in total defiance of John Calvin).
But it’s not enough for the high places to come down, this arrogant boasting of the flesh that “I” will do this thing. The low places come next; the low places must be lifted up. God did just that in my life from age 43 to age 49.
Lifting up the Low Places
The lifting up of the low places in this highway prepared for God to reveal Himself to all creation through us, God made known, consists of the facing of a heart to a Heart. But God could not touch my heart until I let Him. And my acceptance of God touching my heart was a third direct act of blasphemy, coming hard on the heels of the blasphemy of quitting “hear and obey,” yet holding to Jesus.
You see, I could not say, “God loves me.” not with that period at the end of the sentence. It was in an anointed service in Lubbock, Texas that I went forward and, standing before God, repented of ever listening to Buddy Cobb. Only then could I hear: God loves me.
Repentance
Through Sam Fife, God had planted the seed of Christ inside of me. But Sam Fife was killed in a plane crash when I was 22. Buddy Cobb, right from the start, proceeded to replace the blasphemy of Christ in us NOW with the orthodoxy of seeing God through the image of the serpent. Deal with sin/no-sin first, BEFORE an unsatisfied God will ever grant Christ to you as your present life (Bowens Mill convention, July 1979).
For me, there in that Lubbock service, it was the image of Buddy Cobb’s teaching of “hear and obey” that I rejected. I did not know then that behind him stood Calvin and Augustine, or that it was actually seeing God through the lens of the serpent of which I was repenting.
My Heart Is Good!
I realize that I am again going beyond my set limit for academic lessons, but I must finish this thing out in this session.
The real blasphemy came for me, however, at age 45, when, while reading John Eldredge, I embraced the wondrous reality that my heart IS, IS, IS Good – AND filled with Christ! And in that moment, the very lowest place in my road was lifted up to the level of my Father’s path. Yet it was blasphemy, this shattering of the image that my heart was evil and that I must live utterly separated from my own heart. The serpent insists on no competition for his false claim.
Yet what good is our hearts restored to God as the dwelling place of Jesus if we then turn and claim that God’s heart is evil?
Defining Calvinism
The next blasphemy is the elimination from our hearts of the image of an arrogant God.
Let me define Calvinism – seeing God through the image of the serpent. The translators of the King James Bible were Calvinists. They looked through the image of the superiority of arrogance as they carefully sought the “best” English words for the Greek. “Eternal” hellfire as part of a definition of God is the second big low place that must be lifted up.
How low the serpent has cast God’s heart! Eternal hellfire is NOT taught in the Bible, yet to accept that certainty is a HUGE step of blasphemy.
Lifting up God’s Heart
I was 47 when God enabled me to lift His heart up out of the serpentine pit into which Nicene Christianity has cast it. You see, in spite of the intervening decades, the seed of Christ revealed through me on this earth had never left my heart. And when God restored my heart back to me in the goodness of Jesus, there was that same seed of Christ in me unchanged.
So I began to search the Internet for that same word that I carried in my own heart. I found that word in one place only, yet there it was, just as I had made Covenant with God when I was but 21. That same word was found only among those who had rejected Jerome’s deceit, and removed the calumny of the evil one from their image of God. – Hades is only for a season.
Persuaded by the Bible
In looking around, I decided to purchase a set of books from Dr. Stephen Jones, specifically Creation Jubilee. Understand this. I am NOT swayed by anything except what God says in His Word. And I am taught ONLY by what God says in His Word. I MUST see anything as the clear teaching of the Bible before I will ever consider it. Dr. Stephen Jones, in Creation Jubilee, convinced me, out from God’s words, that the concept of “eternal hellfire” is NOT a Biblical teaching, but rather a mighty tare planted in the field of Christ by the false translation of one word. But the thing that meant the most to me was that the only writer today who truly expresses the same word to which I gave my heart fully when I was still a boy is Preston Eby of El Paso, Texas, who joys in a God who redeems all creation.
A Highway Now Straight
And so I embraced, with all my heart, the blasphemy that God’s full intention is to set all creation free, the blasphemy that Paul’s claims are God speaking the truth – all creation restored back to the Father – God all in all (1 Corinthians 15).
I did not realize it, though, at age 49, that God’s highway to winning His Desire lay straight before me now, with the high places brought down and the low places raised up. I did not realize it, because that level path was still filled with debris. God’s final “blasphemy” for me, His final Covenant agreement together with me in shattering forever the lens of seeing “God” through the serpent, was to be the rough places made smooth. That final act of blasphemy came from age 49 to age 52.
Making the Rough Places Smooth
It was through those years that I began to speak Christ my only life. And I spoke Christ against all the screaming wails of the evil one that I was really “in trouble with God” now, that I was really “blaspheming.”
Why was I able to stand against all that wailing horror? Entirely because of the agreement I had entered into with God at age 21 that I would be just like Jesus on this earth now.
How were the rough places made smooth for me? By seeing Christ as all that I am, and in that continual action, everything in my life I had once imagined to be “evil” or “wrong” became Christ Himself in all joy, Jesus, living now as me.
Jesus Becomes Us
The final “blasphemy” is the most important. Jesus becomes all that we are, just as we find ourselves to be.
And so, after all the wailing accusation of the evil one, that I had completely “departed from the faith” had ceased, at age 52, I began to write this stream of Christ Our Life, seeking to know for myself all the joy and reality of Christ my life and to share that joy with you. And right from the start, only one purpose lay upon me, to declare to you the highway of our God, to make His path to His desire straight before you, to bring down your high places, to lift up your low, and to transform all the rubble of your life into the goodness of Christ in you.
The Five “Blasphemies”
Here are the five “blasphemies” by which we commit ourselves together with God to break the image of the serpent as if his arrogance shows us our Father.
1. The full agreement with the Father to be just like Jesus in all ways as He walked this earth, now through us.
2. The full acceptance that we will not be pleasing God and that our every effort to do so is the greatest sin.
3. The agreement with Jesus to call our own hearts good.
4. The agreement with Father to call His heart good and to remove the accusation that He does not redeem all.
5. The Covenant commitment to God that Jesus has become us, has become all that we are as we find ourselves to be.
I Am Father Made Known
I will not presume to force an order for these direct events, these face to Face interactions between you and your God. But I will say that upon each one of these five points, the image of the serpent must be broken out of your heart.
When God shows up in heaven/earth, He appears as a family of human beings, walking inside this heaven/earth, with their feet on the ground and their spirits soaring in the heavenlies, walking together as one, loving one another with pure hearts fervently.
I am the image and likeness of God, a Father who is meek and lowly of heart, a God who sees others as better than Himself. I walk together as one Pperson with my Father in every step.
I am the revelation of Jesus Christ. I am Father made KNOWN.