24.2 Breaking the False Image
© 2017 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
Complete victory over the evil one has three parts. The first part is breaking the false image of the serpent as the lens through which all humans and most Christians see and define God. The second part is our watchcare in the heavens over all those who are running into the fulfillment of Tabernacles in the life of the Church. That part is a place of spiritual power and the sending forth of life and strength. And the third part is the sending of the great chain that binds the evil one and all of his angels far away from the experience of man in this heaven/earth.
Satan and all his demons have a day of reckoning with a chain.
Purpose
Now, I refer you back to Symmorphy II: Essence, Chapter 8: What Is Man? And to God’s pro-thesis, Romans 8:28, God and man working all things together, and to Genesis 2 in which God sets forth that purpose through three different pictures.
People can say all they want – “Well that stuff is all what God is going to do; man has nothing to do with it.” And in doing so, they cut only themselves out of God’s intention. The whole thing is about a Body for God, that He might be seen and known. And that means Father and us doing all things together. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does in like manner (John 5:19b). Father and us utterly together.
Together with Us
Symmorphy exists only because it is the nature of God’s being and the deepest essence of His heart. God does NOT want to be alone or to do things by Himself. God desires, more than we can comprehend, to do all things that He does entirely together with us.
Shattering the image of the serpent is a big, big, big deal, the most astonishing thing that will have ever happened among humans on this earth, I think, since Adam. Jesus walked as God’s true image against the image of the serpent, and a few Christians saw God as He really is in the first decades of the church, but that true image was soon lost to almost all.
The Image of the Serpent
But let’s define specifically that image. When I use the term, “the image of the serpent,” I mean that lens of seeing through which all humans observe and define or describe God. It is still God seen through the false lens, but the serpent posing as “what God looks like” alters and falsely colors God, taking what He is and turning it into something distorted, something contrary to God. Even God-is-love is turned by that lens into something not really our Father. But then, besides altering God’s own attributes, the serpent also adds his own, primarily arrogance, that is, one who stands aloof from all others, one who thinks more highly of himself than anyone else, and secondly hatred.
Four Arenas of Operation
The image of the serpent has four parts, or shall we say, operates on four levels or in four different arenas. The first arena of serpent lens is the psychosis of each individual human mind. The second arena is as a spiritual power in the heavens, a power that imposes itself upon the human spirit. The third arena is the reinforcement of this world, all the ways in which the world maintains, celebrates, and imposes by violence that false image. And the fourth arena is the power of death. The continuation of physical death is a mighty persuader, convincing almost all Christians that death is Savior and being dead is salvation.
Our Weapons
Against each of the four arenas in which the serpent image operates, we possess a mighty weapon in God. Our weapon against the serpent lens in individual human minds is truth personified, clear and simple. MAN is the image of God, not any heavenly being. Father and I together think more highly of you than Wwe do of Oourself. Our weapon against the serpent lens in the spiritual heavens is authority and power, along with Michael and a few billion angels. Our weapon against that image in the world is no conscious-ness of sins – loving one another with a pure heart fervently. And our weapon against death is CONFIDENCE, that is LIFE!
Break All Four
All four of these arenas of serpent image work together upon each individual human. We separate them only for study. In reality, you cannot break just one of these four, for the remaining three or two or one WILL repopulate the others immediately. Thus all four must be broken at once. This action is a total and seemingly instantaneous shattering (seemingly, because it unfolds over a period, likely, of 3½ years.
Now, let me position 3½ years as if that is, in fact, God’s timetable. I am not saying that I know for sure; I do not. But to speak directly, I will be definite, even though the actual time period of this shattering process may be a different length. The important thing is that it is a short time (Rev. 12).
Beginning with Us
The image does not shatter for the entire world all at once. The shattering of that image in totality must begin with us first. Then, for 3 ½ years, that image is removed from the seeing of the Church, God’s Jerusalem, all those who truly love His actual appearing, that is, IN them. And finally, it is shattered forever by a great chain on the one hand and the resurrection of our bodies on the other.
But the shattering must begin first with ourselves. How much does the image of the serpent remain in our thinking or in the realm of spirit power over us? And thus we wait upon God, in full expectation of faith, just as the 120 in the upper room, knowing that God Himself must come upon us in the mighty fulfillment of Tabernacles Day One.
All Authority
Please understand, I have no idea what I am talking about. I am writing to understand, to place the truth of God before our eyes that we might see Him as He really IS. I first heard this word preached forty years ago, overcoming death, breaking the curse from off this earth, setting creation free. Now, I am finally able, out from that same word in me, to have a look at what it might actually mean.
You and I have all authority to shatter the lens of the serpent; there is nothing God wants more than for us to do that. But of course, we cannot shatter one image without the true image of God ready to take its place. In fact, it is the existence of the true image of God that actually causes the false to break.
Bands Snapped Apart
Let’s set aside, for now, the world-beast and death, two things that work closely together, and focus as students upon mental psychosis and spiritual power, two things that also work closely together.
In my dream, when Father and I said, “Get out Jack, and don’t come back,” two things happened simultaneously. You see, our words were absolute power. Our words altered the heavens. First, the bands of spirit power by which fallen angels impose their mutterings on the human spirit snapped apart. The angels were without power or protection. They could not hide, and they could not remain. And second, the true image of God then appeared on the faces of the two youths; that true image came out from Our Holy Spirit now upon them.
Permanence
But you see, that power in that moment was not enough; it could not be permanent. Permanence comes ONLY as the story inside the minds of each one changes from a self separate from God to Christ as the only life I am. And, you know, we really do start with the truth.
For eight years now, as I awake every night through the course of my sleep, I have said the same thing to myself, ranging from “I am filled with all the fullness of God” to “Father, You fill me with all that You are.” This is my certainty; this is my rock. And you know what? I’ve actually begun to believe that Father in me is my only reality.
The Greater Ministry
In the last session, I expressed my consternation between the needs of God’s people for the truth of Christ as us, simply expressed, as it conflicts with my need to reach for and to lay out for us all the reality of the revelation of Jesus Christ.
The first is every bit as important as the second. If my consternation made it seem that the joy and simplicity of sinking utterly into Jesus our Life carrying us all the way through is a “lesser ministry,” please forgive me. It is, in fact, the greater ministry. The ministry of the Kingdom of God is, actually, solely for the purpose of that greater ministry of Jesus living as you becoming the reality of all who belong to Him.
In Simple Terms
I am writing these five texts on Symmorphy so that we might see before our eyes the whole counsel of God, the truth of the gospel contained in the New Testament. Yet I have gone through an interesting exercise, recently. I am almost finished with my Christ Revealed Bible Institute text, Knowing God by Scripture. I am writing that book entirely to make clear in simple terms the truth of God regarding how we should approach the Bible. I am writing it to introduce incoming students to the simplicity of the two trees in the garden, two ways of knowing God. And I am astonished at how clear the truth is, at least to me. When I read the book now, I think, “Boy, this should knock their socks off. How could anyone argue against this?”
Write the Vision
Write the vision and make it plain on tablets, that he may run who reads it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time; but at the end it will speak, and it will not lie. Though it tarries, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry. …the just shall live by his faith (Habakkuk 2:2-4).
I am in good company. David cried, a lot. So did Jeremiah. Even Jesus wept. What a wondrous gift God has given to me, that I should write the vision and make it plain on tablets, so that you who read it can run in all the life and power of God.
But how could we write the truth and make it plain if we do not first know the truth? I have not known the truth. If I know it now, just a bit, it is only by speaking what God speaks as Christ personally in me.
Make It Plain
This is the first time I have looked at Habukkuk’s context since I started writing. At the end it will speak, and it will not lie. The truth, clear and simple. The just shall live by faith. You know, Calvinism, as it was expressed in the move fellowship of which I was once a part, turns even these words into an obligation of duty, always falling short of God.
Paul said that we gird our loins with truth. “Gird your loins” means be ready to run. – Make it plain. I thought momentarily that when I have completed all five Symmorphy texts, I will write shorter pieces, making the truth simple and plain, able, finally, to do such a thing. But I am able to begin doing it now.
My Present Weapon
Write the vision and make it plain is our first task in breaking the image of the serpent.
My text, Knowing God by Scripture, I first set at 120 pages, 12 chapters of 10 pages each. I gave myself license to increase the two practical-study chapters by a few pages, making it now 128 pages. As a text, this is about two fifths of a college course. I was able to write this text as clear as I think it is only by having written the larger Symmorphy texts up until now.
I will commit myself, then, to writing short booklets, along with the Symmorphy sessions, from 50-60 pages long on various topics, and directed towards Spirit-filled Christians who love Jesus, as my present WEAPON of POWER as we break this sick and tired false image that is NOT our Father.