22.3 The Singularity
© 2018 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
Singularity means “that moment in time, that one experience that changes everything.” And when we say, “changes everything,” we don’t mean substance, but rather appearance, the appearance and the seeing of everything.
The resurrection of Jesus changed everything in substance; our own resurrection is the final part of the present singularity that changes everything in appearance. But the resurrection of our bodies is, in fact, the first significant result of the present singularity, not its essence.
I stated that this singularity is three things, first, the narrowest point of the Way to life, second, the breaking of the image of the serpent, and third, that first moment when true substance becomes outward appearance.
What Is the Lie? From the first “Christ Our Life” letter until now, I have been obsessed, even compelled, to search out the true issue of the fall of creation from its initial vanity into corruption, so that we might know this singular moment when the New Creation flows forth from us. At the same time, in recent thinking, I have shared my realization that the underlying Bible phrase out from which I drew my list of the ten ruling verses of the Bible is “He that has seen ME has seen the Father.” But then my thinking demands to know what is the opposite, what are the “ten” opposing rules? What is the one underlying lie that births an entire universe of false thinking, especially inside of what is known as “Christianity.”
The Role of Weakness. I have read the Bible from beginning to end 24 times and the New Testament 47 times. I have read J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings 24 times and The Hobbit 25 times.
Now, it is the New Testament that fills my thinking and is my life’s love. But corresponding with that is the grief that has always filled my heart regarding the darkness that sits as a veil upon human life on this earth.
Tolkien was a devout Catholic, which means that in some ways he understood the essence of God better than most Protestants. And from Tolkien comes my understanding that it is neither wisdom nor strength that defeats the enemy, but rather weakness, the faithfulness of weakness, just putting one foot in front of the other.
“I Will Take the Ring.” I have wept over these words of Frodo, far more than 24 times. “I will take the ring (to the fire), though I do not know the way” from The Council of Elrond, The Fellowship of the Ring. I weep over these words because I want the darkness to end.
Here is Tolkien’s description of the binding slavery through which evil was attempting to cover the earth with a second darkness. “One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.” As I have tried to understand the opposing rules that bind the ten ruling verses of the Bible, I have come to realize that there is only one, the words of the serpent in the garden.
The One that Binds. Here is the one verse that rules over all the others and in the darkness binds them. Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?” – “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:1b & 4b-5).
There is one true truth across the span of Christianity out from which all the wheat of God’s field has grown – Christ lives in your hearts through faith. But everything else in Christian theology either comes out from the one rule of darkness or is ruled by that one rule; that is, all the tares grow out of only one lie.
The Invisible RULE. As I look at these words of the serpent, I see every element of the “Christian” answers to the questions, What is God? What is man? What is the relationship between God and man? (That is, what is Christ?) and what is the purpose and goal of that relationship? (That is, what is salvation?)
I am no longer searching for “ten” opposing verses, for I see, now, how this one “verse” directly opposes and effectively strikes down every one of the verses in my list. More than that, this one “verse” rules out from invisibility. No one sees it; no one stops to think, “What is it that rules my thinking as I read the Bible?” And the majority of my ruling verses are not even noticed because of this one dark RULE.
Blocking What God Says. What is the single most NOT noticed verse in the New Testament? I suspect that it is John 14:20, the only salvation of God.
Now, this whole topic must await the book I hope to write, which I have now entitled as “Let My People Go.” Nonetheless, inside of this text, I hope to devote one lesson to discovering the specific RULES of thinking that come out from the ten most important. And in that lesson, I want to show, very briefly, how the “one rule” blocks out what God says.
I first read The Lord of the Rings when I was twelve. I did not fully realize until later just how much Frodo’s words have been the underlying weeping of my heart from then on.
Today I Know. I will take the ring (to the fire), though I do not know the way.
In that day you shall know that I am in the Father and you in Me and I in you. Today I know. Today I know what is the ring of darkness ruling over all. Today I know what is the fire by which that one RULE is dissolved into the nothingness that it is. And today I know the Way.
If you have watched the LOTR movies or read the books, picture in your mind that one image, very pronounced in the movie, the climax moment of the book, when the one ring to bind them all dissolves into the nothingness that it is, consumed by fire. That picture transferred to our reality is “the singularity.”
The Moment of Transition. Before that one moment, the entire world is under darkness and the threat of slavery and death. After that one moment, the new world, the age of freedom, comes forth in every step and in every place. In Tolkien’s story and in ours, it’s not that all evil vanishes in a moment, though the rule of evil does. Rather, the new transforms the old, step by step, until all things are made new, not just in substance, but also in all appearance.
Although understanding how the “one verse” rules over all the others in Christian thinking is a critical part of our victory, still that remains a negative. It is the positive that concerns us most, that is, the Fire.
What Is the Fire? And what is that Fire? Indeed, our God is a consuming Fire: let brotherly love ABIDE, remain, continue [forever and ever] (Hebrews 12:29-13:1 – JSV).
It is the image of God that eliminates the false image. The image of God is love one another. The image of God is humans, yet in these present bodies of weakness, loving one another with a pure heart fervently.
Our goal is not “heaven,” our goal is love one another. Yet love one another has NEVER yet happened upon this earth, nor in your experience or mine.
God-Love. To “love” one another is to “God” one another. There is no love except it be Father Himself in Person as all our connections together. And there is no God-Love except that which is in full reciprocity between and among believers in Jesus in this present world.
There is no God-Love that is not the Church.
With what has the “one rule” of the serpent replaced God-Love among Christians and in the world? Love is replaced with suspicion, leading to manipulation coupled with accusation, leading to shame and fear, and ending in torment.
Here is a fact we must face. I have NEVER wanted to love you, and you have NEVER wanted to love me.
I Am Willing. Again, the brass tacks of reality – I have NEVER wanted to love you, and you have NEVER wanted to love me. Yet here is our dilemma – Our first grandson is due to be born in a few weeks. His name is Gabriel Schneider. Shall I allow for Gabriel to grow up in a world of accusation and torment?
I am willing to take the lie to the Fire, at whatever the cost might be to me. I am willing to love you; I am willing to be loved by you.
Thy people shall be willing in the Day of Thy power (Psalm 110). Willing to love one another, to love weak, vacillating, emotional, and irritating humans and to be loved by them in return.
The True Image. When I love you as you are and you love me as I am, in the press of day-to-day activities and interaction, we are the image and revelation of God, Father made known. And against that true image all the fury and power of evil screams and rages and is no more.
And so, for the sake of my grandson, (and all others) I commit myself utterly and without reservation. “Father, I commit myself to You. I am willing for You to love other believers in Jesus through me and I am willing to be loved by You through them. Father, I commit myself to life together with other believers in Jesus who also are committing their lives to the same, that we together might be Your true image in creation, that You might be seen and known through us Your Church.”
The Story of the Tares. I use Tolkien, not to promote the reading of fantasy but because the pictures of story make things so real to me. Let’s look at another story, one Jesus told.
The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. …He said, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said…, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’ But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them (Matthew 13:24-29 – condensed). Jesus defined the tares as false people inside His field, but I am convinced more than ever that it also includes Nicene theology.
The Definers of Words. Having become more familiar with the flow of New Testament Greek in working with the JSV, last night I picked up my “Little Kittel,” the definitive dictionary of Bible words that has been useful to me in the past, closer to truth than Vine’s. I was stunned and overwhelmed. The writers would trace the use of a word by the Greeks in the proper manner. Then, when they got to those same words as used in the New Testament, they stopped drawing meaning only from the context, and they imposed the meanings of Nicene theology upon the words. The ideas of the serpent rule their definitions. Over and over, the translators deliberately turn words and inflections away from the original and down the path of Genesis 3:5.
A Consistent Pattern. Now, understand this. My first turning in the direction of my present understanding happened over thirty years ago as I continued writing out every verse in the Bible on this word or that word. I insisted finding what any word might mean ONLY by the context clues scattered throughout the various verses that showed me what God means by what He says. And I discovered a consistent pattern. – God says something quite different from what they say He says. Yet I had only the King James Version, the worst offender of all in imposing the gospel of the serpent onto the words written by Paul and John.
How can what God says be so hidden? What spell of darkness, what veil, has been cast upon God’s people these last 1900 years?
Three Reasons to Twist. I see three larger things taking place in the deliberate twisting of the words in defining and translating. The first is insisting that every word regarding God is speaking of a God who “knows good and evil and who requires of everyone to ‘be like him,’ that is, to choose good and to refuse the evil.” Even love is turned away from a quality of Father and into an outward “moral” achievement. When they read the word “love,” Father does not come to their minds, only human performance.
The other two things are these. Whenever possible, they mask over the statements that Jesus IS now already returned, by turning the inflections to “someday.” And then they hide, as much as they are able, the innumerable times God says that He lives INSIDE OF us.
Hiding God in Us. Now, this was the real goal of Augustine. You see, the New Testament is filled with the truth that God dwells inside of humans now. BUT – every Tom, Dick, and Harry would read those words and then run around proclaiming themselves as “God in the flesh.” And many would use “God in me” in order to manipulate and abuse other people for their own religious exaltation.
That’s why God has chosen you and me, because we are just about the most incapable people in the Christian church.
And so Augustine wrote the rules defining Christian thinking and Bible interpretation specifically to hide Ephesians 3:19 and all the other times the New Testament says that God lives in us.
Heresy and Execution. It does astonish me that dear believers in Jesus can read the ten verses I have chosen as God’s ruling definitions and they cannot see the words; they cannot believe there is any importance in them. They cannot see the words because the definitions of the serpent RULE over their minds as theological darkness.
Yet this was the same in Jesus’ day. As I sat there last night realizing how awful the serpent’s definitions sitting on all Christian thinking really are, I could see clearly that all Christian groups from the second century on must excommunicate me as a dangerous heretic, and all who imprisoned and killed other Christians would place me first in the line of execution. – Just as they did with Jesus.
Only One Thing. Jesus knew that no one was capable of hearing Him, not even His disciples. He knew that only one thing could ever break the hold of the image of the serpent from the minds of all or any humans. And that would be through placing before their eyes the REAL image of God – a Man laying down His life for His friends.
Yet the spell of darkness has remained upon the Church and upon the world. The serpent’s definitions still RULE. The only thing that will break that darkness of “the one verse to rule them all” will be the final and complete image of God, many brethren, laying down their lives for one another, the full reciprocity of love.
Breaking News. Here is the moment that changes the universe; here is the real “breaking news.” “Breaking news tonight. The most phenomenal thing has just happened, something that has never been in all the history of the world. The singularity has occurred! We take you now live to the field. Can you tell us what you saw today?”
“Yes, it was simply unbelievable. I never imagined such a thing. Come with me, if you would and see the impossible. Here, do you see them? Do you see those Christians loving one another in spite of all their outward limitations? Now we know that God sent Jesus into the world. Indeed, today, we have seen God for the first time.”
The singularity, the one event that changes everything.
God Is Family. Love one another, full reciprocal love, God among us, happens only inside of Church. Where two or three of you are gathered together, there I am in the midst of you. There is no such thing as solitary love. There is no such thing as “Jesus and me, don’t need nobody else.” There is no solitary God. God is family, and God among us is our walking as family together.
And when I say, “the fulfillment of the First Day of the Feast of Tabernacles in the life of the Church,” I am saying exactly this God-love between you and me specifically and among many.
The Proof of Christ. And this reciprocal love, “LOVE ONE ANOTHER in exactly the same way that I have loved you” has never happened in creation before now. If it were not to happen in this age and upon this earth, then the serpent would be the one speaking the truth and not Jesus.
Certainly, some have loved others with God-Love; that is God and good, of course, but it is not reciprocal love. Loving others is not the proof of Christ. The proof of Christ, the answer that eliminates the lie of the serpent, is loving one another.
The proof of Christ, faithful and true, is Christ Community.