50. In the Crucible of the Word

August 2017 - August 2018

I thought it would be easier to write about recent times because of the joy in which I live every day. It is not easier; it is harder. All the relationships of my past that were painful to me are no longer in continuance. It takes great faith that God is real to place them into the light and to place the Lord Jesus upon me in that moment and upon that brother or sister in my memories.

But now I bring in relationships that are ongoing. And some of those ongoing relationships contain difficulties that are unresolved. Part of why they are unresolved is the individuals involved are not fully honest with me or towards themselves. Another part of the reason is that I am limited in knowing how to relate long-distance with those who are offensive or who lack respect. Finally, my whole life is caught in God’s intentions, and I find that He is bringing forth His completion in me as a direct response to some of these difficulties.

I had thought not to include certain things. What I find now, however, is that God is bringing a massive change into my life as of April of 2022. That change includes a transformation of how I now understand my life and the calling of God upon me. To be faithful to future readers, I must include those circumstances that contributed to this transformation.

This August of 2017, I wrote the chapter “Symmorphic” in Symmorphy IV: Covenant.  I included a discussion of the crossing of the Jordan and I understood the meaning of the priests standing at the bottom of the Jordan with the Ark of the Covenant on their shoulders, standing there until every single Israelite had crossed through the paths of death and entered into the promised land of Christ.

I also learned that my last name, Yordy, is the Hebrew “Yarden,” that is, the Jordan River. This has no outward meaning, but it did seal in me that God’s heart inside of mine has always been to stand for the sake of all until each little one who believes in Jesus has entered into the life of knowing God.

Harvey & Points North
On August 24, Hurricane Harvey moved over Houston and decided to stay. When the outer rain bands of the hurricane started flowing over Houston, my family was scattered across the city. My wife was in Kingwood caring for the elderly lady she worked for, Melba Turner, through the duration of the floods, having driven there this time in the Suburban. My daughter was on the far southwest side of the city, and my son, Kyle, and I were at home. Soon after the rains started, no one could go anywhere.

Our house was on a slight ridge, so I was not concerned about water inside, that is, not right away. Monday night was the heaviest. Our street was 18" deep in water, but the water was still about 16" below our front door. From Sunday on, we heard helicopters constantly, rescuing people from nearby neighborhoods slightly lower than ours. We also lost power on Sunday and water soon after. We had plenty of provisions, however. On Monday evening, most everyone on our street had stayed. That was the right decision, because the water did not go higher through the night. By Tuesday evening our street was empty of water, even though it was still raining.

Maureen and Mrs. Turner had a different experience. They woke early Tuesday morning with a few inches of water inside the house and rising fast. They were soon rescued by a boat, carrying them to safety. They were able to go to a nice home a couple of miles away, high and dry. Everyone was helping everyone.

On Wednesday, Katrina was able to make it to Lakewood church where she helped with processing all the things people were donating for those in need and to help with those who had found shelter there. I was able to take a long route around in order to take a new change of clothes to my wife. When I arrived in Kingwood, I found that our next task was to drive Mrs. Turner up to Dallas to her daughter's place. Maureen and I drove the long way around back home, packed our stuff for the trip, returned to Kingwood to pick up Mrs. Turner, and went on up to Dallas that evening.

I stayed in Dallas until Friday morning, having heard that our electric power had come back on Thursday evening. On my way home I went by the house in Kingwood to check on our Suburban and to get my wife's things. The entire neighborhood had been flooded, three feet inside the homes. The Suburban was ruined; the insurance company totaled it, a second time. I was able to retrieve most of Maureen's things, but the loss inside the home was almost total. Most everything accumulated over many years was now yucky trash, from the up-flow that had come through the toilets.

Maureen remained a number of days in Dallas to help Mrs. Turner settle into a nursing home before returning. That meant that she had no more work and we had no more income at this point. The park where Katrina worked was entirely inundated including the main building. Her work would now include restoring the park once again. Kyle’s new teaching job was postponed for a few days.

James had wanted to come down for a week or so before he returned to his senior year at the Upsala school. He flew down soon after Harvey. Because Maureen had no more work obligation, we drove James back up to Canada, leaving on September 11^th.

Johanna and Matthew were now living in the manufactured home on their own space part way between the South Farm and the North Farm. We spent a few days with them. Johanna had filled her flower beds with all sorts of herbs and flowers. Things grow fast and big in the short and wet summers of the North.

We were there over the weekend of the 17th, and so for the Sunday service in the community. While we were there, I wrote the chapter “Believers Together as Incense” in Symmorphy IV: Covenant. This was an incredible chapter, and, in fact, a life-changing experience. I was still feeling, however, that sense of “move condemnation” coming against me in the heavens all around through our time there.

We spent an evening with Steve and Cindy Schneider in their home, where James was staying again through his second year at Upsala. After supper, we gathered in their living room and sang praises. Steve is a praise leader. It was a beautiful anointing, but then we sang a song that had once been life to me but now ripped me all to pieces.

I shared this song in the chapter “The Image of God,” calling it a song of rebellion. It was the song “Let me enter in.” How can one sing for forty years, “Let me enter in” and for forty years refuse to do such a thing, ever, even with the Way wide and freely open? For actually living inside the Holiest was considered in that fellowship to be deception.

I had thought that I might share in the Sunday service, but then I learned that a traveling ministry, one of whom I had never heard, which is strange, would be ministering that Sunday. I really did not want to attend and shared with Matthew and Johanna that we might take a drive Sunday morning. To be honest with you, I was fully fed up with “movism.”

Matthew, however, would not hear of it. He sat me down and proceeded to “correct” me in the way I had once known in move culture, that, if I did not go, I would be “missing” God; that is, perform outwardly to prove you’re “in the Spirit.” I meekly submitted and agreed to go. That Sunday morning, however, I wrote the following in the Christ Our Life letter, which went out early that morning.

~ I am finding myself in a very difficult place today, not at all outwardly, but entirely inwardly. I am caught in the intense travail of God for His church. I would ask, especially those of you who open this email early on today, that you would place yourself before the Almighty upon the mercy seat of your heart and extend, together with your Father, a bubble of our Holy Spirit for me to walk in as I have never known. And more than that, that the aroma of the gentle blessing of Christ would go forth from me to all in spite of all my personal inhibitions. ~

It turned out that the brother, again, someone I had never known, shared a really good word, on entering the Holiest, actually. He was almost there, almost taking the fellowship through the Veil, but not quite, and thus, not at all.

Maureen and I spent a couple of days with Glenn and Kim on our way back and then drove across to Atwood, Kansas for another visit with Bill Horton, picking up a whole string of new counties on the way.

We spent two nights, again, in the bedroom that Mrs. Horton usually used, while she and Bill went down to stay in their former home that had not yet sold. We had a wonderful time fellowshipping together. Maureen and Mrs. Horton got on really well. Maureen just naturally brings peace into people’s lives.

While I was visiting with Bill, I became very direct with him. “Bill,” I said, looking him straight in the face. “When I was here last, I asked you about your commitment to join with me in Christian community whenever the opportunity arises. Is that true? Is that your continued commitment?”

Bill answered me, “Yes, Daniel, it is.”

I said, “Good. I don’t want to just assume.”

For me, and in my life experience in the move, such a word given was certain and true.

On our way back to Houston, Maureen and I learned that Katrina and Kyle had taken in a couple as refugees from the Harvey flooding. This was Jazz and Clarissa. Clarissa had been a good friend with Katrina during their high school years. They had been living with Clarissa’s mom in a single-wide trailer not far from our home. The trailer had been destroyed by the floodwaters and they were now on their own. Neither of them worked, nor did they really have the ability to hold down a job.

We gave Jazz and Clarissa our spare bedroom and they stayed with us for a year. Kyle helped Jazz get his drivers license and we slowly prepared him to get and keep a job. At the end of a year, they were able to maintain their own living, and so they moved on. Jazz and Clarissa were always very polite and careful not to intrude. At no point were we troubled by their time with us. Clarissa did attend Lakewood with us and then with Katrina a few times, but Jazz expressed no interest in the Lord. I pray that their time with us will bear fruit in the end.

Give Me a Place to Stand
As I was writing the three chapters in Covenant “Believers Together as…,” the thought came to me that I could use one of my favorite books, Patterns of Home: The Ten Essentials of Enduring Design by Max Jacobson, Murray Silverstein, and Barbara Winslow (2005) as a means of understanding and talking about Christian Community. This was in September, just before we took James back up to Upsala. The joy of this comparison between the patterns of home and Christ Community began to shape how I would write Symmorphy V: Life, the most important book to me of my writing career.

Through this fall I completed the chapters of Symmorphy IV: Covenant and prepared Symmorphy III: Kingdom for printing. Covenant was almost finished and Kingdom published by the end of November. I was now ready to start Symmorphy V: Life, the first chapter of which went out on December 3^rd.

One thing of note was a letter I sent out on November 12 titled “Give Me a Place to Stand.” I used Archimedes’ statement concerning a lever, “Give me a place to stand, and I can move the world.” I must explain my purpose at that time in order to set the stage for the great transformation coming to me in the final chapter of this text, “All That I Am.”

I know that the word I share comes from God and the Bible, and that it is the true word of the revelation of Jesus Christ in these final years of this age. Having nearly completed this account, I know the calling of God upon me. Yet I am read by only a handful of people, no  more than 40 to 50 at any one time and only a couple of dozen have been engaged with this word I share over several years. How can what I share be of God when only a very few people are receiving it? This contention has been a big deal to me.

My limitation, of course, is Asperger’s. Yet my life experience has shown me that when I have walked with another person who was anointed in the things I lack, that I also could function in the full expression of my abilities. For that reason, I sought for those others whom God would join with me to do what I cannot do. This is God’s way, that we would need one another.

I had embraced Solomon’s metaphor from the first letter I sent out, “Cast your bread upon the waters and it will return to you.” And so I wrote in the long-held expectation that the word I share would bring a real community life back to me, a community of people walking together in this wondrous word of Christ our life.

The events of this summer of 2017 had worked together in my thinking into a hope that wasn’t from the Lord. I had always liked the Meadowlands area and have looked to the Lord for any indication that we should move there, though none has ever come. I had talked with Mark Alesch about renting a place from them. I imagined that I could live there with James, that Bill and his mother could come and join us, and that we could prepare a place for Maureen to move up as soon as possible.

I really wanted to do this, but I also felt a witness from God against it. By the time I wrote “Give Me a Place to Stand,” I had finally given in and accepted that my fantasy was not what God was doing. Yet in this letter, I was searching, somehow, for that context out from which the Word I carry could flow out to many inside the anointing of God.

Here is a bit of what I shared, trimmed and shortened.

Writing Symmorphy IV: Covenant has changed something in me, or rather, God has changed something in me as I wrote Covenant. I began this last journey in a sense of knowing the sending of God upon me in a way that I had not known up until now. And finishing this journey through Covenant has given me what I did not possess until now. Confidence.

You see, as an Asperger’s man, I deplore all fakery and pretending. To consider myself as having been “sent by God” with a word to His Church has never been inside my presentation. I am not given to religious excitement, though I know Spirit deeply. I walked away in tears and loss from everything I had devoted my life to in its entirety because I could not pretend to be something I am not. I require REAL.

Let me explain myself. I have inside of me a word given to me by God planted all through the pathways of my heart through many years and inside of deep travail. This word is not for me, but for God’s precious people. And as I have completed Symmorphy IV: Covenant, God has given me four specific things.

[Those four are (1) a deeper knowing of the Covenant binding God and me together, (2) a new vision of the completed Church as Community (3) readers who are becoming convinced of Church as Community, and (4) ANGER – that we have been robbed of God’s meaning of Salvation – Christ Community.]

I then set out a variety of possibilities for how a Christian Community could begin for us, a place that would include Christ Revealed Bible Institute, a school focusing on the study of Symmorphy. I believed that the provision of such a place would give me the “lever” that would enable the word I share to reach many.

I asked my readers to ask God how they could be part of such a beginning of Christ Community.

As I was finishing this letter, and before I sent it out on November 12, I heard God speak to me. ~ “You provide for them.” ~ Well, this was just like God telling me, ~ “Give My people hope.” ~ First, I had nothing to give, other than the Word I share. “Provide” meant, to me, the same as “And they shall nourish her there,” that is, all provision needed, physical and spiritual, in the time of great need. But this was also the second time, now, that God has told me to do something, something I have no ability in myself to do.

This was the last time God spoke in this way to me, as of now. Yet I have pondered God’s meaning for ~ “You provide for them,” ~ and wait upon Him for its fulfillment.

Working on CRBI
In November of 2017 I completed the introductory course for Christ Revealed Bible Institute, “Living in Union with Christ.” I chose three texts for the student to study – The Rest of the Gospel by Dan Stone, Hearts of Flesh by Fred Pruitt, and The Hyper-Grace Gospel by Paul Ellis.  Dan Stone presented the best introduction to union with Christ in the first half of his book, but when he covered practical living in the second half, he knew nothing of Christ living as us. I used only the first half and then took the student on into Fred Pruitt for the practical living aspects of union with Christ, followed by critical questions and arguments concerning Paul’s “excessive” grace with Paul Ellis.

I encountered an even greater problem when I attempted to use Fred Pruitt’s book, Hearts of Flesh. Fred’s approach to writing was similar to mine, that is, to compile a series of letters into a book with only a loose connection between chapters. Scattered through this book were wonderful letters on various aspects of Christ living as us. In between them, however, were letters in which Fred attempted to fit union with Christ together with the Nicene “God.” This included giving place for eternal damnation as well as a fulfillment in “heaven-only” of the big verses of the New Testament. In essence, half of his book was what I wanted and the other half would confuse the student with things I would eliminate in the Symmorphy courses.

In April I had written to Fred, asking him for permission to create a PDF document of just those letters from Hearts of Flesh that were useful to the students in the course. He cheerfully gave me his permission, and so I was able to include the good things he teaches. Nonetheless, this experience showed me the great need to separate the two gospels completely with an understanding for which I was still reaching.

In January and February of 2018 I finalized the Hermeneutics course for CRBI. The three texts for that course were – Knowing Scripture by RC Sproul, my own Knowing God by Scripture and then my The Ten Most Important verses of the Bible. I continued into the third course, Journey to Know the Lord, but did not complete it.

A Trip to New York
Another brother by the name of Pete Douglas, from the New York City area, had also sent me a few emails over the prior couple of years. Pete Douglas and Bill Horton had been long-distance friends for a few years now, though they had never met face to face. I learned from Bill that they conversed regularly on the phone, reading my letters or listening together to the audios. This was quite astonishing to me. They had been introduced to my writing by another brother in the ultimate reconciliation circles who had signed up for my letter through Gary Sigler’s Kingdom Resources page early on.

I had communicated with Pete about coming to New York to spend a few days fellowshipping together in his home. Pete bought my plane tickets, and I flew to New York City on Tuesday, November 28 with a return set for Friday, December 1. I was already writing the first chapters of Symmorphy V: Life, and so this trip added things into that text.

Before I left for New York, however, I wrote part of “Gethsemane,” my last chapter in Covenant. In Lesson 28.3 “I in You,” I wrote of signing our fifth signature upon the Covenant, that is, our willingness to be as Jesus towards His Church. I wrote this, ““Yes, Lord. I will be as You towards our Church, towards all who call upon You in some way. I love our people; I lay down my life for them. I go to Church.” When I read this into audio, I knew another level of being sealed into God. I did not know that I was about to enter another nine months of travail in the crucible of the Word.

Sadly, I came down with a bad cold before my flight, but I wanted to go and the tickets were bought, so I went anyhow. I had not been to this part of the country before and so my eyes were glued to the window as we flew past the coast of New Jersey and into John F. Kennedy airport. This was my first sight of New York City from above, and to me it was a vast sprawling mess. You get the impression from movies that Manhattan is its own place, but in reality, it’s just one tall “hill” of buildings surrounded by many other similar “hills” of buildings in every direction.

Pete picked me up at the airport, in fact, that was his job, driving people to and from that airport. Pete is a gentle soft-spoken man, around my older brother and sister’s age. In fact, he shared with me that he had attended Woodstock in his youth, though only briefly. I had been in grade school at the time. Pete’s wife was on a trip to Florida at the time, and so we had the house to ourselves.

Pete and his wife live in a nice two-story split-level house on the down slope to Glen Cove on the north shore of Long Island, just beyond New York City proper. From Tuesday evening to Friday morning we shared the deepest fellowship together inside the present Word.

Pete shared with me his and Bill’s story. A couple of years earlier, having been introduced to my writing through a mutual friend, Bill had started calling Pete to visit on the phone. Bill is not a reader, but Pete is, and so Bill had wanted Pete to read the chapters of my book, The Feast of Tabernacles, over the phone. Pete was suspicious of me and what I wrote, but finally agreed, thinking that it would be good to see how I was wrong. Instead, it went the other direction as they read, and Pete has been a faithful reader and supporter from then until now.

This visit with Pete was so important to me and I value it very much. On Thursday, he drove me around, “collecting counties.” We drove up through the Bronx and even into Connecticut just a bit, then back across Westchester county to the Hudson and thus down into Manhattan. We came down the upper west side and then along Central Park. I loved recognizing the Plaza from “Eloise” and the tall building where Stuart Little was carried by the hawk. (I always enjoyed the shows we watched with our children.) We went on down into southern Manhattan and drove a ways down Wall Street. Here the skyscrapers were so close together that we were in what seemed a dark and narrow canyon. We also drove east from Pete’s home just a bit, and thus I got all the counties of Long Island. The roads all the way around are winding and convoluted. I must confess that I like Houston and not New York City.

I continued with the bad cold the whole time I was there. Sadly, I learned later that Pete also came down with the same thing after I had left. My trip back home on Friday was the most difficult one I have made. I needed to cough, but dared not, and the pain in my ears through the long descent into Houston was overwhelming. But by the grace of God, I made it home, the difficulty passed, and only the memory of the goodness of God in my time with Pete remains.

The Word Becomes Fire
The nine months from December 2017 through August 2018 are a most critical period of my life. Yet it is only now that what had been “random events” for me have coalesced into my present knowing of God’s purpose in my life, His sending of me. My mission from God and inside my own desperate need is to separate fully the tree of life from the tree of knowing good and evil all through the Bible and all through Church history and Christian thinking, to set forth the gospel according to the serpent as distinct from the gospel according to Paul and confirmed by John, with no mixture between them.

This was the calling I had embraced when I was 21 years old, to have that pure Word from God for God’s people in their hour of greatest need. Yet there is also a second purpose that must come out from this first, and that is to call the Bride into her place as the revelation of Jesus Christ. This second purpose will come in its time.

Every meaningful event inside of these nine months is of great importance, including the sequence of events. For this reason, I want to lay out as carefully as I can this travail again through which God took me, with His WORD burning as fire inside my bones.

In my visit with Pete in New York, I read Preston Eby’s recent writing about the harlot of Revelation 17 and 18. Eby was seeing the prostitute church, all those fleshy Christians out there with all their religious nonsense, through the same eyes by which Adam looked upon a wanton and filthy Eve. And then Eby reached for the exact same arrogant Christ as his answer to her that Adam reached for in the garden – contempt and control. I do not mean to speak against Preston Eby, for his overall teaching is of great importance; I speak rather of the inability of all Christian ministries to see Christ in His Church.

Then, likely this December, I received a letter from Joe McCord, a leading ministry in the move and one who had always had an encouraging and positive impact on my life. More than once Jessica, Maureen’s sister, had informed me that Brother Joe had quoted from one of my books in the service and had shared his word out from what I had written. I had sent him a few of my books, including Symmorphy I:Purpose in response to that initial encouragement.

Brother Joe was very encouraging in his letter to me. Of all the ministries in the move, I think that he had retained the deepest hope in the word Sam Fife had first preached, the Life part of Sam Fife’s teaching. His words indicated to me that he was seeing that same hope of LIFE in the things I was writing. He also warned that there would likely be some opposition from other ministries in the move. This letter from Brother Joe was as a quiet seal upon my heart and upon that commitment I had made to God concerning His Church when I was 21 and the same commitment again, as I completed Symmorphy IV: Covenant.

Let’s Start Again
As I shared, I was writing the first several chapters of Symmorphy V: Life through this time, December and January. This text, a manual for Christian Community, is the most important book to me that I have written. I had waited long for the right context to set forth my love for Christian Community and the vision of Church Life God had made me to know. Drawing from all my experience in Christian Community, all the good and all the not-good, drawing from all my pondering over many years, and weaving it together inside the present word of union with Christ, this was just so important to me and I wanted, with all my heart, to get it right.

More than that, while I was writing Symmorphy IV: Covenant, the realization had come to me that I could use one of my favorite books, Patterns of Home, as the organizational pattern for this text on Christian Community, and that the ten “patterns of home” presented in that book would correspond directly with the ten ruling verses of the Bible.

You can understand, then, the overwhelming distress growing in me through these months to January 21, 2018, when I sent out Chapter 7 “Protecting the Heart.” I was in distress because I was NOT getting it right. The deep cry of my heart for this text to represent my LIFE was not happening. Let me explain why.

Ed Carter continued to call me to visit together around once a week. Normally, this fellowship was greatly encouraging to me. Ed was very talkative, and, though he received what I shared, he was also willing to insert his own views into the conversation.

The difficulty began in November when I shared with him what God had spoken to me, ~ “You provide for them. ~ Ed’s response was, “That’s not union with Christ.” That made no sense to me, but I do not respond to such criticism, and so it passed. However, when I began sending out the chapters on Christian Community, the opposition continued and grew. As time went on, I talked less and less and Ed talked more and more. In my frustration, I did what I always do when I cannot express myself in conversation, I wrote my answers inside the flow of the next chapter I was writing. For this reason, Chapters 2-7 of Symmorphy V: Life were only half what was from my heart and the other half was argument in response to Ed’s opposition to the whole concept of community.

Then, sometime in the third week of January, his conversation became controlling and even accusatory, that I was “losing readers” because of my, apparently, false teaching. I did not respond, but that was it for me. When I give answer to God, shall I say that I did not share what He had put in my heart? I cannot give such an answer, and so I cannot allow such control seeking to turn what I share back into darkness.

The result was that on January 28, I sent out a fiery letter of great strength and vulnerability titled “Why I Write Life Together.” Yes, people were unsubscribing, but they belong to Jesus, not me, and He is very good at His job.

Here is some of what I wrote, condensed.

Why do I write? I do not write for you. I do not write for God. I write for me.

I have carried a knowing inside of me, in the depths of my heart, a knowing that I sensed on occasion through my childhood years, a knowing that became a regular part of my life from the age of 21 on. I did not know what that knowing was, nor could I possibly believe it meant something. Yet it was a constant experience that those things that arose in my own mind and heart, out from that knowing, were also the next things preached on by the apostolic ministry in the fellowship of which I was a part. This ongoing experience over many years only increased my agony, because I could not believe in myself and I had no ability to share out from that knowing.

For all those years, until I started writing these Christ Our Life letters, that knowing, though insistent, was voiceless.

I write for one reason only. I write to articulate, to somehow “give voice to what’s in my heart.” And I continue writing because the expression of that once voiceless knowing is not finished. I must know, I am driven to know, the knowing that has travailed in me in unheard cries of agony over so many years, the agony of travail for something that is NOT.

The reason, then, why I send out what I write, making it as available as I can, is the so-far unrequited hope that this great need inside of me, this overwhelming cry, would be fulfilled in my being part of a family of people walking together, loving one another with a pure heart fervently, knowing the same knowing I know and must know, Christ among us in all our interaction together.

As I said, there are three levels of my response to any rejection of my feeble attempts to articulate what I must, to put this knowing that agonizes inside of me out there where I can see it. The outer response is normal, the desire to “prove myself right and them wrong.” But since such a response is only part of a larger disconnect of confusion inside, and since I am so accustomed to losing, and since there are deeper reasons underneath, I rarely, if ever, act on those feelings.

I sure wanted to do that recently [referring to the difficult phone conversation with Ed Carter], but then I listened to recent lessons and heard myself teaching myself to lay my life down, to see Christ alone, to bless and not curse. I want the blessing of Jesus through me far more than I want to be right.

But you see, neither one of those two responses is the bottom line for me, the deepest response, the rule of all my going forward. Here is that bottom line, my base response towards any disagreement with my attempts to articulate this burning knowing, a cry for something that does not yet exist, a knowing I must express or die.

I DON’T CARE!

I do NOT write for you. I do NOT write for God. (Such a thing is nothing but religious pretension, manipulating others to exalt self.) I write for me.

Now, I have come to terms with my complete failure to please God or to do what He says, and I rest inside of Jesus inside of such staggering inability. And I have come to terms with my complete failure in the church and in the world, my inability, even to provide for my family, no matter how humiliating such failure continues to be.

But if I were to fail to articulate this agony of knowing inside my heart, then I would be a true failure. I will have failed myself. Such a thought never enters my mind.

And the center of that knowing, its periphery, its beginning and its end, is that Christ life IS life together. And the birthing of life together has been my only purpose from the first letter I sent out.
[I then give the setting for this word I required of God when I was 22.] I WILL KNOW You, on this earth and in this life – AND – I WIILL KNOW a people who KNOW You.

That people is my Jerusalem.

And I will call her forth into her place, and no one will prevent me. And I will build that wall of protection inside of which she, the entire Church of Christ across this earth, can dwell, and no one will draw me away in order to discuss what is “the truth.”

Yet Symmorphy V: Life is the most important articulation for me of that knowing I must KNOW. And thus I apologize – to myself – for allowing “truth, truth, whose got the truth” to confuse me. Yet all things are Father and me sharing together as one. And thus I see Father, and I see me, and I see that my present approach to Symmorphy V: Life does not satisfy us.

When I complete Symmorphy V: Life, I must have, before my eyes, a complete and full articulation of that agony of KNOWING that I must express. Such a MUST is greater to me than life or breath. For that reason, I cannot blunder forward, hoping things will come together. Neither can I leave anything remaining that showed up out of distraction.

In short, I am writing this present series to those who are ready, right now, to join with me in a tangible and intentional Community of Christ on a shared property, ready as the spontaneous arising of Christ as them causes the outward reality to appear. And thus I am writing the specifics of life together to those who are committed to such a way of living.

I took no more calls from Ed. I am open to any correction of me, but I am closed to any attempt to control that word that flows out from a life lived inside the fear of God. I know my refusal to answer his calls made Ed angry. He did continue to read my letters for a few more months and later asked me a couple of technical questions in an email. I replied with kindness, hoping that he would ask forgiveness for his disrespect. Sadly to me, he eventually unsubscribed, "Please forgive me, I was wrong,” seemed to be outside of his present choices.

“Lord Jesus, I bless Ed with all joy. I know that You carry him all the way through the darkness and into life. And I know that Your love towards me is shed abroad in Ed’s heart. I am humbled by his love for me.”

I still wanted Symmorphy V: Life to be everything I must have it to be, and so I started again, rewriting Chapters 2-7. I kept about half, weaving it together with the present flow of the Spirit. Indeed, I think that Chapters 2-5 of that text are among the most anointed and wondrous things I have ever written.

Now, as I wrote this text, using the ten patterns of home to illustrate how the ten ruling verses would shape Christian Community as I envision it must be, I had not really looked closely at the definitions of each pattern to see if that pattern would actually fit with its corresponding ruling verse, I just assumed, by the sense of the Spirit in me, that it would.

You can imagine, then, just how astonished I was, every single time, at how the specific details of each pattern of home opened to us each next ruling verse and placed that verse into life together as the Church. It was as if I was seeing these verses for real for the first time. In the end, Symmorphy V: Life became everything I had hoped it would be, to full measure. I am so grateful to God that He enabled me to express the deepest meanings of my heart and life.

Bill Horton had called me occasionally prior to this difficult experience with Ed. I could also visit easily with Bill over the phone, something that is not typical for me. Without any knowledge of my circumstances, soon after my disconnection from Ed, Bill began to call me to fellowship together even more frequently, up to a couple of times a week. These times of fellowshipping with Bill were important to me and gave me much strength and encouragement.

Jesus and Asperger’s
Maureen had obtained  work caring for another lady by the name of Carol Hammack soon after we returned after Harvey. She also had similar shorter-term clients for awhile. Because Maureen is compassionate and of utmost trustworthiness, she is in high demand. This next care job was much easier for Maureen than some before. This lady was mildly forgetful, but could take care of her own needs if she was pointed in the right direction. Maureen has worked for Carol from then until now.

During the spring of 2018 I continued to drive with Uber. I had not driven for a few months in the fall, but started again around the turn of the year. I mostly enjoyed driving people around and had a number of good experiences. I want to share two experiences that were a bit difficult. I had dropped a lady off in downtown Houston, but had forgotten to sign off on the app, thus adding a mile or so more to her trip. I was flustered from this mistake when I picked up the next person, also in downtown Houston such that when I dropped her off, I almost drove off with her luggage still in my trunk. By this time I was so overwhelmed with my mistakes that, as I drove to the Heights to pick up the next rider, I could not bear the thought of more mistakes.

In my overwhelming autistic distress, I placed the Lord Jesus as sharing all with me. That helped, but not really. Then I heard the Lord speaking to me, not as a voice, but in the knowing of my mind, “Daniel, please forgive Me for the mistake I allowed us to endure.”

“Oh, yes, Lord,” I said, “I forgive You with all joy.” Immediately all the agony was gone and I continued in the joy of the Lord.

The final straw for me, however, was a young Muslim lady whom I drove to the Bush airport. She was late and dared not miss her flight to the Middle East. But then I missed the gate to which she was going and had to drive all the way around, putting her in jeopardy of missing her flight. I went into the right place the second time and quickly came to a stop, dropping her off in heavy traffic. She rushed into the building and I drove on down, only to discover that her airline was at the far end. I could have driven her there if I had known, but now she would have had to run a long ways down with her luggage. I don’t know, but she most likely missed her flight.

Making such a mistake that hurt someone else was just too much for me, and it was my last day driving Uber.

During these months, I wondered if I could obtain a disability income from Social Security due to my inability to maintain a full-time job. I did not research it as much as I should have, for I found out later that if I receive any donations, then, no, I am not eligible, end of story.

Not knowing that, however, I made an appointment with Dr. Katherine Loveland, professor of Autism Research at the University of Houston. During my time with her, which cost three hundred dollars, she agreed that I was likely Asperger’s. I explained that I needed a clinical diagnosis of Asperger’s in order to apply to Social Security for disability. She signed me up for a complete evaluation that would cost another $1300 and assured me that she would fill out the forms I needed.

Maureen accompanied me to this evaluation because she also would fill out some questionnaires. I sat with Dr. Loveland and her graduate student assistant as they asked me a series of questions. I was asked what things made me angry. “Being lied to” was my reply. I shared about being scammed and how distressing that was. Then I filled out some long forms. I was alarmed because none of this was scientific or clinical. Over and over, in print and from them, I was asked if I ever thought about committing suicide, to which I replied always in the negative.

When it was finished, I asked the assistant if Dr. Loveland could sign the disability form I had brought with me. The reply came back that, no, this was not an actual clinical evaluation and Dr. Loveland was not qualified to sign such a form.

The truth is – I was scammed again, and we had another $1600 debt to pay off. Later I received their full report in the mail. It was nothing more than a repeat back to me of everything I had said and of my every response on the forms. Reading all that conveyed a definition of myself as dark and mentally unstable. If I did not walk in the joy of the Lord, I might well have considered “suicide” after I finished reading this “account” of myself.

From then until now I say this. Only those who are Asperger’s can write about Asperger’s, those who claim knowledge otherwise are just making it up, even contrary to any scientific approach. It’s called a scam. And indeed all stories told in this world that do not include the Lord Jesus from beginning to end are also a scam.

 But it was a far greater scam, dark and wicked, that made this spring, and April in particular, a time of ANGER.

A Time of Anger
On April 1, Maureen and Katrina planned to go to the Lakewood service. I decided to accompany them. This would be my final time there, and in fact, we sat near where we had sat our first time, up on the south side, looking down.

This Sunday, it was John Gray who would preach. The praise was wonderful, as usual. Then John Gray got up and had us turn to 1 John 4 where he read, “As He is, so are we in this world.” My initial thought was, “Great, he’s going to bring union with Christ into the picture.”

What actually happened, however, was that the next twenty-five minutes were the most painful of my life. I tried to hide in disassociation, but I could not. All I could do was bear the intense agony without moving.

John Gray did not preach union with Christ. Rather, he began with the serpent’s first words, the absolute assumption that what God says CANNOT be true, unless we make it true by “getting it right.” Thousands of good Christian people, all who knew the Lord in the power of the Spirit, were with John Gray in their minds. And well they should have been. He was anointed of God, and I have personally received good words spoken to me by my Father through his preaching. He was “clothed in white,” so to speak, yet a serpent was in his mouth that morning.

He began by saying (in so many words), “You SHOULD BE like Jesus – BUT – you, so clearly, are not.”

Then, after establishing that God lies, he alternated between three concepts. The first was the image of the super-Christ, a “Jesus” of miracles and outward virtue, far above these fleshy Christians. The second was a condemnation of these thousands of fleshy Christians before him for not measuring up to such an “image of God.” And the third was a mighty exhortation that, if they “loved Jesus,” they would now pretend with all their might to be like that fake image.

I spent that time in complete horror; I could not escape. I felt as if I was reliving the garden scene all over again. I saw the face of the congregation, thousands of wonderful Christian people, as the face of Eve, imagining that these false words were the very words of God.

Needless to say, God used this experience in my life to penetrate deep into my NEED to set forth a massive distinction, from the Bible, between a gospel of death and a gospel of life.

And so, in order to really KNOW, for myself, what God actually says in His Bible, I had begun my own whack at translating the New Testament, probably in February, which I have called The Jesus Secret Version. My primary resource for this task was www.biblehub.com, which based its layout on Strong’s Concordance which, it turns out, is reasonably reliable.

I did Galatians first and Ephesians second, for the redo of “Creating Rooms,” and sent the rough draft of Ephesians to my readers on March 17. Then, in order to tackle a full understanding of Hebrews 10:19-22, a very difficult verse in its wording, I did the rough draft translation of the second half of Hebrews through the month of April, which I sent to my readers on May 5.

It was in translating the second half of Hebrews that I became very angry, and my anger is right and just, for we have been lied to in the very words of the gospel we thought was trustworthy. The Calvinist translators deliberately altered the wording of this part of Hebrews in order to force God into Calvinist theology, more than any other portion of Scripture, though they have done this same wicked practice here and there throughout much of the New Testament, primarily to hide from the reader a Jesus here and now, driving Jesus and salvation far away into the delusions of “someday.” This is not what the Bible says.

I explain my argument more fully in the introduction to The Jesus Secret II, rather than continue here, and will do so even more when I write the introduction to the Jesus Secret version. I did not complete Symmorphy V: Life until August of 2018, but this realization concerning Scripture, in it’s “white heat,” brought a huge change in my need to know God and His gospel.

Katrina and James’s Graduations
Katrina graduated from college with a two-year degree in May of 2018. At this point she was working full time at the Jesse Jones Park, continuing to be involved with Texas historical re-enactments.

James was graduating from high school that June, and so we all planned another trip up to Upsala. Everyone else flew, and again I drove, this time having borrowed Kyle’s newly bought small Nissan SUV. I would be bringing James and all his stuff back home.

I drove straight up to Upsala this time. Everyone else was there when I arrived, including Claude and Lois, as well as Matthew, Jessica, and Breanna Sanchez.

James had again gone through a rough patch in his return to the Upsala school, but he had worked through that with Brother Steve and the Lord had revealed Himself to James in the services. James experienced a change of heart and the remainder of his senior year had gone much better. James is a doer, and not an academic, so he was glad to be out of this time period of his life.

James graduated on June 9, a Saturday, in the same community hall where Johanna had graduated. It was a good celebration. James gained much from this experience including a lot of practical wilderness skills.

While I was sitting in the graduation service, God gave me a new way of seeing. I saw a precious people who were lost in a theology that teaches them that they are on their own, far away from God, that Jesus does not carry them. They draw as near to the Holiest as they can while never entering in. And I could see in their words and upon their faces that they were frightened deep down inside, just as I had once been.

Yet I also saw Jesus as He is inside of them, value and wealth beyond measure. And in that seeing, I knew the heart of the Shepherd over His people. Jesus carries all regardless, all the way through death and into life.

After the graduation, all of our family went to Sleeping Giant provincial park on a peninsula jutting into Lake Superior just to the east of Thunder Bay. We had rented two sleeping units, travel trailers. We spent two nights there and had a great time together.

Maureen returned to Upsala with Matthew and Johanna for the next couple of weeks and was with Johanna when our first grandson was born, Gabriel Emerson Schneider, on July 1, 2018. She flew back to Houston on July 10.

James and I headed on down the road to Glenn and Kim’s place in Minnesota. We spent two days visiting with them before heading out on a third route across to Atwood, Kansas. This practice of visiting Bill Horton was reaping me lots and lots of counties.

We spent two days with Bill. He and James got along really well, and James did some skateboarding on the slopes of Atwood. They had sold their other place at this point, and thus I stayed on a cot in the living room. I don’t remember where James and Bill slept. As usual on these trips, I found a special anointing to write early in the morning. I wrote much of Chapter 23 “The Proof of Christ” the first morning at Bill’s.

An acquaintance of Bill’s in Atwood, Shelia Maune, came over in the afternoon. Bill had signed her up for the Bible Institute program and she was interested in hearing more of what I share. The problem came through lunch. Bill is a natural health person and he was fully aware of my dietary needs. Nonetheless, something I ate that lunch was filled with chemicals; it may have been soybean oil on the asparagus, which he had gotten from someone else. It completely wiped me out mentally. As a result, I could not find a focus in the sharing that afternoon and seemed to just ramble on and on. I did not fully understand what God was doing, but it all felt a bit confusing to me.

James and I drove on from Atwood to Colorado Springs, where we spent a night with Kyle’s friend, Will Fonder, who was teaching school there. The next day we drove up to the top of Pikes Peak with Will. They have you park at around ten thousand feet and then bus you the rest of the way – to 14000 feet. I should have stayed at the car park. I was short of oxygen at the top and did not do well until we came back down.

James and I got an Airbnb that night in the midst of the Colorado Rockies, which turned out to be not the best of my Airbnb choices. The next morning we spent a couple of hours at the Royal Gorge of the Arkansas River, over which goes the highest-up bridge in America. This was a great place to see. We drove on to spend the night at the Lubbock Community, in their guest house. The Sanchez’s had also taken a family trip, but were back home, now, after James’s graduation. We were late getting there because I had to take the long route to get my last two counties in New Mexico, making it the third state to have in the bag. We returned home to Houston the next day.

Clarity and Focus
I want to point again to the great change of understanding coming upon me now in 2022. I now see everything pointing in this direction. I did not have Symmorphy V: Life in completed print form until the end of 2018. But it was the discovery of how badly the words that should have been God’s words were altered in our Bibles, just as Jesus warned us would happen, that set me on a clear and driven path to KNOW how and why and where, and thus to KNOW our glorious Salvation as it really is, as God actually says.

It was a remarkable thing to me how well the ten patterns of home fit the ten ruling verses of the Bible and enabled a much deeper understanding of God’s meaning. As I was working my way through those chapters, I pondered the question of the “rules of thinking” that had taken the place of these fully confirmed gospel verses in Christianity.

I now see how important was that brief but horrifying time listening to John Gray speak the entirety of the serpent’s lines in Genesis 3:1-5, all garbed in Christian talk and with a captive congregation, as Eve, believing that this preacher was sent by God, followed just after by discovering how the Calvinist translators had altered the wondrous truth of living inside of God with our hearts sprinkled from an evil consciousness to the “great struggle against sin” that is, the wickedness of the tree of knowing good and evil, that is, the refusal of Christ Jesus and life.

This powerful set of experiences in April caused me to understand that only one “verse” had taken the place of ten to rule in the minds of all – Genesis 3:1-5. And thus I completed Symmorphy V: Life with a different kind of chapter, written in July, one in which I set out the opposing rules of thinking between knowing God through Jesus as life versus knowing God through the serpent as good and evil.

I had waited to finish my final chapter of Symmorphy IV: Covenant until this same time because I needed to know all that God had taught me through writing that course. I had that text completed by the end of July, with the print copy available by the end of August.

I finished writing Symmorphy V: Life by August 12. I was fully satisfied that this text had accomplished all the cry of my heart to speak over forty years of life and that Symmorphy IV: Covenant had given me a knowledge of God as my Father as I had never known before.

At this point God had given me two wondrous things. First, He had given me a methodical understanding of Paul’s gospel confirmed by John. And second, He had given me a methodical layout of the serpent’s perversion of that gospel, turning the entire Bible into the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and away from the tree of life.

Even though I had written the five Symmorphy texts in a college textbook format, I was still writing to learn up to their completion. And yes, I freely confess that, until the completion of the Symmorphy texts, I did not know the gospel with certainty; I wrote because I wanted to know.

But now, for the first time in my life, I had something to say.