52. A New Fire
January 2020 - March 2021Something opened up inside of me in January of 2020, and rivers of Word began flowing out from the heavens and onto my page. I was simply blown away by the Wind.
I wrote in the letter I sent out on January 11. ~ “Sorry, but there is a fire inside of me that cannot rest until the true Jerusalem is a praise in all the earth, until the knowledge of the Lord flows out to all. And so I must write, for that is what I can do. This next series/book, A Highway for God, follows the same desire and purpose as my last book, The River of Life. I am approaching the same topic from a slightly different perspective, and out from fresh and present word.” ~
I began A Highway for God with the same question. – What will a world of life be? We know only a world of death, flowing out, every moment, from knowing good and evil, out from self-exaltation and self-cursing. We do not have the slightest bit of experience with the normality found in a world flowing out from the Tree of Life, out from a God who knows no evil through a River of knowing Jesus as the Sustainer of all.
A Highway for God is my largest book of the middle size. And it is the most intense and glorious. I’m still too close to it to read it as “something new” and thus to perceive its full impact. But I know that in the writing of it, I was filled with wonder. The premise of A Highway for God is that God is entering our world through us. And the most wondrous statement in it is – “My heart is the entrance of God.”
Yet at the same time, in this January of 2020, I began to unveil the most difficult time period of my life, which was from 1986 to 1997, my years of involvement with Blueberry Christian Community. And the most astonishing thing happened as I began to write “Blueberry and College.” The long-buried memory of how much I loved Blueberry and Covenant Life College resurfaced and took its primary place.
I wrote this on January 18. ~ “I have begun working on my first year at Blueberry in a letter titled "Blueberry and College," but it's not finished. I look at it each morning as a boy looks at the cold water of a mountain stream and debates whether to leap in or not. When I am ready to immerse myself in Blueberry, I will do so. Meanwhile, something has happened in my heavens and word is pouring through so fast I cannot keep up. In fact, over and over, my breath is taken quite away by things that seem to be popping out of my fingers onto the page (the first chapters of A Highway for God).
On January 25, I wrote, ~ “Still waiting to take that plunge into Blueberry; I have a distinct sensation, however, of Someone about to push me in.” ~ And on January 30, I wrote, ~ “I find that writing about my time at the Blueberry Community is one of the costliest things I have done. I share these things for Father's sake.” ~
Meanwhile, I had completed Romans in The Jesus Secret II, and thus, for the first time, fully understood Paul’s gospel. Through the last of January, I also wrote a chapter in A Highway for God, titled “My Story,” in which I detailed the incredible transformation taking place in me as I saw the Lord Jesus recasting everything that had once been darkness in my memories into life and joy. I wrote the following concerning this writing of my story.
~ “I am caught in the grip of my Blueberry story and I am overwhelmed. I want to get as far as I can before taking another prolonged break. My problem is that I cannot separate the difficult times ahead from the good times I am sharing with you at present. The good calls up the memory of the difficult and makes it even more poignant. I am going from being emotionally overwhelmed, to seeing things more truly, to being again emotionally overwhelmed, back and forth. I cannot present to you the years from 1990 to 1998 without honesty, and I cannot present to you those same years in a way that lays any accusation upon anyone. I must see all things as Jesus sees them; I must, with Him, carry all inside my heart through the darkness and into Life. ~
~ “Writing my life story is becoming an extraordinary experience, beyond extraordinary. I have hardly ever mentioned my time at Bowens Mill. Always before, if I was forced to look across those years, I saw only a dark hole of confusion and pain, yet they were memories that, by the grace of God, held no immediate hold over me. After completing the third chapter on those years, I now look across them and see nothing but goodness and purpose. I never expected this profound transformation.” ~
Through February, I wrote about the times of deliverance at Blueberry with Sister Jane Miller and then “Friendship with Maureen.” I also completed Colossians & Philemon for The Jesus Secret II and began Ephesians.
On March 3, I wrote the following in the introduction to my letter.
~ “An incredible miracle has happened in my life over the last several weeks. Beginning my Blueberry account plunged me immediately into all the awfulness of emotion and even fear that I would come to know through the years after our graduation from college and marriage. I continued inside the turmoil of those emotions for nearly a month. Then, it all finally came to peace. Still, I waited a couple of weeks before plunging back in with the writing of this letter. And I find what is to me the most incredible miracle of God I have known, that I can look squarely at every moment and person in my Blueberry experience and sense no shadow at all, but only the goodness of God. There might yet be more emotions to pass through as I go forward, but the purifying fire of God has filled in the most difficult parts with the Lord Jesus. ~
~ “More than that, I have astonished myself with seeing just how much joy my remembering the entrance of Maureen into my story has become to me now.” ~
The World Changes
The events of this world typically have no actual effect on my daily life except on those occasions when their importance captures my grief and concern.
On March 15, 2020, almost every church in almost every country on earth closed its doors to the congregation and no longer gathered together to worship. And they kept those doors closed for months at the command of petty politicians and strutting would-be local dictators.
This mighty declaration, reverberating throughout the heavens, that the BEAST rules triumphant over the Church of Jesus Christ on this earth, was almost unremarked by most Christians.
I did wear a mask for awhile in order to enter the grocery store to buy our food, but I hated it. I hated it because I was in no way fooled by the claims of a “pandemic” or by the fakery behind the massive psychological warfare being levied against all people on earth to hide their faces from each other, to stay far apart, and to accept the lockdown.
I hate lying; and I hate being surrounded by lying and being required to dance its tune. And no, there was no increase in deaths by respiratory illness anywhere throughout 2020. It was only the spin given to what was not news.
Nonetheless, it is God’s people, my brethren in Christ, caught in this nonsense and quietly submitting to the plodding line into death that holds my concern. Because I share heart with God, I care about His people. Because Jesus loves me, I also set forth my soul for their sakes.
But what was I writing through these weeks? I was writing “In the Womb of the Church,” positioning my Blueberry experience. And I was writing “Respect” and “Honor” in A Highway for God, that is, our high regard for the Church, each one of whom is as Jesus to us.
The point is that the change in the world increased the sense of urgency inside the Spirit inside of me. Yet I was not quite ready for the great change in ministry that would come by the end of August. As I said, very little was happening in my life outwardly through this time. I am sharing my experiences in writing in order to show how God was preparing me for His task for me.
Through March and April, I worked my way slowly through the first really difficult times at Blueberry, inside of which Maureen and I were married and Kyle was born. When I write about any part of my life, I feel inside as if it just happened yesterday and all the emotions of that time come up inside of me. This was very traumatic, yet inside the press, I placed Jesus into every difficulty and spoke goodness into all those with whom I interacted at the time.
On May 2, I sent out my letter titled “Thoughts on the Present Crisis.” In it I set forth my understanding of the fake “pandemic” as well as what God was doing and about to do through us, His Church.
Through May, I wrote about our time back in Oregon and then our return to Blueberry. On May 28, in the introduction to “Into God’s Shattering,” I wrote the following. ~ “The tangled-up threads of decades of not-understanding are unraveling, and all the path of my life is coming into one simple and straight line, from heart to Hheart. I am astonished and overwhelmed.” ~
On May 12, 2020, our second grandson, Konrad Martin Schneider was born. Mother and baby were fine, even though the baby was born before they could make it out the door. Some sisters from the community were there to help and the EMT’s arrived just as Konrad came into the world. Maureen had hoped to be there for the birth, but the Covid lockdowns made it impossible.
The Summer of 2020
Throughout June, I was approaching writing about the central point of God’s dealings with me, August of 1996. On June 4, I sent out “Becoming an Elder.” In that letter, I quoted from David, “Touch not Mine anointed and do My prophets no harm.” This is indeed God’s central test for every human who would know Him.
I received a response from a reader who had lived at Blueberry through this time and who was, in fact, a student in my classroom for one year. This was a person of immense value to me whom I deeply love. She had gone on from Blueberry with her family to another community, one only partly associated with the move fellowship. Her experiences are not my story to give, but her question to me is my story. That question was – what about abuse in the Church?
In response to this critical question, I added another section to my chapter on “Becoming an Elder,” which I titled briefly, “Dealing with Abuse.” We never speak out from contempt, we forgive all inside of God. BUT – neither do we allow abuse to continue, especially that which uses “God” as a whip to bring shame into the lives of those who love Jesus.
“What Do I Do?” was the significant chapter of my life, detailing my slow and agonizing decision to leave Blueberry. At this time, Maureen had found her calendars through these years in which she had recorded the events of our life. Thus I now had exact dates, especially for our leaving of Blueberry, our long journey through Bowens Mill and immigration, to arrive back again at Blair Valley. Having the dates made these chapters much more specific, something I believe was the Lord.
June 14, 2020 was the last session on the “Tabernacle Teaching” in the Zoom meetings. This was a very fruitful series for us, grounding us in God’s organizational pattern for the gospel. Of truth, these series in the Zoom meetings have been among the most important things I have shared, including for myself, that we together might know the Lord.
Then, on June 21, we started a new series on Zoom, a study of individuals in the Old Testament and their relationship with God. I titled this series “After My Own Heart.” We started with “God’s Riddle” and continued with Cain and Abel, Noah, and then Abraham. This series was the final step in bringing back the Old Testament fully into my knowing and into the present word of Christ our life.
Meanwhile, I had thought to take advantage of the U.S. government’s “stimulus” grants for business. A problem came, however, with the SBA not following the legislation, but making up their own rules. And so I was offered a loan at very low interest and generous repayment terms. I received several thousand dollars for my writing business. By law, this should be a grant only, and I have not had to begin re-payment. Whether or not it will be “forgiven,” I do not know.
I had redone my computer not long before, but it was not adequate for the type of work I was doing on it. I used the money, then, to build a new computer, the best I have had thus far. This present computer does everything I need and quickly. I purchased the materials to add to my office desk setup, making everything very convenient and at hand.
I also spent some money making my website more “search friendly.” I followed the directions given by a number of different “SEO” companies, to little effect, however. The truth is that the most important thing to increase website visibility is links to it from other larger websites. One larger website recommended by some was www.teachable.com. So I signed on with them with the plan of creating “mini-courses” that might bring in an income while increasing the links going back to www.christrevealed.info.
Through June, then, I developed a series of “mini-courses” to be offered through teachable.com, the first three of which I went on to complete. Each mini-course contained seven lessons, each being a video of Power-Point slides, with exactly twelve slides in each of the seven lessons. The first topic I tackled in this focused way was “Living in Paul’s Gospel.”
I completed “Living in Paul’s Gospel” by the third week of July. This was an important milestone in God’s task for me. I did not know fully that for which God sent me into the world; I just knew that I had to put out in front of myself and all Christians a crystal clear, accurate, and brief explanation of a gospel of LIFE as it has never been known in Christianity.
I also completed Paul’s letters in The Jesus Secret II at this point and turned to Hebrews, beginning with the almost final draft for the JSV. I would work on Hebrews slowly over the next several months.
In May, our daughter, Katrina, had purchased a travel trailer so that she could have her own place to live. To celebrate, we made a trip with the trailer to Waco, Texas, the first weekend of July. We rented a place to park the trailer through Airbnb. It was a lovely setting, and we were the only ones there.
When Katrina first put the trailer onto her pickup, it weighted the pickup down more than is safe. She drove it around for a bit, but when she came back, it seemed that the weight of the trailer was almost beginning to pull the pickup apart. In difficult driving situations, such an imbalance of weight could have resulted in the trailer pushing the pickup in directions Katrina would not want to go. Then our son James borrowed torsion bars and an anti-sway bar from our neighbor across the street and installed them on the trailer/pickup hookup. These bars pulled up the trailer and pickup even with one another tightly.
After a great family time together near Waco, I drove the unit back home and was pleased with how safe it felt. I was driving one unit. When I turned or when I braked, I never felt that the trailer was anything other than part of the pickup. This experience really impressed me. God was about to use it to seal something important inside my heart.
Through July and into August, I completed writing about our time at Blair Valley and then the move to Fort St. John. Finally, during the second week of August, I wrote the chapter, “My Reasons for Leaving” Blair Valley, the move, and Canada.
To understand this present chapter of my life, you might want to go back and read that chapter again. This is when I wrote it. I do want to include a bit from that chapter here again, because of its importance in what happens next in my walk with God.
~~~
As I finished writing the chapters on Blair Valley, that image of the trailer weighting down the back of the pickup came to my mind as a clear picture of how my life has been.
Let me explain. The trailer is that large and heavy portion of my life that was my years in the move of God and in Christian community. The pickup is my life since we left that fellowship and we are now in the cab, being driven forward by the power of Christ our only life. My adult life has been two large parts, the first part resting as a heavy weight upon the second part. Most who left the move tried to unhitch and cast off the “trailer” of their move experience from their present life. I am convinced they are doing nothing more than deluding themselves.
The connection between the trailer of my years in the move and the pickup of my present life was our leaving Blair Valley and Canada. That connection has always been weak inside my heart, and sometimes it seems that the years of difficulty might push our present life in the wrong directions because of that weak connection.
The picture of James installing the torsion and anti-sway bars, pulling up the trailer and pickup even with each other, now one tight unit, came to me so strongly as God placed Himself as honoring me through this weak point of my life.
And in that moment, I felt that the two large parts of my life have come fully together as one. I feel whole, complete, and put together. Now, as I am looking forward to writing the second half of my adult life, I am filled with anticipation of the joy of Christ my life entering my experience.
Every particle of my years in the move fellowship is fully complete, fully inside of Jesus, fully filled with blessing and joy.
~~~
I had not known it, but having this experience in the resolution of my life story meant that God was now ready to hurl me into the next part of His purpose for my life.
A New Ministry
On August 22, the letter I sent out was titled “Pray with Us.” I said this in the introduction. ~ “It is my intention to begin a time of specific and focused prayer together with those who gather each Sunday in the Zoom meeting. I invite you to join with us, if not inside of Zoom, then in your own time with the Lord. For that reason, I am including a layout here of how our prayers together will develop over the next seven weeks.” ~
In my book, “The River of Life,” I had written a short prayer after the description of each removal of a seal from off the Word of Christ written on our hearts. Those prayers were prayers of deliverance for the Church. Nonetheless, they were not prayers actually prayed together out loud at that time.
I extracted those prayers and included them in a shortened list. We then prayed them out loud together in the Zoom meeting, starting on August 23. After seven weeks of praying the removal of the seven seals keeping Christ from being known, we just continued right on with the prayer spoken out loud together at the end of each session from then until now. In all our prayers, we have prayed to know the Lord, and for the deliverance of the Church, all who belong to Jesus all across the earth.
I want to share a bit more about the Zoom meetings and our continuing fellowship together. We had been meeting together almost every Sunday morning for a year now, the same people whom I named, consistently, and with others joining on occasion. We had become comfortable together, and this time of speaking and hearing the word was a key part of our weekly lives.
For the first while, however, the time before and after my speaking what I had prepared seemed disjointed at times. Sometimes the discussion after the meeting went in directions un-related to seeking God together. When that happened, I felt very disjointed, as if something vital to our life was not happening. Our gathering together is an experience of great purpose intended by God. We come together to receive His word planted in our hearts. Casual purposes are fine, just not when the intention is to know God together.
I began starting the session each time by praying an unscripted prayer asking God to plant His Word as Jesus in our hearts. Then, after the sharing time, I spoke a blessing into our lives as a sealing of our time with the Father. I asked the brethren to honor God’s purpose for our sharing.
Bill Horton continued to call me around twice a week. Our friendship seemed to be growing and deepening. Bill often wanted to talk about what it meant to be the firstfruits of Christ at the core of Christ Community and the practical reality of loving one another inside of such a life.
On occasion, however, Bill would speak contrary to Christ concerning himself, and once or twice, he attempted to speak the “above-you” Christ at me. Each time, I would gently share with him how speaking Christ concerning himself or me would be different. Bill appreciated and embraced these corrections.
Bill’s phone calls meant a lot to me and gave me much courage and settled-ness.
September 29, 2020 was our wedding anniversary. Maureen and I had spent thirty years together at this point. Our children had been hoping that we could do something big for this anniversary, maybe even a trip to Quebec City and Prince Edward Island, but the lockdown ended that possibility. Instead, Maureen and I spent the weekend in a nice hotel in The Woodlands. We went down to the zoo in Houston mid-town and then visited a Barnes and Noble book store in The Woodlands Mall.
After thirty years of sharing life together, I can truly say that I would rather be with Maureen than anything else in this life. I also took along a laptop with us, and we were able to join the Zoom meeting on September 27 from our hotel room.
On October 4, we completed the seventh part of the prayer we were praying together to break the seven seals from off the knowing of Christ written upon the hearts of His Church. We were now studying Moses in his heart towards God. Our prayer then turned to the fulfillment of Tabernacles, which season we were then in.
Through October and November, I wrote through the chapters of our time in Lubbock and then Maple, Texas. In the introduction to “A Season of Healing” on November 14, ” I wrote: ~ “As I finished posting the last chapter, there arose in me the sense that our time in Three Way was much more important than I had understood, and that I will know more what that means as God takes us into our next step in the present time. This makes me very glad, for we all loved our brief time there."
Through November and into December, we were studying David, a man after God’s own heart, in the Zoom meetings, and I was writing through my time of teaching in Sheldon ISD and our family life in our home on Fernbank Drive in this autobiography.
From August through December, I also completed two more mini-courses to be posted on teachable.com. The second became “Safe from the Serpent’s Gospel,” and the third “The Ruling Verses of the Bible.”
Thus, by December of 2020, I had completed the first part of God’s commission to me, that of presenting a clear, simple, and unmistakable contrast between the two gospels, the gospel of the tree of life versus the gospel of the tree of death. When I went through these 21 short videos again recently, I was struck with the power and distinction of the truth.
Here is a pattern I see only now as I am writing this. It was in November of 1994 that I covenanted with God on a wooded hillside in Oregon, that He would prepare in me a pure word for His people. Soon after that, during the first months of 1995, I began teaching my first rendition of “The Two Gospels” in our service times together.
You will find much similarity between what I taught then and what I teach now, but with one huge difference. I did not know then that it is Jesus who first comes into union with us. That one piece of ignorance meant that I had the two gospels switched!!!
Here it is, twenty-six years later, and God has completed His Covenant with me, that I would have a pure word for His Church. My three mini-courses are the essence of that pure word.
The word I carry was now as clear and simple as I had long hoped it to be, but the ministry of Christ through me was not quite there. From December of 2020 until the present time, God would take me into the depths of His Mercy Seat, of setting forth my soul for the sake of my brothers and sisters.
Another Trip to Canada
On Thursday, December 17, 2020, Maureen and I got on a plane at the Houston airport and flew to Toronto, and then from Toronto to Thunder Bay. Matthew Schneider picked us up that evening at the airport and we rode with him to their home at the South Farm in Upsala.
This was nearing the height of the Covid hysteria. We were allowed into Canada as Johanna’s family, but we were required to wear masks all the way, and enter into a two-week quarantine, not only Maureen and I, but also Johanna, Matthew, and our two grandsons, Gabriel and Konrad. None of us could leave their home for the entire fourteen days, nor could anyone else enter the house.
For a month prior to our trip, Maureen and I had eaten garlic and taken Vitamin C everyday, for we dared not have any sign of sniffles or temperature. Everything about our flight was contrary to me, but we endured it. Then, we were given an app for our phones and we were required to report daily, each of us. The Canadian government made it clear that if we did not obey to the letter, we would go to prison.
It was winter time. Our usual experience in going from southern climes into northern cold had been sickness. Maureen and I continued to eat garlic and Vitamin C, and I wore wool socks on my feet and a stocking hat on my head the whole time. We did succeed in staying well.
Johanna and Matthew were now living in a large single-wide manufactured home a little ways up the slope from Johanna’s former home with Ray and Paula Brumbach and straight south of the Tabernacle, on the other side of the large community garden. The manufactured home was sitting on top of a constructed bottom-story the same size and also had a large entry porch added on the south side. Maureen and I were given a bedroom in the bottom floor, just beyond a nice living area. And so we settled into two-plus weeks of immersed time with Matthew and Johanna and with Gabriel and Konrad.
Here is a picture of me reading a book I have always loved, Green Eggs and Ham, to my
grandson, Gabriel, on the next morning after our arrival. This is in their upper sitting room, just beyond their dining room. You cannot see, however, that there are library shelves on my right and a wide window filled with light.Matthew had taken time off from work to be quarantined with us. He made good use of this time by finishing the interior of their entry porch, which had just been rough. This way, they could open it up to be a room of their home. I helped with cutting and installing some of the trim.
I also took on the task of organizing their extensive library scattered upstairs and downstairs. Johanna collects books like me; in fact, many of her books used to be mine. I like doing something like that and soon had all the books neatly lined up in meaningful categories.
Little Konrad was seven months old. He was fairly mobile, though not yet at the walking stage. Konrad is a very definite little boy, sometimes a handful; whereas Gabriel is always wanting to please. Both of them received Maureen and I fully as their “Nina” and “Papa.” (Grandma and Grandpa were reserved for Matthew’s parents.) Of course, Maureen talked with them most every morning on their smart phones, a practice that continues until now.
Two boys are a handful for anyone, however, and so our being there also gave Johanna a needed break. Johanna then did the mudding and painting in their front entry job.
We shared a wonderful Christmas together on Friday morning, just the six of us, but with our Houston family also joining in on their smartphones. The little boys got lots of presents; I love giving presents to little boys, and so did everyone else.
I had borrowed Kyle’s laptop for this trip, and so I wrote “The Time of the Jesus Secret” through these days, a chapter I want every Christian on earth to understand. I continued conversations with Bill Horton, and he and Peter Douglas joined with me on Zoom for conversation and fellowship.
Then, in my early morning writing/coffee time a most wondrous idea came to me. I realized that I could write another Symmorphy text, and not one more, but two. I was far enough away from the more difficult work of completing the educational parts for the first five, and was ready to do it again. In sheer excitement, I wrote out the chapter list for Symmorphy VI: Mankind and Symmorphy VII: Completion. I shared those with Bill and Pete and they were excited as well.
I had always wanted to write about what we are as humans, and thus to understand, and the discipline of a Symmorphy textbook is just the best way to tackle something like that. Then, I still could not write “Our Glorious Salvation,” because I needed to write a disciplined textbook on “Completion” first.
Writing more seems only to increase my ambition to write more. Yet writing to learn is only one part of that which carries me forward into the knowledge of God-with-me, the other part is the press of the Mercy Seat, the travail of sharing Hheart with God.
That Friday evening, after Maureen and Jo had gone downstairs to the living room and the boys were in bed, Matthew, my son-in-law, sat down across from me at the dining table.
I will say here only this about our conversation - I did not sleep that night.
We did not converse the next day. Matthew went about his business, and I sat and read a book. This was Saturday. On our first weekend with Matthew and Johanna, I had skipped the regular Zoom meeting. I was looking forward, however, to connecting with the brethren on Zoom for fellowship and sharing the word I had prepared this next Sunday morning.
That afternoon, I asked Matthew where Maureen and I could locate ourselves for that time of fellowship where we would not disturb them. Matthew said, “We’ll have to talk about that.” The end result was that I sent an email to Bill and Pete stating that I would not be with the Zoom fellowship, but that they should continue with it.
It was another week before the quarantine would be over. We spoke politely about outward essentials, but nothing more was said of any meaning except that I placed kindness and receiving within whatever I said. I also took to heart my inability towards Johanna when she was just a girl, that she had needed a father, and I was not able to be what she needed. In fact, this was the very chapter I was writing at the time, and I was able to place my wrongness towards Johanna into understanding and into Jesus.
We had a couple of days free after the quarantine and we visited with different ones in the community. I was refreshed with good fellowship in the Lord.
Matthew went on to work that next Monday, so it was Johanna who drove us to the airport in Thunder Bay. It’s a small airport, and so she parked in the parking lot. It was just a short way across to the terminal. As the three of us gathered to pray together before we went on, I could see in her face that she needed her mom and dad, that she needed to be comforted inside of Jesus. And so I prayed in that direction and blessed her with all my heart. I could see the peace return to her face. How I love my daughter.
Although I do not share here the specific details, the second part of God completing in me His purpose and sending had begun, and it began inside of FIRE.
A “Captain of War”
Our flight home through Toronto again was uneventful. I was very glad to step out of, as it felt to me, the jaws of the beast. Before we left Canada, however, we had been informed by Katrina and James that the toilet in the master bath, right on the other side of a door from my bed, had flooded and ruined the carpet, and that the two of them had moved everything out of our bedroom and removed the carpet. Our house was a mess.
This meant that we could not go home until we had put a new floor into our bedroom. And so we stayed about a week with Kyle and Shelbie at their new place in Splendora, Texas, in their spare bedroom, still living out of our suitcases. This was a good time for me, a peaceful restoration from a difficult experience. We drove down to Fernbank most days and, with the help of our two sons, installed a new floor of vinyl panels in our bedroom. By January 10, we had everything moved back in and could be at home permanently. The good thing was that the old musty carpet was gone.
Having written and sent out “The Time of the Jesus Secret” while in Canada, I completed and sent out “Discovering Christ My Life” on January 16. This was the great turning point in my life story from desire inside of agony to JOY.
At this point, I also wanted very much to convey to my readers and in the Zoom sessions the meaning of God that came through the press of the Mercy Seat. And so I wrote and shared four lessons in the Zoom meetings on “Total War,” and placed them as chapters into A Highway for God.
As I was writing and sharing these things, and pondering the prayers we had been praying for the Church, I realized, to my great astonishment, that God had made me a Captain of War. I know how to fight for the Church!
Here is what I wrote for the Zoom meeting on January 17.
~~~
For seven years, from the summer of 2006 to 2013, I cast down my enemy, and for seven years, from the summer of 2013 to 2020, I filled my 'house' with the knowledge of Christ Jesus causing Father-with-me. Then, in August of 2020, God made me a captain of War. — I had no idea. Filling my house with Christ began in August of 2006, however, and was the cause of that all-out assault of the evil one against me. Christ is always all first, before anything not-Christ could ever vanish away. Christ-All is the cause.
I did not realize it until just recently, but I have slain my thousands, and I have slain my ten thousands. Yet I most certainly had help, an army of mighty angels taking down every powerful, familiar, and desperate demon ordered to insert its words into my sphere. There were no survivors. I do not boast in myself, for there is no 'my' self in which to boast, but only Christ Jesus. Yet the more I see the straight pathway of my life, the more I place my face in worship — "Oh, my Father!"
We are at war! And you are MIGHTY sons with me.
My dad believed in non-violence, deeply and at cost. My brother chose to be a conscientious objector rather than to join the butchery of the evil one. I have not known violence. Well, I hit my sister in the back once because she made me mad. Other than that, it has never been in me to strike against anyone. Nothing would give me greater sorrow than that I should hurt other people, even in self-defense.
Yet from the time I was a little boy, I have been fascinated with war, with military strategy, and with great stories of battle. I have long thought this weird. Don't get me wrong. I am entirely an amateur and armchair 'student' of such things. I like my bigger adventures to be found in a good book or movie.
But suddenly, in this year of our Lord 2020 and now 2021, I find myself thrust into the frontlines of real war and I am astonished that I KNOW exactly what to do. We started in August, and I knew that the thing to do was an Admiral Horatio Nelson — "Attack." – But sir, the French outnumber us and we are not ready. — "I am confident that every man will do his duty. Attack!"
But now, in January of 2021, I hear the voice of Russel Crowe playing General Maximus in my ears.
~~~
And so we listened together to the clip from the movie, Gladiator, in which Russel Crowe calls to those riding into battle with him, “Hold the line. Stay with me. Hold the line.” And I shared from that the importance of the fight we are in for the sake of all Christians across the earth, millions upon millions, and that to win together, we give our all – in line together.
Our prayers together became more fierce and direct, and our confidence grew.
In late January, I had a very unexpected experience in a dream. This was not a normal dream, but a real experience. My brother Franz came to me in my dream and said, with great agony and distress of soul, “Daniel, please pray for my children.”
Now, how do I place such a thing with my previous assertion that we do not “converse with the dead?” First, I did not speak that without also knowing that there is no veil, no barrier between us and those of us who are in the heavens without physical bodies. At the same time, you will also notice that I did not “visit” with my brother, neither would such a thought ever come to me.
Yet I know this was my brother, and I took his agony of heart upon myself. I have prayed for Franz and Audrey’s four children from then until now and have placed them into the keeping and expectation of God. I am not a big “pray-er,” but my prayers are inside of faith, and I rest in absolute confidence that God does all that I ask. We also prayed for my brother’s children in the Zoom meeting prayers.
I know that when I see my brother again, he will come to me with all of his children KEPT, inside the goodness of Christ. I will have my brother; I will pray for his children.
We did four sessions in the Zoom meetings on our warfare for the sake of our brothers and sisters in Christ all across the earth before returning again to our Old Testament studies. God was raising our confidence and our effectiveness in spiritual warfare for the Church to a deeper level. This level showed itself when we turned Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the temple into our own.
From Hebrews to Symmorphy Again!
I was writing five different things through these months, January through March of 2021. Those five things were the chapters when my life changed in Prepare a Path, the Zoom lessons for After My Own Heart, the climax chapters for A Highway for God, the book of Hebrews in The Jesus Secret II, and the first chapters of my return to Symmorphy, Symmorphy VI: Mankind.
I am astonished as I look at the weave of all of these together, the topics I was writing all at the same time.
I had Hebrews completed for The Jesus Secret II by the third week of March. This meant that from January through March, I was working on Chapters 10-13. This is that portion of Scripture most altered by the Calvinist translators from what was originally written, a deliberate mis-translation that turned the Christian life away from “no consciousness of sins” and towards “the great struggle against sin.”
Of truth, writing The Jesus Secret II has been a journey into knowing the Father through knowing Jesus Sent into us. Writing this portion of Hebrews was a key section of that journey.
In A Highway for God, right after completing our study on war, I wrote “Calling God In” and “Utmost Purity,” and then on into a topic beyond our boldness to enter, “Healing God’s Heart” through “Joining Heart with Heart.” I think I will find those chapters to be the center of all the change in me that has come since.
When I sent out “Utmost Purity” on February 13, I wrote this.
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I want to share something incredible with you, something I have only discovered now. In March-April of 1985, I had argued with God in bitterness against John Hinson, and God sided with me, coming to Brother John in a dream, telling him what I told God He ought to say. Twelve years later, in March of 1997, God spoke to me, “Son, you passed the test,” because I had refused to place any blame or fault upon Brother John Clarke.
Twelve years later, in March of 2009, God placed four men of great offense before me. And I knew without any question that if I wanted to KNOW Christ in union with me, I would also know Christ in union with them. (This is why I have stalled out again in writing my life story. I haven’t found the courage yet to plunge back into God contending with me.) Twelve years later, in January to March/April of 2021, I know what it all means – take your brother with you.
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Through the middle of February, Texas, including Houston, went through two weeks below freezing, We did experience more than two days without power during the coldest time. We were mostly prepared, however, with lots of candles and a propane heater with propane tanks in storage. The coolest it got inside our house was 65 degrees. Sadly, there were some elsewhere throughout the larger area who did freeze to death. I missed a Zoom meeting as a result of this time without power.
In March, I was able to return to my life story with “Out of the Furnace” and “Shaping a New Path.” I was finally into the present season of writing Christ our Life. I also wrote Chapter 1 of my new Symmorphy text in March, Symmorphy VI: Mankind. It was so much joy to see a whole new level of Word flowing like molten gold into the long-familiar forms of my introductory chapter.
A Familiar Voice
Through these early months of 2021, we were continuing through the relationship with God enjoyed by various Old Testament characters. We spent quite a while with David, and then on to Solomon followed by Elijah and Elisha.
Two more notable things were happening in me through this study. The first was that I was seeing these individuals as friends, as people sharing many similar things with me, people I can know. As James said, “Elijah was a man just like us.” Then I realized that David, and all of them, are Christians today, with their focus on the Church of Jesus Christ as the Jerusalem of God.
I now know that all these brothers and sisters from the Old Testament are with us at a personal level and are believing God for us, that Jesus would be proven faithful and true through us into this world.
But an even greater realization dawned on me slowly through this study during these months. I had seen that Abraham had nothing except a Voice speaking to him out of the blue, and that only several times throughout his life.
And suddenly I knew that I know that Voice, for the same Voice who spoke to Abraham also spoke to me across the span of my life with Him. I know the Voice that spoke to Abraham, for it is a Voice that is close and familiar and real in my life experience. I know this now, not in any self-exaltation, but in tears of gladness streaming down my face.
It is from this knowing, then, that I wrote the chapter coming up, “The Meaning of a Life.” I place that familiar and honored Voice as the center and structure of my entire life story.