19. The Primacy of Death

The last enemy to be eliminated is death (1 Corinthians 15:26).

Now, this breadth of letters, from “12. The Feast of Trumpets” through at least “23. Placing Revelation 13,” is dealing with one thing, and that is the fulfillment of the Day of Atonement in the life and experience of the Church of Jesus Christ and in the history of Christianity. This letter is part of the many through which we are attempting to grasp the meaning and implications of this profound Day.

These many letters, then, from “The Feast of Trumpets” on, are dealing with this one thing – breaking the seals that block from off our brethren, and specifically, out of their ears, that they might hear. Only then will we be able to proceed into the wonder of the First Day of Tabernacles coming hard on the heels of millions of Spirit-filled believers all across this earth turning into Jesus ALONE and thus turning around inside of the Holy of Holies.

Let me place this stark contradiction in front of you.

Most Christians for 1900 years have defined the Church of Christ on this earth as a FAILED experiment, that God cannot fulfill His word, spoken so clearly inside our present Covenant with God, so long as we remain in these bodies of mortal flesh, that only our death and passage into “heaven” will allow God to do what He says.

I define the Church of Christ on this earth as the fulfillment of that full expression of the revelation of God through us as expressed in condensed form in my book, Knowing Jesus as He Is, out from the ten most important verses in the Bible.

I am looking for something, not the opposite, but very, very different from what my fellow believers in Jesus are expecting.

From the moment that the serpent said, “You will not surely die,” death has ruled supreme in the minds of all humans. From the moment that Stephen was stoned to death through the moment that a Roman sword chopped off Paul’s head, death has ruled supreme in the thinking of almost all Christians.

Death – not Christ.

Consider carefully this description of Father through Christ. – I am the A and the Z, the source and the completion, says the Lord God, the One who is existing, and who has existed, and who is continuously and actively coming, the One who holds all, the One who sustains and carries all (Revelation 1:8).

Of all that is anti, death alone shares a certain level of similarity with this active quality that is the nature of God. In that which is anti-Christ, death is the source and the completion.

Here is what we must understand. In dealing with death, our great enemy, we are dealing with three different parts of death. We are dealing with death as the source. We are dealing with death as the river. And we are dealing with death as the consummation.

When Paul said that the last enemy to be conquered is death, he was referring to death as the consummation. Nonetheless, we are beginning to understand this truth, that before death as the consummation, that is, death in outward appearance, can be eliminated, death as the source must be challenged and cast down first so that death as the river will cease.

And one thing alone will cast down and eliminate death as source, death as river, and death as consummation. That one thing is LIFE as source, LIFE as river, and LIFE as consummation.

Death is swallowed up by life.

Now, the last letter, “To Overcome,” is a game-changer for us. As I shared, I have always been a dreamer and a practical man, an idealist and a realist together. For the first time, the practical “how” of the setting free of God’s people is now coming to us.

We look at Revelation Chapter 6, now, in an entirely different light. We are looking at the greatest deliverance service ever conducted in human history. More than that, this change of seeing is tying everything together from Revelation Chapter 1 to Chapter 15, as one seamless whole, setting forth and proving many different views of the same mighty deliverance.

The one sitting in “the chair” of deliverance, so to speak, is the entire Church of Christ, millions of Spirit-filled believers in Jesus all across this earth. And the breaking of each of these seven seals is the casting down of a powerful controlling demon from off of God’s people, from out of their ears. And then suddenly, we read Revelation Chapter 12 as the focal point of this great deliverance service in which you and I are engaged, for it is you and me who are the ones through whom Jesus is conducting this mighty deliverance.

Now that is something I know well in practical terms, and thus I hope to spell out our part in this deliverance session through the next few chapters. Indeed, it is now clear to us that Revelation 12:10-11 is really about you and me casting down powerful demon spirits who are at present ruling inside the minds of our brothers and sisters, preventing them from hearing the gospel of God.

We will begin that particular topic more fully in the next chapter, “How Will They Hear?” In this letter, I want to turn just a bit and look more fully at this great enemy of death and how it works inside of the “Christian” mind. It is demons that are cast down, but it is death that is swallowed up by life.

At the same time, the next lesson for me to write in Set My People Free is “6.3 Death as Salvation.” I have already rambled through this topic once in Designed by Word, “Chapter 22. Opposing the Ten.” If I ramble through it again here first, I will have more source material to fine-tune that critical lesson.

What is death?

I wrote a lesson titled “What Is Death?” in Symmorphy II: Essence. I recommend that you read it yourself, but I will not because I want to restate a definition of death in terms of source – river – flow and in my present thinking. (I probably defined it in a similar way there, but I want this to be fresh.)

Death as source is that point of marriage in which each human joins the words of accusation spoken by the serpent together with the hardness of unthankfulness in his or her own forehead.

In Adam, death as source became his own fallen spirit, now dead to God and alive to fallen angels, now providing that human awareness of self inside of which the human can generate his own preferable story of self in the forms of self-cursing/self-exaltation, and in arrogant contempt towards others. That fallen human spirit is called “the old man” and is itself put to death upon the cross of Christ.

In the Christian however, the action of marrying words of accusation anointed by the serpent with the hard forehead of unthankfulness results not in the death of the born-again spirit, but rather in the driving away of the true knowledge of Christ our life. Nonetheless, this false marriage in the Christian results in a river of death flowing out towards others in word and action, right alongside of the river of life. As James said, “These things ought not to be so. How can two rivers flow out of your mouth?”

Death as river, then, is the story of self spun inside the human mind, a story of “I am a vile sinner” always together with “I am more righteous than they.” This death as river, then, flows out as words of cursing and the will to manipulate and control.

I know many Christian parents who raise their children by words of cursing and who exert upon them the will to control. And in result I know many Christian children who either hate God or love self-righteousness, but usually both together. Of truth, this is a worse crime than abortion.

Death as consummation, then is the fantasy story of “We’ll know what its all about in the high by-and-by, when we are exalted into the ‘higher life.’”

Physical death is the end result of this marriage of unthankfulness with accusation continuing in the present, and all that attends physical death. In contrast, the fantasy definition of “salvation” does not exist except as the power inside the Christian mind keeping Christian far away from Christ here and now alive Personally inside all that he or she is.

Yes, Christians who lose their physical bodies are kept safe inside of Christ in the heavens, but they do not know Jesus as He is, not before we do.

When I was attending college at Blueberry Christian Community, in my late twenties, I returned there after a brief visit with my parents in Oregon. Soon after my return, the Lord gave me a profound dream.

In my dream, I was standing next to a long line of Christian people. I knew some of them, either in the move fellowship or in other fellowships. Each of these Christians were trudging forward in a single line, their heads cast down, and a shadow upon their faces. At the end of the line was DEATH, executing them.

I was not in the line, but rather, I was pleading with them – “You do not belong in this line. Step away to life. Death has no authority over you.” No one would look my way, but they kept their heads down, trudging forward to death.

Now, this vision does include general death, but I also saw it at the time as including actual persecution against the Church in these last days. Death has no power over us.

Here’s the problem, though. When I seek to remove death from off the imagination of my fellow believers in Jesus, they imagine that I am attempting to take “heaven” from them, and thus “Jesus” from them, for they imagine Him to be only there.

And so they trudge forward in the dark shadow of death, convinced that only death can save them.

Death rules, having replaced Christ in the minds of our brethren.

I want to look at a few other ways in which death maintains its hold before looking at the layout of the deliverance taking place in Revelation 6, a layout that places the victory over death as fourth, not as last, which means that this is death as source and river, not the resurrection.

First, let’s consider “Sue,” and her need for healing by the good-speaking of Christ to enter into every moment of her tragedy, Jesus, utterly together with her, sharing her agony with her. Look at the argument of those who reject any such healing. If you take the psychology of their argument apart, you will see that what they really mean is that Sue should “look forward” to death (and not back to Christ in Gethsemane revealed now through every present moment of her life). In essence, the argument is that death alone can heal the Christian, and to rob death of his place is to deny Christ.

Then look at the reaction of almost all Christians when someone suggests that Jesus is well able to seek and to save a human who has died, after they have died (something Peter claims He does). The reaction is to run as far away from you as fast as they can, for you are attacking their exaltation of death as the final arbiter of “fate,” in the face of a very small, very limited, and fairly irrelevant Christ Jesus.

A Christian who claims that Jesus CANNOT save anyone after they have died is a worshipper of death as savior and salvation. And if you attack the supremacy of death, you must be attacking “God,” at least in their desperate and frightened minds.

There is also an entirely different element we must consider in this rule of death over our brethren inside the brutal taskmaster of their mental definitions of “Christ.” I am speaking of a rule of death coming out of the heavenly realms, a rule that has its authority against the Christian, by their own sworn agreement to be part of an organization of this world.

Let me give a Scripture before talking about this covenant with death too many of our brethren live inside of.

Therefore hear the word of the Lord, you scornful men, who rule this people who are in Jerusalem {that is, the Church of Christ}, because you have said, “We have made a covenant with death, and with Sheol {the place of the dead, that is, for us now, “heaven.”} we are in agreement. When the overflowing scourge passes through, it will not come to us, for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood we have hidden ourselves.” – Your covenant with death will be annulled, and your agreement with Sheol will not stand; when the overflowing scourge passes through, then you will be trampled down by it (Isaiah 28:14-15 & 18).

We take words such as these as a warning from a deeply grieving Father, not as the infliction of punishment by a “superior God,” a “God” through the image of the serpent.

Nonetheless, the reality expressed in these lines is very real and very desperate. When a Christian makes a binding agreement with death, that agreement must be broken by repentance before the authority of death over them, to trample them underfoot, can also be broken.

That repentance is always a full turning to Christ their only life, yet it also includes a repudiation of that false oath.

What is, then, this covenant with death and with being dead? It is the very words of the serpent – “You will not surely die.” “Death takes us to glory! Oh hallelujah. We have made a covenant with death to take us into the knowledge of God. We refuse to believe God here and God now, we refuse to know Father Personal inside of us. But we’ll know what its all about by the overflowing scourge taking us to heaven!”

Yet this covenant with death takes on very practical terms inside our connections together as Christians and as humans.

This covenant with death is also a covenant with the group.

First, notice who it is to whom Isaiah is speaking – to those who rule in the Church. Here is Ezekiel’s introduction to the same topic.

“Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel, prophesy and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God to the shepherds: “Woe to the shepherds of Israel who feed themselves! Should not the shepherds feed the flocks?” (Ezekiel 34:2).

I have a chapter in Set My People Free titled “The Preachers.” Although I want to end that chapter with no condemnation, nonetheless, this business of preaching the sermon of the serpent in every Sunday service must cease.

Notice that this business of feeding themselves is NOT a pastor earning a living, something Paul established, or from a Christian writer making money from selling his books, even to prospering. This is the business of exalting self by gaining victory over the flesh of the congregation through preaching, “You should be like Jesus,” and not teaching these precious ones to live only inside of Jesus and Jesus inside of them.

Inside the history of Christianity is this practice of creating an organization and becoming members of that organization in order to gain a place over the Church of God. Whether that organization is the Roman Catholic Church or the Southern Baptist denomination or even the hierarchy of the move of God fellowship, it all works in the same way. All such organizations place “the ministry” in-between the congregation of believers and the Lord Jesus Christ.

For 21 years, the story I told myself about myself was that my connection with God was found primarily in my commitment to the “move” and to my submission to the ministry of that fellowship as unto Christ. Yet that ministry did not teach me that Christ is my life. Rather, they taught me that Jesus was above me, that I was a low sinner, always in rebellion against God, and that I could “become like Jesus” only by my own performance of “obedience.” They taught me the gospel of the serpent in almost every sermon.

To leave that fellowship, that is, to “walk away from the covering,” was one of the most desperate actions of my life. I had to break a story I had spun for 21 years. Nonetheless, it was another two years before God could thaw out my heart from that covenant with death before I could even hear my Father say to me, “I love you,” and to add no “but” after it.

Now, in Symmorphy V: Life, I gave a very careful balance in showing how we are committed to one another in our local fellowship in full reciprocal love, in submitting one to another inside the fear of Christ. This commitment is to Jesus alive in our hearts, and through Jesus, to one another as Christ Himself. It is entirely different from a commitment to a group in the form of a hierarchy of “authority over” that has taken the place of Jesus in our lives.

That commitment to a “group,” in that manner, will block all knowledge of Christ Jesus now our very and only life.

Yet there are greater group commitments to death. One of those is swearing heart allegiance to the battle flags of the kingdoms of men in this world. Another is the sworn oath of commitment to death found in being a Mason, or of other, similar associations. Such oaths must be broken by repentance and by agreement with God through the speaking of Christ. The blood easily breaks such oaths, but the willingness of the human is less simple.

Working for a corporation or a business is NOT such a commitment, for you are simply providing your labor for a paycheck in return. Such a thing is not a binding commitment of the soul; that is, you are not seeking any “belonging” through such an agreement. Rather, all employment is freely part of Jesus living as you. You are a “servant,” and you are pleasing the Lord in all that you do together with Him for your employer.

Let’s look, now, at the psychology of death in the mental agreements of our brothers and sisters in Christ, as it is laid out in the deliverance taking place in Revelation 6. Of truth, this layout is designed for the sake of how we humans think inside our consciousness of self, and not in an order as it would be for other purposes.

More than that, I now see clearly why it would be inappropriate for me to use Revelation 6 in my layout of the seven principles found in the serpent’s words. That lesson, “6.1 Seven Perversions,” in Set My People Free is the most terrible thing I have ever written or recorded into audio. Yet such horror must assail us as we consider those words, for they are awful indeed. In that lesson, however, I was dealing only with the meanings of the serpent’s words, irrespective of Adam. This layout in Revelation 6 is dealing with the combining of the serpent’s words with Adam’s rebellion as it is repeated inside the Christian mind.

Here is the layout of deliverance. (1) Lust for superiority. (2) Abuse of others. (3) Limiting the Atonement. (4) Exalting death. (5) Unbelief. (6) Self-righteousness. (7) Accusing God.

Let me trace my own life. By my early thirties, out from my practice of planting God’s word all through my heart, two pieces of knowing had taken root inside my heart, underneath of how I would know the Lord and His word. The first was these words, “He that has seen Me has seen the Father,” in terms of Jesus, the Man, as the visible image of God. And out of those words, “Conformed with the image of His Son,” as the defining words of the Bible and of my life.

I had no idea of what these things might mean, but I realize now how much they were the beginning of all I teach now.

It is placing the human Jesus, stumbling under a cross He could not carry, as the image through which alone we must see and know God, that breaks the lust for the image of superiority, the image of the “above-you” Christ. That image of the “above-you” Christ still ruled in my mind, but it had no power over my knowing of the Jesus of my heart.

I was 32 years old when the lust for the super-Christ had died inside of me.

I was 33 years old when I was stricken with sorrow the first time I saw how badly I had treated other people. That was a mighty barrier through which God required me to pass before He would bring Maureen down the aisle to be my wife.

I was 45 years old when I no longer limited the Atonement.

I was 48 years old when I finally broke the covenant I had made with death.

I was 49 years old when I rushed into Christ my only life.

I was 54 years old when I no longer needed to hide, for I had finally discovered my Father underneath of me, carrying me all the way into life, His name now my only story of self.

I was 56 years old when Jesus sealed me into never again accusing God of my being separate from Him in any way. From then until now, I think only Father with me, sharing everything with me, regardless, reconciling the world to Himself in travail together with me.

Look at that. Revelation 7 is about being sealed in the forehead with the name of our Father, just before all accusation ceases. That sealing is where I have lived since I was 56.

And look at this as well. Breaking the covenant with death, seal # 4, stands in-between eliminating all limitation of the Atonement and entering boldly into at least the beginnings of knowing all that Christ is by faith.

And you know that you have ceased limiting the Atonement when you can say, in all faith and joy, but against all sight of the eyes and against all judgment of the human, “My heart is GOOD; my heart is filled with Jesus.”

This is so cool, because now we see all three of these things together.

Therefore brethren, having already a freely bold entrance into the Holiest inside the blood of Jesus consecrating for us a newly sacrificed as well as a living way through the veil, that is, through His flesh; and having a High Priest over the house of God, let us approach [everything inside the Holiest] with a true heart, in full assurance of faith; having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil consciousness; and having our bodies washed with pure water (Hebrews 10:19-22).

1. The blood of Jesus consecrating for us a newly sacrificed as well as a living way – never again limiting the Atonement. 2. Through the veil, that is, through His flesh – breaking the covenant with death. 3. Let us approach everything inside of God with a true heart – entering boldly into the Holiest.

That the life of Jesus also may be made visible inside of our mortal flesh (2 Corinthians 4:11).

Death, where is your sting? O death where is your victory?

Death has been swallowed up into victory – through the veil, that is, through His flesh.

Death has no authority over us.