3. The False Image

I received the following question from a reader. Even though this question is very much part of God’s press upon me right now, that I might know exactly how to make the issues found in Set My People Free to be as clear as God through me can make them, I can place it here inside of this present rambling topic of “A River of Life” because we are looking at the essence of what it is that blocks that river. (And when I say, “What it is that blocks,” I am in no way referring to the brother or his question – but simply to that conflict between the ideas of the mind and the Jesus of our hearts.)

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Daniel, in Musings on Union chapter 19 you wrote – “Now, there is a teaching out there somewhere that says something along this line. God would not have placed the tree of the knowledge of good and evil before man in the garden unless He had intended man to eat of it as part of God's ultimate purpose.”
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Help!!! This is what I have been taught. Did not God know that Adam would eat from the tree? If Adam did not eat, then God's plan would have been ruined? Did not God place Adam in a place where Adam would willingly choose to eat? What is your understanding on this? Was not this God's plan?

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Brother, in a question like this, it is essential that we look much deeper than "verse against verse" or "who is right," etc. I have no confidence at all in any ability I might have to "figure things out." But I do have a confidence in the path God has led me and in the way He has taught me to understand.

Of truth, this "teaching out there" is one I once held as an idea in my mind, placed there in my last years in the move of God fellowship by Buddy Cobb's teachings, that is, through the 1990's. It was very much part of that larger package of thinking that weighed me down into hopelessness, a "God" who would place such a weight upon me, to test me with trickery, to prove - what - that I am a failure? Well, yes, partly, but I thought that I had to "get it right" or die. I was not being successful.

The point is that leaving that fellowship was a BIG deal. And in leaving, I made a covenant with God. I kept for myself only one thing I knew - Jesus is my Savior; His grace carries me." Everything else - everything - went into a large closet after which I shut the door and locked it. My covenant with God was that He would bring out from that place only those things that were truly of Him and if He did not bring something out, making it real inside of my knowing of my Jesus as my Savior and grace, then I would never know it again. The wonderful thing is that God is a keeper of Covenant, but only of one-sided covenants, where all expectation is upon Him.

My problem was this. I knew there was a whole lot of God-stuff inside that closet. I also knew that there was a whole lot of other ideas not from God as well and that the two sets of ideas were so intertwined that I could never pull them apart.

This was no little thing, but the press of my life over several years. In fact it was about two years after I made this agreement with God as we left the communities before I was able to say, "God loves me." And to end that statement with a period. Of truth, that was the first thing God added to my absolute trust in Jesus my Savior.

Now, this whole question you have raised has been very much a part of my recent writing in "Designed by Word." In fact, this question of evil comes up first in "An Enemy Has Done This," the first part of the letter, down to the large-font words "ENLARGE THE GOODNESS."

I would suggest that you read/listen to "The Anointing" again. For here is the real issue regarding a question like this. Now, I suspect that you have come to my writings through the "Ultimate Reconciliation" teaching. That is the only other place I know of where you can find this "teaching out there." Most Christians would reject such an idea.

https://christrevealed.info/bibleinstitute/free/index.php?page=anointing 

As I share in this letter, some of what came to me in the move of God fellowship was God speaking to me, things that found a place inside the knowing of my heart. But other teachings also accompanied those God-things, except they found residence only in my mind. I did not know then the difference between the two, but I do know it now.

Now, it is evident that God has taught you of Himself out from your own heart and has made alive to you many things He says in His covenant with you, that is, out from Paul's gospel and confirmed by John. But I also suspect that I would not be wrong in surmising that the idea that "God placed evil before humans for the sake of His 'plan'" came to you only through some preacher whose words you listened to. (I have read what UR preachers teach.)

But I am also very confident that such an idea never rose out from the words of Paul or John or the writer of Hebrews to become the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ inside of your heart. Here is what Paul said, Romans 3:5-8.

But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unjust who inflicts wrath? (I speak as a man.) Certainly not! For then how will God judge the world? For if the truth of God has increased through my lie to His glory, why am I also still judged as a sinner? And why not say, “Let us do evil that good may come”?—as we are slanderously reported and as some affirm that we say. Their condemnation is just.

Look at the root of that idea, that God placed evil in front of humans for the purpose of pushing them into evil so that His wonderfully good "plan" would happen. - "Let Us do evil that "good" may come."

Our response is the same as Paul's - God forbid.

But - that is not the "looking deeper" that we must have.

The root is - "What is God?" You see, you have a very specific definition of "God," and your definition rules everything you think you know.

Everything I teach began for me from my early thirties, that is, the late 1980's, out from one line - God is love. The answer to every “why” is "God is Love." and I would argue out from that in my mind to arrive at a satisfactory answer. The problem, of course, is that other ideas in my mind kept that word from ever being personal - "God loves me." None of my arguments were coming out from Jesus alive in my heart. Although Jesus alive in my heart was the only foundation of my life and the true knowing of my heart, I did not know that in my brain.

You see, this distinction between the knowing of our hearts and the knowing of our brains is huge and crucial.

So - back to God's path for me. From 1998 to 2004 we attended good, Spirit-filled churches where we were gently bathed in the simple things of Christ in the anointing of the Holy Spirit. That time was critical for me, but by early 2004 my time of healing was coming to completion and my heart began to cry once again for the knowledge of God that I must know or die. I was becoming quite dissatisfied, once again, with the limitation of good charismatic churches.

The first thing God brought back out of that closed and locked closet was the covenant He had made with me when I was 21 and 22, and that is, on the one side, that I would know God as He is in this life and on this earth and that I would walk with a people who know God, and on the other side, that the Lord Jesus Christ reveals the knowledge of God to all through me and through His Church. That I would be just like the Lord Jesus Christ, whatever God might mean by such a thing.

Now, of truth, you will find exactly that truth in the first chapter of Knowing Jesus as He Is, Lessons 1.2 and 1.3. Here - https://christrevealed.info/bibleinstitute/knowing-Jesus/index.php?page=jesus-lives  And so, yes, Romans 8:28-30 was very much a part of those first things God brought out from my former knowledge into Christ alive in me. And please understood, I wrote this book only to those who have zero former thoughts about God and salvation. The ENTIRE purpose of God, then, is found in essence in this first chapter.

BUT - I now understand much more than I did then this distinction between heart and mind. Then, I knew what was in my heart, but I did not understand it with my mind, since I had broken utterly with knowing God with my mind – viewing it as a frivolous exercise incapable of saving me from death.

What I now know is that the first lesson, 1.1 Jesus by Heart, was the doorway I had already placed before everything I might "know" about God. If it came to me through Jesus alive in my heart, then I would receive it. If not, I refused to know it.

But I had also placed an absolute rule for myself regarding "What is God?" I knew in my heart the importance of my rule and of that definition, though I did NOT know it in my mind. Any "God" that I would know, I would know Him through one means only, John 14 and Hebrews 1:3. He that has seen Me has seen the Father – Jesus, the express image of God's person – We will come to him and make Our home with him.

Every part of my definition of God MUST come through the human Jesus as He walked this earth and especially as He walked the path of the Atonement. If an “idea” about God is not coming to me through God’s set forth image of Himself, then, as far as I am concerned, it ain’t God at all.

Oh – another thing I had placed SOLIDLY into that locked closet was the Old Testament in its entirety. I knew the power of the Old Testament to force itself upon Christ and the gospel and to pervert our understanding of both. Indeed, I had already set myself not to know anything about the gospel unless it came to me first through Paul’s words and by the Holy Spirit making Paul’s words to be life and joy to me.

So – in 2004, as God brought back out from my heart the revelation of Jesus Christ (that is, as I discovered that I had never actually placed that covenant I had made with God and His Seed planted inside of me into that closet, for that Seed had always and only been in my heart, Jesus Himself, proven faithful and true through many pressures). Anyhow, I went looking on the Internet for anyone else who taught the revelation of Christ through us His Church outside of the move fellowship.

And, of course, I found such teaching coming from a number of different ones – but in one place only – in ultimate reconciliation circles, and especially Preston Eby, whose teachings, as I have said, are identical to Sam Fife’s at least two thirds of the time. This presented itself as a huge dilemma to me. For here was something, full redemption, that had never been in my closet. But – I am a Bible person. If I am to know anything, I MUST know it out from the pages of the New Testament, words I knew quite well, having devoured them for years.

I carefully chose Dr. Stephen Jones’s books, purchased them, and began to read with a fully open mind, but with very clear requirements – I must see that God, in fact, says these things in the New Testament and not everlasting damnation as it seems that “the Bible says.” Dr. Stephen Jones was the right choice for me – I became convinced, not by Jones, but by the Word God speaks.

BUT – I kept reading in the ultimate reconciliation circles, and, as you probably know, I read all sorts of things that had been tacked onto this approach to the gospel. Through that process, I read these same things you are raising in response to what I wrote in Musings on Union. – Immediately, the Jesus of my heart vomited.

Let me explain. Look at Jesus in the gospels and as we know Him through Paul’s words and John’s gospel and epistles. Picture this Jesus deliberately trapping His disciples into a horror of death and ruin, of suffering and torment, of evil and wicked actions, of rape and murder, just so that He can “work out His good plan.” You are not picturing Jesus at all, but the devil, the Jokester, the Trickster, a demented and evil being.

The real question is, “How did the devil place himself as the image of God in the minds of almost all Christians?” And that is the question I am seeking to answer as explicitly as I can in “Designed by Word” and “Set My People Free.”

Before looking at that in the context of answering your question, let me complete this path of what things came back into me and what I teach out from that locked closet. Once I had decided that God was not a demon who tortures His creation without hope forever, that I really could know personally and intimately a God who is Love, nothing further came back to me from what I had known before. And so I spent about two years in the travail of the revelation of Jesus Christ filling my heart without knowing how such a thing could possibly be fulfilled.

Then, in the summer of 2006, I heard Joel Osteen say, “Speak what God says you are.” As I have shared, there was inside of me, written all through my heart an enormous amount of word waiting in the agony of expectation for just such an opening. As I rushed home and began to write the confessions of faith you find in The Jesus Secret, starting with Matthew, it was just a day or two before I got to Colossians and wrote these life-changing words – “Christ is all there is in me.”

Everything I teach, every verse in the Bible, every word I have ever heard, everything I had locked up in that closet, now comes into me, if it is to do so, ONLY through “Christ is all there is in me.” And when I say, “Christ,” I mean only Jesus, my Savior, the One who always carries me.

So, let’s place your question into our required entrance. – If Adam did not eat then God's plan would have been ruined? –

First, I never use the word “plan.” In fact, that whole concept of God decreeing a future already set in stone was a large concept that never came back out of my locked closet, for the simple reason that it is neither found in the gospel nor a word describing a God of life and love. God’s word is Pro-Thesis, His set-forth purpose, which is Christ.

So, let’s first alter the words as applied to Adam. – If Adam had not plunged the whole creation into sin and death, then Christ could never have become our life or revealed God to us and through us?

But that’s not far enough, for this question has not yet attempted to enter us through our door. – If I do not commit wicked actions and hurt and despise other people, then Jesus, the revelation of my Father and the pattern of all that I am, God’s set-forth purpose, cannot be my life?

Now, that last question is identical to the belief about Adam and sin that you were taught. And, I suspect that you don’t need to tell me that you reject it utterly when it attempts to enter into you.

 But look at my definition of God’s purpose coming out from many gospel verses. That purpose is found inside the tree of life, that is, inside of John 14:20. Then look at the meaning of God’s “plan” as you once understood it. Now – I just attempted to write out what that once was, but I was not being accurate. And the reason is that it exists only in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and thus bounces around in confusion. – And, I think you will recognize that there is nothing about God seen and known through us His church inside those former definitions of any “plan.”

Before looking at where this idea came from, that is, the entrance of this idea that God needed (as an essential requirement) death and rape and misery in order to fulfill His grandiose plan, let’s lay alongside it how God does deal with evil.

Evil exists for two reasons. First, God is not known, and second God cannot sin, that is, He cannot force His knowledge on anyone. God cannot create any sentient beings without having beings inside Himself who do not know Him and who are utterly free of Him.

God’s set-forth purpose, then, was to work together with man in order to turn every particle of His creation into the knowledge of God. God’s set-forth purpose is to reveal Himself through humans walking together in love. Man is responsible for sin and death, not God. And we continue to be responsible so long as we hate being made just like God. Every moment of unthankfulness turns things around us to death, and every moment of our joy and expectation of Father and us together turns things around us towards life.

When our Father becomes part of us through Christ through our faith that He IS part of us, and when we have utterly turned around, then in all things, Father and us together are turning everything meant for evil into the outcome of goodness. This is God’s Pro-Thesis, NOT that other thing that is called a “plan.” And this is God’s intention for man from the beginning. I talk more about God’s Pro-Thesis here: https://christrevealed.info/bibleinstitute/covenant/index.php?page=pro-thesis

So – here is the culprit – Genesis 3:22 as it is found, here in the New King James, but, as I saw the same thing in all translations I looked up, including in those who pretend to know better. – Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil.

When I say that the words “of Us” are NOT in the Hebrew, I am making a claim that has more evidence behind it than almost any claim I make regarding what God actually says in the Bible. The word translated “as one” is found many, many times through the Old Testament and never do the translator feels compelled to add “of Us” to that concept. Those two words do NOT belong here.

Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become as one who knows good and evil.

The question is – How did those two DEFINING words get into that line? And those are defining words, for by them Satan has defined God in the church for 1600 years.

Here is the enormous disconnect, and why I refuse to know God by the cacophony of mental ideas. I have a book on my shelf called The Jerome Conspiracy in which a convincing argument is set forth that the reason Christians believe in eternal damnation is that Jerome altered a handful of words in his translation of the Bible.

But in getting rid of Jerome’s deceit in that one regard, many in ultimate reconciliation circles turned and embraced Jerome’s second deceit in inserting this definition of Satan as “God” into the Bible and thus now teach that evil is part of God and that God inserted evil into the human experience. And the same people who teach that it is wrong to say that God does evil by torturing people forever, then turn and say that all the evil in creation comes, by substance, out of God.

This is a most extraordinary disconnect to me. But the problem is not the fallibility of the human mind, but rather, the false living by the fantasy of the mind in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

God does not know evil. God is aware of the hurt caused by evil, that’s why He is so against it. But He Himself cannot know what evil is. Doing what is wrong never enters God’s mind.

Now, in actuality, whenever I hear something that seems to me to contradict what God says in the gospel, my mind is governed by that which is arising out from my heart. And whenever I read about this claim that God knows or needs or “creates” evil, it’s not just horror arising from my heart, but also word.

Here are the words that have always governed my instant repulsion of that whole concept. – Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone (James 1:13). – Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning (James 1:17). – God is light and in Him is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5).

I am quite aware of all the little phrases of the Old Testament that are so successful at turning God’s people away from the clear rule of the gospel. And so I always dealt with Genesis 3:22 in the back of my mind as something utterly struck down by God revealing Himself as He is to us through Jesus and through Paul’s gospel.

But when I was asked, several years ago – What about Genesis 3:22? Before I looked up the Hebrew I knew, arising out from these words of Christ inside my heart, that I would find that it had been translated falsely. Thus, when I opened up the Hebrew words at https://biblehub.com/text/genesis/3-22.htm and again at https://biblehub.com/hebrew/mimennu_4480.htm, which shows a list of every Old Testament verse with that same word in it, I was not surprised at all to find the deceit.

But – from whence comes this deceit in placing Satan as the image of God? We must understand that Tyndale and especially Luther were open and godly men, and Luther was quite willing to throw out anything if he understood that it was not of God. Luther is the one who chose our final Bible canon. He did get rid of several of Jerome’s false choices, but not all.

The problem for both men was that they did not know the Greek of the New Testament; in fact, they knew classical Greek only by a limited study. And they hardly knew Hebrew. They had none of the resources we have and relied only on a very limited personal knowledge. But they did know Latin, and even though both rejected the guilt and darkness in which Jerome lived, they also could do little more than trust Jerome’s Latin translation of both the Hebrew and the Greek.

When modern translators, however, continue to place the words “of Us” into Genesis 3:22, they do it knowing full well that it does not belong. They do it because of the power Satan holds as the image of God in the thinking of all Nicene Christianity.

Now, I am laying this out as starkly as I can because God cannot be known through us as He is except this false image that God has something to do with evil and with cruelty and hurt is utterly broken out of our minds and hearts. We will never live turned around, sharing all things with our Father as one person together, directing the flow of the Spirit towards turning all things around us towards goodness, IF we hold any shadow of accusation against the God who fills us with all that He is.

More than that, the greatest grief we will bear as our Father shows Himself through us in the revelation of Jesus Christ will be all those of our brethren running around in the same anointing proclaiming a God who “knows good and evil,” that is, running around cursing every one and calling it “God” and teaching everyone to lust after the appearance of a superior “Christ.”

We will share heart with God and thus be the source of that river of life flowing out ONLY as every shadow against our Father is long vanished from our hearts and minds.

God has no plan, but only purpose. And His purpose is and has always been one thing only, the revelation of Jesus Christ through us His Church.