36. Gathering Together

 
© Daniel Yordy – 2019

And I heard a great voice out of the throne, saying: “Look and see, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will tabernacle with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself, their God, will be with them” (Revelation 21:3).

Inside of the Beloved One, we possess redemption and full deliverance [from our old selves] through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, that is, the elimination of all consciousness of any falling short, by all the details of His abundant and wealthy grace which He [Father God] actively abounds into us inside of all wisdom and practical gut-level heart thinking. He has already made known to us the mystery, that is, the hidden secret of His desire, according to His good pleasure which He purposed and set forth inside of Jesus, for the careful management of the full and complete season or opportune time; this secret of bringing and gathering together ALL into Christ, all upon the heavens and all upon the earth inside of Him. Inside this same Jesus, we also were lot-cast, that is, we were given place by divine choice, having already been pro-determined according to God’s Pro-Thesis, His set-forth purpose, Christ, Who is energeoing all down to the finest details of the counsel and deliberate wisdom arising out of God’s desire; which is that we who actively hope and expect inside of Christ [as firstfruits] might be the praise and the full outward expression of His glory, His great and intrinsic value (Ephesians 1:7-12).

Inside of Whom the whole building, being fitted together, is increasing into a temple, holy inside the Lord. Inside of Jesus, you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God inside the sphere of Spirit (Ephesians 2:21-22).

The Feasts of Israel were a massive gathering together of an entire nation in one place unlike anything else in human history. The gathering of Israel to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles beginning with the dedication of Solomon’s temple was at the height of the united kingdom. By God’s direction ALL were to come, trusting Him entirely to keep their homes and their livestock safe from all intruders. At the height of Solomon’s power there were no enemies left anyway. Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt was his close ally and likely his consort (we know of her as the “Queen of Sheba”). On the other side, Solomon’s power reached halfway across the Syrian desert towards the Tigris. The Phoenicians of Lebanon were his father’s friends and recognized him as overlord.

The number of Israelites constructing booths together in all joyous festivity and living in those booths together, scattered all over Jerusalem and the area around it, would have been millions.

Tabernacles is the Feast of Joy. God commanded them to get drunk, to eat and eat, and to rejoice in all joy together before Him. One-third of all tithes offered throughout the year were dedicated to pay for this massive festival.

Think of that – one third of all tithes paid in the Churches to be devoted to the establishment and support of Christian Community. More than that – all Christians gathering together with their local Christ Communities once each year for a massive celebration of worship!

I’m setting that idea out only as something to wonder about.

But think of this. For seven days the entire nation of Israel lived in these newly-made booths together, celebrating God, dancing and eating and drinking, all intermingling together.

WE ARE ONE FAMILY!!! WE ARE ONE FAMILY!!! WE ARE ONE FAMILY!!!

I have recently completed the almost final Jesus Secret version of the first part of Paul’s letters, which is around 2/3 of his total. I have made this portion into one PDF document, which is available on my website at The Jesus Secret Version. I am going full bore, now, in casting The Jesus Secret II. The layout is already prepared; all I have to do is fill in the boxes.

I strongly recommend that you read through the entire document, 1 Thessalonians through Philippians, to see the massive scope of the actual gospel Paul presented to the Church. Romans is the structure of that gospel, but Ephesians is its beating heart.

I am saying all this  in order to have you read again Ephesians 1:9-12 at the beginning of this letter. When you set these words where they belong, in the power of the fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles, the gathering together into Christ, you can see that there are in these four verses alone depths unknown and vast avenues of discovery yet unexplored.

Two things stand out at first glance. First – this gathering together into Christ is a mystery, a secret unknown. So when we question God as to why on earth we have never really known the glory of the gospel of our Salvation, He has a ready answer – “Now is the time.” And second, as all the multitudes come rushing into living only inside of Jesus, you and I are already there, welcoming them, displaying for them the full outward expressions of His great and intrinsic value!

You know, I feel as if I’m stumbling into the gospel for the first time, looking around in all amazing wonder, seeing all things new, seeing all things GOOD, seeing glories never before known. And I am not alone, for you also are here dazzled in wonder with me.

Where do we even begin?

Look again at the three passages above. I have sandwiched the passage of the gathering together into Christ in-between God tabernacling among us and our being built together as a dwelling place of God. I find in me right now an intense desire to know what is found for us inside of Ephesians 1:7-12. The other two passages give us the larger context and meaning of the gathering together.

The first huge thing we notice is that God is switching our perspective now. Through the fulfillment of the Day of Atonement, we see God through us as the wings of the mighty eagle, carrying God’s people inside our hearts all the way into the knowledge of Christ made personal as all of us together.

But here our perspective is entirely different. In Ephesians 1:7-12, we are the ones already inside of all the fullness of Christ, welcoming the many as they come rushing in for the first time.

Here is the pivot point – This secret of bringing and gathering together ALL into Christ, all upon the heavens and all upon the earth inside of Him. – The Gathering Together.

The celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles in 972 BC was likely the greatest gathering together in joy and abundance that has ever happened before or since in the history of humans upon this planet.

Now, David had tried to number Israel in 988 BC, just 16 years earlier.

For some strange reason, since I was five and a map of the world came into my awareness, I have been obsessed with knowing population figures. The problem with population figures, however, is that they are always changing. And so the knowledge of how many people lived in each state, province, or city across the whole earth that I held in my teenage years is worthless now, as all those figures have moved significantly.

But God not wanting His people numbered, especially inside this critical foreshadowing of the real Tabernacles to come, carries a meaning we do not yet fully perceive. I am placing that idea, of God not wanting His people numbered in the context of the greatest gathering together of celebration in human history, out here where we can hold it in our awareness.

We assume, however, that the count must have been several million people.

This secret of bringing and gathering together ALL into Christ, all upon the heavens and all upon the earth inside of Him.

Now, we must understand this principle – that, prior to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God dealt with that one nation and place, the children of Israel. After the resurrection of Christ, however, God deals with the entire world. In the foreshadowing of gathering together that happened in 972 BC, God gave us the view of one great family come together in one geographical location.

In the gathering together into Christ, the definitions of “family” and “the place God has chosen” has enlarged their meanings to include all whom the Father has given to Jesus in this present season AND Christ Community, the final resting place of God.

Here is the nature of the Church. The Church is local, and the Church is universal, always both fully, all of one and all of the other. In other words, every expression that is the Church in total must also be found inside each local place. Thus, the “place” God has chosen is not one fixed geographical location, but rather – wherever two or three are gathered together in My name, there I am in Your midst, that is, in your connections together.

Now, I have included verses 7 and 8 in this passage because those verses establish what and how you and I ARE inside of this Christ prior to the great gathering in.

Inside of that Beloved One, we possess redemption and full deliverance [from our old selves] through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, that is, the elimination of all consciousness of any falling short, by all the details of His abundant and wealthy grace which He [Father God] actively abounds into us inside of all wisdom and practical gut-level heart thinking.

Let’s reduce this sentence down to its basic layout – We possess A by B. In other words, B is the cause of A, thus B must come first in our experience.

A is the completion of the Atonement, and B is grace abounding into us. “By grace” is male, the progenitor; “through faith” is female, the active receiver. We have already established the Atonement – no consciousness of sins. Let’s look a little further at this abundant grace abounding into us.

The words “according to” mean “down to and including the finest details of.” The progenitor is Father God’s abundant and wealthy grace. The act of procreation is “actively abounds into us.” That verb, “abounds” is continuous, all here now.

When you think of the word, “Savior,” don’t ever think of something back then either in history or in your life experience. “Savior” is Jesus right now, all now, and Personal in you, your ever-present Help in time of need – which time is every moment, for we have NO sufficiency in ourselves.

But look at the place WHERE this active and continuous, wealthy and overflowing GRACE does its stuff – that is, the female womb where that Seed that is Grace, God in us, develops – inside of all wisdom and practical gut-level heart thinking.

The Greek word after “wisdom and” is just one word – phroneo, which I have amplified by using the range of English words – practical gut-level heart thinking. A synonym of this same quality is “acknowledgment,” or the Greek word, epignosis. Although the word “acknowledgment” is not found in this line, we consider it to be the same thing.

In other words, the Atonement is ours in full as we acknowledge the good things of Christ inside of us. Except, when we say “the good things of Christ,” we are speaking of an infinite count of all the details of His abundant and wealthy grace.

Or we could say it this way – upon firm we stand. Or – CONFIDENCE – inside of the Beloved, that is, already and fully inside of Jesus.

Then, let’s look at verses 9 and 10 together. – He has already made known to us the mystery, that is, the hidden secret of His desire, according to His good pleasure which He purposed and set forth inside of Jesus, for the careful management of the full and complete season or opportune time; this secret of bringing and gathering together ALL into Christ, all upon the heavens and all upon the earth inside of Him.

Now, Paul use the word “mysterion” only once, but I have repeated it for clarity. But the strongest element of this “mystery” is – the hidden secret of His desire.

The Calvinist word “will” fits with a “God” who manipulates and controls and who sets a rigid expectation before everyone, an expectation no human can find or meet. The word “desire,” on the other hand, speaks of our Father who intends all, but forces none. The Greek thelema is translated “desire” most of the time in everyday Greek speaking. In the human experience, an inflexible “will” is commonly known as tyranny, that is, the devil as the “image of God.”

Okay – so – “the hidden secret of His desire” can be nothing other than the innermost recesses of the Heart of our Father, that single quality that is MOST IMPORTANT to Him.

 Before we look at the meanings of “mystery” and “secret,” let’s set the hidden secret of God’s desire out in large print – THE GATHERING TOGETHER INTO CHRIST.

What does God WANT? – The gathering together into Christ, otherwise known as the fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles in the life of the Church, pictured to us by the greatest family reunion that has ever occurred in history – that of 972 BC at the dedication of God-among-His-people in the place God had chosen.

Here is Jesus’ expression of that same desire. - Father, I DESIRE that those whom You have given Me might be with Me [where I am] (John 17:24) – the gathering together into Christ.

If we want to talk about “God’s Heart,” we must recognize that we are talking about Tabernacles, that is, Christ Community, for Christ IS a many-membered Body. This Heart of God has been a secret, unknown by most until now.

Mysterion (Strong’s Concordance): (Greek) a mystery or secret doctrine. Usage: a mystery, secret, of which initiation is necessary; in the New Testament: the counsels of God, once hidden but now revealed in the Gospel.

Mystery (Webster’s 1926): 1. A rite to which only privileged worshippers were admitted, and that after preparatory ceremonies and under obligation of secrecy. [In the pagan Greek experience] they appear all to have had the purpose of imparting precepts and semi-magical formulas supposed to ennoble this life and to impart a belief in a future life. 2. A similar secret rite or doctrine in primitive religion.

3. A profound secret; something wholly unknown, or something kept cautiously concealed, and therefore exciting curiosity of wonder; an enigma; something that is not and cannot be explained, hence, something that, as a religious truth or fact that is beyond human comprehension; a sacred and at the same time, mysterious thing. 4. The consecrated elements in the Eucharist [that is, transubstantiation, that is, Jesus becoming us].

Secret (Webster’s 1926): 1. Something studiously concealed; a thing kept from general knowledge; what is not, or is not to be revealed. 2. A thing not discovered or explained; a mystery. 4. The key to the solution or explanation of something difficult, mysterious, puzzling, or the like; hidden cause or explanation; as the secret of his success. 6. A secret or silent prayer; specifically, prayers said in a low or inaudible voice by the celebrant just before the preface of the mass.

The mystery or hidden secret of God’s desire.

Here are the two primary verses that govern our initiation into the secrets of God.

It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh [intellectual knowledge by outward appearance] profits nothing. The Words that I speak to you are Spirit and they are Life (John 6:63).

We speak wisdom, moreover, among those who are perfect and complete [in Christ], wisdom, however, not of this age… But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery being kept secret, which God pro-determined towards the ages into our glory… But, as it is written, “What eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and into the heart of man has not entered, what God has prepared for those loving Him” (Isaiah 64:4 & 65:17). To us indeed, God has unveiled it through the Spirit, for the Spirit searches all, even the depths of God. …we have… received… the Spirit who is out from God, that we might know the things having been given to us by God (1 Corinthians 2:6-12 – reduced).

Most theologians, of course, will argue that we cannot know God in the personal way that John and Paul knew God; therefore, whereas they received this things by the Spirit, we know them by mental understanding only, as a series of “truths” to which we give mental assent. I have shown that argument to be the words of the serpent in the garden, “Get away from that tree.”

We will make further use of these definitions of “mystery” in the upcoming letters, especially as God’s intention to prove Jesus faithful and true through the ONLY evidence accepted by all.

That evidence is Christians walking together, loving one another with a pure heart fervently; something that has never yet happened.

What does this “gathering together into Christ” look like?

Many will point to a literal interpretation of the words that indicate all Christians rising up into the air, all coming together in proximity to each other in a single area in the sky. It is thus assumed that, at that point, all Christians will just automatically “get along” with each other without any indication of how that would be.

In other words, Christians go from not getting along with each other at all, or, getting along inside of rigid religious definitions, to instantly and automatically getting along in all “love” forever. In other words, this is the fundamental belief that, God having made a mistake in making us like we ARE in the first place, then re-invents us to make us into something else, something not human at all, something “superior!”

My assertion is that if love one another does not come to full experience in the lives of many across this earth, as and through what we presently are as humans, then there is no God and we are wasting our time. My further assertion is that we cannot do “love one another,” but only God; therefore, love one another MUST BE God among us.

God gives us two great pictures of what the gathering together into Christ looks like outwardly. The first is the Old Testament celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles, dwelling all together in little booths made out of branches, eating and drinking and celebrating God in all joy, the feast of the full harvest. The second is the New Testament Church in Jerusalem through the first eight years of the Christian experience.

Here is the greatest (and one of the few) celebrations of Tabernacles in the Old Testament.

At that time Solomon kept the feast seven days, and all Israel with him, a very great assembly from the entrance of Hamath to the Brook of Egypt. And on the eighth day they held a sacred assembly, for they observed the dedication of the altar seven days, and the feast seven days. On the twenty-third day of the seventh month he sent the people away to their tents, joyful and glad of heart for the good that the Lord had done for David, for Solomon, and for His people Israel (2 Chronicles 7:8-10).

“A very great assembly,” that is, millions of people all dwelling in booths across the whole area around Jerusalem and waving palm branches together in celebration.

Let’s specify the days in booths just to be clear. They would have erected the booths on the afternoon of the first day of the feast. This was not “work,” but celebration. Or – they could have put them up after 6 PM, which would have been after the Sabbath. (Paul told us not to go by present Jewish tradition.) Then, seven days and seven nights would have meant that they left the booths on the morning of the second Sabbath, the eight day, the Great Day of the Feast, the twenty-second day of the month, not leaving Jerusalem until the next day, the twenty-third.

I do NOT know what God’s real fulfilment of the Desire of His Heart will look like today, except this, that it cannot be fantastical, God is not a science fiction writer. Rather, it must be real in all ways to human experience and to life inside this heaven/earth. What I do know, however, is found in the remainder of our passage from Ephesians.

Inside this same Jesus, we also were lot-cast, that is, we were given place by divine choice, having already been pro-determined according to God’s Pro-Thesis, His set-forth purpose, Christ, Who is energeoing all down to the finest details of the counsel and deliberate wisdom arising out of God’s desire; which is that we who actively hope and expect inside of Christ [as firstfruits] might be the praise and the full outward expression of His glory, His great and intrinsic value.

These verses give us the picture of you and me, waiting there together, inside of the Desire and Heart of God, both as the full outward expression of His Desire, but also as His welcoming face to the many rushing in, and as the visible expression of God’s Pro-Thesis, the pattern of the fulness of Christ for the Church.

As Ezekiel was told, “Show the House to the house.” – Show the Church to the church.

Jesus is energeoing all, including every fine detail of counsel and deliberate wisdom arising out of God’s desire, and He is doing that in one place only. He is doing it in us together.

Here is the Old Testament picture of our place inside of Christ, here, as the welcome to all who are entering into Tabernacles as the fulness of God among us.

Bring all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house, and try Me now in this,” says the Lord of hosts, “If I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be room enough to receive it (Malachi 3:10).

We are the tithe of God, given place as firstfruits so that the blessing of God might open for the sake of all. Indeed, this picture in Malachi is just another representation of the same river of life that is the topic of this series – abundant provision in the heavens and in the earth.

The tithe, of course, is the guarantee of the full harvest; the full harvest is Tabernacles, the gathering together into Christ, that is, as the Church, which is His body, the fulness of Jesus who fills all inside of all.