18. To Overcome

As our understanding comes into alignment with our being just like the Lord Jesus Christ and our walking just as He walked, so we see that the ideas we have held in our head about “approaching” God have been entirely perverted.

Not least among those perversions is the concept of prayer and of intercession as if we plead with God to do something He so obviously “is reluctant to do.” Yet this is a big part of why I have never been successful at “intercession,” because my inner certainty that God does what He says always made me feel that treating God in such a despicable way was not what I wanted to do.

I just didn’t know a different way of walking with God – but now we do.

Let’s start with the absolute directive of authority given to mankind from the beginning.

“Subdue.”

The translators insist on adding the word “it” to “subdue,” as in “subdue the earth,” but the Hebrew word for “subdue” stands all by itself.  More than that, the writer of Hebrews insists that “subdue” means all created things in both heaven and earth.

You and I, in union with the Lord Jesus Christ, have as much authority over every detail of heaven as we do over the plants in our flower garden. And we have as much authority over the greatest of angels as we do over the least creature on earth.

We have all-authority, yes, but no power.

God has all-power, yes, but no authority.

When God said to mankind, “Subdue,” that transfer of authority was absolute. BUT – no power came with the authority. That’s a big part of what turned Adam to the dark side. “What good is authority if I have no power to accomplish what I might command?”

The “will to dominate” is a man reaching for the power to match his authority, power not given to him by God. And because man is NOT ever given God-power, he must resort to inflicting pain by violence as his means of power.

Here is what Jesus actually said in 2 Corinthians 12:9. – My grace suffices you [is all you need], for power is made perfect and comes to full completion inside of weakness.

So many things fit perfectly together in order to change our minds about everything.

God cannot remove authority from any human because the thought of doing so is not found inside of God. God cannot give His power to any human because the thought of doing so is not found inside of God.

Here is the equation – For we have this treasure [all authority in heaven and on earth] in earthen vessels [utter weakness, no power at all], that the excellency of the power might be of God and not of us.

That’s pretty simple, then. The only possible way that a universe of life could come into the experience of anyone and everyone is one thing only – synergeia – God and us together.

And that is exactly how Jesus walked. He knew that He had all authority and He knew that He had no power. He walked in full confidence that Father and He were synergeoing all things together.

No one will ever “overcome” except they walk in the same absolute confidence of full union with God. I have the authority over all creation; God has the power. We walk together as one BECAUSE I am confident that we walk together as one.

BUT – in the exercise of my authority (and when I say, “I,” I mean Christ Jesus living as me, the Man to whom God transferred the authority from Adam) I also possess a heart as bold as God’s. The best human word to begin a definition of such a heart is “ambition.”

So – what keeps me utterly together with God in my God-given ambition AND utterly free from arrogance and abuse of power?

This is so critical – the life of all sits on this one thing as on a razor’s edge.

The thing that keeps me utterly together with God in my ambition and utterly free from arrogance and abuse of power is the communion service.

Except not the communion service as we have known it inside of Nicene Christianity, but the communion service that took place at the end of the last letter.

“My flesh in all of its weakness is Your flesh, Lord Jesus. I give you thanks for every element of our shared weakness and our shared every moment. My spirit in all of its goodness is Your Spirit, Lord Jesus. I give you thanks for every element of our shared life and our shared and Holy Spirit. And inside of this communion, Lord Jesus, I know that You share Your soul with me and that I share my soul with You. And I know, Lord Jesus, that Father is inside of You and inside of our life together, sharing all things with us in full and sweet fellowship.”

And this communion service is at its greatest when we are being hit with all opposition and slander, with everything going wrong, and against all threat of hurt. Yet all true victory proceeds only out from here. I have never known a prayer that keeps me utterly inside of my Father as this communion prayer does.

And out from this communion service, we KNOW that we possess all authority and God possesses none. And we KNOW that God possesses all power and we possess none. And thus we KNOW that God and we are synergeoing utterly together, turning everything in creation towards goodness and life.

Now, the fourth most important verse in the Bible, the verse that positions “to overcome” into our creation as one new man inside of Christ, is rightly understood as applying to each one of us personally as we are beginning to know our wondrous union with Christ. But there comes a point when we see the Church as Christ sees the Church and then we see that “to overcome” is not for ourselves, but for our brethren. And this also is a “right” interpretation of “And they overcame him.”

As we have seen, it is evident from Revelation 12:10-11 that the place of the battle against Satan is inside the minds of our brethren, for it is there that he accuses them in the very presence and face of God. Satan is not cast down, then, until Christ alone is the only story taking place inside the consciousness of millions of Spirit-filled believers in Jesus across this earth.

So – we see that there are seven “overcomings” in Revelation Chapters 2-3 and that there are seven seals removed in Revelation Chapters 6-8. Now, I’m not going to get excited about trying to match these two lists together, and I have decided not to use the seals as a rigid outline in writing about the seven principles of the serpent’s words in Set My People Free, primarily because I am writing there out from an entirely different perspective and do not want to be hampered by some arbitrary layout.

My purpose, in using this vision of the removal of the seven seals that bind, is to set before us a clear picture of how we cast Satan’s gospel out of the minds of our brethren.

Nonetheless, let’s at least put a simple layout of the seven overcomings and the seven removals of seals in front of our eyes.

And we understand that 1 John 5 is the defining rule over how we understand the seven overcomings, and that is, that, for instance, “eating of the tree of life” does not come out of “to him who overcomes,” rather, it is the other way around. “He who overcomes” is always coming out of “eating of the tree of life.”

Overcoming in full victory, then, comes out of – [And as you read through these, you might want to look at the verses in Revelation 2 & 3 that are these specific points of overcoming.]

1. Eating of the tree of life, that is John 14:20, by practicing the real communion service every moment.

2. Not being touched by any second death, that is, refusing to consider ANY possibility of a separation from Father, that is, walking always beneath of all with Father.

3. Eating of Christ as hidden manna, possessing God’s full approval in the form of our own knowing of God’s knowing of us.

4. Possessing authority over all peoples on this earth, possessing the morning star, that is, the emblem of that authority as the covering over all that God creates and has created.

5. Being clothed entirely with the Lord Jesus Christ, living only inside of the Book of life, that is, this Scroll about to be opened, coming always and utterly out of the pro-knowing of God through the same spoken word that is Christ.

6. Remaining utterly inside and as God’s house, His Church together, having “Father” in all that “Father” means written upon our foreheads, that is, upon the frontal position of our entire self-story, having the name of God’s precious people and Jesus’ new name written upon us, upon all that we are.

7. Sitting with Jesus inside of His Mercy Seat as God’s Heart extended over all creation.

It is out from these seven places in which we live entirely by faith, that we overcome the world, the beast, all accusation, and death itself. Yet it is the defeat of all accusation inside the self-stories of our brothers and sisters all across this earth that concerns us most of all.

Then, here are the false things that must be removed before Christ written upon the hearts of all who belong to Him can be seen and read by all. [Again, as you read through these, you might want to reference the specific seals in Revelation 6 & 8].

1. A false conqueror who looks like “Jesus,” but is not. The super-Christ, the caricature of the Lord Jesus that makes Him into something unreachable by us. The image mirrored by Constantine before the Council of Nicaea – using the cross of Christ as a device of satanic control – “Die, brother, die. You cannot ‘know Jesus’ otherwise.”

2. An extension of this control into the abusiveness that Nicene Christianity has exercised, Christians killing Christians, turning the words of the Bible into clubs with which to beat one another, that is, the outcome of treating God’s word as mental ideas.

3. The false judgment of falling short, the repudiation of Jesus’ grace as sufficient for us, measuring and thus minimizing every aspect of the Atonement. In fact, this is the final perversion needed for seal number four to reign over the Church of Christ.

4. Death. The primacy of Death. Death replacing Jesus as Savior and as Salvation. The next chapter will be “The Primacy of Death.”

5. Christians living in the wrong place, in the Altar of Decision, weeping over their mistaken view of everything. Look at how this description does match Number 5 in the seven overcomings.

6. All hiding and pretending that humans are capable of in keeping themselves from knowing the good-speaking of Christ by which they exist. This hiding and pretending that operates especially in the face of other Christians, that is, being ruled by the “face” of Eve.

7. All accusation ever uttered against God, accusing Him of falseness. All application of “Did God indeed say” against the Lord Jesus Christ, all nuances of definition found inside of “God knows evil.”

Now, I started by saying that we need not try to force any connection between these two lists of seven; nonetheless, the connections we can now see are truly amazing and wonderful. And, in fact, bringing in each of the seven overcomings will help us to far better understand the removal of the false.

In fact, I am just overwhelmed and blessed, because God’s word is just awesome when we understand it as He means it and by His patterns.

Here are the seals of deception, coming out from the serpent’s words in the garden and matched with the rebellion inside of Adam, which we cast out of the minds and thinking of our brethren all across this earth by the authority we alone possess and with the power of the Spirit flowing out, power that only God possesses.

1. The super-Christ.
And I looked and behold a white horse and the one sitting upon it having a bow; and a crown was given to him and he went forth conquering and that he might conquer (Revelation 6:2).

I won’t spend time on defining this fake super-Christ here. I think we understand this ridiculous caricature of the Lord Jesus Christ and what it means to “be like Him” reasonably well. When I sat in the Lakewood service and listened to the brother proclaim how we were not like “Jesus” and how we must pretend like we never have before to be “like” this “Jesus,” every element of his image of “Jesus” was this twisted perversion that we have known too well all our Christian lives. (There is an entire chapter called “The Arrogant Christ” in Set My People Free.)

And what is the full antidote to the false image of Christ held in the mind of our brethren? Eating of the real Jesus living in their hearts – the tree of life – John 14:20, entirely by faith.

We cast the image of the above-you-Christ out from the minds of our brethren.

2. Abuse in the Church.

When I see someone using Bible verses as mental ideas in order to beat me into submission to their superior “knowledge of the truth,” I see those verses coming at me as clubs, as extensions of the horns of power. When used as intellectual ideas, verses seem to lose all essence of the Jesus they should carry.

The first Christian to be killed by Christians for using Bible verses the “wrong” way, happened in the middle of that darkest of centuries in which Nicene Christianity fully overthrew the precious gospel of Christ our life. And Christians have been using “the Bible” for that same purpose nonstop. How can a man, John Calvin, who ordered a believer in Jesus to be burned at the stake for using verses of the Bible in unapproved ways (that is, using those verses as I use them) how can such a man give to the church a true picture of God and of the gospel?

Yet most Christians I know see God and the gospel by John Calvin.

Let me share here just exactly what God is doing with us. You see, the antidote to this horror of Christians beating on Christians is found entirely inside of our full knowing that our Father shares all things utterly together with us, that no separation can exist between our person and Father’s Person, that we walk beneath of all with our Father.

A reader of these letters has shared with me how the word coming through me over the last couple of years, that is, the word of not controlling others, has brought him to great repentance and weeping, including asking forgiveness of some whom he has abused religiously in the past. I do not disclose this brother’s private sharing, however; rather, I know full well that I am speaking of each of my readers, for we have all abused other Christians in order to strut our religious “superiority.”

Nonetheless, my counsel to this dear brother is this. Do NOT imagine in your mind that you are in any way “reconnecting” with Father. You are not subject to any “second separation.” Rather, using the prayer of the communion service, see every moment of your present agony and humiliation as Father utterly together with you, winning the victory of Christ over all the abuse still remaining in our brethren. Your agony is you and Father together, winning the freedom of all.

3. Limiting the Atonement. Making Jesus to be tiny, far away, and fairly irrelevant to our lives right now. Placing human performance in strength as a condition of His grace inside of us.

But look at the antidote to all the limitation placed upon Christ. – Eating of Christ as hidden manna, possessing God’s full approval in the form of our own knowing of God’s knowing of us.
Isn’t this cool!

Every demon spirit, speaking the limitation of Christ and of the atonement in the minds of our brethren, we cast down by showing them Jesus as He is already inside of them, their only life, that is, the hidden manna. Know Jesus alive in your heart; know Jesus; know Jesus personal as you.

4. The Primacy of Death. Death casts a far greater spell upon the Christian mind than the super-Christ. The super-Christ is so obviously a caricature, but death is the guy that prevails in driving the knowledge of the real Jesus far away.

Again, we will look more at death in the next chapter, so I will not take up space here.

But look at this. Number 1, the super-Christ, is what Adam lusted after first in the garden. Then, Number 2, domination over others is what Adam chose in his brutal decision to kill everyone. Number 3, limiting Christ and the atonement is what the evil one must do in the face of the obvious Lamb slain for us and now living in our hearts.

And – I have just seen a further definition of the “super-Christ,” and that is, the desire for the power God does not give, either to Jesus or to us, power God reserves entirely to His Holy Spirit.

But it is number four, the death that comes out of eating of human performance by the knowledge of good and evil, that is the most powerful of these seals. For death has replaced Jesus as Savior and being dead has replaced Jesus as Salvation in the intellectual delusions of our brethren.

Thus death is the “last” enemy we must cast down, breaking the hold that “heaven” has over our fellow Christians. And our antidote over death is that we possess the authority and we are God’s covering over all things by that authority. That is, we overcome out from already possessing all things as our inheritance (Revelation 21:7 – the “eighth” overcoming).

5. Unbelief. Refusing to enter the Holiest. Refusing to rejoice in the giving of thanks.
You see, this is the place where most of our “Spirit-filled” brethren are stuck. They hear the Trumpets blowing, that we “should be” just like Jesus, but they will not enter into knowing that such a reality is already true, or to call it to be so against the sight of their eyes.

But look at Overcoming #5. This is exactly what I wrote in Symmorphy IV: Covenant, and that is, that we completely bypass the Altar of Incense and those stuck inside of it where they have no business being, and go straight to the Table of Shewbread, to show them Christ Jesus alive inside their hearts as every word God speaks. That is, as we know that we are entirely clothed with Christ by faith, so we show the words of life to our brethren, that those words, coming out from Father, are indeed the only thing written upon their hearts.

Before we can take our brethren into the Holiest, we must entice them out of their hiding place inside “the dealings of God,” back to the knowing of a Living Word already written upon their hearts.

6. All hiding and pretending – especially in the face of other Christians.

Sometimes Peter and even Paul like to write out a specific list of the ways in which humans pretend to be something they are not as they hide from the good words of Jesus always sustaining them. As I bring those lists into the JSV, and especially Peter’s list, I do not find the fruit of Christ in their doing of such a thing. These writers were humans, just like us, and sometimes their humanity colored over the purity of Christ. I was quite depressed after finishing 1 Peter until the Lord spoke to me, “Do not be concerned, My son, by the letter of the word.” We know life only out from that word that becomes Christ our only life.

What I mean to say is that we could write books on all the hiding and pretending of which humans are capable of practicing. And yet, the truth is, that is the province of the great literary writers of history. And they do a far better job at portraying the masquerade than do Christian theologians writing out some list of all the wicked things people do.

What we want is the root – the axe is laid to the root. And we have that axe, removing the root of the meaninglessness of “not-Christ.”

Yet look at the specific antidote to all the fakery practiced by Christians in the face of each other. – Remaining utterly inside of and as God’s house, His Church together, having “Father” in all that “Father” means written upon our foreheads, that is, upon the frontal position of our entire self-story, in fact, our very face.

That’s my mask, the only face I wear – the name of my Father written upon my forehead – life laid-down and love poured-out. Those names written upon us, Father, Jesus, and the New Jerusalem, (something I cover in Symmorphy IV: Covenant) are the very thing that we see as we look at one another inside and as the House of God.

The only ones who have no need to hide in the moment of this level of deliverance are those who are already hidden only inside of Jesus and who see all other believers in Jesus only inside the same place.

7. ALL accusation ever uttered from the first words of the serpent until this moment of deliverance.

Silenced. – that the entire cosmos might become silent, guilty before God (Romans 3).

Here’s the thing. Think back to Joe and Sue. Every accusation they carry inside their hearts, minds, and bodies, for the rest of their lives, out from that one momentary action of wickedness, is, in fact, an accusation against God. Yet God bears no responsibility as the on-going cause of any unjust human action. God does not know any such thing; therefore, those isolated actions cannot be coming out from the good-speaking of Jesus sustaining them.

Man is the master. And by the one action of either accusing or of giving thanks, we ourselves place ourselves into which realm we prefer to live, death or life.

God, of course, does take all that responsibility upon Himself through Jesus, but that is even more proof of His goodness and not of His culpability.

Now, I never expected these two layouts to become what they have become or to fit together so incredibly wondrously.

More than that, although I did not focus on “what we do to overcome,” I have never before had such a clear and practical understanding of how we overcome. You see, I am a dreamer, thus I can “see.” But I am also a builder, and thus I must have precise and complete practicality as well.

Here is our practicality. The deliverance of our fellow Christians from the false gospel of the serpent IS a deliverance service, and that deliverance service is ordered by the breaking off of the seals from Christ already written upon the heart. Those seals are demonic powers. We have all authority to cast them down. And that is exactly what is happening in Revelation Chapter 12.

Now, breaking off the seals leads to the opening of the scroll, which is the revelation of Jesus Christ in the fulfillment of the first day of Tabernacles in the life of the Church. But before we will see a people enter into that mighty Day of God among us, we must develop much more fully this mighty deliverance service for our brethren in which we are engaged right now, this deliverance service called the Day of Atonement.