38. The Impartation of Word
© Daniel Yordy – 2019
The symmorphy of the Body of Christ is Christ Community. Christ Community is the larger form that is Jesus, His revelation. As we live inside of Christ Community, so we are found together inside of the same form that is Christ Jesus.
Our own personal symmorphy with Jesus, He in us and we in Him, Jesus in Person and me in person, sharing the same flesh together, sharing the same physical body together, intermingling our souls together, His story as His and my story as mine, yet two stories woven in all ways as one, this personal knowing of Jesus remains our treasure forever.
Yet the second level of symmorphy is the form we share together, that is, the glorious Body of Christ – symmorphosed with His glorious body (Philippians 3:21), that is, Christ Community.
Millions of Israelites, gathered all around Jerusalem, camping out, dancing and celebrating God-among-us, is one of the pictures God gives us of this larger symmorphy, that of many, many sharing the same form together.
But what are we looking at, specifically?
Millions of believers in Jesus are about to rush into, in one mighty Day, the full knowledge of being sealed into God, God-among-us as love one another, that is, into Christ Community. They will not know the vast extent of Word as God means by what He speaks. And they will not know the demonstration and power of the Holy Spirit inside of Tabernacles.
They will know the words of the Bible, yes, but only in the framework of Nicene theology. And they will know the demonstration of the Spirit, yes, but only inside the mixture of Pentecost.
The time of dwelling in booths, then, is our topic now – this time, however long it must be, between the First Day of knowing God among us and the final Great Day of the Feast, the resurrection of our bodies. Whether it be 3 ½ years or 7 years, or whether those Biblical numbers are symbolic only, we cannot know.
We do know that the human mind cannot embrace a total transformation of word overnight. Normally, such a change takes years. I think of some of you who have been reading and listening to what I share for several years now, and I see the astonishing transformation in you. That transformation came by the impartation of Word, but it did not come overnight.
Yet the other thing we know is that Jesus said that, for the elect’s sake, the days will be shortened. I no longer see that as God wrapping this thing up before His intended season. Rather, I see it as meaning that the time it takes for the impartation of Word to fill and to transform the human mind will be made shorter than normal by the power of the Third Feast anointing. I knew third feast anointing in the move fellowship, yes, but that was only Feast of Trumpets anointing, an anointing that then stopped short of the Day of Atonement.
The Third Feast anointing we will consider in the next letter is far greater.
In this letter, we want to consider the meaning and importance of the impartation of word that must take place in the transformation of the minds of many out of serpent thinking and into Christ thinking.
Before continuing, I want to raise the issue of the last letter. Why do I continue bringing such tension into this great Feast of celebration and joy?
I am working with Paul’s words for the Jesus Secret II. Paul was an incredible encourager; he was always speaking good things into those who heard his gospel. He was always proclaiming “abundance of faith,” and “your great love out-poured to all,” and so on. Yet I find Paul doing the same as I, (or maybe it’s the other way around), going back and forth between speaking abundance in full confidence of faith on the one hand, and then wielding the knife of circumcision on the other hand. Yet look where that knife was typically wielded – against himself.
Paul taught exultant boasting in Christ in us and as us, and he taught NO boasting in one’s own human performance. We understand, however, that “no boasting in the flesh” does not include being proud of skill and expertise in craft and a job well done. “Boasting in the flesh” refers only to human performance intended to make one’s self “right” with God. Yet it is this very quality of boasting in the flesh that stands behind every instance of manipulating others for religious self-exaltation.
But Paul had no idea of the exaltation of the flesh found in Nicene Christianity and thus in the minds of most Christians today, the perverted belief that “the flesh” keeps Christ Jesus far away from all who live in presently dying bodies.
You see, what happens in the “Christian” mind when you say, “great faith” or “man of God,” is the expectation of performance. “If you were a son of God, then –.”
The true faith of Jesus, however, was not on display when He raised Lazarus from the dead. The true faith of Jesus is found in the agony of Gethsemane where He said, “Here am I, I and all the children whom You have given Me.” It is found in Psalm 22, when, in the midst of all His human confusion, He did not drive God away from Himself, not deep inside His gut, even when all separation was coming upon Him, even when His brain was screaming against the Father.
GREAT faith is found when, in your every stumbling step and awkward foolishness, you share it all with Father with you, and you with Father together give thanks and speak good grace towards others in spite of your confusion and pain. GREAT faith is found when you live inside of the confidence that, regardless of the sight of your eyes or the judgment of the human, you are CONFIDENT that Father directs your every step inside of Love.
It is this faith alone, then, that speaks the wondrous proclamations of Christ made personal as us, that glories and boasts in the Lord.
The kind of “faith” that boasts in obedience, dramatic miracles, outward power and show, a great ability to awe people, typically called by most as being a “man of God,” is something from which I run far away.
The difference between “God with me,” and “God with me because I,” is the difference between life and death, between the Joy of Tabernacles and the horrors of hades, between a Community of Christ and a community of abuse.
Until our bodies are swallowed up by life and by the inability to decay, we must keep the circumcision of Christ already accomplished as the definition of our relationship with God and of the words coming out from our mouth.
One line of Paul’s from Colossians, turned into a statement of faith, stands out to me here. – The word of Christ dwells in me richly. The depths of meaning found in this one line are staggering and beyond all limit. It is one of many key lines found at the heart of Tabernacles.
And so we turn again to the mighty speaking of Christ our only life.
The celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles is recorded only a few times in the Old Testament. We have looked at the most important celebration of Tabernacles, that occasion that defines exactly what the First Day is for us, God filling His fully prepared house with the knowledge of Himself, Father at Home.
But I want to look at two occasions that show us the next important thing we must know about this season of “dwelling together in booths.” One of those occasions is actually the Feast of Passover long after Josiah had become the king of Judah, just before the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian captivity. The other occasion was under Ezra and Nehemiah in the restoration of Jerusalem some years after the return from Babylonian captivity.
I include the story of Josiah, even though it is Passover, because it speaks to the same impartation of word.
Josiah, after he had been king for several years, directed the priests to clear the debris out of the temple, a building left in ruins by the wickedness of his grandfather, Manasseh. In doing that task, the priests discovered a copy of Moses’ writings. Josiah gathered all the leaders of Judah and read the books of Moses out loud to them.
[Josiah] went up to the temple of the Lord with the people of Judah, the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets—all the people from the least to the greatest. He read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant, which had been found in the temple of the Lord. The king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord—to follow the Lord and keep his commands, statutes and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, thus confirming the words of the covenant written in this book. Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant. (2 Kings 23:2-3 – NIV).
After they made this covenant together, Josiah ordered the destruction and removal of all the false images that had been erected in Jerusalem by those before him. Even though these events took place as part of their celebration of Passover, and before the Babylonian captivity, this passage speaks of restoration.
Then, during the restoration after the Babylonian captivity, in the year 444 BC, on the first day of the seventh month, Nehemiah, the governor, directed Ezra, the “scribe,” that is, the man of wisdom, most likely the man who directed the compilation of all the scraps of parchment into what we now call “The Old Testament,” the man who wrote Psalm 119, “Oh, Lord, how I love Thy law.” – “Thy word have I hidden in my heart that I might not sin against Thee.”
This was the first day of the Feast of Trumpets, the preparation of the hearts of the people for the coming of Tabernacles itself.
When the seventh month came and the Israelites had settled in their towns, all the people gathered together as one man in the open square that was in front of the Water Gate; and they told Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded Israel. So Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly of men and women and all who could hear with understanding on the first day of the seventh month. Then he read from it in the open square that was in front of the Water Gate from morning until midday, before the men and women and those who could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the Law (Nehemiah 7:73b – 8:1-3 – NIV).
I want to put in front of us this entire picture. After reading, Ezra blessed God and the people. Then – Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” The Levites calmed all the people, saying, “Be still, for this is a holy day. Do not grieve.” Then all the people went away to eat and drink, to send portions of food and to celebrate with great joy, because they now understood the words that had been made known to them. (Nehemiah 8:10-12 – NIV).
Notice how God defines “being holy” as eating and drinking with great joy. Why – because those who are weeping are NOT believing God whereas those who are rejoicing are counting God right and true in all that He speaks. Show me an assembly of Christians where everyone is weeping over their sinfulness, and I will show you a people who reject the Salvation of God. Show me an assembly where everyone is laughing out loud in overflowing joy right in the middle of the service, and I will show you a people who KNOW that Jesus IS Lord.
The joy of the Lord is our strength. This joy does not prevent our weeping with Father in travail for the sake of others, but rather is the only foundation upon which our travail can stand.
What happened next in Nehemiah’s account was the discovery of Tabernacles and possibly its first celebration after God had filled Solomon’s temple 528 years before. [Note that it says that they had not practiced dwelling in booths in this way since Joshua’s time. Nonetheless, we know that they did so at least once under Solomon. I simply set that statement on the shelf; there is no need for us to “know” what it means.]
On the second day of the month, the heads of all the families, along with the priests and the Levites, gathered around Ezra the teacher to give attention to the words of the Law. They found written in the Law, which the Lord had commanded through Moses, that the Israelites were to live in booths during the festival of the seventh month and that they should proclaim this word and spread it throughout their towns and in Jerusalem: “Go out into the hill country and bring back branches from olive and wild olive trees, and from myrtles, palms and shade trees, to make booths”—as it is written.
So the people went out and brought back branches and built themselves booths on their own roofs, in their courtyards, in the courts of the house of God and in the square by the Water Gate and the one by the Gate of Ephraim. The whole company that had returned from exile built booths and lived in them. From the days of Joshua son of Nun until that day, the Israelites had not celebrated it like this. And their joy was very great. Day after day, from the first day to the last, Ezra read from the Book of the Law of God.
They celebrated the festival for seven days, and on the eighth day, in accordance with the regulation, there was an assembly. (Nehemiah 8:13-18 – NIV).
Day after day, from the first day until the last day, Ezra read from the Book… of God.
I want to talk about the flow of Word, that is, TEACHING, taking place inside the fulfilment of Tabernacles soon to come.
Because the definitions of the serpent have sat in the ears of Christians until now, the real Words of our Salvation are not known. Just as in Josiah’s day, the image of the serpent, the highest of heavenly beings, has stood in the sight of Nicene Christianity as the image of God, and not a Man on His face in the dirt under a cross He cannot carry, carrying us, carried by Father through a way neither He nor we could ever go ourselves.
Once that false image has been shattered and millions of Spirit-filled believers in Jesus have entered fully into the Joy of their Salvation, then they must be taught. Many someone’s must plant the Word of Christ their lives all through their hearts, their thinking, and the words coming out of their mouths.
I am, once again, in midst of writing The Jesus Secret, this time, the second volume, Galatians through Revelation. I am including around half of each of John’s gospel, Romans, and 1 and 2 Corinthians, even though they were inside of the first part of The Jesus Secret, because I want all of the primary verses of the gospel in this present book.
The difference between how I saw and understood when I wrote the first Jesus Secret, and how I see and understand now as I am writing the second, is beyond all expression.
When I wrote the first, I wrote in a desperate, desperate hope that this wondrous key given to me by the Lord – “Speak what God says you are” – might somehow unlock for me the knowledge of the Lord Jesus that I had longed to possess in tears through the prior 30 years.
As I have shared, it was as I arrived in Colossians and wrote these words, “Christ is all in me,” that something changed deep inside, something I hardly knew, something that would take more than 12 years of writing Christ my life from then until now to come to a full understanding.
The Jesus Secret II is similar in outward form to The Jesus Secret I (although it will be much larger), but in substance, it exists in an entirely different universe. I hope to have the completed draft of 1 and 2 Thessalonians to you soon; I am convinced that you will find yourself in the same scintillating glory inside of which I am blinking my eyes in utter amazement.
Over and over, Paul’s words go through me in great depths of value – The word of Christ dwells in me richly.
It is this Word of LIFE, with no shadow of sin and death and no remembrance of the arrogant Christ, that must be written all through the hearts and minds of our fellow Christians and that must become the speaking of their mouths.
The resurrection of our bodies will happen from no other source.
I am placing the books of the New Testament into the order in which they were written, except for James, which I kept where it is, between Hebrews and Peter.
Galatians must come just before Romans. And Colossians and Philemon must come just before Ephesians.
Here is the layout of the primary confessions of faith I have drawn out from Colossians and Philemon. I am filled with the acknowledgement of God’s desire. – Christ is made known in me. – I am complete inside of Christ. – Christ is all there is inside of me. – I put love, Father Himself, upon myself. – I serve the Lord Christ; grace is with me. – I acknowledge the good things of Christ inside of me.
These two books establish us in Christ BEFORE we get into Ephesians, which simply blows us right out of this present age of limiting God.
But look at the layout of those confessions. It is after “Christ is all there is inside of me,” and inside of, “I put love, Father Himself, upon myself,” that we find these words.
Now, upon all these, put on love, which is the binding together of perfection and the completion of the end purpose. And let the peace of Christ act as the umpire inside of your hearts, into which also you were called inside of one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell at home inside of you richly, inside of all wisdom, teaching and placing each other’s minds inside of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing inside of grace inside your hearts connecting with God. And everything which you might do in word or in deed, do all of it inside of the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks, speaking good grace connecting to God the Father through Him (Colossians 3:14-17).
These words give us a central part of the fulfillment of the “dwelling in booths” in the experience of the Church. Here are the confessions of faith from these four verses.
- I put love, the love of God Himself in Person, upon myself, a Love that binds me together with my brothers and sisters in Christ to all completion and perfection.
- The peace of God in my heart acts as the umpire between me and my brethren. We are called to peace, together in one body.
- I am thankful. I am filled with thanksgiving. I speak good grace.
- The word of Christ dwells at home inside of me richly, inside of all wisdom. I share with my brothers and sisters in Christ and they with me minds filled with spiritual songs and the singing of grace. I sing inside of grace inside my heart in all connection to God.
- I teach and encourage my brothers and sisters; I listen carefully as they teach and encourage me. We sing worship songs together, connecting with God.
- I do everything inside of the name of the Lord Jesus. I give thanks; I speak good grace connecting to Father through Jesus.
As I was working on the first volume of The Jesus Secret, I thought I was continuing right through the remainder of the New Testament. I was busy working in Galatians when I hit a brick wall dead on. The anointing to continue lifted completely from me. I tried, several times, but the anointing to continue never came. My conclusion then was that the Lord wanted me to learn what the first volume of The Jesus Secret would teach me before I would be living inside the knowledge of Christ whereby I could impart the remaining confessions of faith with all purity and understanding.
I was completely correct.
When I sent out very rough-draft copies of The Jesus Secret I to some whom I knew in order to get their comments and corrections, I did not get the best of responses back. One sister whom I had known for years in the move communities wrote good responses for a little while into the draft. Then she stopped. Here were her next words etched into the margin.
“This will not work.”
What did that mean?
She meant that this practice of speaking what God says I am, acknowledging the good things of Christ inside of me, would NOT result in any increase in my knowledge of the Lord Jesus whom I love. It would NOT result in any kind of a transformation inside of me from shame to glory. And it would NOT result in any fruit of Christ coming to others through me.
Basically, she meant that I would likely make a bit of noise for a little while and then crawl back into the abyss of “Sin, sin, oh dear God, look at how much I still sin.”
When this sister discovers just how WRONG she was, she will laugh together with me inside of a JOY that will never cease.
Now, it is true that it was more than three years of speaking these things day and night against all the horrors of condemnation I had ever known, before I stepped through that darkness into the beginning light of my first Christ Our Life letters. And it has been more than nine years since then until I now find the FULL release of anointing and understanding to set before you the second volume of The Jesus Secret.
Why has it taken more than twelve years? The answer is so very important to us.
It took more than twelve years before the Words of Christ my only life had removed forever every shadow of the image and definitions of the serpent from my thinking. That final removal of distant shadow came to its completion as I was finishing Set My People Free along with writing Chapter 30 of this series, “Setting Forth Our Souls.”
Here is what we must know. The years of the slow transformation of our minds into the knowledge of the Salvation in which all already live were PROLONGED because every Word of Christ was pressed against by the thoughts of the serpentine “gospel” still remaining in our minds.
Shatter that image utterly, take God’s people quickly and overwhelmingly through the Day of Atonement, through the Ark of the Covenant standing at the bottom of the Jordan, and we will discover that the years that it normally takes to transform the minds of God’s people will be SHORTENED.
I now understand that it might not take more than 3 ½ years to effect such a renewal of the minds of millions of our brothers and sisters all across this earth.
The KEY is the shattering of the image of death, and the Jesus of our hearts becoming the ONLY way we know our Father.
Word, the impartation of the Word of Christ our life to all who love Jesus is the treasure of my heart, the thing I would do above all as the Lord carries me into such a wondrous task. Yet I cannot be alone in such a work, for you share that same treasure with me.