5.2 The Guantlet
Some native American tribes had a practice that came to be called “running the gauntlet.” One such account is found in The Frontiersman by Allen Eckart, the true story of Simon Kenton forced to run the gauntlet by the Shawnees. The Shawnees lined up in two rows with a space between them. At the end of that path was a door into safety, but as Simon ran the length of the gauntlet, the Shawnees beat him with sticks and whips. He did not succeed, but that is another story.
Here is a similar concept from Song of Solomon 5:6-7. …my beloved had turned away and was gone… I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer. The watchmen who went about the city found me. They struck me, they wounded me…
Adding the Opposition. In Chapter 4, we saw God’s path out from our lostness into the full knowledge of our Salvation inside of Jesus upon the Mercy Seat. We saw that it was a straight path, filled with purpose, and with everything we needed to arrive inside the Tree of Life, our complete Devotion to God. That was NOT our experience. Consider the diagram. Make note of the added dashed arcs and lines, representing preachers and theologians.
A Desperate Run. To add to the poignancy of our awful experience, consider this line overshadowing everything upon that run into Life. – “If anyone draws back, My soul has no pleasure in him” (Hebrews 10:38, from Habakkuk 2). What drew us to risk such a run? – My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. Father at Home with us is found only inside the Most Devoted place. Desperate for such Love, we ran against all.
Consider closely the dashed lines added to the Tabernacle. Each dash in both the curved lines and the gauntlet lines are intended to represent a person, a ministry of the Church. I picked a “runner” who looks like me; put yourself there instead, into the way by which you are led into Life.
The Universal Influencers. The curved lines represent the most significant Church men, whether influential theologians or influential leaders. Where I have placed those curved lines is really true to the experience of all Christians for two thousand years.
The larger arc, just outside the Gate, are those who work to keep Christians bound to the ritual forms of Christianity, to forbid them entrance into a “personal relationship” with Jesus. The middle arc, just outside the Door, are born again, but work to keep Christians inside the outer court, to forbid them entrance into a full experience of the Spirit. Finally, the smallest arc, those just outside the Veil, are filled with the Spirit, but work to keep Christians in a perpetual “struggle against the flesh,” to forbid them to know God-with-them.
The Local Influencers. Then the gauntlet lines represent local ministries of Christ, whether pastors or teachers or priests, those involved directly with God’s people, using God and Bible verses as their whip. But if that servant says in his heart, ‘My master is delaying his coming,’ and begins to beat the servants… (Luke 12:45).
Many of these individual influencers, whether local to us or larger inside Christianity, are good and sincere people, brethren with us who love Jesus but are deceived as Eve was. Even though there are many pretenders, we carry all inside our hearts, for the moment we hate those who prevent us, we become one of them towards others. Everywhere in God’s Gospel path, groups of Christians have stopped and “set up camp,” now opposing all other believers.
Every Argument Against. Constricted is the Gate and pressed in is the Way by which we are led into Life and few there are who find it (Matthew 7:14). – Tearing down fortresses, overthrowing arguments and every barrier raised up against [those who seek to enter] the knowledge of God (2 Corinthians 10:4).
Through the remainder of this lesson, I intend to focus on those “arguments” or words used against going on to know the Lord inside full Devotion. To those who are truly in this desperate pressed-in run into Life, into knowing the True God, these words and arguments are as whips of despair, inflicting great pain. Yet the arguments become fortresses, that is, stalled groups of Christians, or barriers only to those who are turned aside by them.
Outside the Gate. Here is a reduced version of the words Leo Tolstoy placed into the mouth of a Christian woman who believed what she was told, that a personal relationship with Jesus was not of God.
From War and Peace. ~ The volume you sent me contains things which our weak human understanding cannot grasp. Some people confuse their minds contrary to Christian simplicity. Let us not seek to penetrate what mysteries the Gospels contain; for how can we, miserable sinners that we are, know the terrible and holy secrets of Providence while we remain in this flesh which forms an impenetrable veil between us and the Eternal. Let us rather confine ourselves to studying those rules which our divine Savior has left for us here below and not seek to fathom what He has been pleased to conceal from us. ~
The Barrier of “The Cross.” Those who do enter into knowing Jesus as their Savior inside their hearts are then presented with a horrifying definition of “the cross,” a definition almost all keep, even going forward. They are instructed to place themselves “before” the cross, weeping over their sins. It would have been the same for the children of Israel to weep before their door painted with blood, believing they could not enter into safety from death.
Many of those along this gauntlet run use the cross, like Constantine did, as a means to strike against people’s flesh. The cross is called “incomplete,” needing our futile effort to “stay on the cross.” Indeed, instead of the open Door into all the life of Jesus, the cross is used as a crucifix of torture to keep people out.
Outside the Door. It is actually expressed that those who seek “the things of the Spirit” will receive devils, that all the “manifestations of the Spirit” are the outpouring of demons, that no true believer would ever laugh in overflowing joy inside the assembly. Many of the “defenders of the faith” show the similarity between the Spirit of Life inside of Christ Jesus with “new age” practices, and thus proclaim knowing God by the Spirit to be the deception of the end of the age.
Intellectual definitions imposed on the words God speaks become fetishes and obsessions. People find and proclaim all sorts of mostly dark or controlling things out from the Bible, just not Jesus as every Word God speaks fulfilled in us. Fear of “being deceived” keeps many from entering the Door.
In the Devoted Place. All of the arguments against all Salvation now work jointly in differing ways at every stopping point along the Way into Life. Since most of my Christian experience was in the Devoted place, focused on the Altar of Incense, the arguments of those who drew near to the Most Devoted, coming against me, were the most painful over many decades.
These are brethren anointed of God, with the power of the Spirit moving through them. I have heard profoundly anointed teaching explaining with many Bible verses why “union with Christ” is the deception of the evil one. Yet they never pause to hear their own words, that they are Bible words, the words of mockery before the cross, the words of demons railing against believing God-with-us.
The Intensity before the Veil. There are actually only a few kinds of things spoken, repeated endlessly, like a religious chant, beating against all hearts. It begins with seeing Jesus, briefly, then, immediately – Look at yourself, see how you are NOT like Him, you do NOT measure up. Then – it’s your fault, you are not yet dead, your will is at war against God’s will, die sinner die, get back on the cross – the whips of an unending and futile death. The cries against get really intense just before the Veil. – You are presuming on God. God doesn’t hear you. You are moving out of your place. Then the final curtain, the blow that strikes so many down – Be afraid of God. Be very afraid.
We don’t care if we “don’t belong” inside of God; we close our ears against all the harsh arguments out from domineering foreheads, and we run into our Father.
A Blood Covenant. How did Simon Kenton survive the gauntlet intended only for his death, even after he fell senseless under the blows? The answer is astonishing, and historically accurate. Simon Kenton was saved from death by the entrance into the Shawnee village of an already established blood covenant. How is it that we escape the assault of all those fellow Christians determined to keep us away from knowing the Father? It is by the entrance into us of the full and complete reality of the already established Blood Covenant.
I love my Christian brethren and carry them with me inside my heart all the way through. But I refuse to be turned aside. I will know the living God, and I will walk with a people who know God with me. Our Blood Covenant is certain and sure.