3. The Gate & the Altar
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3. The Gate and the Altar - for Notes
The Gate and the Altar are the first entrance into the knowledge of God.
Salvation IS the true knowledge of God out from Christ Jesus living in our hearts. The Gate and the Altar are the entrance of Christ into us. Jesus is the becoming known of Father in every heart where Father is becoming known.
The Gate is the Lord Jesus Christ – No one comes into [the knowledge of] the Father except through Me. Being born again – asking Jesus into our heart – praying the “sinner’s prayer” – this was an entrance.
What Is Untrue? It is not possible for us to understand the true meaning of the Gate and the Altar, God’s entrance for us into our knowledge of Him, unless we separate out the wrong-thinking of the serpent’s gospel. The truth is so wonderful, but the serpent’s definitions are so woven into our minds that we can still think wrongly.
What is redemption? What is salvation? What does God want? And what is untrue?
God continues to place before each one a choice between two, between “knowledge about” and Life. What wrong ideas must God separate out from our minds?
What Is Redemption? You were redeemed out from your useless manner of life …by the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot (1 Peter 1:18).
We know that Jesus’ path from Gethsemane to the Blood sprinkled upon our hearts, the Walk of the Atonement, did something for us.
Jesus did not die for God; His death did not “appease” God or “satisfy” His need to punish us. Jesus was not “punished” in our place. This way of thinking was created by religious minds who do not believe God’s salvation.
But we cannot know redemption unless we know what God wants.
What Does God Want? I want to express as simply and as clearly as I can what God, our Father, wants.
God wants two things of you. First, God wants to share your life with you and you to share His life with Him, as one together in pure fellowship.
Then, out from such a shared Llife, God wants to reveal Himself to creation through your relationship with other believers in Jesus as you love one another, God among you.
Sharing life together with God is the Holiest. Showing God to all through Christian love is the going forth of the Ark into every place.
Instantaneous. The transfer of redemption was instantaneous and total. The Feast of Passover is instantaneous, happening in one moment of time.
Even when we were dead in false steps and falling short, [He] made us alive together, that is, sharing together as believers the same life with Christ (by grace you are saved) (Ephesians 2:5).
He has rescued us out of the authority of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of His beloved Son, inside of whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Colossians 2).
Our Problem. I cannot express how much I have hated God’s salvation.
The totality of God’s salvation is God sharing my life with me, this present life, me, as I find myself to be and in my present circumstances. Why do you think I’ve spent my life daydreaming? Because I hated my lowly state and my boring circumstances. I wanted BETTER.
And the totality of Salvation Revealed is me loving you. Why is writing my life-story so difficult? Because I have always found other Christians to be offensive to me in one way or another. – We have a problem.
“Heaven.” We have the exact same problem Adam had, a guttural hatred of being “what God looks like.” We “deserve better than God.”
But the gospel promises life! And so LIFE, real Salvation, is put off to someday, only AFTER we are dead. Placing life into heaven someday, not here, not now, not in these bodies of flesh, is open rejection and hatred of God and a refusal of Father’s heart. It is outright unbelief. It is the epitome of wicked self-love. I deserve BETTER!
What is it then that connects us with God-now? – Give Thanks – that is, embrace God-now in us as we are.
The Well-Spring of Falseness. Let’s restate full Salvation. Salvation IS God now sharing your life with you as one together in pure fellowship. Redemption is clearly instantaneous and total.
The source of all false thinking in Christianity, then, is calling our present life “not God.”
[Read from Symmorphy II: Essence – 21.1 The Confessions.]
Look at this wide space between redemption and the fulfillment of salvation. By imagining this space, the Christian gets to rebel with Adam and call his rebellion “the Christian gospel.” Most definitions of redemption come from this rebellion.
Christian Psychosis. The Christian problem is two things. First, it is a lusting after superiority, a condition that results in contempt for the low estate and failures of others. Second, it is the programing of the mind through emotions, to “believe” all sorts of things that are not true.
The human mind, the Christian mind, is a complete mess. And the religious definition of “blasphemy” is the hatred of God-as-He-is. God-with-me-now is “blasphemy” against me! I “deserve” better!
But you see, God knows all this. And God has provided the Way for us into the knowledge of what is already true.
Jesus’ Task. And that Way is Jesus in Person. Jesus’ task, from beginning to end, is to get our attention, to win our hearts, to entice us to step out of the nonsense of a separated self into the wondrous reality of Father sharing all that we are with us.
Every element of redemption is for us, so that we would look out from our psychosis and our unbridled lust for superiority and see Love.
And the purpose of the “dealings of God” through the Tabernacle is to convince us that holding out for superiority is worthless, that we would accept Jesus as us.
The Entrance.
The Gate is Christ Jesus as our entrance into the knowledge of God. The Altar of Sacrifice fills our view as we step through the gate. Our first task is to place our beast upon that altar, for we died with Jesus.
Put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Let’s look again at the three entrances – Gate, Door, and Veil. Each one is the same, Jesus Himself in Person. And we are carried through each by Jesus. – Our salvation is entirely the actions of God and not of us.
To pass through the Gate, you must get down on your knees, you must lift up the Lord Jesus Christ and place Him entirely upon yourself. And you must drag your cow or goat with you under that Gate. You must drape the Gate over your entire bull.
You must place all of your sins upon the One who takes them away from you.
Romans 1-3. In the last part of Romans Chapter 1, Paul speaks against the practice of homosexual sex. Most Christians have missed Paul’s point ENTIRELY. Yet Paul makes his point clear in the first verses of Chapter 2. Paul did not write about homosexual sex in order to condemn the homosexuals. He wrote about such practices in order to condemn the righteous.
Their practice is wicked, agreed? Okay. YOU ARE MORE WICKED then they are.
If Jesus can take upon Himself the wickedness of the holiness preacher, then the other is no problem for Him.
I Cannot. As it has been written, “None is righteous, not even one. There is none who is understanding; there is none seeking after God. All have fallen away, together they have become useless and worthless. There is none who is doing good; not so much as one” (Romans 3:10-12).
Putting the Lord Jesus Christ upon yourself happens three times. And each time, a profound “I cannot” must be your absolute and final decision. The Gate – I CANNOT save myself. The Door – I CANNOT figure out God or the Bible. The Veil – I CANNOT live the Christian life.
I cannot please God; I cannot do His “will.”
Close Your Mouth. Having passed under the Gate with all your bull, you are now faced with the Altar of Judgment. That every mouth might be closed, and the entire cosmos brought under judgment before God (Romans 3:19).
Your bull is now Jesus Himself. You must place your hands upon your bull/the Lord Jesus and transfer all that you are, all of your sin, all of your sinfulness, ALL OF IT, must pass from you into your Sacrifice.
The priest does not kill the bull – you do. You slit its throat. The priest then takes it from there, but you remain all covered with blood.
A Graphic Picture. I AM crucified with Christ. – I AM crucified with Christ. – I AM crucified with Christ.
You also consider, reckon, speak yourselves to be truly dead to any and all sin or falling short of God (Romans 6:11). – For you have already and fully died (Colossians 3:3).
Why does God give us such a graphic picture of the slaughter of a bull and the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus? God gives us such a horrendous picture of our bloody death so that we would be able to know that God IS telling us the truth.
God Is Telling Me the Truth. Therefore, if anyone is inside of Christ, he is a new creation. The old things are already gone; look and see, the New has already become. And all things are [coming] out from God… (2 Corinthians 5:17-18).
[from The Jesus Secret II] I am just and innocent inside the presence of God – God is telling me the truth. No sin is counted to me – God is telling me the truth. God reveals His glory through me – God is telling me the truth. The Love of God is shed abroad inside my heart towards all – God is telling me the truth.
I exult boastfully here, inside of God, through Jesus; I am fully restored to God inside of His favor.
God Knows. Redemption means that the moment you said, “Jesus come into my heart,” you were now utterly and only inside the Holiest of all. From that moment on, the Father was sharing your life with you in all things.
Your problem has been that you did not know the truth, though Jesus utterly carried you.
But God knows we do not know, and so He gives us the next picture for us to consider, He gives us the Sacrifice. In the next lesson we will explore a bit more, “One Sacrifice for sins forever.”