34. We ARE the Body of Christ

All things are the Father and you walking together, God in you reconciling the world to Himself. When God enters into a full Blood Covenant Bond with a man or a woman, that Bond is complete and permanent.

Tabernacles is the Feast of Joy. It is celebration and feasting and exuberant happiness.

Tabernacles is the Feast of Harvest. When Jesus spoke of fields white for harvest, He was speaking of the Feast of Tabernacles.

I do not see the harvest as an effort to “save the lost,” out of the idea that multitudes will be forever lost if we don't get out and “save” them. The Harvest is the bringing in of all whom the Father has already given to Jesus all the way into all the fullness of Christ revealed. That number certainly includes many who are right now unregenerate. For that reason, the ministry of leading those of our brethren who do not know Jesus right now into the knowledge of His Salvation, into the experience of Passover, is very much a gift of the Holy Spirit.

But the ministry of leading all those who belong to Jesus all the way into all the fullness of Christ revealed through them is the final harvest.

The Harvest is Tabernacles.

You see, those who have died and are in heaven only have not yet entered that Salvation. They cannot, for it is an entrance found only here upon this earth inside of mortal bodies.

Our dying body is the key, the door, the opportunity of eternity, for us to enter into all the fullness of Christ and by so doing open the doors for all others who belong to Jesus, including those who exist in heaven only.

The fullness of Christ, Christ life, is corporate life, a life of communion together.

He took bread and broke it and gave it to them saying, “Take and eat, for this is My body which is broken for you.” Likewise He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you.” Luke 22:19-20

We become what we eat; we become what we drink.

For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. Ephesians 5:30

I have made the simple, human decision to believe that God is telling us the truth.

My body is the same body that arose from the grave, the resurrected body of Jesus, by material substance.

By outward appearance, my body remains dying, but outward appearance changes in a moment in the seasons of God. When my body changes, it will not be a surprise to me, glorious beyond wonder, yes, but no surprise.

It will be no surprise because I already know it to be true.

God has told us the truth.

We ARE the Body of Christ.

And as the Body of Christ we are Jesus walking this earth. – Jesus has already returned.

If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know Him who sent Me. John 15:18-21

Because I have made the simple human decision to believe that God walks in perfect union with me and that all of my ways are God through me reconciling the world to Himself, I see all things quite differently than in the past. And that is a simple human decision, one you can make just as easily as I; I am speaking of no spiritual exaltation or perfected superiority.

Several days ago I read some books that I enjoyed but that seemed to put a damper on my spirit. I found myself unable to finish my letter, “Tabernacles.” Because I know that precious brethren wait for my next letter of a Sunday morning, I wanted to finish it. I sat there in front of my computer screen Sunday morning, feeling as if “my sin” had separated me from the Lord. There was a blocking presence sitting upon me; I knew I did not have the words of the prayer found in that letter. I thought inside of separation, crying out to the Lord to deliver me.

The entire issue was identity.

In that moment, the Lord arose in me shining His light upon the truth. I saw that I am one with the Father, and that in all things, it is the Father walking in perfect union with me through all things that I experience. In that moment I was free to finish the letter and send it out to you.

But I also saw that I had been standing on the brink of DISOBEDIENCE. You see, I had imagined that my action of reading those books was separate from the Father. Yes, I had read them for pleasure; yes, I had gained insight into the realms of spirit; yes, they were definitely not Christian. And thus I sat there imagining that my actions had “caused” this blockage that kept me from knowing the flow of the Spirit by which I can write.

Had I continued in that false imagination, it would have been “sin.” Yet even that sin, He also bears.

But here is something of significant difference between my walk with the Lord now and my experience with Him in the past. You see, in the past, I was taught and believed that the Lord would help us “do what we know is right.” – No, He never did.

But since I began to write this word of Christ our life, so many, many times, the Lord Jesus has arisen inside of me unexpectedly to turn me from seeing myself as anything other than one with Him.

Real sin is to see separation, to look at anything we do and then say, “See, because 'I' did that, these bad things are happening to me.” – NO! Sowing to the flesh is not what we “did” it's what we say out from our false perception of separation.

All things are the Father and you walking together, God in you reconciling the world to Himself. When God enters into a full Blood Covenant Bond with a man or a woman, that Bond is complete and permanent.

The moment the Lord arose in me, laughing in His goodness always filling me full, I saw that I had been misinterpreting my inability to write. It was entirely a press of the evil one against my identity as the revelation of God in just the same way that He challenged Jesus. – ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’

I have felt so utterly content the last few days, so utterly content.

I had a mild cold bug Sunday evening and slept only four hours that night. When I do not get enough sleep, the next day I am emotionally very vulnerable and must sit quietly with my emotions kept securely on the shelf. But Monday morning, in that place of great vulnerability, I wept before God. All I could think  was “They lied to me. They lied to me. When they told me that You were far away from me in my distress, when they told me that my mistakes meant I was in trouble with You, they lied to me. And all those years of heartache came from something NOT TRUE. You are so close; You are my life and my breath. You are bound to me in perfect Covenant Bond forever. We walk together in all ways as one.”

I am so content. I possess all I have ever longed for. God is with me, my Heart and my life. My inability, my failure, my foolishness makes ZERO difference to our Covenant Bond. All of it is nothing other than God through me reconciling the world to Himself. God made my weakness to be filled with Himself. If I were strong and capable, I would never know Him. How I rejoice in my inability, rejecting all of the lies I was told by brethren who remain dear and precious to me.

As I sent out the letter, “Tabernacles,” I felt so content that I had written all that the Father has given me to write. If I were to write no more beyond finishing this book, I would know that I have accomplished His purposes by my writing. I have no personal intentions of no longer writing; writing is how I know the Lord and I will know Him more deeply forever. In fact, I now see how to write the second volume of The Jesus Secret. All along I was trying to put new wine into an old wineskin. Although the second volume will also be structured, that structure will be a different shape than the first.

Now it will be titled The Jesus Secret: Living with God. I could just as well call it Shacking up with God or Sharing the Same Body with God.

I write these things about myself to encourage you, by any means that I can, to stop speaking any form of separation. Speak only your full union with Christ. Christ and you are one. You cannot see yourself as two, walking together, sharing this thing called union. You must see yourself as one with Jesus, in full and perfect union now, sharing this thing called communion.

The obedience of faith is to stop speaking not-Christ and to speak Christ alone. There is no other obedience. All things that are of the Father flow out from speaking Christ alone and from nowhere else.

Yet in speaking Christ, we also speak of our weakness. As Paul said, “We glory in our weaknesses, for there alone is the power of Christ made known.”

We are never ashamed of making a mistake, for our Covenant Bond with the Father cannot ever be anything other than God.

And by this Covenant Bond we ARE the Body of the Lord Jesus Christ as HE walks this earth today.

We just ARE. It's nothing glamorous, nothing pretentious, nothing of outward appearance. It's just what God says, and that's enough for us.

But as I KNOW that the Father is one with me and I with Him, I see all things as from His hand. And when I say, “from His hand,” I am not speaking of God doing anything “to” me. Such thinking is of the evil one and of rebellion. All things are God and I together, walking forward together in the most glorious enterprise and adventure ever undertaken by anyone ever before or anyone ever again.

I love adventure; God made me just like Himself.

And if adventure, and unexpected journeys with a dragon at the turning point, are not your cup of tea, that's perfectly fine. God made you just like Himself just as much.

There is no greater adventure in all the universe than the task God and we share together of flinging wide open the Doors of Tabernacles for many to come rushing in.

Tabernacles is the Feast of Joy. – Tabernacles is a feast of sorrow.

And the dragon stood before the woman to devour her child as soon as it was born.Revelation 12

If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.

Over the last few weeks I have seen glimpses of the fury of hatred directed against Joel Osteen. Do you know why they hate him? They hate him because he dares to teach that the gospel is good news, that the good news is that sin is absolved and that we walk through the difficulties of life in this world entirely inside the goodness and favor of God, seeing God as big and our difficulties as little. They call this teaching, that the gospel is good news, as “selfishness.” I have never heard Pastor Joel teach focusing on self, not once, but always on seeing God as big and ourselves as children of the Most High.

There is a demon spirit that takes possession of those who “draw close to God” in deeper truth circles, yet who continue in pretending, keeping God Himself in the cold distance. Let me give you an example. I was taught that this verse in Hebrews 10, Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation, that this verse was a terrible threat against us. That since we are in sin, and Christ appears apart from sin, then we must stop sinning entirely in order for Him to appear in us. Since I could not “stop sinning,” what horror I lived in for many years.

It is these people, who teach that we “must die,” who hate all thought of a “good news” gospel.

You see, I am, in the only way I know how, attempting to share with you the reality we will find as we walk as Christ Jesus revealed upon this earth.

Although the world itself would destroy us in a moment if it knew who we really were, as the Roman world did Jesus, yet to the unregenerate, we sound like harmless lunatics, just as Jesus did to the Romans.

It is our brethren who will hate us without a cause, just as it was Jesus' own who rejected Him.

We will see the gathering together of all those appointed to Tabernacles taking place in the midst of fury outpoured in the church.

It is Christians who persecute Christians and put them to death.

These things I have spoken to you, that you should not be made to stumble. They will put you out of the synagogues; yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service. And these things they will do to you because they have not known the Father nor Me. But these things I have told you, that when the time comes, you may remember that I told you of them. John 16:1-4

But at all times, we must remember Paul. If you had been a Christian in Jerusalem or Damascus in February, AD 37, you would have considered this guy to be the embodiment of anti-Christ, the furies of hell vomiting forth to destroy the church.

Jesus saw the same guy as the one who could receive and share with all the revelation of Jesus Christ.

We judge no one by outward appearance.

I want to share here a communication with a brother who reads these letters.

– One thing I have noticed since meditating upon these truths and speaking them is the complete sense of powerlessness I feel personally. Being so grounded in pentecostal ways compared to union only with Father… is completely different. 'The Son can do nothing of himself,' is something very tangible to me lately. I see how I have always wanted to preach to others out of a sneaky hidden feeling of superiority. Now I have nothing to say. I also see my children's disdain for anything I have shared with them over the years. What an incredible contrast it would have been to all those sinners, when Rabbi Jesus began to share… nothing coming out of him reeking of superiority or condemnation or condescension. –

My reply: Pentecostalism is, in part, a search for the "feeling" of powerfulness. That's all part of the Adamic problem. But when we tell ourselves the story that God fills us full and walks inside of us AS we are weak, until we know that it is true, then we see that it's good to be as we are and God IS what God does, which is life power, not the other thing.

Yes, "pentecostal" power makes people feel superior, that's really what they are after. We felt inferior because of the way God made us and, in rejection of how God made us, we sought to feel superior over others. You know, that sums up what our whole approach to the pursuit of God once was.

But life power is always coming up from beneath. As it comes up from beneath of us, carrying us, we turn and come up beneath others, lifting them up. What a difference the ministry of Christ then is.

~~~

I want to talk about the Mercy Seat. You see, there is no Church, there is no revelation of Jesus Christ, there is no walking with the Father, apart from this thing God calls “the Mercy Seat,” this thing John saw as the throne of heaven, this thing we call our own hearts.

The Mercy Seat is the portal of God, the wormhole by which God enters His creation.

You shall put the mercy seat on top of the ark, and in the ark you shall put the Testimony (Covenant) that I will give you. And there I will meet with you, and I will speak with you from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim which are on the ark of the Testimony. Exodus 25: 21-22

These words bring me to tears. I don't know that there is anything more wonderful in all the universe.

There I will meet with you.

Remember that the Old Covenant was stone tablets written by the finger of God. But God spoke this word in Exodus 25 before Moses shattered upon the mountainside the Testimony God gave him. Thus the Testimony that actually went into that Ark was the Testimony Moses had chiseled out, not the one God gave him.

In the New Covenant, the Covenant is Blood, which Blood we drink as it becomes our very and only Life. That Blood is the Blood that flows through our veins, bringing life to every part of us, including every cell in our body even though in outward appearance it is presently dying.

The Covenant of God is inside of us, flowing through every vein and artery in our body, imparting life and strength and God to every particle of our being.

I am speaking literally. Don't think for one moment that outward appearance can stand against the Face of the Almighty, against the clear certainty of the Word God speaks.

The Mercy Seat is the portal through which God comes out of invisibility to enter into His creation to be known and seen and handled by all, to dance with joy among family, to take little children into His arms and bless them.

The Mercy Seat is our hearts, the Heart of God beating in our chests. The Body of God is ours, flesh of His flesh. We are God revealed. We ARE the Body of Christ.

Church comes only by the Mercy Seat. (Here are some lines from previous letters.)

– When God is fully known, when all creation see and know their God, He will appear entirely as Community, as Life Together, as the Body of Christ.

– The unfolding of an invisible God into a God known and seen and touched by His creation is travail from beginning to completion. God is the One in labor.

– The Word, having become us, having become our very hearts, never limits Himself to our hearts only, but always enters our mouths and flows out from us as a Spirit of Life connecting with each other. That connection is the Church. That connection is the Bond of the Covenant we share together. Then that Word, flowing as Spirit among us, becomes the Body of Christ, God made visible.

– The source of God is the heart of the individual. The Church exists only as God, springing up and flowing out from one, connects with God springing up and flowing out from another.

– We cannot be best friends except as humans. That is, as people who make mistakes. This is the incredible God-ness of trust, the Mercy Seat. It is the Mercy Seat in me into which I am allowing you entrance, and it is the Mercy Seat in you into which you are allowing me entrance.

– This, and nothing else, is Church, members one of another.

– Welcome to Church. – Church is a bunch of very human humans filled full with a meek and tender God and thus filled full with each other.

– This issue of the bond of friendship coming out of Blood Covenant together, members of one another, is a river that runs deep and full. Only here do we find Church. Only here do we find the Body of Christ. Only here do we find the full revelation of God in the Feast of Tabernacles.

– This bond of friendship comes out from a Heart, the Heart of our High Priest beating in our chests.

But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. Colossians 4:14Put on God.

The harvest is a harvest into Tabernacles; it is a harvest into Church.

How my heart groans somehow to impart to you, to cause you to know what your own heart is, the Mercy Seat of God, now planted in your chest, this portal of God that beats the Blood of the Covenant all through you and out from you in a Covenant Bond together with all those who belong to Jesus.

But that, I think, will take the careful articulation of The Jesus Secret: Living Together with God. You see, I am compelled by my own heart to keep writing.

We are not looking “at” God. We are not looking at our future. We are not looking at the unregenerate in this world. We look squarely at our brethren, at all who belong to Jesus, regardless of where they walk in the present moment. And what we see is not pretty, not to outward sight.

A sister shared with me the grief she feels over a loved one who: – is sold on the hype of not only the rapture but the J-s back in the Promised Land in the Middle East and will fiercely defend that deception. She has a book written in defense of Is- and said she loves John Hagee. –

This is just one of many big reasons why our brethren will hate us without cause. But this will become a BIG deal, bigger than you may realize. The power of the h-, the wound of the Beast, is overwhelming.

But here is the power of the Mercy Seat.

All sin is absolved.

Christ appearing through us, a second time, apart from sin, for salvation, is the joy-filled entrance into Tabernacles.

We bear ALL their offense and see in them Christ alone.

There is a reason why God is looking for those who are hit by spears thrown by their brethren and who do not throw spears back. It is that spear, striking the very Mercy Seat of God, our hearts, laying our hearts wide open as the Heart of God upon the cross, that then draws this precious one into the Love of God outpoured, the Blood of the Covenant flowing down upon the earth.

Paul threw spears at Jesus. “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me.” And by those spears, Jesus drew His beloved Paul into Himself.

This is Christ appearing  a second time, apart from sin, for salvation.

They do not know Him, but we do.

Oh, if I could but expound to you these things. Blood. Covenant. Heart. Mercy Seat. Then I could show you Church. Then I could show you God.

Right now I am writing to you towards Church. But it is the intense expectation of my heart that very soon I will be writing to you out from Church.

Communities of Christ.

How my heart longs for the simple reality of God in the earth.

Family. Family for real.

I am not speaking of socialism or of “shared ownership,” or even of “cooperative living.”

I am speaking of family.

What my wife and I earn and own is ours. What my children earn and own is theirs. We always honor and respect them in full; I am always setting them free of myself. Yet whenever there is a need, we give freely of what is ours to one another, not because we are “told” to, not because our manner of living requires us to, not because we have agreed to do so, but because we are family. Because we love one another.

You see, the bond of socialism is an external bond, that's why it's of the evil one, of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Requirements. Duties. Obligations. Punishment. Pain. Loss. Death.

The Bond of Covenant is an internal bond, out from a Heart shared with God and with one another.

Love, which is the bond of perfection.

Yet inside this love, I don't owe you a thing. And inside this love, you are required to give me nothing.

You see, inside this Bond of Love in which we walk, one moment, I might give you what you have need of, and the next moment I might give you nothing. Maybe because I gave it to someone else, or maybe because I enjoyed the thing together with my wife – or even by myself, and thus no longer have it to give. Or maybe I have reserved it for some future use. It is mine, and I give it only as I see fit.

And what belongs to you is yours, and you give it or not only as you see fit.

Inside of Love there can exist no bond of obligation.

Yet there is the bond of Heart, and Heart is family, and Heart is an unbreakable bond.

That's how God walks together with us. He requires nothing of us. Yet He gives Himself utterly to us. In like manner, we require nothing of God, yet we give ourselves utterly to Him, knowing that He first loves us, and we expect God, but expecting God is something entirely different from “requiring of” God.

In this Bond, no shadow of obligation can exist.

I am always setting God and you free of me. God is always setting you and me free of Himself. You are always setting God and me free of yourself.

It is the Promised Land. It is a land of freedom.

And that is why the Mercy Seat alone can be the center, the fulcrum, the guiding Heart of this Covenant Bond.

In a world of obligation, if I do not “give” to someone, that one can easily imagine that I have slighted them and for that reason, I cannot be a “man of God.” Or vice versa. It is easy to me to begin to imagine that if someone does not communicate with me, it's because they no longer “like” me.

The communities in which I lived were established on the assumption that, even though Christ was in each one, yet the heart of the human is deceitful and wicked, and the flesh is evil and stronger than Christ. Therefore the “order” was established to “cause” community to work. Yes, Christ was in our midst, but the debt of obligation called “the order” produced only socialism, never Christ.

To see Christ alone revealed in a community of people, in Church, takes a ministry that is always laying down its life for all, walking beneath each one, suffering the loss of all things continually, lifting up each one in encouragement and grace, carrying each one, in spite of all the thrown and jagged spears, all the way into life.

This is the Door of Tabernacles.

This is the Mercy Seat, life laid down, love poured out.

This is the Portal of God.

This Heart, this beating Heart of Jesus, beating now in us, is the whole purpose of God, the whole end of Salvation, the only meaning of our lives, and the very reason why God placed us here on this planet.

Will you take the call? Will you be a human being? Will you be God revealed?

Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest! John 4:35

Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Therefore go into the highways, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding.’ So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good. And the wedding hall was filled with guests.Matthew 22:8-10

Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind.’ And the servant said, ‘Master, it is done as you commanded, and still there is room.’ Then the master said to the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. Luke 14:21-23

The Wedding, the Great Supper, is Tabernacles, fulfilled as the Church, right here on this earth. Let there be no thought in anyone's mind that Jesus is referring to “going to” heaven.

You see, we are the poor and the maimed, the lame and the blind. And we are the servants sent out to gather the Bride for our Friend, the Bridegroom, a Bride still caught in the highways and hedges of this world, even though Tabernacles has already begun.

Yet she will hate us and call us deceivers and anti-Christ. She will throw many spears at us.

But we draw her into the House of Love by drawing her into the Mercy Seat, our hearts, where no sin exists and where all are set free into love and life.

We suffer long and are kind. We rejoice in the truth. We bear all things; we believe all things; we hope all things; we endure all things. We never fail. – For she has become dear to us.

You see, the Mercy Seat is not “for” you, not since you have passed through the simple human decision to accept the Mercy Seat as complete and finished in God. The Mercy Seat is you, and you are for her, the Bride of Christ, God's woman, the Eve of the Lord Jesus.

Let me turn you towards her, with tears streaming down my face, that you might know the passion and intent of this Mighty One who fills your heart full with all of Himself.

It is our expectation that opens the Door. Because we believe that everything we do, say, think, or feel, is bound utterly together with God and God with us, because we expect that, regardless of ourselves, God is moving through us, in our weakness, for her sake, God is released to be God.

God comes through no other way than by faith through weakness.

You see, I just spoke about “tears streaming down my face,” then I read an email from a sister in the Lord, espousing the darkness of this world. Instantly, I felt very “human”; that is, I felt not at all like “Christ.”

Let me get at it, right there – THAT is the Mercy Seat. When we expect God, regardless, by faith alone, in all things, in all ways, flowing through us, regardless of all outward appearance, that alone is faith, that alone is the Mercy Seat.

That is the Portal of God. – And there I will meet with you.

We ARE the Body of Christ. We are the Lord Jesus Christ, walking this earth again.