2. One Door

The door into knowing Christ is found in these words. "That every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. God made you guilty, yes – He led you into darkness. Why? So you would shut up. So you would stop saying that most ridiculous nonsense, "But I, not Christ."

To a brother,

It is true that God carries you completely, ever with you, hovering over you with the tenderest of concerns. But at the same time He does not let you know that He is there. You are perfectly safe, perfectly found, perfectly carried, but God does not let you know it.

There is a very good reason for that. We are such devious characters, we humans, always finagling to get an upper hand, somehow. We can say "I am weak," but look what happens when we get one chance not to be weak. We go for it! And soon we are on our face in the mud once again.

God can take us into the knowledge of Christ through only one door.

But first – love.

I want to apologize for not being there for you when you needed someone's regard. Please forgive me.

Now, you might think, "Yordy, you did not know me, and you are nowhere near right now."

That is true, but still, my apology is true as well. You may find it impossible to forgive yourself, but can you forgive me? When you say, “Daniel, I forgive you,” you can begin to know the forgiveness of Christ.

I am a limited man. I am Asperger's, a form of high-performing autism. Thus all my life I have not fit; I have known much pain. Inwardly we may be more alike than you might think. Only in the last few years have I come to understand the things I now teach.

The vision of my heart is to be a part of a community of Christ, a place that one such as yourself could come and walk with people who will walk with you, learning Christ your only life. That vision is strong and full, rooted in full life-knowledge. But alas, I am incapable of making it happen. Though you would find great strength in me, you would also find a weakness that puzzles, a weakness that looks like insensitivity or even arrogance, yet always withdrawing from the face of confrontation.

I was in my late twenties before I began to grapple with the idea that these others in my life were people just like myself. I always gravitated towards other people, but I in no way comprehended them.

Now, however, after living in Christian community for many years, after teaching school in many settings, public, private, and college, I do smile just a bit at your words. "The people that love me, do not really know me. If they did, they would not love me."

I know what it means that people "do not really know me." I know what it means to be utterly ashamed of myself over years and years. "I am so ashamed of myself" were very familiar words to me.

But you are wrong just as I was wrong. The truth is, you don't know yourself, not really. I am convinced that if God allowed us to walk together, I would value all that you are as a dear and close friend.

How can I say that? I am not able to say that of everyone. Those who are self-righteous, who see themselves as superior, as the "man" or "woman of God" sent to condescend themselves to me, I cannot stand before the face of those people. It takes great courage for me to draw them into love inside my heart. But apart from God's mercy, I cannot walk with them, though I have had to do so for years. Yet God used their false face to burn from me all of my own self-righteousness.

Removing self-righteousness from you is one of the greatest gifts God ever gives anyone. You see to what great lengths He has gone to eliminate from your mind and heart any possibility of sitting in your own righteousness, your own doing? God has given you a great gift, this intimate knowledge of face-in-mud; the day will come when you will treasure it.

You see, Jesus knows the face-in-mud experience. He had boasted to His disciples that they should “carry their cross,” yet when He, the Messiah of God, had the chance to prove His words, He could not do it. He stumbled and fell into the mud, just like you and me. Someone else carried His cross for Him.

But before we get back to that door, I must say that I am unable to make any kind of promise to you, except to keep speaking Christ into you – because I am so very incapable. Yet, do not feel for one moment that you should not "bother me" with your letters. I know there are actions that bind us outwardly as far as life in this world is concerned. But there is nothing greater than blood.

If you cannot forgive yourself, it's because you do not yet know BLOOD. The blood shed for you is greater than you have ever imagined.

The door into knowing Christ is found in these words.

"That every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God."

Most of the Christians you know have never passed through this door. Yes, in one moment way back when, they said, "I have sinned, Jesus forgive me." But they have not stopped their mouths. Nor have you. Look at all the things you say about yourself that cannot be true.

Consider your words: "I am weak, I am miserable, I am desperate, I am lonely, I am a real mess…bla, bla, bla…" You started out speaking the truth, but then you said, "Bla," as if your true words had not brought you to the most important place in the universe, one step away from all the knowledge of life.

How can you go silent before God? You can't do it. Your problem is that God made you just like Himself. You are a voice; you cannot go silent. God is always speaking; we call the always-speaking-of-God the Lord Jesus Christ.

Just like God, you also are always speaking. How can you shut up before Him? You can shut up for a moment, but before you know it you're back to telling yourself things that are not true, over and over, telling yourself things that cannot be true. God made you to be unable to shut up; He made you just like Himself.

For the first time in my life I know how to be silent before God. This has been only in the last few months. But I can testify with all the certainty of Christ, I know this place and I know the way here. And suddenly, I begin to have an inkling of the silence in heaven at the opening of the seventh seal. I was seeing in the wrong direction before.

You see, there are two voices in the universe, not one and not many, just two. God's voice we call Christ Jesus; the other voice we call Satan. Both voices are in our own mouth and in our own mind. Christ speaks blessing and life; Satan speaks accusation and curse. You can know instantly which voice you are speaking, they are both so very different.

The accuser is always lying, yet we humans find it so easy to speak his words – BECAUSE we imagine them to be true. Christ is always speaking the truth, yet we find it impossible to speak Christ – BECAUSE we imagine those words cannot be true.

And we cannot stop speaking; we cannot go silent before God. That is an ability God left out when He created us. Yet the only door into Christ is that we stop running our mouth. "But I, but I, but I."

Consider the following three statements of faith.

"I am a miserable loser. I always fail; I'm no good. I am so ashamed of myself. My sin is so great; I cannot forgive myself. I will never make it."

"I am shuckamatoo. I always dibblededoo. I'm no skood. I am so gyre and gimble in the wabe. My rink is so dankle; I will never hoppety-scotch.

"I am the revelation of Jesus Christ. I am with Him in His glory right now and forever. I am altogether clean, as pure as Christ Himself. The love of God fills me to overflowing all the time. Christ is all there is in me."

Shout the first confession at the top of your lungs (in private, of course). It sounds so true and right, so familiar, doesn't it? It is complete rot, far more ridiculous than if you shouted the second confession.

Shout the third confession at the top of your lungs with all confidence. Can you do it?

You see, I inserted the second confession because, though you might feel silly, you could say those syllables. Why, then, is it so hard to say the syllables, the sounds of the third? Why, when you shout the third confession, does it feel and sound all wrong? Why does it sound as if you are lying?

When you speak the first confession, you are lying to yourself and to God; that is, you are being an absolute hypocrite. Yet those words sound so very right and familiar. When you speak the third confession, you are, for the first time in your life, speaking the truth.

And those words are the truth; they are the only thing that is true. When you speak those words, Christ Himself is in your mouth, and He always tells the truth.

You are the master; God made you so. All angels, fallen or unfallen, are at your command. God has even made Christ subject to you – the word is in your mouth. You have the power to speak Christ, regardless of all the screams of accusation being hurled at you by very frightened demons who are sick-to-their-stomach terrified of you.

The only thing not subject to you is the God who fills you full with all of Himself, and He utterly possesses you. You can't make that any other way; you have no power to alter His possession of you.

You see, if you will force yourself to shout that third confession, to speak Christ, you will hear a voice strong in your ear saying, "But I, but I, but I…" Finish that line, "But I, not Christ."

That's the shut up God want's from you. He made you guilty, yes – He led you into darkness. Why? So you would shut up. So you would stop saying that most ridiculous nonsense, "But I, not Christ."

And here's the thing. There is no vacuum. You cannot just shut up. No, you MUST SPEAK. And therefore, the only way to silence the voice God never wants to hear is to speak the only voice He loves – speak Christ.

"Not I, but Christ. Not I, but Christ. Not I, but Christ. Christ is all that I am; I am His revelation. Right now, me, as I find myself to be, I am only the revelation of Jesus Christ."

The voice that hates those words is the voice that has brought all the misery and destruction you have ever known. To hate yourself is to hate Christ; you are perfectly free in God to hate the voice of the accuser. That voice is NOT and NEVER HAS BEEN you.

But to the Father, there is no sweeter sound in all the universe than to hear Christ coming from your lips.

Most righteous Christians you know refuse to speak Christ. They believe that by speaking Christ, they are lying. They imagine that by accusing themselves and others they are "speaking the truth in love." Thus Satan is so often in their mouth.

God has given you the most wonderful gift granted to any human being. He has made you guilty before Him. He has led you into the most utter failure you could possibly know. He doesn't typically offer such a gift to most. Now He wants one little thing from you. He wants you to shut up.

But He knows you can't. Therefore He led you to my website. You see, you have nothing left to lose. Shout Christ at the top of your lungs. So what if you are lost, shout Christ. So what if it sounds like total blasphemy, you can't possibly do anything more wicked than you already have – shout Christ. So what if you are "banished forever," shout Christ. Shout Christ. Shout Christ your only life.

"There is no me, there is only Christ! Christ is all there is in me."

The only way you could ever be silent before God is to put another voice in your mouth. The word, Christ Jesus, is in your mouth.

It is a complete exchange: life for life, self for self, actions for actions, voice for voice.

Never ever regard your sin again; when you see it, say, "So what." If you ask forgiveness of others, that's not you atoning for sin, that's Christ flowing out of you as rivers of life. Christ is all that you are.

You see, since you are already such a complete failure, since you already know you won't "make it," then saying "So what," is within your reach. Saying "Christ is all there is in me" can't be worse than anything else you've done, can it? Christians who are righteous don't want to lose their righteousness for His. You who are utterly lost have nothing left to lose.

You have the power to speak. Even the man who was full of 2000 demons, though he could not speak, yet he spoke with his feet. It was not the demons who came to Jesus, but the man.

Only the lost know salvation; only the forgiven wash His feet with tears.

If you were not lost, there would be no hope for you.

Give thanks, give thanks, give thanks for the incredible gift God has given you, complete and utter failure in all things. God is so very good to you.

~~~

Hi Daniel. This was posted on Facebook. It is about the "New False Grace Gospel" being taught.

The New False Gospel - Shepherd Serve

(From the web page): There is a false gospel being perpetrated by MANY in Christendom. A false conversion - false belief, another Jesus. If belief is enough, then even demons would be saved according to this false gospel since the scriptures say that even demons BELIEVE and TREMBLE (James 2:19). If you don't repent, you are not saved. Period. The scriptures are clear. Hebrews says that if you continue in your deliberate sin, there is no sacrifice for sins left and you are crucifying Christ all over again (Hebrews 6). Take HEED "Christians" read the WHOLE Word of God and not only the bits that make you feel better. Your very soul depends on it!

~~~

Most everything the brother says in his article would be true if he lived inside of Salvation. Sadly, he is the one teaching “another Jesus,” the far-away Jesus of the Nicene Creed. A Jesus who has left us only a series of transactions through which we must maneuver correctly in order to make it someday into a far-away salvation.

But if grace teachers continue to regard a Nicene Christ (far away) and a Nicene salvation (who gets to go to heaven? – what negotiations with God are appropriate?), they are in exactly the same boat.

We are in a pickle. Sometimes I am pressed hard with the thought that I must be insane. It doesn't bother me because I already gave it my best and failed utterly. I have nothing to lose; if I must negotiate with God, this much repentance, these sins are okay (pretending), those are not; these things are sin, those are not – everyone's list is different, I'm just no good at such transactions. How could I ever know if I have made the right ones, sufficiently?

The writer, of course, is fully confident that he knows exactly which transactions get him in, and that he has fully engaged God with all those correct transactions. He fails to see that pretending is also a sin.

Everyone imagines that God gives us some things, salvation, life, righteousness, heaven after we die, and so on. They just don't get it. God is ultimate stinginess. He has never given any human any-thing. With the law it's all or nothing; disobey on one tiny point and die. With God it's the same. The only "thing" we get from God is God Himself in Person filling us full with all of Himself. Then, whatever God is, whatever God does, He shows Himself through us. – Almighty Power Exercising Absolute Dominion.

That's the covenant, that's the deal. Our knowledge of God comes in steps, but God Himself in Person is all in us or nothing. Either our body, as it is right now, is His temple, the visible expression of another invisible Person, or nothing. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ is 100% literal.

Christ as us is nothing other than our simple acknowledgment that He IS The Almighty. We cannot be "wayward"; He exercises His will in all that we find ourselves to be and in all the ways of our lives.

Salvation is one verse alone in the Bible – John 14:20. The entrance into that salvation is one verse alone – Galatians 2:20. Both are entered by faith alone. Faith is not what most think – believing in an escape from hell and an entrance to heaven someday, holding ideas in one's mind about a far-away God. Thus only those who simply, quietly, and with all finality choose to believe that God is telling us the truth, first in Galatians 2:20, and then in John 14:20, the only place where we live, only those see that Salvation is only Jesus in Person in us.

A sister asked me what I mean by "the tree of life." There is only one answer – John 14:20.

Here, then, is what I find. Living only and entirely inside John 14:20, by faith, that is believing it to be so against everything I see, feel, hear, or even do, I discover that the only way I can see anything is to look out from Jesus' eyes, since I am only inside of Him. Then I see that everything that is God forever comes only and immediately out of John 14:20. Every verse becomes life to us as it comes out of John 14:20. But apart from John 14:20 (the tree of life) every verse is only death, it kills, as Paul said.

So when you see people laboring over verses, as this writer does (and his approach is normal – use the jeopardy verses to eliminate the assurance verses, never think that they MUST always go together – doing exactly what he accuses the grace people of doing, picking one set of verses to eliminate another set), when you see them laboring thus, unable to see what is so plain and obvious to us, all you can do is point to the door, over and over, point to the door. If you will believe that God is actually telling you the truth, Galatians 2:20 will take you into John 14:20, the only place that IS Salvation and Life, that is, inside the Lord Jesus Himself in Person.

And here's what the brother who wrote the article does not comprehend. He has never repented. Taking all our sin and self and flesh into the Lord Jesus and seeing Him all through all that we are, Him in Person, that we are only flesh of His Flesh, one flesh with Him, is the greatest surrender and the only real surrender that there is. The more I speak what I speak, the more astonishingly surrendered I find myself to be! Because my self is 100% affirmed inside of God, I find it all joy to see His Self released through me, and always as I find myself to be. I know my true Self; it is He, yet He calls me by name!

I said that Galatians 2:20 is the only doorway into life. Yet the same thing is said elsewhere in a number of different ways. Here is another way to say it: That every mouth may be stopped and all the earth become silent before Him. Since “I” am silent, the only thing I speak is Christ.

Then I look out from the tree of life, John 14:20, and see these good people, fellow believers in Jesus, who have never repented, though they prate on and on about it. And it seems that when you try to explain, all you can do is stutter gobbledygook.

The most extraordinary phrase, one we will hear more and more, is "another Jesus." The horrifying thing is that the "other Jesus" Paul warned about came into the church long centuries ago through the Nicene Creed. "Another Jesus," a Jesus back then, up there, some day, is the only Jesus they know. Thus when they hear us speaking of Jesus as our only life – He is Salvation after all, Jesus in Person in us – then they imagine that we are pushing the "other" Jesus. Well, we are, the real Jesus who really is real Salvation.

And Paul's gospel, by which all men are judged, places you and me entirely, in all that we are, our sin, our flesh, our self, entirely into that Lamb, that Person, that Salvation, in all that He is. Entirely into His Gethsemane, entirely into His death, entirely into His burial, entirely into His Resurrection, and then Paul's gospel places that same Jesus entirely into us. Only Jesus is never alone, all the fullness of God in Person comes into us with Him.

Paul's gospel is not figurative; it is absolutely literal. We put on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Have you ever watched someone go into a dark room and work and work at getting rid of the darkness so that someday, someday, they might have light? Most of us simply flip on the light switch.

Have you ever watched someone work and work and work to get rid of their sin and their flesh and all the horror of Adam and the terror of a far-away God? Some of us simply accept Christ Himself in Person in all that is us.

Christ is always all before anything not-Christ could ever vanish away.

~~~

And I would caution you to be careful to keep your desire for His desires expressed through you in it's proper place. It is so easy for such desire to cause us to see ourselves separate from Him and suddenly needing to measure up, to "get" something from God we think we need. We already have all of God in Person; as we desire to know Him on the one hand, we rest utterly in Him on the other, both all the time. But desire not found in rest can never be the desire of God; that is, desire that says "I wish" and not "I am." – Calling those things that "be not" as they are is the only proof of true desire. – We must look at ourselves in all we find ourselves to be as the perfect will of God in the present moment, regardless of what we think. We live only in the tree of life.

~~~

Abide in Me and I in you. John 15:3

There is no other commandment in the Bible. As we keep this commandment, Christ Himself fulfills the entire Bible in our lives. Those who fail to keep this commandment, though they “keep” all others, live only separated from Christ in their minds and can never please or know God.

Inside of “Abide in Me and I in you” we find everything of God. Outside of that place, everything is all wrong, including every word in the Bible.

When I was in college, one of our teachers gave us a “quiz.” It was a page of little things to do, such as “write the date on the top left corner of your paper,” or “circle the word ‘because.’” The test was timed; we all attacked it earnestly. The directions said, “Read all the questions before you begin.” Well, I followed the directions. The last item on the quiz said. “Do not do anything except #1, ‘Write your name.’” I happily obeyed #1 and sat back laughing at all the other students but one who were busy, busy, busy, doing all that the test said to do.

The rest did all the questions correctly and failed the whole purpose of the quiz.

Paul says that Jesus lives in our hearts by faith. John says that we are in Him by faith. We know that means today; now is the day of salvation. 1 Corinthians 6:2 – Today if you will hear His voice… Hebrews 3:15

Today we abide in Him and He in us.

In that day you shall know that I am in the Father and you in Me and I in you. John 14:20

Today is that day. Today we know, today we see that everything that we are right now in this world is IN the Lord Jesus and the Lord Jesus Christ fills every particle that we are. Absolute and today.

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The Two Gospels Chapters

2. One Door