20. The Two Gospels

We cannot know the false except we have our hearts filled full with the true. And we do.

In 1996, I came across a little booklet titled “The Two Gospels,” written by a brother in the Lord. This brother attempted to argue his version of what is “another gospel” and “another Jesus.” The brother mentioned a teaching he had recently come across about present union with Christ and attempted his best, in great Biblical argument, to show the wrong view in that teaching. In doing so, he presented his version of “the gospel.”

The problem was I believed what this brother wrote in his booklet. And in doing so, I entered the time of deepest despair in my life. The author of the booklet? You may have heard of him. His name was Daniel Yordy.

In this letter, I intend to refute this guy's sincere, but sadly wrong thinking, to discover the core of it's hostility to God.

But first, I place before you the joy I now know.

There are two premises underneath this entire series claiming that the Nicene/Augustinian definitions of God, of man, of Christ Jesus, and of salvation, are the “other gospel” that Paul warned us against and that the gospel of the New Testament is something quite different.

This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

We know that we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is.

When the brother contended with me that I cannot be like Jesus because Jesus is “God” and I am not, he was speaking out of the knowledge about God and about man derived from Nicene/Augustinian Christianity.

We shall be like Him is the core of the Covenant. If it is not true, nothing else can be true.

In “The Altar of Incense,” Chapter Four of The Covenant, I presented this declaration of faith as the doorway into our actual full Covenant with God. Put your own full name in the blank.

“I, _______ _________, will be just like Jesus. I will walk just as He walked, right here on this earth, in this age, and in this life. I will walk without sin, just as Jesus walked. I will walk revealing the Father just as Jesus walked. I will walk in open ministry as a manifest son of God, just as Jesus walked. The Spirit will move through me without measure, just as the Spirit moved through Jesus without measure. I will know and reveal God, just as Jesus knew and revealed God, right here on this earth, right now in this life, me, as a human BEFORE the resurrection, just as Jesus walked in all these things before His resurrection.”

Only those who believe enter into Covenant with God.

Now, some have believed this and not seen it in their time – so what! Read Hebrews 11: These all died in faith, not having seen the promise. Faith places us in God regardless of the seasons appointed by Him. But this confession of faith is referring partly to Jesus as He was when He walked this earth. The full Covenant is that we are just like Jesus as He IS right now, the ascended Christ of God, the King of the universe.

Eternal life is nothing other than one thing: to know God and to know Jesus-Sent. Knowing God and Jesus-Sent AND being just like Jesus, conformed to His image ARE the same thing. Since writing the letters on “Spirit” and “Body,” I have been pondering a statement of Jesus.

I tell you the truth. It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you. Then Jesus said this: . . . the Spirit of truth . . . will guide you into all truth. . . He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine. Therefore I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you. John 16:7 & 13-15

Jesus was saying that so long as He was outside of the disciples, He could not be inside of them, He could not be their life. More than that, when He said that the Holy Spirit will “declare” to us ALL THINGS of the Father and of the Son, He did not mean that the Holy Spirit will give us informational knowledge about God. Jesus meant that we would know God and Jesus-Sent in intimate and perfect Union, Communion, AND Expression.

So – our human spirits are merged entirely into the infinite and omnipresent Spirit of God; where He is we are. That same Holy Spirit DWELLS in our bodies, where He is busy, busy, busy, applying the resurrection life of Jesus to our dying flesh. That same Holy Spirit flows out from us as rivers of living water. Christ Jesus LIVES IN our hearts, and inside of Jesus comes all the fullness of the Father. We HAVE the mind of Christ; we have a mind to know God; eternal life fills our hearts and souls. And Christ Jesus Himself lives as us, our very and only Self.

What else is there? What else would we want? We are humans, that is, God-revealed.

The problem, of course, is just who and what this Fellow is that fills us full. He recklessly and continuously, without any visible hope of success, lays down His life for His friends – all while they are still His enemies, attacking Him in all ferocity!!!

And the worst of the matter is that, if we are just like Him, then we also – lay down our lives for the brethren.

And here is where too many revert back to the safety of a Nicene God, far above, far away, or worse yet, divert “Christ-as-us” to mean God's support for their desire to manipulate and control God's people.

God has chiselled away at me all of my life. I would guess that about a quarter of all the letters I have written were either written in the agony of great difficulty or written in the joy just after the pain has vanished. Sometimes the letters I have written in the deepest of His sufferings have brought the greatest help to my readers. At other times, the letters that came in the joy of release just after such a time have been the most inspiring. That includes my recent letter, “Spirit.”

But the most difficult year of my life was 1996. Through that year, God did not just bear with me the assault of many chisels all at once, but on top of them was a great sledge hammer that, by December of that year, had left me all smashed to pieces, having lost everything I had devoted my life to win, numb and confused, but holding utterly to His hand holding mine.

I have shared of that time and how God spoke to me a few months later, “Son, you passed the test.” He spoke it in that way because that's how I thought at the time. Last night, God gave me an entirely different view of what took place through that most difficult of years. He showed me what He did deep inside of me underneath the blows and in the midst of all my confusion.

God reached deep into my innermost parts and removed from my heart that voice that would speak the words of Satan, that voice that would accuse others, that voice that would strike back against others when God uses them as the chisel in His hand. That I had “passed the test,” meant outwardly that I justified God in all my confusion and blamed no one, inwardly it meant that God had given me that greatest of gifts, a heart that could lay down its life for my brother.

I had no knowledge of such a heart then, but such a heart has shown itself just a little bit in recent years. I know that it will only grow as I see Him as He is and am just like Him.

There is nothing sadder in all the universe than a fellow believer who speaks accusation against another in anger against God. This is the true test of any eunuch in God's ministry. When God chisels you through your brother, will you justify God and speak blessing and Christ, or will accusation flow through your lips?

God orders my steps; He is responsible for all things that come my way. His ways concerning me are perfect, and I justify Him in all things. No chisel ever chisels me, no hammer ever delivers its blows except entirely IN the Hand of my Father, this One who fills me full. Every moment of the fellowship of His suffering is of more value to me than the universe, for by it, God is giving me Himself.

Yet this God who fills me full is joy and gladness as well, always laughing hilariously, especially when I take myself too seriously. And thus I must never make a fetish out of my difficulties, but dance for joy with you in the celebration of His love.

What does this have to do with “The Two Gospels”?

We cannot know the false except we have our hearts filled full with the true. And we do.

We know Him and we love Him. And in knowing and loving Him, in believing all things that He speaks in the Covenant He signed with us, in making all that is Christ personal in us, we come to understand that the “Jesus” and the “gospel” we once knew in our mental definitions bears no relationship to this Jesus and this Salvation we now know and love.

We see Him as He is, and in seeing Him as He is, we discover that we are, right now, just like Him.

And in discovering that we are, right now, just like Him, we realize that we must now be hated for the same reasons they hated Jesus, as Jesus said we would be. We have dirtied their “God” in exactly the same way that Jesus dirtied their “God.”

The God of the Nicene Creed is God as known out from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, a God far away. The nature and substance of the Christ of the Nicene Creed is a Christ we could never be of His same kind. God's desire to be seen and known and touched through His image, man, is removed entirely from the Nicene Creed, and thus God's heart is ripped right out of their whole picture.

Nicene thinking reduces God to mental definitions, ideas of the mind. It places “God” in the control of man.

Okay, I have finally pulled this booklet titled “The Two Gospels” written by this Yordy fellow in 1996, but not completed and printed until early 1998.

I am speechless. I had no idea. – There is almost no difference between that little booklet and the gist of what I write now. Same verses, same truths, same view of most everything.

All except one thing. One thing that brought me to the loss of everything.

Here's the thing. I did not realize until I was looking at this letter, back and forth at parts written on different days that the writing of that book in 1996 and losing everything I had hoped to be for twenty years came at the same time. I then printed it as a polished booklet in 1998, during the winter of my deepest hopelessness.

Oh my, now I look back up at the last thing written here before I opened that booklet to begin reading it.

“It places 'God' in the control of man.”

I have not looked back at this booklet since I left move community in late summer 1998 numb and frozen inside. Please bear with me, this is very difficult. I can share now only out from a “stream-of-consciousness” sharing of my present very real search to understand how a man could speak the same things from the same verses with a view to the same end and one speaking be darkness and death and hopeless loss and the other be light and life and unending joy.

I cannot convey to you the highest importance and greatest value of one thing alone in all the truths I have ever heard or shared.

This one thing, that Jesus, my Lord and my God, drank His Father's cup, drank me, all of me, into Himself and then allowed the Father to send Him back to walk this earth again, planted now as me in all I find myself to be. Oh, oh, oh – how utterly I can cast myself into Him.

In 1996 it was all about me making it somehow into a God so far away.

In 2014 it's all about Jesus carrying me all the way to the full knowledge of the Father. To know that my own gross inability to fulfill any requirements, even of the gospel, cannot remove me from Salvation nor prevent me from walking right now in full union with God.

Again, I am feeling pulverized right now, this is not easy.

There is almost nothing in this booklet to refute. Yet it brought me into utter despair. Let me quote one bit.

~~~

Eternal life is a gift from God. We neither earn it, or deserve it. God gives it to us freely out of His great love for us.

What is eternal life?

Your answer governs how you view your walk with God.

There is a traditional understanding of eternal life not supported by Scripture. I read a gospel tract that said, “The gift of God is eternal life (going to heaven).” Wait a minute! Where does the Bible say that? It does not!

What is eternal life? What is it not? Eternal life is not where you live or how long you live.

Eternal life is not going to heaven when you die . . . (I then say exactly the same as you have read me now.)

What is eternal life?

John 17:3 “And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”

Eternal life is knowing God.

Eternal life is not knowing about God. It is more even than knowing Him really well. “That they may know You” is an intimate marriage union with God enabling us to bear His life. Eternal life is coming into union with Him who is eternal, whereby He plants His life in us and enables us to bring forth out of our beings that very same life.

Can we walk in union with God here in the earth? Certainly.

~~~

I rest my case. Yet as I typed these words now onto this page, the dark hopelessness appeared to me in one little phrase. Can you find it? You see, I started my rendition of the “true gospel” back then with Galatians 2:20 as the only doorway into salvation. Can you believe that?

Here's the deal. I had thought all through this series that in this letter I would pull out that booklet and address it. However, when I finally “had to” write this letter, I wimped out. I chose just to start with my opening and then give a present rendition of “the two gospels.”

The Lord did not let me escape. (He has a way about such things.) I'm saying this because I realize that inside this present feeling of utter astonishment mingled with feeling pulverized and numb, it seems to me that the Lord wants me to strip aside all other knowing, all other teaching, all other glory and wonder and power, and look right now at the one thing that is important, the only thing that counts.

Did you find the hinge in the above quote from “The Two Gospels” by Daniel Yordy © 1998, the sling shot that casts all this wondrous truth coming through my mind and fingers back then into darkness and despair? And if I could take you back to those dark months of December, January, February when and where I finalized what I had written in 1996 so that you could see me in that setting, you would likely go quiet. You would understand and be astonished.

Here are the awful words: – “Coming into union with Him.”

I can't do that. I tried; God knows I tried. I cried out to Him for years in the wrenching despair of my heart, in the deep places of God taking a man all to pieces inside the depths of desire, and I could not. I could not. I didn't know how. I didn't know why I could not do what everyone else must be able to do, as I thought.

I could not “come into union with Him.” And I did not know why.

You can understand, I think, the deep sobs wrenching my breast right now as I tell you that there is only one thing of any meaning and value to me in this life or any other:

Jesus came into union with me.

“Father, I will drink Your cup.” And in that moment my grief turned entirely into Joy inside His heart.

– Okay, I had to go out for a bit. I am calm again; I can breathe.

I want to take you now back again to the letter “Christ Versus Superman” and the email I received that sparked such turmoil and desperate longing to know God as He really is out of which I wroteThe Kingdom Rising. I truly believe that the Lord Jesus squeezes me in His grip right now for your sake, for your understanding. The difference between the two gospels is not a difference of ideas or verses. Yet the difference is night versus day, hopeless despair versus all overflowing joy.

It is a difference of heart.

The email I included in that prior letter, the bit I do not and will never read, attempted to force back upon me the horrifying, awful darkness of a Christ far away from me. You see, there was a very simple problem in the booklet I wrote called “The Two Gospels,” from the front page of that booklet to the back. – I was all alone.

But while striking back against the horrific image of a far-away Christ by writing The Kingdom Rising, my definition of God changed into a description of Him. God caused me to see that He is utterly different than I had ever known or heard of Him.

– God always reveals Himself through weakness, swallowing up into Himself all that we are including our sin and rebellion, becoming us in our present state, limiting Himself by our weakness. Thus, carrying us inside Himself, stumbling and falling along the way, He arises out of death into life, ascending on high, and we in Him. –

The Father has never left me alone.

Christ became us long before we ever thought about becoming Him.

~~~

I have returned to this letter, now, in a new morning, fresh from sleep. Before continuing here, I began to work on editing the first two letters of this series for the book. As I did so, I understood clearly what this exercise is about, what God wants me to see clearly and to convey to you.

Here are two things I wrote, one near the beginning, the other near the end of the first letter of this series, “Another Gospel, Another Jesus.”

– We face an almost insurmountable difficulty. Both Paul’s Jesus and another Jesus share the same name, both promote a gospel using similar words, and both use Bible verses to promote their claims. –

– So few seem to be speaking out from God’s interests and intentions. Almost all repeat what they hear from others. But why can’t they stop and think? I do not know. Part of it is the power of the Nicene Christ image. –

How is it that I could be speaking the same truth I speak now, using the same verses I use now, and yet be myself in utter hopelessness, seeing, as I realize now, the very opposite of what I know now by those very same words? How could it be?

Tiptoeing back into the horror of those years of hopelessness and seeing there the same words I teach now was shocking to me. Yet it is the whole point of this series.

The POWER that sat upon me preventing me from seeing the wondrous reality of Christ my only life though I spoke almost the same words I speak now was the POWER of the Nicene Creed, of the Nicolaitan Christ.

I now understand God's incredible purpose for the most difficult three years of my life. I worship before Him and give Him thanks.

God wanted me to hate, with all the passionate fervency and eloquence He crafted as Himself in me, the Nicene Christ, the far-away Christ, the some-day Christ, the “get out of my way, loser” Christ. For your sakes as well as mine, so that you, by seeing my testimony and the truth of the Christ who is your only life, of the God who fills you full, you can lose forever the lie of that wicked image, a separate-from-you Christ, a Jesus far-away.

At the core of my blindness as I wrote “The Two Gospels” was a specific theology expressed by these words:

– If I am not walking with God this moment, I am not in eternal life, even though eternal life is in me. I can have eternal life in me and not be in it. There are two lives in me. One is called death and the other life. One is my own way and the other His. I can be in one or the other, but I cannot be in both at the same time. –

That's the key darkness: “There are two lives in me.” That statement is the creation of the false self.

Now, there are multitudes of powerful and anointed preachers who push that line in every word they preach and never know hopelessness. In fact, I received that understanding from the press of those to whom I had subjected my own life. Why did writing “The Two Gospels” bring me to such hopelessness?

This is so neat. I KNEW I was speaking truth AND I KNEW I was lying.

What I did not know was the difference.

I knew I was twisting certain Scriptures, particularly this line, “We shall be saved by His life,”when I said, “By His life, not by ours.” In other words, “Get out of your life, loser, and into His,”something I could never ever do. I did not know how.

And neither do the liars who teach the Nicene Christ. They don't know how to escape their own life either.

When I left move community, I made a covenant with God. I took everything I had written, everything I thought was “truth,” everything except the Jesus I did know and trust, put it on the shelf, and walked away from it. I said to God, “God, You will bring back off that shelf ONLY what is You. That way, everything not of You will remain there.”

God is a Keeper of covenant.

As I said, so much of what I wrote in that booklet then, I write the same thing today.

EXCEPT. – Except my unbelief.

You see, I never believed that what I taught was true. “There are two lives in me” causes blindness of the eyes, hardness of the heart, and all the rebellion of Adam.

“There are two lives in me” is the horror of all things evil.

“There are two lives in me” is another gospel, another Jesus.

You see, the email that sparked “Christ Versus Superman,” spoke of the dark Christ I had known so very well, that high-above-you Christ that brought me to such hopelessness and ruin. The brother insisted that “Christ” cannot be my autistic difficulty, that Jesus does not conform Himself to me, that the only way I could ever know this “power Christ” was to escape my human frame.

Jesus came into union with me first.

I will never know Him in His power until I know Him as my weakness.

My strength is made perfect in weakness.

Okay, here is something God left entirely back on that shelf. He had to bring me to complete hopelessness before He could. This is what I said then. – “To exalt the weakness of man is to reject the power of God.” –

I KNEW I was saying things contrary to the words of the gospel, I just did not know what or how. The thing is, a large part of my reasoning in making that statement is truth I speak today. Yet, I did not see or know.

Here's another: – “I cannot walk in my own way, do my own thing, or think my own thoughts, without using my body.” You see my blindness? I ( not Christ), I (not Christ), I (not Christ).

And that's the problem through the entire booklet. Me, me, me. And Jesus far away.

I made this statement: “What many in the Church call faith is really self-reliance,” yet it was I teaching self-reliance, though I sincerely believed the opposite. I was hopelessly alone, and in my hopeless inability, I believed that I had to prove something, to perform obedience, in order to be found in this Jesus whom I did know and love. What a pickle. What a contradiction.

Speaking Christ and not Christ, both at the same time.

You see, even as I wrote those words, even as I sent out that booklet, I KNEW there was something missing, something I was not seeing, something critical I did not know. I just did not know what it was. But I did know this. That something would be found in the words of Paul's gospel alone. It would be found nowhere else.

Thus in leaving everything on the shelf, I held to one thing alone. “I will take into myself only what God Himself says about me in Paul's gospel as God makes it real to me, everything else waits in the distance until the center, my heart, is true and Christ.”

The first thing God brought back to me?

“Daniel, I love you.” Do you see that period after “you.”? Most precious period. For years I was taught to say, “God loves me, but. . .” It was impossible for me to speak, “God loves me,” and nothing more without feeling that I was in open rebellion against God.

Do you know what God says about me in Paul's gospel?

God says, “Daniel, you are in the Spirit, you are NOT in the flesh.” “Daniel, you have the mind of Christ. – Daniel, you are complete in Christ. – Daniel, you are already dead; it's not you, it's Christ. – Daniel, Christ is your life.”

Show me one place in the gospel where God says that we are in the flesh or that we possess a carnal mind or that we have a life not Christ. It's not there.

God talks about those things, yes, but He never places us in them or them in us. – God sees Christ alone.

I said at the beginning of this letter that I intended to uncover the core of hostility against God found in the writing of this sincere but deluded Daniel Yordy.

I have done so. Here is that core. – I, not Christ.

Here is the core of all the joy in which I live today. – Christ, not I.

The first is hell, the second heaven. The first is darkness, the second all light and joy. The first is rebellion and hardness of heart; the second is all submission and repentance.

The Father has never left me alone.

~~~

The two “gospels” are not one set of ideas versus another set of ideas. Rather it is built entirely on the human definition of “God” versus a God who is known only up from within ourselves, carrying us inside Himself.

I have postulated that Jesus in no way “set aside divinity,” that God showing up in the earth is exactly what was seen by those who saw Jesus, a Man, God-revealed. That same God, showing up in the heavens is seen and known as Spirit. Neither One, in and of themselves, are “the Father.” Both are the Father revealing Himself through Another.

This same Father desires, now, to reveal Himself through many, through you and me. Christ is His forerunner in our earth; Spirit is His forerunner in our heavens. Father-revealed is our full inheritance.

Show me one place in the Bible where the Spirit does violence to anyone. Show me one place in the Bible where the Son does violence to anyone. There is no “God” of violence, other than the serpent. The law of the Old Covenant and all the imagery in it was entirely for one purpose alone. Man chose to live by knowledge about God, empty of God. God gave man the full experience of what that means.

There has been much discussion in this series concerning “politics,” that is, the nature of power-over. The Nicene God is entirely a God of power-over, ruling from the top down, giving commands and expecting immediate and explicit obedience, a God who inflicts pain to get His way.

You may gather that I am 100% libertarian when it comes to violence against others. Small llibertarian means one thing only – the non-aggression principle, best stated by Jesus, “Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.” All initiation of violence for any other purpose then immediate and minimal self-defence, is immoral; that is, God is not involved. The same morality applies to all, including all “government.”

Thus we have a God who reveals Himself only as a Man laying down His life for His friends, protecting them from the assault of death, a Man who possess all power, yet uses none of it because He will not hurt anyone.

A Man who forgives out from His pain those who most deserve punishment of all created beings.

The Nicene Christ was forced all throughout Christianity at the point of the sword. Out from that image comes the most reprehensible doctrine in human thinking. “Hurting other people and calling it 'God'”

You must understand that the Dominican priest, inflicting pain upon the heretic in the torture chambers of the Inquisition, was moving in sincere and heart-felt love. I have no doubt some were anointed of God. He truly believed that this person was heading for unending awfulness and that his present infliction of pain was the very MERCY that would save. He truly believed, out from Christian principles, that this heretic would thank him one day for saving him, that the pain he was inflicting would bring forth Christ made visible. – A Nicene Christ.

The only Christ that is true is that which comes up from within each individual person by Spirit, who, when seen in outward form, is a Dove, one who never strives, never pushes, never violates anyone's person.

What I shared about the fellowship of His suffering in the last letter, “Body,” is NEVER to be taken to justify any infliction of suffering on another. Jesus did not just say, “Offences must come.” He also said, “But woe to him through whom they come.” In the move communities where I lived it was often heard this way, “Suffer, brother, it's good for you.” Here is another way it is said, “Let us do evil, that good may come.”

I left the move for one reason. I will not treat others with disrespect. The fellowship of His sufferings is known only inside of God; it is God sharing with us the chisels attacking Him, or shall I say, God takes the brunt of the assault against God, allowing only a little to come through to us, thus allowing us to know His heart.

God just spoke to me as I read the following paragraph in a libertarian article this morning.

– The real question here is a very personal one. Do the ends justify the means? If you bend on a bunch of principles along the way to get your message across, is it worth it in the long run? I don’t know if there’s a definitive answer, but for me, it was “no”. – Vedran Vuk

Though the Father never leaves me alone, I am still lonely, never certain of myself outwardly. Yet of one thing I am certain; I will stand before Jesus and He will ask me what I have done with what He has placed in my heart.

I fear God; that's why I'm not afraid of Him. Those who do not fear God will be terrified when He reveals Himself. And of course, there will be no condemnation in Jesus' question. But what eternal sorrow I will know if I am forced to say, “I kept it safe, Jesus, here it is. I did not share it with anyone because of what everyone else says.”

“Get your message across” is the greatest trap sent against the sons of God. Most everyone, it seems, wants me to compromise what I share in order to join with them. When I will not, I am sometimes attacked. I am neither wise nor strong. I have no ability to “get my message across.”

And neither did God as He walked the earth. When push came to shove, He just went silent. Then He laid down His life for His enemies.

Only the Spirit will ever get His message across, and only coming up from inside each individual person, a Spirit always sent, but never forced.

This is God. Can you see Him? Do you want to know Him?

The Father has never left me alone.

Christ became us long before we ever thought about becoming Him.

Covenant Fulfilled Books

The Two Gospels Chapters

20. The Two Gospels