21. The Feast of Authority

We are no longer going forward into God. Rather, we are seated upon the mercy seat, the throne of God, and we are looking out towards His creation, seeing now with His perspective, seeing all things as He sees them. God with us has swallowed us up completely and now it has become that we are with God. Now we are caught in the passion and power of His determination. He moves through us to prove His will in the earth.

The central word of the first feast, Passover, in its fulfillment in the life of the church, is grace. The central word of the second feast, Pentecost, is power. The central word of the third feast, Tabernacles, is authority.

Grace is the Greek word, charis, which means gift. Grace is God Himself present with us as our life as a gift to us. The blessing of the beginning of the Christian life is that God is now with us, we are no longer alone.

But the presence of God with us was knowledge only. We did not know that God impacted the physical world; therefore, we put everything off to a someday “heaven.”

Then God brought us into the experience of Pentecost and we received power. The purpose of power is to be a witness of Christ. That is, to show by demonstration that God is present in the human, physical experience. We experienced the Bible becoming a new book to us, we saw miracles take place in physical bodies; we experienced supernatural provision and guidance – all means of God present with us more than just as an idea, but in outward demonstration of reality.

But both the knowledge that God is with us and the experience that He is with us in power all came to us as immature believers who did not know what God is doing. We knew that He is taking us on and up, but too many re-defined that upward call to mean “going to” heaven after physical death.

In the first feast, we lived in the outer court of the temple. We talked often about the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross – the brazen altar, and we pursued “Bible study” – the brazen laver. When we heard there was more, we pressed on forward to enter into the Holy Place.

In the second feast, we lived in the Holy Place. We enjoyed the bread of truth, that is, the Bible as a living word; we walked in the light of the Spirit of God in ways we had not known in the outer court. But we heard there was more, so we pressed forward to the altar of incense, desiring to be consumed by its flame that we might rise up and enter into the Holy of Holies.

In moving out of the outer court into the Holy Place, we left many of our brethren behind who were quite content with the outer court and had no desire for anything more from God in this life. In moving towards the altar of incense, we left many of our brethren behind who were quite content with the Holy Place, with the bread and the light, the provision and the joy, and had no desire for anything more from God in this life.

But the altar of incense itself can be a place that many choose to set up their dwelling place, convinced that the entrance into all the fullness of God revealed in us will not actually happen in this life and on this earth. They are content to wait until their physical bodies perish and go into the grave before they enter into the Holy of Holies.

The third feast is entirely different.

In the first feast, God with us was a nice idea, but kept in a distant sort of way, back then, up there, some day. In the second feast, God with us became much more relevant and real to our daily life. But still, we were one and God was another. We saw ourselves separate from God, and we saw “God with us” in only a limited way.

To enter the third feast, to enter the Holy of Holies, we must become the smoke of the incense, that is, we must disappear into God. To enter the third feast, we let go of any claim to a “self “ identity, to being some other person separate from God’s Person. We now see that we are one spirit with the Lord, that He carries every part of ourselves inside Himself and that He lives in every part of us, right now, as we are in this world.

But in entering the third feast, we do not “leave behind” any part of the first or second feasts. Rather, those things pertaining to those two feasts, the elements of our salvation and the power of the Holy Ghost, are raised into a closeness and personal-ness beyond what we ever understood before.

Here is what is different about living in the third feast.

We are no longer going forward into God. Rather, we are seated upon the Mercy Seat, the throne of God, and we are looking out towards His creation, seeing now with His perspective, seeing all things as He sees them. God with us has swallowed us up completely and now it has become that we are with God. Now we are caught in the passion and power of His determination. He moves through us to prove His will in the earth.

But how do we pass from the travail of the Altar of Incense into the full knowledge of union with Him? Simple. We believe what God says by faith.

And how do we sit upon the throne of God and see all things as God sees? Simple. We believe all that He speaks. And how do we come to believe that what God says is true? Simple. We speak what He speaks, until what He speaks overshadows all other voices.

If we pick and choose and believe some things and not others, then we cannot see as God sees. If we are still doing that, we may be inside the Holy of Holies – God has many doorkeepers in His house, those who stand at the door and show others the way into the Holy of Holies, into the life of Christ our life – and that is a beyond wonderful place to be. But Christ is more than an entrance or a door. All the fullness of Christ is all that God speaks fulfilled now in us. Christ is larger than anything we have ever known. A million years from now we will still be discovering broad vistas that Christ is, revealed in us, that we had never seen before, after a million years of seeing more and more.

Faith is the word God speaks, Christ, made personal in me.

Then, as we sit upon the Mercy Seat and look out, viewing all things as God sees them, we understand that though we always remain seated upon the throne, we are also always moving out into the creation, both heaven and earth, with the one element that God gave to man in the day that he was created.

Authority.

We are made just like God as His likeness. God flows out from us, revealed through us as His image. But then God said, “Subdue the earth and take dominion over it.” The writer of Hebrews brings that word into the reality of the present human experience by saying, “We do not now see all things placed under man’s feet. But we see Jesus.” And Matthew remembered these words of Jesus, “All authority in heaven and in earth is given unto Me. Go therefore . . .”

Paul, in Romans 8, says that the whole creation will be set free from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of God.

By these words we understand that the authority given to man as the image and likeness of God is an authority that encompasses all of creation, both heaven and earth.

The ultimate goal of authority in us in the present time is authority over death. Anyone who believes that they “have to die” physically has bought the big lie and cannot see as God sees. That lie, that the physical body must perish under the original curse and be buried and turn to worms and that we leave this earth, “going to” a “place” called heaven, sits as a block, a blinder, upon the eyes and upon the heart. It prevents those who believe it from knowing what the third feast, what God, is all about.

The Lord Jesus Christ possesses all authority over death. He is my life; I have no other life. I, Daniel Yordy, possess all authority over death. I do not have to die; by God’s grace I will not die. God swallows up death through me. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15 that God took the mighty victory over death that Jesus won and He gave that victory to me.

I possess full victory over the dying of the present physical body. I have authority over death.

This is the glorious liberty of the sons of God. Creation cannot know that liberty until we know that liberty.

Now, don’t get me wrong; in myself I can do nothing. I am a weak man, unable even to fulfill a work commitment I made because of the tiredness and weakness of my body. Some would say, “Well, if you can’t ‘overcome’ physical weakness, what makes you think you will defeat death?”

Ah, but there’s the whole point. God revealing Himself in weakness does not fit anyone’s definition of God (including mine), and “to overcome” becomes for many “to pretend with all your might.” That is not faith. Faith believes what God says; faith does not regard what the eyes see. Nor does faith try to “force” the body into a pretending in order to meet some outward definition of Christ.

However, between now and the full and final knowledge of complete victory over death, there are increasing levels of authority, of God moving through us as He speaks and we as tag-alongs, vessels, caught in the fulfillment of His determination.

Do not ever limit God. Remove all limitation from what God is doing in you and through you right now upon this earth.

God says, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” God says that Jesus has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. God says that the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.

Faith is bold with an audacity that the carnal mind cannot know. Faith takes all that God speaks – Christ – and makes it personal in me. Faith knows no limit and no bounds. Faith never says, “This far I will believe, and no more.” Faith never says, “But that is for some future day or some other person.”

God has placed three enemies against Himself into our experience: the world, Satan and his demons, and death. Contrary to what many teach, the flesh is not our enemy. Paul said that we do not battle against the flesh, but against spiritual powers – powers that exist on the outside of us. Our body is the very temple of Almighty God. The enemy we fight is the finger and sentence of death that yet remains in it.

Death is the last enemy to be defeated. God created us to defeat His/our enemies. That’s what it means to be a son of God.

Before we take the full and final authority over death, God reveals in us the full and final authority and victory over the Beast (the outward authorities in the world) and the Dragon (Satan and his demons, the spirit that fills the world).

Defeating the Beast and the Serpent comes first.

John says in his first epistle, “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith. Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”

The world is that system of relationships among fallen man upon this planet, breathed upon by Satan, and governed by the authority of man – the Beast. The world is entirely a lie, built entirely out of a whole fabric of things that are not.

God did not place us on this earth to make the world a better place. He put us here to defeat the world, to defeat the “stories” the world tells. All Christians who seek to enter into and participate in the governmental systems of this world come under the authority of Satan. There is no other possibility. The kingdom of God, coming through us, is something entirely different.

Now, let us bring in what God says.

And he who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations – “He shall rule them with a rod of iron; they shall be dashed to pieces like the potter’s vessels” – as I also have received from My Father . . . Revelation 2:26-27

She bore a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And her Child was caught up to God and His throne. Then the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there one thousand two hundred and sixty days. Revelation 12:5-6

All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations . . . Matthew 28:18-19

The Father gave unto Christ all authority in heaven and on earth, including authority over the nations. Christ is my life; I have no other life. I believe all that God speaks; I place no limit on the fulfillment through me of what He speaks. I never say, “Well, maybe God isn’t talking about me.” How could God not be talking about me? He is most certainly talking about Christ. Christ is the only life I know. Therefore God is absolutely talking about me.

Faith defeats the world. Faith takes every word God speaks and makes it personal in me right here and right now.

Unbelief says that all things continue now as they have always been, nothing changes. Unbelief does not allow a present fulfillment of all that God speaks in the physical realms of this earth, nor the end of this age of human folly. Unbelief does not see us as the ones through whom God is transforming the ages, bringing an end to this present age and birthing the age to come right here upon this planet. Unbelief does not allow God to freely use us in the present fulfillment of His determination.

Unbelief puts a limit on God. Unbelief says “This far and no more.” Unbelief says, “It can’t be talking about me.”

Faith makes Christ, the prophetic Word, every word God speaks, personal to me.