15. The Abomination that Makes Desolate

This study is “Being a Witness of Christ.” The problem for God is that all kinds of people are drawn to their conception of “God” so that they can use God for their own gain. And false gain for humans is one thing only, ever, and that is superiority over others.

The appearance of what is perceived as “superior” varies from one to the next, like fingerprints, but in the end, it’s all the same. Yet being superior creates a great void, for how can one be superior if there are not many others who can be deemed inferior. Self for self has no meaning if there are not despicable others.

The Church is filled with strong people who use God and the anointing to be in some way “above” all these fleshy Christians. Bullies and manipulators, insincere people playing games, are drawn to Christian gatherings because such gatherings are filled with naive people who will believe “the Bible says,” “the Bible says,” without ever proving God.

There are two ways in which manipulators manipulate. The first is the most common, setting one’s self upon others through “submit to me.” The other, though less common, is still well-known, and that is the vociferous separation from the “herd,” in setting one’s self as the seeker of “higher things.” This is vociferous, because those who seek “the higher life,” make certain that others see them high and lifted up, otherwise, what is the point.

The best example of the first is the Pope, starting with Damasus 1, and the best example of the second is Simon Stylites, a generation later, who placed his flesh high on a tower, so that everyone whom he despised might draw near to worship “God.” Yet the key possessed by both, the man who bridged between the two, was Jerome, a son of perdition, who gave to all manipulators the ammunition they needed, Genises 3:22, a God who “knows evil.”

I have had much personal experience with both types of manipulators, as I am sure you have as well. And the horror of my Christian life, the abomination that brought so much desolation to me, was the awful deception that God knows evil.

The problem was never the manipulators or those who preached out from such a “God,” though they caused great distress. The problem was me.

You see, I knew God. From age seven, when I asked Jesus into my heart, from age fifteen, when He planted the seed of thanksgiving into my consciousness, from age nineteen, when He restored my heart to Himself, I knew God. All through the years in Christian Community, I knew God, even in the demonstrations of the Spirit and Power. Through the years since we left that fellowship, I knew God, guiding us, keeping us.

But what I did NOT do was glorify Him as God.

I have never glorified God as God until this October of 2025. And the distinction is so strong, that my whole perception of reality has shifted.

The immediate result of not glorifying God as God through all these years is that I was unthankful. Yes, I practiced thanksgiving, but to “practice” thanksgiving means that you are seeking to leave the normal flow of unthankfulness.

And because I was unthankful, my mind was split. Yes, I knew the grace of God in my heart and I trusted in Him, but my mental thinking was subject to a theology that placed God far away from me. I was truly psychotic in my thinking, double-minded. I imagined myself running back and forth between God and the flesh, breathless and frightened.

Inside of such foolishness, you can imagine how darkened my heart had become. The single most shameful thing that I did during my thirties was that I sought reasons from my upbringing for my “problems.” That is, I toyed with the idea that it was my parents who were at fault for “the way I was.” I don’t know that I have ever done anything more wicked.

In 1996, even when I was sitting as an elder in that fellowship, and when I cried out to God to save even me, I “heard” no answer. You see. God did answer me, with the most powerful and most vivid reply one could imagine. Yet my heart was so dark towards Him that I did not even know that He said anything.

I misunderstood everything. I misinterpreted every circumstance, and misread every moment of my life experience. I was clueless – BECAUSE, I did not glorify God as God.

And because I did not glorify God as God, I was subject, not willingly, but nonetheless, subject to a theology “about God,” that can only be called an abomination, an abomination that left me lifeless in the very midst of overwhelming, all encompassing, age-unfolding LIFE!

It was a theology that pretended to define God, that pretended to present the Gospel, that pretended to be Biblical, but that brushed Jesus aside with cleverness and that exalted the flesh deceptively, even inside the very dwelling place of God, making the flesh to be greater than all.

I thought I was so wise. I thought that I “had it right.”

I did NOT know that I was defining God, partly by Jesus, most certainly, but also partly by the devil, in a horrible and psychotic mixture. I did not know that this creeping thing, the serpent’s words in the garden, governed how I thought about everything, especially about the image of God.

In short, I was a “Christian.”

For having known God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were they thankful, but they became pointless, even psychotic in their thinking and their incoherent heart was darkened, misunderstanding everything. Asserting themselves to be wise, they became foolish. And they bartered away the glory of the incorruptible God in order to gain the likeness and image of dying man, and birds, four-footed animals, and even creeping things (Romans 1:21-23).

In the next letter, I hope to describe for you my present experience with God, what it means to glorify God as God, and how it changes everything. But one result of such a transformation is that the false becomes so horrifically false.

As Jesus said, we hated God for no reason whatsoever.

In this letter, I want to continue with how I once defined “Christian thinking,” along with all other Christians I have ever known.

“Therefore when you see the ‘abomination of desolation,’ spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place” (whoever reads, let him understand), “then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains” (Matthew 24:15-16).

The Judeans of Jesus’ day understood the “abomination of desolation,” both from their history under the Greeks and in their present experience with Rome. The Greek dictator, Antiochus Epiphanes, had ridden his horse into the very sanctuary of the temple in Jerusalem and had waved his battle insignia inside the place made for the worship of God. By the time the Roman conquerors tried the same thing, the Judeans were mentally prepared, and they demonstrated to the Romans a full willingness to die by the thousands in order to prevent such an atrocity again. The Romans obliged them, and by 70 AD, the Romans rode over their dead bodies into the temple again, with the Roman eagle in their hands, waving in the air.

Before they did so, however, all Christians in Jerusalem had fled in obedience to Jesus.

During our homeschooling years here in Houston, we attended a certain church for a homeschool presentation. In that occasion, boy scouts led by Spirit-filled Christian leaders marched back and forth across the sanctuary waving the same eagle that had brought such desolation to the temple once before. This was considered “normal.”

How on earth did the theology of the eagles decimating the house of God become the theology forced upon the Bible by the “Church fathers?” That is a study I have ventured elsewhere, particularly in Symmorphy II: Essence, and in Our Glorious Salvation.

In a nutshell? – We did not glorify God as God, neither were we thankful.

Now, the eagles that represent domination in this world, waving themselves inside the heart of the Temple of God, are an outward, letter-of-the-word fulfillment of “the abomination that makes desolate.” The outward is not the real meaning, however, but only represents the repulsiveness of the real.

To make “desolate” is to strip of life. Life is knowing God through knowing Jesus Sent into us. “Desolation” is not ignorance of God, however, for ignorance of God is neutral. Ignorance is the normal state of creation waiting for humans to do and be what God intends. When ignorance of God sees Christians loving one another with pure hearts fervently, it is wise enough to say, “Now we know that God sent Jesus into the world.”

The abomination that makes desolate is that which fills ignorance with knowledge, the knowledge of something that everyone calls “God,” even though it’s not, a “God who knows evil,” a God defined in-part by the image of the serpent.

Now, we are not talking about worshipping either the devil or self as God, for, as horrifying as those are, they’re not the real horror. The real horror is mixing together the image of Jesus and the image of the serpent, using both lenses together to define “God.” The abomination is mixture; it is pollution.

She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with detestable things – the cup which she has mixed (Revelation 17:4 & 18:6).

I was desolate through the decade of the 1990’s, because I was mixing Jesus and the devil together in order to “know” God. Here is the greatest and most definitive statement coming out from this “Christian” way of thinking. – “When you see God, then you will know just how evil you are” (John Calvin – Institutes of the Christian Religion). A God who KNOWS evil!

Now, at the same time that I am writing this letter, I am also writing the next, which is titled “Seized into God.” Since the season of Tabernacles, 2025, God has opened my eyes to see – through my writing of the Flow of Gospel Word together with His dealings with me, with Jesus winning my heart even more, AND with my practice of giving myself to the Father for the sake of all who belong to Jesus.

But I am blinking in wonder, hardly knowing what it is I am seeing. I must write in a blundering way, for I cannot yet “put things together.”

Ephesians is the meaning of Paul’s gospel; our gathering together as the local church is far, far more than we have ever thought or even imagined. The entrance of Paul’s gospel into the human experience CHANGED EVERYTHING! Not because it’s “Paul’s” gospel, but because it is  the first knowledge of Jesus having ASCENDED into His Church now upon this earth.

Consider these Scriptures from all four gospels (and Psalm 41); I will not reference them so that the flow is unbroken.

Immediately the Spirit drove [Jesus] into the wilderness (another word for desolation). And He was… tempted by Satan. – But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men. – When they hear the word, Satan comes immediately and takes away the word that was sown in their hearts. –  The enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. When the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. – Then Satan entered Judas, surnamed Iscariot, who was numbered among the twelve. – Now after the piece of bread (the eucharist – the mass!), Satan entered him. Then Jesus said to him, “What you do, do quickly.” – The son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. – Even my own familiar friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted up his heel against me. – The hour has come; behold, the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going. See, My betrayer is at hand.”

Without question, the same thing happened in Church history with the passing of John. Satan entered into those who “ate bread with Jesus” in order to plant his own word alongside the word of truth, so that no one can tell the difference as to which word is of God and which word is of Satan, for they go back and forth between the two in the same sentence. From the first “Church Father” on, Jesus became someone far away, now just an idea of the mind to which we adhere, and “sin in the flesh” slowly became the focus of everything.

Nicene Christian theology works only because it retains Jesus and the words of salvation so that the unwary think, “Oh, this must be the truth.” Yet it changes the definitions of every word used in order to fit the definitions of the serpent in the garden. We also know that Jesus is not affected by such false thinking, for He is very good at salvation. That is a problem, though, for those who love Jesus for real are also deceived by the serpent.

God gave us a vivid picture of the meaning of Nicene theology through a very strange man by the name of Ezekiel – from Chapter 8.

And it came to pass in the sixth year, in the sixth month, on the fifth day of the month, as I sat in my house with the elders of Judah sitting before me, that the hand of the Lord God fell upon me there. Then I looked, and there was a likeness, like the appearance of fire—from the appearance of His waist and downward, fire; and from His waist and upward, like the appearance of brightness, like the color of amber. He stretched out the form of a hand, and took me by a lock of my hair; and the Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven, and brought me in visions of God to Jerusalem, to the door of the north gate of the inner court, where the seat of the image of jealousy was, which provokes to jealousy. And behold, the glory of the God of Israel was there, like the vision that I saw in the plain.

Ezekiel’s terminology of the temple layout is very hard to decipher. I’m sure there are those who understand it, but I have not made a close study. We understand, however, that the image of jealousy and the abomination that makes desolate are basically the same thing, and that this is all taking place inside the layout of outer court, Devoted Place, and Most Devoted Place, that is, inside the path of God’s Salvation, beckoning to all to turn aside to something “Christian.”

Notice the presence of the glory of God. There is no such thing as not being inside the presence of God, inside His pronounced Glory, for there is no other place to be. – Inside of Him we live and move and have our being. – Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? …If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.

I suspect that Ezekiel’s “inner court” is the same as the outer court of the tabernacle, the place of sacrifice. The image of jealousy is the crucifix, not just as Roman Catholic idolatry, but as found in all Nicene theology, the image of a helpless and dead Jesus, not “one unlimited sacrifice for sins forever,” but rather, as a death that never ends. And the death cannot end – Why? Because sin is just too great.

Then He said to me, “Son of man, lift your eyes now toward the north.” So I lifted my eyes toward the north, and there, north of the altar gate, was this image of jealousy in the entrance. Furthermore He said to me, “Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations that the house of Israel commits here, to make Me go far away from My sanctuary? Now turn again, you will see greater abominations.” So He brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked, there was a hole in the wall. Then He said to me, “Son of man, dig into the wall”; and when I dug into the wall, there was a door. And He said to me, “Go in, and see the wicked abominations which they are doing there.”  So I went in and saw, and there—every sort of creeping thing, abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed all around on the walls. And there stood before them seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel, and in their midst stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan. Each man had a censer in his hand, and a thick cloud of incense went up. Then He said to me, “Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the room of his idols? For they say, ‘The Lord does not see us, the Lord has forsaken the land.’”

~ “To make Me go far away from My sanctuary!” ~ To see a church, the gathering of believers, not filled with all of God. – “Idols” – mental images of “God” and of “Jesus,” defined by human argument, by lust, and by fanciful imagination.

The false definition of the ascension states that Jesus is now far away, Jesus has forsaken the earth, and especially, that Jesus has forsaken His Church, leaving her in the care of hirelings. They then create in their minds an “image” of Jesus which they call, “God the Son,” an image of a humanoid demigod, weak and irrelevant, faraway, pleading with God to “back off” and not throw us into hellfire.

The “union with Christ” sister who asked me, “How can it be Jesus in your heart, when He is at the right hand of God,” was imaging Jesus by this same fake image “portrayed upon all the walls” of her seeing.

In Ephesians 4:10, Paul made it clear that Jesus ascended above all the heavens – that He might fill His Church now upon the earth with all of Himself. The ASCENDED Jesus IS your gathering together with other believers in all their present humanity.

There is a song we once sang, that I still sing to myself on occasion, to encourage myself in the Lord. – Though none go with me, still I will follow… No turning back, no turning back.

Not long before writing this bit, I sang through its verses. – The world behind me, the cross before me - ??? – HORROR of HORRORS.

Caught between the world and the cross, another word for HELL, the meaning of the Bible word, hades. Yet it seems very “Christian.” It is not Christian, it is rebellion, the worship of wickedness. – “Oh my, look at my flesh, look at all my sin. My sin and my flesh belong to me, and they are greater, greater, greater, than anything Jesus might be.”

And there we worshipped wickedness, caught between a world we could not escape and a cross that has no effect, a cross that mocks us with a dead Christ, a Christ that never lives. “Die sinner, die. Oh, you tried and failed. Get back on the cross, loser.”

I fixed this line immediately, for the song is important to me. Here is the true song. – The cross behind me, the Church before me, the cross behind me, the Church before me, the cross behind me, the Church before me, no turning back, no turning back.

But notice that these false worshippers carry censors of incense. That means they are ministers of the Devoted Place, that is, filled with the Spirit of God, just before the veil. They wave a declaration of becoming like Jesus, even while REFUSING to believe a single word God says. These are the same as pictured in Revelation 6.

And He said to me, “Turn again, and you will see greater abominations that they are doing.” So He brought me to the door of the north gate of the Lord’s house; and to my dismay, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz.  Then He said to me, “Have you seen this, O son of man? Turn again, you will see greater abominations than these.” So He brought me into the inner court of the Lord’s house; and there, at the door of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men with their backs toward the temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east, and they were worshiping the sun toward the east.

Tammuz is the Babylonian “son,” the same as Osiris of Egypt and Dionysus of the Greeks. Tammuz is the cross, the Tau, the T, the crucified one, that is, the crucifix, a “savior” forever dead. Tammuz as Dionysus is the one who said, “Eat my flesh and drink my blood,” long before Jesus walked this earth. The “women” are Christian churches practicing what they call “Christian repentance,” weeping, weeping over their many sins of the week, running to confession, buying atonement from those willing to sell it to them.

But it is these “twenty-five men” who are the greatest abomination of all. These are the men who worship the “superior Christ,” the “above-you Jesus.” They are in this thing so that they can be far above all these fleshy and weak Christians whom they despise.

Notice that they have turned their backs against Jesus as He is, the Jesus who carries us inside His heart, stumbling and falling along the way, all the way into the Father, the Jesus who places Himself beneath, who gives Himself as a ransom for many. They have zero interest in being like such a Jesus. They want something better.

The man who said, “Union with Christ doesn’t work.” The man who said, of speaking Christ, “They’re just words,” meaning, they don’t work. The man who sent me the email of the “above-you Jesus” in September of 2011. The man who demanded submission to his religious superiority from all in the group. Every one has the “sun in the east” as their goal. They want to be superior. They want a God who makes them better than all these contemptible “Christians.”

Why did it “not work?” Why do “just words” not do the job? Because to be like Jesus FAILS to make them superior like the bright-shining image so falsely admired. This image of the “superior Christ” is paired completely with the crucifix. It is the very essence of the Catholic mass, Jesus inside this one, forced down onto His knees, unworthy to touch the power of the priest to “create God,” where Satan enters the church.

And this is why I left the move fellowship, because I saw this same image of superiority operating there, and I could not bear to make myself part of it.

In the next letter, “Seized into God,” I hope to share with you what I am finding to be the REAL Christian life, something entirely different.

Someone might ask the question – Why do we need to go through all this stuff about the “abomination that makes desolate.” Why don’t we just talk about Jesus? The answer is found in Ephesians – our stewardship over God’s final opportunity to be known through His Church. – We are at war, and we are not ignorant of the devices of the evil one.

Consider this line in light of the True Flow of Gospel Word. – How will we escape if we have neglected a salvation such as this? (Hebrews 2:3). – A salvation such as I hope to share in the next letter, that is, the Salvation that is God coming now through us into all creation.

Hebrews then uses the story of Numbers 13-14, the refusal of Israel to enter into the promised land, as a warning to us not to be like them. Why do Christians not enter into such a Glorious Salvation? – Because they refuse to believe a single Gospel Word that God says.

I like the Message Bible version of Numbers 14:11. – God said to Moses, “How long will these people treat Me like dirt?”

In the next letter for this series, I hope to convey to you, somehow, even if it’s in a blundering way, what God’s salvation really means. And how giving God glory changes EVERYTHING.