8. The Valley of Decision

In John 16, Jesus said that it is the Spirit that CONVICTS.

God cannot force His Word into anyone, for the thought never enters His mind. Receiving Christ is by invitation only. But God is perfectly free to do all sorts of other things, when released through the authority He has given to us.

Someone might contend that God does all sorts of things without regard to the authority He has given to humans. That is most certainly true. In fact, God gives us the clear distinction between what He does separate from human authority and what He does only through that authority, right from the start.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Yet the earth was without form and void, and the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light,” and light became (Genesis 1:1-3).

An earth “without form and void’ is the entire creation empty of the knowledge of God. That is, God has not yet entered into His dwelling place inside of creation. The entrance of word then begins through permission. – “Let there be light.” – “Receive Jesus.”

As we saw, Jesus does not ask us our permission before creating us. Consider the actions of God, however, in-between the initial creation of everything, and the entrance of Word through our permission. Those actions are “the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.”

Every intervention of God inside the human experience that is not coming immediately through us, the Highway He has made for Himself, is found inside the Spirit going before preparing the way for that mighty entrance of Word.

Understand this fact, however. No matter how mighty those demonstrations of God appear to be, they are not God as He is. Elijah was looking for God in the things that appeared big to him. God said, “That’s not who I am.”

When God showed up as He really is inside the human experience, He came through the faith of Jesus. “He that sees Me, sees the Father.”

God always meets people where they are, and for much of the Christian life, we are babes. Part of growing into maturity in the knowledge of God is the ability to separate between those things in one’s “infancy” that were truly of God and those things that were not. For often, they were happening for us at the same time inside the same experience.

The outward actions of the Spirit in preparing the way for the entrance of Word create huge problems for God, however. The problem is that religious humans then latch onto those outward demonstrations of God in order to refuse God as He is. The Pharisees used “God with us” to oppose and even to crucify Jesus.

We also must understand this fact. The difficulty God faces in moving from getting our attention to showing Himself as He is, that difficulty is greater than we can imagine. For we humans will use “what the Spirit did,” to refuse, and even to rid ourselves of God coming through as He really is. “What the Spirit did,” becomes our pitchfork as we run God down to drive Him out of the human experience.

The Spirit must do those preparatory things, and in their doing, they are entirely of God. The problem is not the Spirit; the problem is us.

What does it take for God to get through to humans?

He sent His Son, and we got rid of Him. Even the disciples inside the glory of the early Church did not comprehend the gospel! Paul rebuked Peter in front of the whole Church because Peter, and John as well, did not understand the gospel that they preached.

What does it take?

Then Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked letters from him to the synagogues of Damascus, so that if he found any who were of the Way, whether men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.

As he journeyed he came near Damascus, and suddenly a light shone around him from heaven. Then he fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” And he said, “Who are You, Lord?”

Then the Lord said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. It is hard for you to kick against the goads.” So he, trembling and astonished, said, “Lord, what do You want me to do?” Then the Lord said to him, “Arise and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”

And the men who journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice but seeing no one. Then Saul arose from the ground, and when his eyes were opened he saw no one. But they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and neither ate nor drank (Acts 9:1-9).

In actuality, Paul explained the meaning of this moment all through the letters that he wrote, but piecemeal, that is, we have to gather all the threads together to get the full impact. More than that, we have had no real idea what any of this meant, for we, like Peter and John, have not really known the Gospel.

Before we continue with Paul, I want to bring in our two texts from the Old Testament, and then explain my purpose in this letter.

I will use only the one line from Joel, and not the whole passage. The larger passage has inspired in me great anger against the wickedness calling itself “the God of the Bible” in our world today. I will address that in-part later in this letter.

Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision (Joel 3:14).

We will then bring this same line into the Elijah moment for the purposes of this letter. These are selected verses from 1 Kings 18.

And Elijah came to all the people, and said, “How long will you falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.” But the people answered him not a word. – Then you call on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the Lord; and the God who answers by fire, He is God.”

Then Elijah said to all the people, “Come near to me.” So all the people came near to him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down. – Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood and the stones and the dust, and it licked up the water that was in the trench. Now when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces; and they said, “The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God!”

And Elijah said to them, “Seize the prophets of Baal! Do not let one of them escape!” So they seized them; and Elijah brought them down to the Brook Kishon and executed them there.

Let me state my purpose in this letter, the central truth I am driving towards, before I attempt to bring all these things into that picture.

We have no more time. Set aside all thought of Bible prophecy and consider only present-day reality. The pursuit of Artificial General Intelligence is on hyperdrive worldwide, driven by war-like competition. The levels of total surveillance and control coming out from it are beyond frightening. The combination of AI, cell-phones, vaccinations, robots, drones, and digitized finance are demonstrating their overwhelming ability to coerce everyone into submission. At the present rate of advancement, the way of life humans have known for thousands of years will be no more within three to four years.

At that point, the only thing that can save human life on this planet will be a fulfillment of the prophecy in 2 Peter, that God will cleanse the earth with fire. A full-on electrical discharge from the sun, bathing the earth over several days, something that has happened many times in earth’s history, will remove all electronics from the planet, all surveillance, all robotics, and all modern technology, taking us back to the way of life prior to 1837, with the first use of the telegraph.

That’s the setting. A Church on this earth, clothed with the Lord Jesus Christ, free of all demonic influence, with Nicene theology gone and the Gospel of Life the only thing millions of Christians know, a Church that lives inside the heavens, free of all beastly control, God through us now into our world – that Church is the PROMISE, for every Word of the Gospel must be fulfilled.

The question of this letter is how do we get from here to there in three to four years?

I am suggesting that it will take an Elijah moment, as powerful as how such a thing came to Paul, happening to thousands of Christian ministries all across the earth, all around the same time, and very soon. It will take the fulfillment of Ezekiel 9 and Revelation 7.

“Will you surrender all that you are to Me, right now?”

Notice what Elijah did at the end of our passage. He directed the immediate and bloody execution of 450 Israelites. – Nicene theology must go; Paul’s Gospel, a Gospel you have never actually heard in your life, must be the only thing that remains.

And I am suggesting that this moment is inside of the office of the Devoted Spirit to CONVICT. That CONVICTION does not need permission to overwhelm. Yet inside of it is the overwhelming moment of, “Yes or no, right now.”

Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision.

The example for us in the New Testament of that experience that must come upon tens of thousands of ministries of Christ in the next few months is Paul’s. His “Elijah moment” shows us God’s true purpose. And as I continue to write about Paul, my hope is that we never view Paul as we have, ever again. The first Gospel Word lesson for Galatians is titled “Apostolic Authority Unleashed." It will not be a time in which anyone will want to minimize the Gospel Word Jesus Himself spoke through Paul, for we remember the prophets of Baal.

According to Paul, Saul of Tarsus was the most obedient to the law of any human who has ever lived. His life was devoted to God and to His service. His zeal for God’s house was unmatched. He was determined to cleanse Israel of these blasphemers.

When Jesus struck Saul to the ground, it was inside of bright shining Light, the same Light Adam should have stepped into, “Here am I God, deal with my wickedness.” It means that Saul, like Adam before him, was no longer deceived. It was “Give Me your answer now, yes or no.”

Saul asked, “Who are You, Lord?” Sometimes asking a question is the wrong thing to do when confronted with “yes or no right now.” But Saul’s question was right, for it shows already his answer in the word, “Lord.” Saul, and we as well, needed to hear Jesus say, “I am Jesus.”

I want to talk about the three answers Jesus gave to Saul, paraphrasing them just a bit. You see, Saul had set himself to KNOW the Scriptures from an early age, and he had ruthlessly pursued that goal, as he later asserted, more than any other human before or since. Saul KNEW the words of the Bible. And he knew them utterly and completely in the wrong way.

First, “I am Jesus, the Word God speaks, the Messiah of Israel, and you, Saul, have been fighting against Me your whole life.” Second, “You’ve had a very hard time, Saul, kicking against the goads.” And third, “Sit in your blindness and in silence for a few days and then I’ll show you what comes next.”

The blindness was indicative of the complete shattering of Saul inside his psyche, that he had been utterly and completely WRONG about everything.

Saul was murdering the very Christ of God, the Salvation whom God had sent. And the purpose of that LIGHT in that moment was not to destroy Saul, but to silence him completely.

The Gospel of Life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil have no compatibility. To receive from Jesus to eat of the Tree of Life in the midst of the paradise of God is to be willing to abandon without question all former nonsense that we once called “Bible truth.”

A goad is a stick used to prod the hind feet of an ox to keep it going forward pulling the load.

Earlier I said that part of maturity is the ability to separate between that which was of God through one’s life and that which was not.

Jesus was saying to Saul, “Look, Saul, I have been with you your whole life. Every moment you have ever experienced, I shared with you. But you would not have Me in your knowing, you kicked against Me, refusing to give thanks. You wanted to be in control, and you were angry that you never were.”

If Saul had come under condemnation for his actions of putting Jesus to death, we would never have heard of him. Condemnation is a twisted form of self-exaltation, equal to blaming others. What Jesus wanted was for Saul to KNOW, “I am wrong.” And then for Saul to wait for a Gospel of LIFE, with his mouth closed, not one more word.

God alone calls us what we are.

Most of our life was God with us, the only part that was not of God was out from human stupidity and wrongness. Sometimes oxen are smarter than humans, for they stop kicking against the goad early on. We, however, kicked against Jesus for years.

God’s purpose is not for tens of thousands of Christian ministries all across the earth to discover that they have been WRONG about God and the Bible. God’s purpose is for tens of thousands of Christian ministries all across the earth to receive a Gospel of Life with no shadow in it. “I am wrong,” is a momentary necessity, but being filled with a Gospel of Life is forever.

God does not want you to know that you are guilty. He wants you to be silent about yourself so that you can hear Jesus speaking you every moment. The grief that is of God is momentary, a swift means to a far surpassing beyond-ness, as the later Paul liked to say.

I want to bring in two specific wrong-nesses that pertain directly to Christian ministries today. There are many others, but these two are enough to show God’s purpose.

The first horrific crime I will include is being committed by Christian ministries today who have attached themselves to the enemies of the gospel in bringing destruction to the children of Jacob in western Asia and North Africa, including the children of those who received the Lord Jesus as part of the early Church, who are among our fellow Christians today, members of us.

In the late 1800’s, a Turkic tribe from southern Russia and the Ukraine, the Khazars, began its conquest of the land known as Palestine, slowly driving out those who had been living there in peace. By 1947, that became a flood, Gog and Magog from the lands of the north descending upon the mountains of Israel, as prophesied by Ezekiel, a people claiming to be Judeans, even though they were not, as prophesied by John. And in 1948, a beast climbed up out of the pit, a beast that had been “wounded unto death,” first by the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 79 and then by the story called “the holocaust,” it’s deadly wound now healed.

Today, the whole world fears that particular head of the beast, for good reason.

Thousands of those Christian ministries whom God intends to sweep into His firstfruits are right now teaching their flock to worship anti-Christ and to support the murder of the children of Abraham before the eyes of the whole world, including the preparation for the greatest act of wickedness that will ever take place on this planet, the sacrifice of beasts, once again, a “red heifer,” in the open, polluted, filthy, filthy REFUSAL of one unlimited Sacrifice for sins forever.

After – “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision,” Joel says this, “Then Jerusalem shall be devoted, and no aliens shall ever pass through her again.”

According to Paul, God’s Jersualem is always the Church, yet those who are in that land now are alien to God and to all Truth, making that whole place now to be called “Sodom,” not only by the Spirit of God, but also by the whole world. (That fact does not prevent Jesus or us from receiving with joy any such who turn to Him).

Like Saul, these Christian ministries are putting Jesus to death. Like Saul, they must be hit hard with all GUILT. And then they must shut their mouths.

The second piece of awfulness to address is much closer to home, yet so very, very important in my own life. I want to talk about Brother Buddy Cobb. I am free to do that because not only was Brother Buddy the leading figure in the public lives of thousands of Christian people, but he was the one under whose ministry I sat for hundreds of hours, more than any other.

Brother Buddy was anointed of the Lord and faithful in his calling. I know of nothing that could be said against him in his conduct and in his treatment of other people. In fact, within a couple of years after Sam Fife’s death, Brother Buddy, with others, traveled around to all the fellowships in the move, to review those in leadership. He asked quite a number of people to set aside their place of ministry, especially those who were using it to manipulate and abuse God’s people. Two of those individuals chose to come to the Ridge at Bowens Mill while I was living there, in order to find help in deliverance from that propensity to hurt other people. I will talk about them in a bit.

Let me say it this way, using “percentages” not to be literal but simply to show proportion. Ninety percent of Buddy Cobb’s life and ministry was of God, and ten percent was not. I think that is indicative of a lot of good pastors, with the majority being less on the “of God” side of things. And remember Jesus’ contention with Saul. – “I have been with you your whole life, but you have always kicked against Me.”

Yet the “ten percent” in Brother Buddy’s life that was “not of God” included almost all of the word he preached, almost all of the theology in his mind. You see, I would not have listened to him had he not been anointed of God and faithful in service. And then the Lord Jesus would not have had the opportunity He needed to take me through all the conflict of “two gospels” across the span of my life.

Many of the things I heard Brother Buddy preach are shocking to me now in their opposition to the Gospel, yet he sincerely believed that he was teaching the truth of God out from the Bible. And as Paul argued, faith in Christ, even with wrong ideas, counts far more with God than we would give it credit.

As Paul presented in 2 Corinthians, the day of salvation is always today. Just because someone no longer has a physical body does not mean that their Elijah moment cannot be inside of any present today.

What I mean to say is this, there will be a moment of blinding light for Buddy Cobb, as for all Christians first, and, according to Paul’s Gospel, to all humans and angels in their season, and in that moment, he will hear Jesus. (I’m not saying this has not happened since Brother Buddy passed, neither can we say that it has happened.) Inside of that LIGHT that imparts the overwhelming knowledge that “I am WRONG,” there comes, “Yes or no, right now.” It has to be right now, always, for Salvation is only today, this moment.

Let me paraphrase Paul’s response into something that will fit all whose hearts truly longed to know God through all the years of in-part-ness. “Jesus, show me who You really are.”

There is no question in my mind that Brother Buddy would give that response immediately. And then, as he put the Lord Jesus upon himself, across the span of his whole life, he would be astonished at seeing those many things that were Jesus with him set against those “few” things that were his own confused understanding.

Remember, however, that the shock of seeing his sinful actions, in murdering believers in Jesus, stayed with Paul for the rest of his life, keeping him little in his own sight. It would be the same for Brother Buddy, that he will be shocked to silence when he understands the falseness of the Calvinist doctrine that he preached relentlessly.

That GUILT and that SILENCE in no way prevent an entrance into all the life of Christ and the discovery that all things have always been out from God.

Yes, almost all Christian ministries in today’s world, including all those who belong to Jesus as His firstfruits, have spent their whole ministries preaching a false theology that exalts the testimony of the serpent and is at war against the Lamb. An Elijah moment alone can shock them into that rapid decision regarding what is truly in their hearts.

I must add this concerning Brother Buddy. Through my earlier years of writing, God was dividing in me between that which I had been taught that was not of God and that which was. In my frustration, I may have spoken of Buddy Cobb with a slight shadow. My words would never have been against him as a person, however, but only against what he taught. In any way that I expressed any frustration against, I ask forgiveness, both of my readers and of Brother Buddy.

Nonetheless, one time I received an email from someone speaking evil against Brother Buddy after listening to my words against what was taught, thinking, I suppose, to get me to join with him in castigating “all those false ministries.” Typically, I wait on the Lord before answering anyone, so that I might speak only Christ. That was one of the few times when I responded immediately, in a similar way as to how David responded to the idiot who claimed to have killed Saul. David used a real sword, but mine was only words, short and sharp. Such EVIL is something you want to get away from as fast as you can, lest the ground open under you as well.

Let me reference the two men who came to the Ridge, men who had abused others in their community ministry. One of those two was Wasil Tchiniak. I knew Wasil well, and I know that his wicked treatment of other people was not his heart, just his blundering self-centeredness. That does not mean it was not WRONG! I know that he had not truly repented during the years I knew him at the Ridge. But I do believe he did prior to his passing, for I heard that he spent his last years just serving homeless people in Atlanta.

The other man I would not give his name, even if I remembered it. During his time at the Ridge with his wife, he reached out to all of us with kindness and encouragement, almost as a champion of our needs and difficulties. Years later, Maureen and I visited them in their home in another part of the country. They no longer had any relations with the local move community where the man had once been the leading ministry. They were still as hospitable and kind as we had known them at the Ridge, and they expressed great sorrow that the brethren of the community wanted nothing to do with them.

Look at that last line very carefully, for you are looking at the rebellion and the wickedness of Adam. – “It’s their fault. We were just trying our best.” Yet I know personally the shattered lives that came out from that man’s horrific abuse. His face was that of years of practiced pretending.

Let me set out these three men inside of 1 Corinthians 3, the fire that proves all. Brother Buddy, in that moment of blinding light, will step into Jesus, and into the realization that his whole life was one seamless story of Christ, regardless of all his wrongness. Wasil would step into Jesus, knowing that his whole life was messed up, but not caring, just happy to rest in the Lord. But I suspect that the other brother would vanish into pretending, aka, Annanias and Saphira.

Salvation is Jesus active towards us, and He lives in the heart, not in the intellect. It is a shocking thing to separate a lifetime of false teaching from a lifetime of a heart given to God. Nonetheless, that reality exists for all who will say in that moment, “Jesus, show me who You are.”

Conversely, just because a ministry of Christ is WRONG in what they teach, even to oppose and speak evil against a Gospel of Life, does not mean that Jesus has not been Salvation towards them their whole life, though they did not know Him as He is.

Sadly, the majority of Christian ministries will refuse, holding tightly to the “rightness” of their Nicene theology, and thus set themselves at war against the Lamb. But those are not our concern, not at all.

Our concern is one thing only. Let me make that one thing personal to myself.

On two different occasions, in recent months, the Lord took me into an experience with Him in the Spirit. In both times, I was reaching out in my heart over all those whom God had brought into my life over many years. I was seeing this one, and that one, bearing them in my heart into the presence of my Father. Then, near the end of both of those experiences, the Lord brought Brother Buddy to me in my consciousness, with the thought of – “What about him? What is your judgment towards Brother Buddy?”

All I could think of was the honor in which I had held Brother Buddy through all the years under his ministry, in spite of the pain that came to me through what he taught. In both instances, I sobbed outright against any thought that Brother Buddy would be treated with any lesser honor. “Yes, oh God,” I cried, “I receive Buddy Cobb with all my heart.”

That is our judgment, but what is our concern?

My concern is this – What if? (Here is another of my rare “what if’s.”) What if Brother Buddy came to me, just after his Damascus Road experience, and asked, “Brother Daniel, please show me, from my Bible, Jesus as He really is. Show me the full extent of the Gospel of Life, that I might know God our Father.”

Would I have a pure and Personal Gospel Word to show Brother Buddy “God-with-him through Jesus” in every moment of his life? Would I give him an entrance into knowing the Father? Could I share every Gospel Word as God means it? Would the things I had to say be Pure, and would they be True?

This is my great concern.