The angels sang, ‘Peace on earth, good will towards men..’ Yet it was not long before Herod sought His life and ‘God’s representatives’ began to plot to murder the one who was their life. There is much about life that is deeply offensive to the carnal mind.
I knew a man, a likeable person of conservative bent who is the type of person whose careful religiosity ensured promotion to the roll of church elder in the churchliest of churches. ‘We must be so careful .. so careful..’ was his refrain. “So careful” was brother Curtin that he, along with others have succeeded in keeping the Kingdom of God out of his church to this very day. No matter, apparently that Jesus declared that the Kingdom of God is ushered in by the forceful.
Which reminds me of a quote from Bill Johnson that appeared on Facebook recently. It highlights all that is self-righteous and limp about a life in religion.
‘If Jesus would have preached the average sermon preached in our pulpits this last week He never would have been crucified.’ This is to say that there is little in much of the discourse that rises above the kingdoms of men.
Jesus did not set out to annoy or insult people. Yet His life was so different to a life in religion that He continually confronted the status quo by being Himself.
There’s a vision in which the Lord pictures society as a large prison with high walls and very insecure guards. Some of these guards are secular figures speaking out their versions of popular unbelief. Others are church leaders – pastors to be specific – who bind people in religion. It’s notable that in this vision it is not this kind of person who bursts through barriers to lead people into the authority of the Kingdom of heaven. It is ordinary people who have been authorized and empowered by Jesus personally to speak life.
There’s another vision described by the same author. Here the people of the world, including many of God’s people, are groping about, almost blind and half paralyzed in the darkness of a huge tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They have gorged on its’ stinking fruit and as a result are stumbling and sloshing about erratically under its branches. Unsurprisingly these people have no discernment or divine authority to be victorious in the world. They are another version of the captives in the prison.
It’s significant that when Jesus announced that He had come to set the captives free He was speaking to the religious in general and God’s people in particular.
The prison and the tree of confusion represent the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. To live in religion is to live from this tree and eat its fruit. We are eating this fruit if we are attempting to live from the law, the letter, Christian performance orientation, an ethical philosophy, a belief system, Bible principles, good works, missionary work, churchianity and Christianity. Common Christianity is a Christianized version of the knowledge of good and evil where people attempt to be like God by living THEIR LIFE.
A perceptive teacher put it well in a recent video: Sow Bible study and you will reap Bible study. Actually he is not against Bible study and perceives its Kingdom meaning better than many because he reads His Bible through the lens of Jesus. What he means is ‘Plant religion and you will reap religion. Sow Jesus and you will reap sons and daughters of God.’ We must plant Jesus to reap the Kingdom of God. Succinctly he has described the difference between a life in God and a life in he knowledge of good and evil.
A Christianized version of the knowledge of good and evil is a ploy of Satan to rob the sons of God of their ability to love and exercise their authority and power over circumstance and the Enemy. It infatuates us with our status making us believe we are Godly while concealing the fact that we are spiritual cripples.
Several years ago the Lord showed me in a dream the real nature of much of the church. It was captured in a dungeon. The people were drastically crippled and in many cases scarcely recognizable as human. They were presided over by Mr Berlesconi. They worked in a factory and were absorbed with the machinery. There were pastors present who were proud of this industrial activity.
Dungeon means prison and bondage. It means lives untouched by the sovereignty of Jesus and the message of the Isaiah 61 and Luke 4.18. The crippled nature of the people represents their deformity as slaves and their failure to live in their inheritance as sons and daughters of God. Their obsession with machines represents bondage to the letter and ignorance of the life that is theirs in the Spirit. The factory represents the Christian industry and the inability to be living as sons in the Kingdom of God in this regime
The one who presides over all this, Mr Berlesconi is a significant figure indeed, given his character, past position as a political leader and co-responsibility for the dire financial circumstances of Italy. He is one of a class of politicians who maintained themselves in power by leading the people to live in a false reality – a life beyond their means by accumulating debt. In this he is not unlike Christian leaders who have made a career for themselves by leading the people to live in religion and the knowledge of good and evil instead of in Christ. Eventually the tower begins to collapse.
As a media magnate Mr Berlesconi represents the ability of the Christian industry and its politicians to shape and control Christian opinion for political purposes and personal gain. The current predicament of Europe and the world financial system is a picture of what the Lord in mercy will allow to happen to the church that is not His, but represents itself and its interests while essentially living in adultery.
When Jesus is our life we multiply the gift of resurrection. When Jesus is our light we shine light into the darkness and people begin to see. When we are love because Jesus lives in us, we are able to sustain the reproach and persecution that comes to us as a result of taking up our cross and following Jesus with grace. May your life in Jesus empower you to sow life into dead situations this Christmas and in 2012.
We are going into recess until approximately January 16. May you all have a happy and blessed holiday season.
Keith, Elizabeth and Meredith Allen.
