March 2014

IS NOT THE LORD IN ZION? WINESKIN PART 2

Posted on March 22, 2014 by ADMIN

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IS NOT THE LORD IN ZION? WINESKIN PART 2

Here from Jeremiah 8.19 it says “Is not the Lord in Zion? Is not her King in Her?”  Is this fact or fiction? Maybe an event in the future?

We could take this as the earthly city Zion but that would make the Lord a vagabond and a sojourner. The earthly city being built and destroyed, ransacked and rebuilt over and over. Like the tabernacle in the wilderness put up, take down again and again. But why? To build a city on puny planet earth for a God whose heavens cannot contain Him?  ”Heaven is my throne and earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build me? For all those my hand made.” Us making something for God? What a silly concept. The Creator needing the created for Him to become something. To make Him whole? I think not.
The earthly model of the eternal city was to only teach the Israelite’s the hidden eternal realities of God. The eternal city for an eternal being. They were not making a place for Him to come down but they were playing a part on earth to learn of spiritual eternal reality. The facts in the spirit for them to go up. The Kingdom of God is at hand!
As John had “The Revelation of Jesus Christ” so too did many others. Lets look at one of Davids revelations of Jesus Christ. He too was “in the Spirit on the Lords day” and he was giving a similar testimony. You see John didn’t see something become that wasn’t already, He bore witness to a truth and all truths are eternal for it is what was and what remains after “time is no more”. This is the objective of all revelation. To get ourselves into the eternal. Not in bodily form, but “receiving the end of our faith the salvation of our souls”.
Please read 2 Samuel 6. What we have here is David gathering the hidden truths of God seen in different concepts developed in the old testament. He was a commander and chief like Joshua, He was a king in contrast to Saul and he was the high priest wearing the linen ephod. Christ is all these and more. The ark that had the tablets, the very word of God (John 1.1) was put on a new cart. This is like new wine skins, a new understanding.
In the journey Uzzah put forth his hand to protect the cart as the oxen tripped and the Lord smote him. As if to help God. That is an oxymoron.  ”Not by power or by might but by My Spirit says the Lord” He is the author and the finisher of our faith.
The ark was brought up to the city, in the tabernacle, in the Holy of Holy’s by David who was a king, who was a priest, who was a commander and chief, who assembled the city in the right order for the true sacrifice. Talk about a power house! These eternal truths were showed to Moses when the Lord instructed him to “make all things according to the pattern shown on the mountain” and seen again at the “Transfiguration of Jesus Christ” where the Father said “this is My beloved Son, Him you shall hear”. Jesus at this transparency showed the disciples similarly what David acted out when He danced before the Lord and all Israel naked, exposed. This was truly an unveiling for spiritual understanding.
However Saul’s daughter, the daughter of the earthly king, despised David for “uncovering Himself” and “therefor the daughter of Saul had no children to the day of her death”. This is the carnal always fights the spiritual. Visible vs invisible. The carnal mind keeps you out of the kingdom.
The book of Hebrews talks of the eternal sacrifice in the temple eternal in the heavens to a people in need of the milk of the word, but here we have David assembling the spoils of not just the resurrection like a priest but also the ascension to the right hand of the Father. “Tell the disciple I have ascended to my God and your God, to My Father and your Father”. This is the purpose of the gospel, to assemble the truths displayed in scripture in our minds. To throw out all the getting old concepts from time and matter and be clothed in these eternal truths/realities. As Paul said, When I became a man (a mature believer) I put away childish things. I put away my toys. And that is all these earthly images of spiritual truths are. Toys! A child differs not from a servant but is under guardians and tutors. The images are the tutors. But after faith comes we are not under guardians and tutors. We assemble them in our renewed mind and partake of His holiness now. We enjoy the reality of all of these invisible attributes assembled now in the person of the Messiah, the Christ, Hosanna, Emmanuel. It is a servant who has not broken their thinking from serving “days months seasons and years” time and matter.
If you think of a power plant and all the lights come on, generators whirring, motors spinning, all the power lines in place, the city comes alive. That is what this is. It is assembling the King to the City. As Paul said “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ for it is the Power of God for salvation to all who believe”. The Greek word for “power” is “dunamis” from where we get dynamite
It is not that these are events to come because then they are not eternal. It is that our understanding has to be renewed to appropriate this. For us to participate in this now. “If you are able to receive”And this is not an it or a that but all the things found in the person of Christ.  The commander and priest, King and the City. This is Christ’s Kingdom. All these components are eternally established forever and are found in the persons of the Father Son and the City. If you are “in Christ” “in the Spirit”
These concepts were broken down for human consumption. The bread of life. All the truths of the Kingdom found in the person of Jesus Christ “in Him I am well pleased” said our Father. For in Him dwells the fullness of the Godhead body. Christ united with the Spirit is the eternal King in the eternal City, which is the “two becoming one, made He them in His image male and female”.
Which was done not for Him to become but us to become “renewed in the spirit of our mind” to ” a perfect man, the measure and stature of the fullness of Christ, till we come to the unity of the faith. That we no longer be tossed to and fro by cunning craftiness and the trickery of men by which they lie in wait to deceive. Even as Jesus said to the rulers of that day “you yourselves are not entering the Kingdom and you are keeping out those trying to enter”.
So be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. This is your reasonable form of worship.
From the beginning.  Jeremiah 8.19 it says “Is not the Lord in Zion? Is not her King in Her?”
Yes the Lord is already a King and He is already in Zion the heavenly City
Psalms 48. 12-14 Walk about Zion and go all around Her. Count Her towers. Mark well Her bulwarks. Consider Her palaces that you may tell it to the  generation following. For this is GOD, our GOD forever and ever.
The King is in the City in all power.
This is “His Kingdom At Hand”.

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NEW WINE, NEW WINE SKINS, A NEW UNDERSTANDING

Posted on March 19, 2014 by ADMIN

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NEW WINE, NEW WINE SKINS, A NEW UNDERSTANDING

Luke 33 Then they said to Jesus, “Why do the disciples of John fast often and make prayers, and likewise those of the Pharisees, but Yours eat and drink?”

34 And He said to them, “Can you make the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them? 35 But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them; then they will fast in those days.”

36 Then He spoke a parable to them: “No one puts a piece from a new garment on an old one; otherwise the new makes a tear, and also the piece that was takenout of the new does not match the old. 37 And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled, and the wineskins will be ruined. 38 But new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both are preserved. 39 And no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires new; for he says, ‘The old is better.

 

The parable of the new wine and skins from the synoptic gospels is associated with fasting and the Bridegroom. That while the Bridegroom is present they do not fast. When He is taken then they fast. This is like when Christ indicates in the book of John “it is imperative that I go away, if I do not go I will not send the helper, His counter part “another helper” like Himself but not Himself but another. The bridegroom, meaning Christ, has the bride (John 3.29) And if there is no Bride now, there is no groom but today there are many who think that the bride is later, that she is not but will be, that she is being made.

 

A Bridegroom without a Bride is like a King without a city or without a kingdom. He makes himself a liar. But we know Him who is the King of kings. All other kings show faint likenesses of that King. So too is the City of cities. There is but one New City. And “the Bridegroom has the Bride” would not be said in present term if it were not an established fact, an eternal truth.

 

“He who has the Bride is the Groom. If you take one away the other ceases to exist. Like a driver without a car or a jockey without a horse. A doctor without a degree or a visionary without a plan.

 

The Bride is half of the two that make the one. “He made man in His image, male and female made He them”. The Greek word for bride is “numphee” which means “to veil”. She is the One hidden behind the veil. The veil is our carnal understanding. Like Thomas said of the resurrected Christ “unless I see Him and put my fingers in the holes of His hands I will not believe. We too do not want believe unless we see the Heavenly City, so we have developed a whole theology based around this seeing that speaks of another day. A place where time and matter intersect.

 

This is why the topic of the Bridegroom is spoken of with wine skins in the scriptures. We need new wine skins to receive new wine and what is a new skin? It is our mind. A new way of looking at things. We must be “renewed in the spirit of our mind” for “the carnal mind is enmity against God”. Him who gives life to the dead and calls those things that don’t exist as though they do. They exist, She exists. If I do not go I will not send Her. The man Jesus had to be transfigured. There are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the son of man coming in great power and glory”, A concept others call the second coming was experienced back then. Christ had to be transformed. But He who is “the same yesterday today and forever did not have to become something He was not, at least not for Himself but for our understanding. So when we are instructed by Him to “follow Me that where I am you may be also”, He became a man for our sake so that we would receive the gift, our inheritance. So He did not renew Himself but all that He did was done to renew our understanding, our way of thinking to an eternal mindset. “Be ye renewed in the spirit of your (Greek word nous= knows = thinking) knowing. Christ in His eternal original state is not a man, not of flesh and bone, but spirit. And that the Bride is “flesh of His flesh, bone of His bone”. They are of the same spiritual, eternal makeup. Pre-existent, outside of time and matter, just beyond the veil of our understanding and perception. Outside of human experience of the carnal man.

 

This is the New Wine Skins, a new understanding to contain and understand eternal truths. Or as Thomas we can say, nope I am not going to believe until I see it.

 

If you do not have a renewed mind, a new wine skin, the Bride is a veiled topic. “Whom the world cannot see or know, but you know Her for She shall be in you”. If you think of Jesus as a man you see the “kingdom at hand” as a future earthly reality then you see the promises for another day. You have another gospel, a different Jesus. He was bone and flesh but “henceforth know we Him like that no more. If any man be in Christ he is a new creation” II Corinthians 5.16+17. And if we are “in Christ” we are this new creation and like the Bride and Groom it is not for the old. Outside is for muderers adulterers and whoever loveth a lie.

 

As Nicodemus aked “what is truth?”. It is what remains after the dust of time and matter are gone. “Everything that can be shaken will be shaken so that what is eternal may remain”. It was and is and is to come. It is the same yesterday, today, and forever. In each generation. Do you receive this now or later like Thomas?

 

This is why the book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ, the revelation means the unveiling, is the unveiling of The City, The Bride. The words that are “faithful and true” is because they are pre-existent eternal timeless realities un-faltered by time and matter. They are what remains. This is the truth.

 

Most of Christianity is waiting for a visual event to happen on earth to get on with eternal life. They are waiting for another day, but “Today! if you will hear His voice harden not your hearts” Receive the invitation of the Bride and Groom, “The spirit and the Bride say come”. As John the baptist said, “He who has the Bride IS the Bridegroom, and the friend of the Bridegroom who stands and hears Him rejoices greatly because of the Bridegrooms voice. That is why he said, “my joy is full”. And from the Greek word “ekeinos meaning they” Ekeinos who comes from above is above all, he who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of the earth. The one from heaven is above all. He who has received this testimony has certified that God is true”. Do you now believe?

 

This is the new wine skin. It is our thinking being  continually renewed by the Holy Spirit in things pertaining to the ever present, always ready Kingdom of God.

His Kingdom is “At Hand” Today!

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