Authority superior to the scribes

LAW BASED OR KINDOM BASED? Son of the slave woman or daughter of the Free Woman?

What would you do if your daughter was living in poverty and degradation when she was actually a princess with a huge fortune and privileges? What would you do if your son was paralyzed from the waste down and you knew that his paralysis was entirely due to the way he saw himself and had nothing to do with an objective physical condition? I hope you would restore them to who they actually are. You would do all in your power to set them free. This is the mandate of all in whom Jesus lives.

‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed’ Luke 4.18

To bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor’ Isa 61.3.

The Spirit of the sovereign Lord is released to ensure that every member of the House of God reflects the glory of God and multiplies the authority of Jesus Christ. You have been given authority to expand the Kingdom of God. The spirit of anti-christ exists to oppose these plans by robbing people of their humanity and authority as the sons and daughters of God. Anything you grow without such authority may be church – but it will not be the kingdom of God  and hence no threat to the Enemy.

‘The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law’ Mark 1.22 NIV.

Three unclean spirits like frogs (Rev16.13) are seen coming out of the mouth of the beast. These spirits are an apt figure of spirits who have robbed Adventists of their inheritance in Christ. They have been robbed of their identity as sons because they live in the law. Adventists have imagined themselves under law and hence under condemnation.  As a consequence they live in fear of deception and of the Second Coming. They have been separated from the Body of Christ because their law based life separates them from Jesus, from themselves and from other people. Adventists have the cross and they have jesus [sic] but their cross is robbed of its power and their jesus [sic] plays second fiddle to the Law as will be seen below.

These unclean spirits are the progeny of the chief religious spirit who is the Father of Lies. They are lying spirits who gain their power from false doctrine – doctrine that sounds believable but which is really a distortion of the truth. The result of these lies is that God’s people are made to be like frogs rather than be what they really are: Sons and daughters of God.

Then I saw three evil spirits that looked like frogs; they came out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet Rev 16.13 NIV.

Adventists live in horror of being deceived. This because their denomination began in deception. A spirit of deception releases an influence that makes people so afraid of ‘being deceived’ that many have developed an ‘immunity’ to the truth. It’s not uncommon for sincere and usually Godly people to live inside silos of belief that effectively excludes the ability to perceive the glory of the Truth that is Jesus.

Adventist beginnings explain why those who are so sure they have the truth actually live in deception and fear deception. The initial deception was that Jesus was coming in 1844. Despite the fact that the Bible clearly says that no one knows the day or the hour other than the Father in heaven, it was steadfastly claimed that Jesus would come in 1844.

The first lie was then compounded by another deception – the notion that Jesus, instead of doing the second coming, went into the most holy place in 1844 to begin a work called the investigative judgment. He was engaged here in an ongoing enquiry to establish who keeps the commandments and who does not. Those who do not of course get the kybosh. This of course is not sound doctrine. Those whose life is Jesus get eternal life.

The Bible says sinners were acquitted for every sin at the cross. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus  Again, Jesus took His Place beside the Father on His ascension to heaven. His installation at the right hand of authority and power beside the Father was marked on earth by the out-pouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Now the Son of Man would multiply Himself by living by the Spirit in the sons and daughters of men. Jesus Christ would become the life of all who ate His flesh and drank His blood in the Spirit.

Christ’s message is that we are forgiven by His blood and restored to the glory of sons by His life. We have been seated in Christ since He took His place beside the Father on His ascension. While there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus this is not so for those who live in themselves and their self-effort through keeping the law.

The third lie is related to the second, with its implication that he old covenant has not passed away but is in fact perpetuated by jesus [sic] who empowers people to keep the law of Moses. ‘Jesus lived out of the law and kept it’ so the it is claimed. Now by Jesus’ strength we can keep Moses laws just like Jesus did, the argument goes. The idea became inculcated into Adventism that Jesus helps us keep Moses. But doesn’t the book of Hebrews emphasize that Jesus is above Moses and above angels and that in fact all things are under Jesus’ feet?

According to the scriptures, Jesus lives to impart to us Himself. This is because the highest entity in creation is being or person – not abstractions and behaviors. In other words NOT LAWS. Significantly God is ‘I AM’.  Not ‘I DO.’ We become human doings by living in behaviors. We are sons of God by living in God’s Son. We are sons because in Jesus we are placed in the Father.

According to scripture Jesus did not live in reference to law or live out of law. He lived in union with His Father. His was not a law-centered life. It was a Father centered life. He lived as a son in union with His Father. Jesus’ righteous life exceeded the finite righteousness of the law to the extent that a mountain exceeds a grain of sand. But Jesus’ wholeness, holiness and authority over demons, disease and death was entirely the result of living in the Father – in the Father as son, with the authority not like the teachers of the law.

Jesus lived as a son in the manner in which Adam had not. Significantly Adam was told to keep away from the tree. But trusting in the Father Jesus advanced relentlessly towards it and was crucified on it. Thus through the genius of God the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was turned into the tree of life. Life in the knowledge of good and evil was put to death on the cross and life in God through His Son became ours at His resurrection.

Let’s embrace what really happened. Through the crucified Jesus, Adam and the regime of the knowledge of good and evil (law of sin and death) was put to death and a life in God was made the possession of the sons and daughters of God. That’s you.

‘For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!’ Gal 2.19-21 NIV.

Once the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was dead the law was dead. Now you are alive in Christ to live as sons of God in God’s Son. The righteousness sent from God is Jesus who lives in you to conform you to Himself. Jesus is the righteousness of God in you and the One whose resurrection power in you steadily raise you up in conformity with Himself. It that good or what!?

It seems that the plain teaching of scripture has never been a barrier to Adventist ideology which is a religion of law and letter confining people to the limitations of the old Adam and his body of death. In contrast genuine Christianity is lived in the Spirit as the Spirit of Sonship imparts to us the life of the one new man. Far from being frogs believers are God’s kings and priests called to reign on the earth.

So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!’ Romans 7.21-25 NIV.

‘Yet now he has reconciled you to himself through the death of Christ in his physical body. As a result, he has brought you into his own presence, and you are holy and blameless as you stand before him without a single fault’ Col 1.22 NLT.

A friend of mine had a dream in which he saw Ellen White standing on her head. Another friend had a vision in which the cross was seen suspended upside down in a church. I had a dream in which a woman was up-ending Adventist people and abusing them. The sad things was that they accepted that this abuse was sound Christianity. But the Lord was showing that Adventists have attached themselves to an upside – down gospel. The law leads to Christ. But Jesus does not lead to law. We either live in the law or we live in the Kingdom of God.

The Bible says the law is a school master to lead to Christ. It is a tutor, a method, a device of God to push us in the direction of union with God’s Righteousness: The Person of Jesus. But many Adventists believe that Jesus exists to empower us to keep the laws of Moses. Not so. Jesus lives to make us like Himself.

According to Adventist teaching Jesus plays second-fiddle to the law. The implication is that Jesus is subordinate to the law. If true this would mean that He is not really God but some lesser being who exists under a superior entity. Adventists could well examine the possibility that they worship a false christ. According to Ellen White, the real source of Adventist the Great Reality at the center of Heaven is not the Father and not Jesus. It is the law.

‘The law of God in the sanctuary in heaven is the great original, of which the precepts inscribed upon the tables of stone and recorded by Moses in the Pentateuch were an unerring transcript’ Great Controversy 434.

But the Bible contradicts such an assumption. The Bible says that the law and the temple services were shadows to lead us to the Great Reality: The reality that is Christ. The reality that the glory of God’s Kingdom on earth is Christ in you. Due to the incarnation, Christ not only live in you. He manifests AS YOU.

Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ’ Col 2.16,17.

But you say, ‘I don’t live in the law.’ If you believe that Jesus lives to empower you to keep the law, you do live in the law. But if you believe that Jesus lives in you to transform you into His likeness You live in Jesus and you live as a son.

Do you want to live real as live as a shadow. Do you want to be a whimp, a wraith, a flitting ghost or do you choose to be reborn as a real son of God in whom the Son of God lives by His Spirit?

The law and the prophets pointed to Jesus. The law and the temple services were a shadow of the reality that is Christ. But the writings that have shaped Adventist theology and which have assumed greater authority than the Bible have portrayed Jesus engaged in the project of upholding the law.

In the Desire of Ages Jesus busily goes about to heal people on the Sabbath day as a means of establishing the sanctity of the Sabbath and supremacy of the law. But this is an imposition on the text. Jesus was doing nothing of the kind. What He was demonstrating was the compassion and life-multiplying nature of His Father, and its contrast to the life-denying nature of the law’s custodians. We become what we live out of. With these healings, Jesus  drawing all men to Himself to live as the life of sons in the Father. He was illustrating the difference between one who lived in God and those who lived in the law. In the latter case rules and strictures are more important that people  – and ultimately more important than God. ‘So let’s kill him to preserve our place and our nation.’

Law and temple had a purpose. But they came to an end over 2000 years ago. Now instead of living in religion God’s people would live in God.

‘Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law’ Gal 3.23-25 NIV.

God is not only the Father of truth. Truth is what He is. He does not promote information that is actually a lie. Since He is love, He lives to reveal Himself as He is and to reveal us as we can be. As the Son of God Jesus revealed God. As the Son of Man, Jesus revealed the glory of man.

God’s greatest exposure of Himself is the revelation that is Jesus. The Bible says that Jesus is the exact representation of the Father, He sits in equality beside the Father and that all things are under His feet. The Ten Commandments were never a description of the Father’s character. Was He ever on guard to ensure that He did not worship things that were not Him? Clearly the Decalogue is about us. Clearly this was a list of rules founded in the framework of the knowledge of good and evil to hold people accountable until the advent of Jesus.

‘The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word’ Hebrews 1.3 NIV.

There is only one description of the Father’s character: Jesus. It is this Jesus who comes to live in you and impart Himself to you. The new and living way is not the old and dead way. It is Jesus in you. This is entirely a work of the Holy Spirit. Significantly those who represent the Kingdom of God live in the Spirit by the One Spirit. They don’t live by a trinity of religious spirits spreading the notion, that with sufficient effort we can be like gods defining good and evil and rising like gods above chaos. No. To live in Jesus is to live in life itself and have this life transform you from glory to glory.

Keith Allen, May 25, 2011