Same old same old – Or a New Covenant Life?

Jesus is the lens through which we interpret the world. “In His light we see light” is not a generic reference to God. The light by which we see is Jesus the Son of Man in whom all things find their essence and purpose. Jesus is both the life and the light of the inhabitants of the world. All things that are in Him hold together. All things were created by Him and for Him. There is no thing, no law that is superior to Jesus. He is all that transcends the knowledge of good and evil. He is life itself.

Jesus said, ‘I am the light of the world’ because He is. Jesus is the starting point of meaning and understanding. In the Old Testament God was but dimly perceived. In the New Testament God is revealed as the Person of Jesus and the one who reveals your meaning and purpose and the destiny of the church. See Jesus and you see the Father.

Jesus is the lens by which we discover existence, understand the Bible and see clearly to create the Kingdom of God. It is through Jesus manifesting Himself in us and as us that we become kings and priests who reproduce the Kingdom of God as the Bride of Christ.

It is more correct to say that Jesus gives meaning to the Bible than to attempt to know God through Bible study. Many Bible scholars do not know God. Jesus is not produced by our religious efforts. He already is. We perceive and know God as Jesus takes His place in our hearts and His revelation of Himself floods our being. Knowledge of God starts in the heart through revelation. This is why a little child can know God while a seminarian only thinks He does. When Jesus is our life we will know the power of God and the Bible.

Jesus is the lens through which the Bible must be viewed if it is to become the Word of God and not an encumbrance of the letter, which kills the knowledge of God and His reality in us by the Spirit. Spiritual things are not only spiritually discerned. We are re-created as spiritual beings by the indwelling Spirit of Christ – the Life Giving Spirit. Where the letter, which is the knowledge of good and evil puts life to death, the Spirit of life in us infuses us with resurrection vigour.

Jesus is also the lens through which we perceive our identity as the sons and daughters of God. Such an identity is exclusive and unconditional needing no props and human additions. He is the lens through which we interpret the New Testament and make meaning of the Old. Beware religion that has its own distinctives and perspectives. Should we attach ourselves to the Sabbath making this our focus, we join ourselves to the law, separate ourselves from the Spirit, make nonsense out of the New Testament and pervert the entire Bible. All for the sake of building an identity and a place outside God. But the Father has given us a place in Him. Just as Jesus and the Father are one, so are we when Christ is our life. The place Jesus has prepared for us is union with God.

‘There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?’ John 14.2 NLT.

We cannot live in the law and participate in the Spirit as sons. No matter how hard the we may work under law we cannot represent the Kingdom of Heaven (Galatians, Hebrews).

We are on the verge of a new year. We can advance mightily in the Kingdom of God or continue in the same old same old. The old has ended, the new has come. The law as a school master is dead. Our teacher is the Spirit of Christ Himself witnessing within and speaking through the witness of the Bible and Godly people without. Today we have a choice. We live either in the knowledge of good and evil or in the Son of God. We live either in the law of sin and death or the One who is the law of the Spirit of life. We live either in the letter or the Word who is alive in our hearts. We have our own minds or the mind of Christ.

Speaking of the Living Word the author of Hebrews writes, ‘For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart’ Heb 4.12 NIV.

 

Keith Allen

Fables Exposed

Noah spoke for many years about the coming flood. Not many listened but he did it anyway out of love and duty. Old Testament prophets declared the words of God to eyes that would not see and ears that refused to hear. Jesus represented the Father and re-introduced the Kingdom of Heaven to earth, ending the regime of the knowledge of good and evil and the power of Satan. Yet few believed, few understood. To the natural mind His life appeared to end in failure. But His resurrection and the multiplication of His authority through Pentecost by the Holy Spirit began a new birth for the world and a new creation for society.

The new creation begins and grows through Christ in you.

Life really is Jesus and it multiplies by the worship of His Name and the multiplication of His deeds. Jesus is life itself and righteousness embodied. His loves brings all people and all things together in Himself.

‘And this is the plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ–everything in heaven and on earth’ Eph 1.10 NLT.

‘He is before all things, and in him all things hold together’ Col 1.17 NLT.

Jesus came to draw all men and women to Himself and by doing this to draw us into God, to establish us as members of His Household to reign in the earth. There is no reference point outside the Son of God. He is, and since He is He is “I AM.”

In Jesus you are constantly washed and complete. Jesus is the fullness of the God-head bodily in you by the Spirit. Thus you are indwelt by the law of the Spirit of Life that is written on your heart and which pervades your being. Thus by the Spirit of Christ you are a maturing son/daughter of God. You are no longer a slave of law, to do lists or self-appointed Martha’s. Your place at Christ’s feet enables you to stand in righteousness, speak with discernment and only do what Jesus is doing – because His life is your life and you are His; one of His Representatives in your home, factory or office.

The truth is that Jesus is the truth and your life. He is the Way to the Father and the means whereby you are a daughter or a son. The lie that is Adventism is that Adventism is the way, the truth and the life. The truth about Adventism is that it is a false-christ.  The fate of Adventism is that its cleverly designed fables are soon to be exposed. The salvation of Adventism is repentance and turning to Jesus.

Keith Allen

Be sure of your lens

Jesus said I am the way the truth and the life and those who eat the Son have life. Life is found in the Son of God alone because Jesus is life itself.

Christians who become Adventists are very likely to be already living out of the law of Moses. Where this is the case there is a natural logic to the Advent message. If you are living out of the Ten Commandments,  it is consistent to live out of all of them. The error in this view is not difficult to spot if we are living in the Spirit, since a life in the Spirit is the only way Jesus can be our life. To be alive in the life-giving Spirit of Jesus is to know that Jesus did not come as The Means to make commandment keeping successful. He came so that we can be like Him. He came so that the hope and the reality of the Kingdom of God today is Christ in you, Christ through you. Christ as you.

Jesus is the lens through which we read and understand the Bible. Since Jesus is the Alpha and Omega He is the hermeneutic through which the Bible becomes revelation. The Bible lives, moves and has its being in Christ, which means it is more correct to say that the Bible is revealed in Christ rather than Christ is revealed by the Bible.

‘For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him’ Col 1.16 NIV.

In Jesus the Bible is the word and not the letter. In Jesus the Bible reveals God rather than the perspectives and agendas of men. Significantly eternal life is knowing God – not your Bible.

‘Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent’ John 17.3 NIV.

When Adventists declare that they have the truth, the implication is that the Bible exists to support Adventism. At least that is how it is used. Indeed many Adventists believe that they are saved, assured of a place in heaven and safe passage through the rigours of the end-times by being Adventist. Yet it would be difficult to find a people more insecure about Christ’s Second Coming.

The pass-port to the Adventist package is The Sabbath which is code and shorthand for commandment keeping. The manifest impossibility of any of us keeping the law has been collapsed into the easier task of keeping the Sabbath – although what Sabbath keeping means is far from certain. For some in means an attempt to do what the Hebrews did. For most it means going to church, sometimes filling the day with meetings, eating with fellow Adventists or sleeping the afternoon away in Sabbath rest (lay work).

The end of the week gasp of desperation, ‘Thank God for the Sabbath!’ has more to do with the intemperate pace of a performance driven ethic outside Christ’s peace, than it does with any life-giving merit of the Sabbath itself. ‘The Sabbath’ can be a fatiguing and tiresome day, rather than a day of refreshment. Many know this and search in vain for a Sabbath-keeping mode that is more life-giving. But there is only one non-adulterated source of life in itself: Jesus.

Keeping the Sabbath turns out to be more about spending time with other Adventists than attempting the impossible task of living the 7th day in a secular vacuum. It can’t be done – but this reality is papered over with many fictions. How is doing a survey in church more righteous than voting on the Sabbath? How is someone serving meals in an Adventist hospital more righteous than a person serving meals in a café?

In time the internal contradictions of the attempt to live in law by the power of Jesus make themselves known. There are many observances and usages of which Adventist believers can say, ‘I just don’t do that any more. I don’t think it’s important.’ But they continue in Moses and remain within the law. For Adventists grace is less about living in a Life that is not ours by the Spirit and more about a means of living with a law that is.

‘He saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit’ Titus 3.5 NLT.

Jesus has gifted us with the privilege of living in Him rather than in religion, which means ceasing to live out of Adam/Moses and being enfolded in God through Jesus Christ. This is the more fulsome meaning of Jesus as the New and Living Way and the Righteousness sent from God. For the people of God the New Covenant means ceasing to live in law and temple and living from the Christ within. We emerge from the abstractions of good and evil to live once again by the Spirit of God who is our life.

But for Adventists there is no new covenant/old covenant demarcation. The New Covenant can be described as ‘New Covenant theology’ as though it is a conspiracy to do these believers out of their identity in Sabbath and law. Many Adventists don’t know what the New Covenant is. The Bible is to them a seamless book in which the New Testament is the Old Testament lived in the strength of Christ. Some believe you can have one foot in the law and still be living from the New Covenant, despite what is clearly stated in Galatians and Hebrews. But only because this is part of the all encompassing assumption that Jesus lives to aid us to keep the law. No my friend. Today the Father’s commandment is this: ‘Believe My Son.’ Jesus’ testimony is this: ‘I am your life!’

Since the New Testament is interpreted through the lens of the Sabbath, Jesus is seen to be upholding the Sabbath and the law in everything He does, which is drawing quite a long bow. In actual fact, Jesus is upholding His Father and demonstrating what a Son who lives in His Father looks like – a son who lives in God rather than in the knowledge of good and evil, as did Adam.

Jesus’ life-project was to demonstrate that He and His Father are one, that union with God is found in Him and that we have life in His Name. But the emphasis of His life was not about ‘getting to heaven.’ It was about bringing heaven to earth.

This slant on a law and Sabbath subservient Jesus has its roots in Ellen White. In particular the book, Desire of Ages. But Jesus did not minister to the Sabbath or the law. He ministered to His Father.

This does not mean Ellen White was a bad person. But it does mean, that like many Christians, she had not made the transition from the Old Testament to life in the Spirit. She remained bound to the ministry that brought death engraved on letters of stone. The anomaly is that Ellen White demonstrated some of the gifts of the Spirit. But she never made the transition to life in the Spirit, remaining firmly in the camp of the daughters of Hagar. Unfortunately she set a pattern that many still attempt to follow.

What we see in the New Testament depends on the nature of our lens. If our lens is the law we will see the law. If our glasses are the Sabbath we will see Sabbath-keeping endorsed. If our lens is Jesus and it is He that is our life we will walk in the light. Jesus as ‘Lord of the Sabbath’ is seen among Adventists as Jesus healing people on Sabbath to uphold Sabbath-keeping and demonstrate how the Sabbath should be kept. But what Jesus was really doing was revealing the nature of the Father and the value of His daughters and sons.

For not a few Adventists their identity as an Adventist is more important than their identity in Christ. It is assumed by many that you can have both. But we have but one Husband and one master who is Christ. When we are joined to the Father through Jesus we are the sons and daughters of God able to live and love in the authority and power of His priests and kings.

Where ever Jesus is there is life, peace, restoration and recreation. There is no Saturday, Sunday or Friday Holy day. In Jesus holiness is a life that transcends days and death. Holiness is a Person. Holy people are called the sons and daughters of God because the life of the Son; the order of the universe is their life by the Spirit of Sonship. In Jesus the sons of God and the creation are one. When Jesus, the Lord of the Sabbath lives in you, you are at peace and you multiply peace, because with Jesus as your life you are a Sabbath.

‘For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience’ Hebrews 4.8-11 NIV.

‘So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed’ John 8.36 NIV.

Keith Allen

Belittling ourselves and creating ‘little people’ in the name of Jesus

We can produce malnutrition in the name of God or we can feed the people Living Bread. Living Bread comes from heaven. Junk food comes from the earth, the flesh and the letter. Christ is either our life or something else suffices as our substitute for the living Spirit of God.

In this hour Jesus is calling us to leave all and follow Him. Leaving all means leaving all that is a substitute for Him and all that is not Him for a life that is unconditionally Jesus and nothing else. This call is a call to re-birth that exceeds all others. Jesus asks us to find our identity, purpose and mission in Him and in Him alone. Since we are the Bride of Christ, all else is adultery. This is a blessing since attachment to smaller things leaves us smaller people.

If you have said to Jesus, ‘I’ll follow you no matter what’ the freedom and authority you will develop is infinite.’ But if you give a conditional allegiance and try to bargain with Jesus saying, “I’ll follow you so long as I can retain my religious identity and distinctive doctrines and continue to seek the approval of those who make me secure and comfortable” If this is your walk, don’t expect to reign as a king or a priest in the Kingdom of God. True we may make a start in the gifts or we may develop a ministry in some niche we did not have before. But compared to an immersion in Jesus and a genuine baptism and rebirth, our growth will be small, our spirit will be dulled and our ability to sense the Kingdom and feel God will benumbed. If we are leaders we will be a blind leaders of the blind. But we will not know it.

‘Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me’ John 12.26 NIV.

Some are controlled by a political spirit. The political person is tied to what man thinks. No matter what such a one affirms, he or she is less concerned about offending Jesus that about offending people. Such a one is a people pleaser. As a result they are bound by the spirit of religion. Their discernment is unreliable and their spiritual authority is small. Since such a one remains bound as a leader they binds others in the un-life and un-power of religion, exercising influence over a community of the bound. But Jesus is here to set such people free.

‘A life in Jesus is not life in the religion of Jesus. It is a life in the Spirit of Sonship.’

Jesus is all and in all. You can’t have two masters or three or four. You have no right to have ‘a perspective’ that is contrary to the New Covenant or a view point that is simply a plank in the knowledge of good an evil. As a minister of God you have no right to limit the fullness of Christ for the sake of ‘our theology.’ If you are Christ’s it is all or nothing. You either live totally in Him or you don’t. You are either a son or a slave and you are either preaching malnutrition or infinite life.

‘I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world’ John 6.51 NIV.

The Bread of Heaven is Christ as you by the Spirit of Sonship. In this season the sons of God live as the sons of God – not as sons of denominations, ministries or perspectives. Sadly there are sincere believers who believe it is godly to live diminished. Look to your self through Christ and not through the religion that blinds you. You represent either authority or captivity, knowing God or knowing the knowledge of good and evil. We can live in the Light and see light. Or we can talk of going from glory to glory while blindly leading the blind and celebrating our malnutrition.

‘I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him’ 2 Cor 11.12 NIV.

 

Keith Allen

Walk through the door into Sonship

Pdf booklet here.

Creating a Storm

THE REAL STORM CO – BEATING UP A STORM

There’s a saying that goes, ‘Someone with an experience is never at the mercy of someone with an argument’ This is why God’s amazing plan is so powerful. His plan was not a list of abstractions or formulations. It was not a matrix of behaviors and beliefs. His Plan was Jesus. God’s Plan is Jesus and all that He is, has done and will do.

His Plan is Jesus in you.

Jesus came as life. At His resurrection life, not death, was forever established as the norm. At His inauguration and the right hand of authority in the heavens, the authority of man to reign on the earth over circumstances and death was established for eternity. Such authority in Christ is a now reality.

Jesus did not retreat into heaven. He rose into heaven to advance the work He had begun. Christ in us it the hope of glory because Christ in us is the defeat of death and the resurrection of life in all its forms. By the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned to earth at Pentecost to multiply Himself and all He did in every believer who believes. ‘Doing God’s will on earth as it is in heaven’ is multiplying what Jesus began.

We can do better than sit in circles and discuss God. We can do better than ‘Me being the kindest person I can be.’ In the power of the Living Jesus, we can do things that are impossible for any human to do unless God is present and active in our words. We are able to release God’s power to cause the masses to respond: ‘That has to be God!’ We have the authority to speak LIVING WORDS.

People need to know that God is real and present with us. Should we live in the knowledge of good and evil, we can speak religion. Should we live in God through Christ we can speak life. In the near future expect to see examples of the dead being raised to life in Australia.

Rather than bleating about the Second Coming, might it not be a good idea to multiply His first coming into our every-day situations as some are beginning to do?

We can do better than focusing on behavior and doctrine in the Bible while ignoring the entire supernatural fabric of the book. We can do better than doing the kinds of charitable things any kindly atheist can accomplish. We have the authority. We need to believe in what we have been gifted with and stop making religion out of the devil’s robbery. You want to stir up a storm? Just repent of being the unbelieving believer and shake the kingdom of Satan!

We are mandated and commanded to heal the sick, raise the dead and caste out demons. Stop living Christianity as a philosophy and live Jesus as a Person.

Jesus is life without measure. He is forgiveness, righteousness, wholeness, light, liberty and wisdom. He is healing and life. Jesus is authority and power clothed in love. Jesus is the resurrection and the life alive in you. Jesus multiplied in His people is the advance of the Kingdom of God in the world.

 

Keith Allen