Law abiding or Lawless

To be a son in a fully human sense we need to be the progeny of One who is supremely a person. The distinguishing quality of personhood is the ability to love. God is love. He is all that it means to love, be a person and a Father.But if we see the Father as the Unmoved Mover as Aristotle and many Christians do, we will demean the Father and belittle ourselves. Similarly we make Father small when we define Him as The Great Law Giver. By doing this we define ourselves as slaves and workers.

Despite what you have been taught, you your life is in God and not in the law. I hope it surprises you pleasantly to learn that the Sabbath points to Jesus, but Jesus does not point to the Sabbath. He draws all to Himself. It is in Jesus that you and the world are brought into agreement with God. In Jesus who find rest even as you are being re-created. This is something the law never could and never will do. The end product of living in the law is not holiness. It is lawlessness.

As familiar as you are with keeping rules, you were never meant to live in them. We are created to live unconsciously and intuitively in the Father as daughters and sons. Thus, son of God was not only defined our state of being. It defined our state of righteousness. Sons of God being a creation of the Father were righteous because they were an extension of the Father – part of Him yet independent of Him.

The bond that joined us to the Father was love, revealing itself as trust. Thus the trust of a little child has in its human father is an illustration of the love and trust that existed between the Father and Adam before the fall.

Satan is called the father of lies because he is a false father who succeeded in breaking trust and joining humans to himself and to falsehood. If you have been divorced and one of your children has become subject to the influence of another figure who does not have your interests at heart you will have experienced what we might call a shadow of the father of lies.

Satan succeeded in breaking the bond of love and trust between Eve and Father God and replacing this with abstractions flowing from the knowledge of good and of evil. Thus the human race became crooked. Its loyalty became bent towards the father of lies.

These categories of the knowledge of good and evil became a substitute for the righteousness of God and what was worse – union with God. The ideals were impersonal and unobtainable. They took humans out of love and intuitive righteousness and into the severities of un-righteousness, self-righteousness a judgment and violence. The so called godliness of ‘being as gods’ that the knowledge of evil produces is an illusion. It is always relative to the person, self-serving, fraught with bias and presumption. Why? It is lawless. It places men and women in the place of God. The result is not righteousness. Quite the opposite. The result is sin and death. Thus in the era of good and evil, humans were subject to the law of sin and death. But we have moved from the age of Adam to the age of Christ.

If you think that I am implying that the knowledge of good and evil is actually evil, you are correct. While it has categories it is actually lawless, contradictory and self-serving. This can at times be seen in the realm of international relations where good can be defined in terms of the national interest, victors get to write history books and those with a less than neutral bias re-invent history to suit their purposes.

Since the cross, we no longer live entirely in the knowledge of good and evil, yet we do so substantially. This is because so many have not accepted Jesus as the New and Living Way and because so many of God’s people do not live in God through Jesus. They live a Christianized version of the knowledge of good and evil. This is not my idea. It is clearly exposed in Rick Joyner’s vision known as The Torch and the Sword and has been expertly described in the work of Jacques Ellul, Dietrich Bonheoffer and Gregory Boyd.

Our opportunity since the cross and Pentecost is that we can live in God. This is to live where we were created to live and where we have been redeemed to live. With Christ as our life we literally live, move and have our being in God. This is so individually, communally and cosmically. This is the only Way that humans can be aligned with God, live in His order and express His wholesome life. But if we remain in Adam, Moses or any kind of performance orientation we are not righteous. We are lawless.

Jesus stated through Paul, ‘Salvation comes through the Spirit [of Christ] who makes you holy through your belief in the truth’ (Thess 2.13). Then he alludes to the new and living way which is the expression of Jesus in us and through us. He says, ‘May the Lord lead  your hearts into a full understanding and expression of the love of God’ ( 2 Thess 3.5). This is to say that as Jesus increasingly becomes our life we increasingly manifest His Kingdom in the world.

You need to know this: Sabbath keeping does not provide you with rest. Nor does it make you holy. It wears you out and makes you lawless.

‘Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for [that day will not come] until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction’ 2 Thess 2.3.

‘For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way’ 2 Thess 2.7 NIV.

But this is so only as Jesus actually is our life. He is not our life if we are still living in the law or bits of it. Lawlessness is secretive and powerful because hides itself in religion. Lets be clear. We live in lawlessness and multiply lawlessness when we rebel against God. Be we also multiply lawlessness as Christians when we refuse to live in the New Covenant and seek salvation in the Old. We are either crucified in Christ and living in Him or we are living in  religion and in institutions that have passed away. In this case we too are lawless because as far as we are concerned, Christ died for nothing.

Keith Allen

One ring to rule them all

KEEPERS OF THE LIE

Jesus did not come in 1844. He did not enter the Most Holy Place of the temple in heaven at that time. He is not conducting an investigative judgment. And during His time on earth He did not endorse or re-institute the Sabbath. Jesus ended  the religion of temple and Sabbath and began the era of life in Himself.

God’s command to all to day is ‘Believe My Son.’ The testimony of Jesus is, ‘I am your life.’

Our ability to be ‘alive’ depends on what lives at the core of our being. That which is in our heart eventually reveals itself in soul and body. Is it Jesus or is it the law? The difference between SDA praise and worship singers and the rest is astonishing. I’ve seen singers in non-Adventist churches minister with faces aglow with joy and freedom. Yet Adventists singing the same song are covered in a veil of inhibition. Why? The face cannot hide what is in the heart.

Contrary to what many believe, Jesus did not keep the law or live from its constructs. Jesus lived in His Father and from His position as the Father’s Son. Jesus and His Father were one as Adam and the Father were not. In this way Jesus transcended the law of Moses but He did not keep it or endorse it.

Jesus accomplished everything intended by His Father. He saved the people from their sin, rejoined the human race to the Father and instituted the New and Living Way – the way in which the Spirit of Christ imparts the life of Jesus into the hearts of people. In doing so, Jesus as the life-giving Spirit re=establishes the ancient path or ancient way in which the law of the spirit of life is restored to the world. Living in the law we may be near God but we remain separate from Him. In the Spirit we live in union with God by the One Spirit. We not only sing the son. We are the song.

 

Keith Allen

Drinking the sweetness of Jesus

Living A Lemon Or Living In God?

Adventism is a way of life for many sincere people. But it is a life lived from within the knowledge of good and evil. It is filled with many good people who have been sold a lemon. There are many gracious Adventists. But none  live in their full authority as sons and daughters of God. They don’t expect to. It’s customary with many to wear powerlessness as a badge of honour.

There are Christians who heal in Christ’s Name and continue what Jesus began with His authority and power. But many Adventist believers steer clear of the power of God because they have been taught to label it as the power of the devil. Captured in the law they have a big devil, a small god and an even smaller self. No wonder they are hanging out for the Second Coming.

Jesus has accomplished everything we need to live as sons and daughters of God in order to multiply His Kingdom with authority and not as the law-keepers. Nothing remains for Jesus to do. He has given us all authority. We can either live in what we have been gifted with or say, ‘You are a hard man’ and bury it in the ground.

There are groups who have begun in the Spirit but have been unable to advance into Christ’s fullness because they remain tied to the law. For these children of God it’s not just a matter of reading the Bible to find where one’s views don’t line up with scripture. The Bible itself gets distorted by the law mind-set with they read scripture. If they could read the New Testament through Jesus they would see what Jesus has done with the law. Jesus will reveal Himself to any who have a desire to know Him. He delights to reveal Himself as He is because He lives to impart life.

Adventism has its own version of exceptionalism[1]. Undergirded by the teachings of Ellen White it has a distinctly self-reinforcing hermeneutic. Adventists can encounter the most undeniable truths which fly right past without alighting – truths that are rendered invisible by their assumptions about law and covenant. Thankfully this will not always be so. Those with a passion for Jesus will know what they do not know now. Jesus will come to them and reveal Himself to them. Jesus loves Adventists and desires that they live in the fullness of all He has accomplished for His children.

‘But what does the Scripture say? “Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son’ Gal 4.30 NIV

Sadly, many Adventists are children of the slave woman, children of Sinai’s Hagar and unable to live in the inheritance that Jesus has won for them them. This is not to say that Adventists cannot be ‘sons’ by definition or that they are excluded from heaven. It does mean that they are restricted in their ability to bring heaven to earth and resist the powers of hell. The Lord showed me in a dream that Adventists can put up a good front and maintain a façade through law and performance but they cannot overcome sin and the devil because the law robs then of power to resist him.

Tied to the law through the Sabbath, Adventists deny themselves the ability to live in the authority of Sonship. Paul demonstrates in Galatians that we either live in the law or the Spirit. Isa 61.1 and Luke 4.18 declare that all captives have been set free. But this freedom belongs to those who live in Jesus as He is – not in a the cobbled together Frankenstein that people have made him to be. Only by living in the real Jesus and His complete accomplishments can we minister freedom and holiness as His priest-kings.

It is a sad thing to shoot down the Holy Spirit and walk about like an ancient mariner with a dead Albatross of the law hanging around one’s neck. We are not competent to minister the Kingdom of God in this condition. In this mode our ministry can only bind others.

‘Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, fading though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious?’ 2 Cor 3.7-8 NIV.

It is a serious thing to ignore the New Covenant and remain in the Old. This is to rob the cross of its power and act as though Christ died for nothing. Each year my wife and daughter participate in the Road to Bethlehem pageant. Following Road to Bethlehem, some years ago, the Lord gave me a vivid dream about the dangers of ‘mixture.’ On a raised dais were faucets where people could get a drink. One faucet had water, another muddy water, yet another had hydrochloric acid and one had beer. The water represented Jesus the water of life. The others represented the additions and mixture of man, all of them impure. All had a degree of toxicity. But the significance of the acid was that any kind of mixture has the same toxic qualities as a hydrochloric acid.

We are now the sons of God because we have been placed in the Father by Jesus. We are not orphans. The Holy Spirit of Jesus is with us and in us.

We are privy to the miracle of Christ in us. Privileged to have Him imparting to us His love and holiness. It is the love of Christ IN US that changes us relentlessly into His likeness. Nothing need be added. We are complete in Christ.

‘A son of God is holy because God is holy and the Holy One holy lives in him.’

Jesus is not some lesser being than the Father. He is God in all His fullness.

Jesus did not live to serve the law or draw people to the law. He lives to draw people to Himself. It is Jesus who is the resurrection and the life. It is Jesus who has overcome the tree of death.

To have Christ in you is to have God in you. By living in Jesus we are washed and filled with His life as we manifest His Kingdom in the world. We are equipped to crush scorpions. No one need be ridden and defecated on by demons. None of us need be a cripple when we can be whole, vibrant and filled with the imagination of Jesus.

With Jesus as our life we have authority, unlike the scribes who thought they gained status from the law. Every human being has been placed in God. All have been given a new covenant and promise. Jesus has given us the same place He has with the Father. We are with Him. We are in Him.

But this is not our possession if we do not believe it and stubbornly make arrangements of our own.

‘Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me’ John 6.57 NIV.

‘The son of the slave wife was born in a human attempt to bring about the fulfillment of God’s promise. But the son of the freeborn wife was born as God’s own fulfillment of his promise’ Gal 4.23 NIV.

 

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[1] Exceptionalism – meaning.

 

Keith Allen

Messengers of Life or Blind Guides?

Jesus asked me to give this message to a friend once: ‘Would you give up the Sabbath for Me?’ Why would He ask this question? Let me explain.

First, let us ask another question. What kind of leader are we? Leaders can be found giving people rivers of sand to drink. Leaders can be found binding people when their mandate is to set captives free. Or leaders can lead people in and out to find pasture. As the ‘led’ we can find ourselves in a parlous position when the very belief system we think gives us comfort is actually our prison.

Jesus came to set the captives free. Any genuine apostle does the same. Like Moses, Elijah and Jesus a genuinely apostolic figure is a liberator who joins God’s people to Christ’s infinite life. Life in law is innately limiting. Life in Jesus is without limitation. Life in Jesus is called life in the Spirit. This is the life of the sons of God who live in authority and not as teachers and keepers of the law.

We don’t have to be bad to bind people. We just have to put our faith in things that are not God. We just have to be out of agreement with what God has done. We just have to read the Bible through a lens that is not Jesus.

There is no way we can be apostolic with an old covenant mind-set.

Don’t let your perception be clouded by good works, spiritual gifts or a new mission endeavor. It’s sad when leaders do these things yet remain bound and crippled in their being. This is binding of the worst kind because it is invisible.

We don’t have to be bad to bind people. But we can get a false sense of satisfaction, a touch of smugness and a mistaken identity that comes from an attachment to ‘our perspectives.’ This shrinks who we are and limits what those to whom we minister can become. The worst kind of captivity is to be imprisoned in a sense of being that is much smaller than you are.

But formed and built up in Jesus we are furnished with discernment to see what is of man and what is of God. We can live in an atmosphere of liberty, peace and infinite possibility. But those who live in law cannot see. Their inheritance is veiled. Living in performance of any kind we bind ourselves. Tied to Moses we blind ourselves. As Sabbath keepers we are more than ‘kept’ by the Sabbath. We are deformed and belittled by it. But hey – we are complete in Christ. So live in Him!

‘But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away’ 2 Cor 3.14 NIV.

We are accustomed to think of ‘false christ’s as deceivers of other people, never suspecting that all our lives we have been limited by their presence and influence. The reason we do not easily discern the influence of a false Christ [sic] is that from our earliest years we have been socialized, indoctrinated and brain-washed by a system of belief whose source is something other than Jesus Christ Son of God.

A one time captive to false doctrine writes,

‘The proof of the power of the indoctrination I had undergone is that throughout my sojourn from all things Christian or Adventist I continued to believe in the Sabbath. As I write this it occurs to me that I didn’t just believe in the requirement of Sabbath-keeping. 

‘Believed in the Sabbath in the way she now believes in Jesus..’ She had a false christ [sic]. Do you?

A leader from God does not plant churches, community, identity or purpose. An apostolic person plants Jesus. Jesus draws people into Himself and creates sons and daughters of God. Re-birthed from the law into Jesus by the Spirit, such people live in the Spirit as sons of God. Deep rooted in Christ and the product of His Being, they become the church. They are the community of the saved and their identity and purpose flows from the Spirit of Sonship in which they live. They are the kings and priests of God who reign on the earth.

____________

See  Lyn’s story. See Also Greg Taylor’s perceptively argued study on Jesus our rest. What lens have you been using. Do you use The Sabbath to interpret the New Testament or are you using Jesus to interpret it?

Keith Allen

Christ alive in you Now!

A friend had a dream recently. The key part of it for the purposes of this post is that someone had mangled the sacrifice and that people were called to return to the genuine Sacrifice. It’s a riddle of the cross. Observe what follows.

I see before me a half-dead man. Decay has so taken hold on his body that he is scarcely mobile and partially blind. His name is Body of Death. His head is manacled to Performance, Performance has him chained to the law, the law confines him to the Old Covenant and the OC binds him to the knowledge of good and evil. Dead Body lives in Adam. But his real place is in Jesus.

From time to time Body attempts to revive himself with a swig from a bottle of spiritual gifts. Now and again he is stirred by a new method of prayer ministry or the effort to establish a new form of church. Sometimes he will attempt to stand upright and stagger a few steps into an overseas mission venture before falling to the ground like a man with a debilitating disease. Body is meant to bear a sword but all he has is a spoon with which he attempts to feed himself.

Body of Death does not mean to be a clacking carcass in the valley of dead bones. But he remains so because he lives from a mindset that has perverted the cross and robbed it of its’ power. The death and resurrection of Jesus, has been substituted for his own sacrifice of works. What had resulted is a false christ and a false cross on which he crucifies himself in order to please Jesus.

Beware of a false sacrifice (you) and a false christ (a little Christ who is the page boy of the law) that binds people in the Old Covenant by making it the New. The New Testament really is a new and living way – Christ in you, Christ as you. Christ for you. Christ covering you. This is the deeper meaning of the Lord’s Table: Christ your life.

Make no mistake. We cannot live in resurrection life (Jesus) unless we are really dead in Adam. We are not a new man or woman in Christ if we are still living in the law. In Jesus we are sons. In performance we are a Body of Death.

‘By abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace’ Eph 2.14,15 NIV.

Body of Death is dead because he has not died with Christ and therefore cannot be resurrected with Him to be the One New Man. He is still in the Old Testament while living in the New, struggling to have Jesus help him keep the law. But Jesus lives in us to transform slaves into sons by the Spirit.

Sadly, for Body of Death, Christ died for nothing because he lives in the law and hopes Christ will help him do it. He has set aside the cross; set aside God’s grace, while he strives to achieve what God has already accomplished in Jesus for Him. As a result he is separated from himself, separated from God and separated from his fellows.

No. We have been delivered – delivered from the Body of death to live whole and holy in Jesus as the One New Man.

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 2.20,21 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 NIV.

Only one real door

Paul urges all to live in the Spirit since those who live in the law cannot minister the Kingdom of God. Why? This is a Kingdom of kings and priests  and not of slaves.

‘But what does the Scripture say? “Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman’s son’ Gal 4.30 NIV.

Adventists are sincere and good people. But unless our life is Christ; unless we are living in the New Covenant, we are not competent to minister the Kingdom of God. We can minister kindness and goodness but never the authority that Jesus has over sin and the devil. This is to say that as prisoners of the Old Covenant and sons of the slave woman, our stature is dwarfish and our swords miniscule.

The unfortunate dilemma of God’s Adventist people is that they interpret the New Testament through the Sabbath. This ties them to the law, the Old Covenant, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – but unfortunately not to the cross, which is the tree of life.

You may believe as an Adventist that God asks you to ‘keep the Sabbath.’ He did in the Old Testament, but you are a child of the New. Here you live in a New and Living Way, a righteousness sent from God which is the THE PERSON OF GOD’S SON. While the Bible is a consistent whole, the New Testament is not the Old Testament with Jesus added. Let’s say that another way. The New Covenant is not the old re-invented with Jesus’ help.

We live in a whole new era – a change from the law of sin and death to the law of the Spirit of Life. The first is an abstract rendition of the knowledge of good and evil. Something the Father gave as a School master to lead to His Son. The second is Jesus, the personification of life and goodness – Jesus Christ in you. Christ in you as your life is the point of Jesus’ victory at the cross.

It is a great mistake to believe that the Bible is one continuous whole. The last book of the Old Testament marks the end of the account of our life in Adam.

Matthew records the beginning of our life in Christ. John announces a new Genesis; a new creation in Christ. The Bible is one whole that is consummated in the Person of Jesus. But the New Testament is not a re-invention of the Old in Jesus mode, which means that many of us have been greatly misled.

The confusing factor is that Adventists as well as many other Christians live in Adam and attempt to use Jesus to do it. They have not fully grasped what Jesus has done. This is to say they have remained eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, hoping that Jesus will help them eat it well. But this fruit always brings death.

Adventists are more solidly glued to Adam than most others since, they are bound to it by a doctrine which is inimical to their identity and purpose. Many in the Body still wade through a molasses swamp of good and evil because our natural inclination is to live in this realm. To the natural mind this dichotomy seems ‘natural’ and normal. But this is not the new and living way.

Large numbers believe Christianity is about being good – with Christ’s help. But the Kingdom of God is about life in God’s Son by the Spirit.

Unless we understand the difference between the Old and the New Testament and the meaning of the New Covenant we can never minister its love and authority. Nor can we meet the standards we set for ourselves – unless we adopt the practice of picking on some part of the law like the Sabbath, focusing on this one aspect and then persuading ourselves that we are righteous and whole because we are Sabbath-keepers. Trouble is, real righteousness is infinite. Paul states emphatically that if we remain looking for salvation in law, then for us Christ died for nothing, which means that we are under a curse and absorbed in self-effort which can only multiply death.

‘He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant–not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life’ 2 Cor 3.6 NIV.

The Lord once gave me a picture of Avondale College surrounded by an extensive cemetery that extended right out to the gates. The institution and those like it are founded on death! The gift of God is Jesus who is infinite life. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. When Jesus is our life this infinite life wells up in us in continual novelty and freshness. Crucified to self in Jesus we live a raised life, because we are filled with the power of the Resurrected One. Thus we have not a day dedicated to Jesus but a life that is His. Our re-creation and our rest is Jesus.

Further Reading: Hazel Holland, Ramone Romero, and Cherry Brandstater.

 

Keith Allen

Agreeing with what Jesus has done

Jesus is life in Himself. Those who live in Him will live completely and eternally. Nothing can be added or subtracted from Jesus. He is all sufficient and fills the universe with His Presence. There is no such thing as a Baptist Christian or an Adventist Christian. Christ is not divided. Jesus is one. He re-creates people to be one and draws people into Himself to make them one. Jesus heals us, draws us to Himself and together with each other because God is love.

You either live in Him or you don’t. Add anything or subtract anything from Jesus and you have created at best a sect and at worst a cult. Phrases such as ‘we as Adventists’ and ‘since I became an Adventist’  and ‘our perspectives on’ indicate that something is amiss.  This phraseology need not be used by those who are Christ’s. It does not have to be. Those who believe have a place in Him. They have the same place that Jesus had with His Father, which means that you and the Father are one. There is nothing more glorious than this.

Followers of Jesus find their life in Christ. Indeed He is their life because He manifests His light and righteousness through them. Jesus is either the righteousness of God in you or you are embroiled in the vain attempt to prove your righteousness to God. Nothing surpasses being in Jesus as a son/daughter and one with His loving embrace of the universe.

‘And the same one who descended is the one who ascended higher than all the heavens, so that he might fill the entire universe with himself’ Eph 4.10 NLT.

Jesus is your life and the life of the world. This is not always well known, even by Christians, not a few who think Jesus is an addition to their life. Jesus is the life and the light of the world. So why is the world in such chaos? It’s writhing and thrashing because people live in their own light and life. This is what is meant by living in the knowledge of good and evil. Living in this mind-set people can live ‘a good Christian life’ without ever representing the Kingdom of God. People can be moral and ethical yet powerless, blind and continually defeated. But to have Christ as our life is to reign as kings and priests today!

The Kingdom of God is the realm where Jesus reigns, where He is worshiped as Lord and lived in by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit in us and on us means that we are never orphans and always sons. It is by the Spirit that we can live in God and He in us. By the Spirit of Sonship we become the Kingdom of God.

Eternal life is Jesus. So is temporal life. The Kingdom of God is eternal life in you today and every day. It is Christ in you. The Body of Christ is those joined to Jesus and who are literally His life because they become who they are – new men and women in Jesus. This is the manifestation of Christ on earth, Christ in the work place, the kitchen and the nursery.

Live from the law and you will know perseverance but never glory. Live in the Spirit and you will reign as daughters and sons.

The Kingdom of God cannot be lived by planting the Old Testament in the New. In the Old Testament God lived in no one. He was with men and women of God and His anointing rested on some, but He did not live in any.

It was not until God became incarnate in Jesus that Jesus became incarnate in people. The latter occurred when the Spirit was poured out at Pentecost. Pentecost made possible much more than the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost achieves the reality of Christ in you. This is the mystery of the ages revealed in Jesus. Those who live in the Spirit of God are the sons of God.

‘And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ’ Eph 1.9 NIV.

Surely you have heard about the administration of God’s grace that was given to me for you, that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly’ Eph 3.2-3 NIV.

‘This message was kept secret for centuries and generations past, but now it has been revealed to God’s people’ Col 1.26 NLT.

‘To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory’ Col 1.27 NIV.

Keith Allen

The Mode is the Spirit

An exasperated Adventist pastor exclaimed to his son, ‘Why all this talk about Jesus!’ No doubt many Adventists would be offended if it were asserted that Adventism is not about Jesus. The truth is though, that Adventism is about Adventism in general, the Sabbath in particular and the law as a foundation for these retrograde beliefs. I say retrograde because Temple, Sabbath and Law ended at the cross. Christ as our life began at the resurrection and  became multiplied in people as the church at Pentecost. The church, His Body is the multiplication of Christ in people by the Holy Spirit.

The mode in the New Testament is the Spirit.

This is not to say that we now live in lawlessness. By living in Christ, we and the creation are made whole. We are aligned with the Father and made one with God in Jesus. All things are ‘brought together in Christ’ as Jesus becomes our life individually and collectively. The New Creation has one genesis: Christ in you. This is Christ in us individually and socially through us into the creation.

Lawlessness has two sources. It comes from those who rebel against Christ, refusing to aknowledge His Kingship. Lawlessness also comes from those who live in religion, law and performance. If we believe that the Sabbath is mandatory we live in law. The custodians of law had Jesus put to death. A law mentality is innately hypocritical because it can never achieve that which it espouses. It has no power to accomplish righteousness leaving adherents living in pretense, frustration and immaturity. In such a state we have no power to overcome sin, let alone appreciate genuine holiness. Should we insist on living from a law foundation we will inevitably find ourselves suffocating Jesus in general and putting Him to death in particular – that is wherever He is speaking through those in whom He lives. This is what the author of Hebrews meant by crucifying the Son of God anew.

In the Kingdom of God Jesus is the life-giving Spirit, the Law of the Spirit of Life and the embodiment of all righteousness. The law is not something beyond Jesus or separate from Him. It is His embrace that sustains all things, meaning that the universe finds it proper function in the Person of Jesus.

He is holiness and wholeness personified. But in Adventism Jesus is inferior to the law and a servant and minister to the law. According to the Desire of Ages Jesus is running about upholding the law. No friends He is not. Jesus is drawing attention to Himself as the Source of righteousness and life.

We remain stunted of being like the dwarves in C.S. Lewis’s Last Battle if we refuse the banquet of the Lord’s Table that delivers food that means we will never hunger again. The living bread that came down from heaven is Christ in us. This is real food than makes us more than just a human. It transforms us into those with the dignity and authority of the sons of God. This bread is always, fresh, pure and life-giving. It has power to overcome sin and guilt. It has supernatural strength to defeat every work of the devil. Unless we eat this bread we have no life in ourselves. But those who live in the law claim to be alive while demonstrating that they are dead.

‘Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me’ John 6.57 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