What really happened at the fall and The Day of our Atonement

Transcription

1 What really happened at the fall and The Day of our Atonement The author would like to preface this article by stating that he believes in the preeminence and sovereignty of God. It is his conviction that everything that has ever happened in, or out of this universe has only happened in accordance with the Father s purposes. He wants no misunderstanding on this point, and having stated this, let s begin. When confronted with a patient afflicted with a serious disease, the first step a doctor must take is to endeavor to correctly pinpoint the exact nature of the disease; to identify exactly which disease is causing the illness in his patient. This is sometimes a long and arduous process requiring many tests and sometimes great pain to the patient. Correct and accurate diagnosis is a highly critical issue, an issue that as our bodies age, affects us all. It has been said that doctors, through misdiagnosis and misuse of prescription drugs are the leading cause of death in this country, that they kill as many as five hundred thousand people a year in this country alone. To many of us this is a frightening thought... Now while these numbers may or may not be true, I submit to you that the whole premise is simply not true. Even if doctors do kill this many people every year in this country alone, they are not the leading cause of death... What is? We will find the answer before the end of this discourse, but the question brings us to a very important point: What is the nature of the malady that afflicts man as a whole? What is the source of all our diseases? Of our wars? Of our continual social and physical disorders? We know there is a malady. There is something causing the diseases we battle, and we know that in the beginning we did not die. So what caused us to begin dying? Since whatever truly happened to Adam at the fall caused humanity to begin to die, and to war, and to be in a continual state of disorder, a correct diagnosis and exact nature of this situation would seem to be of the utmost importance. Especially since a cure to our affliction will not be obtained without a correct assessment of the true nature of the problem.

2 2 There has been a recent attempt to explain the nature of the ailment that afflicts humanity as sleep walking. The idea that has been put forth and received by many, is that in Genesis, the Lord God put Adam to sleep, but it never says God woke him up. Consequently, since we re sleep walking, we ve forgotten our identity and that we proceeded out of the Father. We ve forgotten we re the Sons of God, and that we re perfect. All we need to do is to realize who we really are and act in accordance with that realization. By hope (not faith, for the nature of what is being taught in this instance is not faith, its hope) we ll appropriate who we are and realize our Godlikeness. What is being taught is that the whole thing, the whole sordid history of mankind, all the wars, poverty, pain, abortion, and slavery has just been a dream. We re all just asleep!!! The cure to the whole thing is just to realize and believe who we are. There s nothing more to it. By faith (really hope) one day we ll wake up, and quit living in our dream world. We ll finally understand who we are. The lights will come on, and everyone will simply see. There s only one problem with this idea, and we must call it an idea, for it is not a revelation, a revelation being the recognition of truth. It s simply not true. Little of the available evidence in scripture, and none of the evidence outside scripture support this conclusion. Man is not sleepwalking, or in a dream world. Unfortunately, the truth of our situation and the malady that afflicts mankind is far less glamorous, and far more real than the mystical and metaphysical figment of sleep walking in a dream world. So what is the true nature of the problem? Subjectivity! What is subjectivity? Subjectivity is the leading cause of death since Adam and Eve. This malady has killed every man, woman and child ever born with the exception of two that we know of: Enoch and Elijah. So we ask the question again: What is subjectivity? To find an answer to this most important and pressing question let s go back to the book of Genesis and the story of the fall.

3 3 Genesis 3:1(ESV) He (the serpent) said to the woman, did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. Reading the story, we notice what Eve related to the serpent is not exactly what God told Adam about the tree in the center of the garden. What scripture relates is that God only told Adam not to eat of the tree. He never said anything about touching it. This is a minor point, but it does give one some insight into the relationship between Adam and his wife. The important point of the story is what we come to next: Verse 4: But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God... Was the serpent lying to Eve here? Of course he was, for he is the father of lies. In this case however, there was actually some truth in what he said to her; a horribly twisted truth. For as we know that s the nature of the most effective lies. They are horribly twisted truth. What happened to Adam after he ate was exactly what the serpent promised to Eve. He became like God in only one way, but in the most twisted, horrible way possible. God sees Himself as the center of all things, because as Creator, Father, and God, He is. All things revolve around Him. When Adam ate of the tree in the center of the garden, he began to see himself as the god of his own universe. He literally became like God in the fact that he began to see himself as the center of all things. He became self-centered. In his paradigm and perspective he became the center of all things. This is subjectivity : The paradigm of seeing ourselves as the god of our own universe. It was born at the fall! It is the paradigm of believing that TRUTH and reality are subject to the perception and will of the individual;

4 4 That we are a god, and we will bend the universe to the way we see it and to our desires. This is why we experience deep frustration when things don t go the way we expect. We have created an alternate reality by expectations that do not line up with the way things really are. In our minds, we have the way things should be according to our desires, and what we think is wrong and right rather than recognizing the sovereignty of God in every situation. There is only one truth, one true perspective, God s perspective. His paradigm: objectivity. When we ponder this, we see that in our journey through life, our walk, He is revealing to us the picture from His perspective. He is revealing His truth, His paradigm. When He is finished with our paradigms, once again He will be the center of all things. If we love the truth more than any other thing, we will begin to walk out of the paradigm of subjectivity and into His. We ll find true objectivity. Genesis 3:9 (ESV) But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, Where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and hid myself. In speaking of the nakedness he felt, I believe Adam was speaking of far more than the nakedness of his physical body. He was also speaking of the blindness he felt. This is why he was afraid. Now the center of his own universe, he could no longer see himself the way God saw Him or see through God s eyes. HE COULD NO LONGER SEE HIS TRUE SIGNIFICANCE. He was blind to the Father s perspective and no longer felt emotionally and spiritually clothed by the Love of the Father. As a result, he felt a terrible nakedness and fear. Understanding this gives us a window into the true nature of fear. The fall of man is when fear was born. In reality there is only one fear afflicting mankind: the fear of the unknown. Man cannot see things from the Father s perspective, the one true perspective. His perspective is the essence of the unknown. Men fear the Father because they don t know Him. How can we be sure that this is what actually happened at the fall, what s our evidence?

5 5 Well to begin with, one of the first things Adam noticed, with his paradigm of being the center of all things, was that he was physically naked. Why would one suddenly realize they were physically naked, something they had always been, unless they suddenly become selfconscious, and self-centered? Secondly, let s talk about needs. One of the main things Adam lost at the time of the fall was the understanding of his true significance. When we look back in history and around in the world today, we see that the primary issue people have, the primary emotional need almost all people are seeking to meet, is the need for personal significance. Almost all of man s pursuits and endeavors can be traced back to an effort to meet this need. If one takes the time to look as a student of human nature and ponders all we see around us, we find ample evidence outside scripture for what happened at the fall. Now, let s go back to scripture: Isaiah 14:12 (ESV) How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star; son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low! You said in you heart, I will ascend to heaven, above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of the assembly in the far reaches of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High. But you are brought down to Sheol, to the far reaches of the pit. Those that see you will stare at you and ponder over you: Is this the man who made the earth tremble...? Some translations of this passage use the name Lucifer, instead of Day Star, but the actual meaning of Lucifer is day star, or possibly shining one. Looking in the Strong s we see that the name Lucifer was only used once in all of scripture, in this passage. In times past, students of scripture thought this was a passage describing how Satan was thrown from heaven because of pride.

6 6 In context, with the reality of what happened on earth during the fall, this passage has to be referring to Adam, otherwise the scripture would never have said, is this the man who made the nations tremble. We all know that Satan is not a man. Adam was the man who made the earth tremble by his decision. The whole order of life on earth was thrown into disorganization, and decay began. This was not the serpent. He only seduced Eve. Adam s choice is what caused the fall of man. When we compare the two passages in Genesis and Isaiah, and consider the evidence outside of scripture, we are provided with a very precise picture of exactly what happened at the fall. In Genesis, Serpent to Eve: You will become like God... We know that while Eve was deceived, Adam made a conscious choice to join his wife and go against the commandment of God. Isaiah: I will make myself like the Most High. Adam, in making a conscious choice, was in essence saying; I will make myself the god of my own universe. I will make myself like the Most High. I will become the center of all things. Isaiah: I will set my throne on high... We also know the throne of God should be, in our hearts and minds, but instead fallen man resides there, especially in our minds. Isaiah: But you are brought down to Sheol... What happened when Adam fell? We began to die. The earth became the common grave. What is death? Decay... Stop to think for a moment. Where does anything decay but on earth, in this material existence? The Apostle Paul said to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Does anything die (decay) outside of our material existence? The answer is no. This makes earth, our existence, the realm of death. We all live in the realm of death, Sheol, in the far reaches of the pit. This understanding of what death is also brings new meaning to the scripture, the dead in Christ shall rise first and then the judgment...but we will save that discussion for another time.

7 7 So there we have it, the case for subjectivity as the all time leading cause of death. The source of all evil, wars, continual state of disorder, and of every woe and ill that besets humanity. So what s the cure? How do we get out of this paradigm of subjectivity? How do we get out of being self-centered? How do we find our Father s paradigm of true objectivity? Ready for the answer? It s far simpler than any of us have ever thought. It s so simple it s mostly overlooked. Here it is: Begin to love the TRUTH more than any other thing including yourself. If you take this simple but extraordinary step, you ll find yourself walking out of self-centeredness and subjectivity, and into objectivity and truth. You will find yourself becoming free, even and especially from yourself. You ll begin to have an ear for the truth: it will ring. You ll find yourself focused on the truth of what is said and not the source. You ll be able to hear the truth, even if it comes out of the mouth of a donkey. Why is beginning to love the Truth more than any other thing the only way to reverse what happened at the fall? Because loving the Truth is the only way to deal with the issue of pride and defensiveness in the human heart. If we re focused on the truth, if we desire it more than anything else, our defensiveness will be gone. The need to protect ourselves will be gone. Pride, stubbornness, exerting self-will, and being right will no longer be the issue. WE will no longer be the issue, the truth is the issue. How does all this relate to the Day of our Atonement? The Day of our Atonement is when we re married to our Husband, the Spirit of Truth. He who is our first Love!!! This Day will be the marriage supper of the Lamb. Who is the Lamb? He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. This is the Day when we will say we are the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and He will become the firstborn among many brethren.

8 8 This will be the Day of the fullness of our manifestation as the Sons of Promise. We will step forth in purity, delivered from the womb of our affliction. This Day we become part of the pure fire of intense TRUTH that burns away every last impurity. Our God is a consuming fire. Jesus said, If you ve seen me, you ve seen the Father. We will be perfected, having His Spirit, Nature, and Mind. The path of all who share our calling and purpose is a reflection of the path of Christ. Hebrews 5:7 In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death and was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all those who obey him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. Are we learning obedience through what we suffer? Let s ask ourselves for a moment...what has the Father been revealing to us in the hardships and trials we ve suffered? He has been revealing the truth about what s on the inside of us, and the truth about Himself. He has been giving us a clear and objective picture of the truth from His perspective. Once we understand, do we continue to walk in the truth revealed to us? You see, learning obedience through the things we suffer has to do with understanding the truth and then walking in the truth that we have come to know. This is the very same path Jesus took. Learning obedience through what He suffered. Is the path of Christ a path we can all follow? Can we be made perfect as He was made perfect? Absolutely! We can follow in His footsteps, for He wasn t perfect to begin with; He was made perfect. But how can this be? We know He was without sin, but how can one be less than perfect and without sin at the same time? This would have to mean that being less than perfect is not a sin. Sin would have to be redefined... If all this is true, what is sin? These are the questions we should be asking (especially those of us who are called to the priesthood) if we are ever to have any true understanding of these matters. However, it s not our purpose to answer these questions here, but to demonstrate that coming into union with the truth (objectivity) will reverse what happened at the fall and we ll find our way back to life.

9 9 You see, Jesus was pure of heart. The pure in heart shall see God. The only way to be pure of heart is to love the truth more than any other thing including yourself. This is the only way to deal with the issue of pride in the human heart. And it s the only way to follow the trail Jesus blazed and become His Christ, His corporate body of anointed ones. Revelation 2:1(NIV) To the angel of the church in Ephesus write:... Yet I hold this against you: you have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lamp stand from its place... What things did we do at first? We cried out for and sought the truth. What else do we see in this passage? The church at Ephesus had forsaken its first love... For those of us who have come out of the structured church, what did we come out in search of? Truth!!! The truth has been our first love, and the Spirit of Truth has been our guide and shepherd. So we see that the truth has been our first love; how could we lose it? What could we possibly begin to love instead of truth? How about love itself, or our idea of love? When we were first enlightened to understand the nature of the love the Father extended to all men and that the sacrifice of Christ was for all men, we, for the first time could actually love our neighbor. We began to love all men, because we understood for the first time that God loved all men. That Christ died because God so loved the world, not God so loved the world because Christ died, so we began to love... but it didn t end there. Some of us unconsciously began to reason, I know God is love, He loves every man and He is going to reconcile all men to Him and be all in all, therefore, to love love is to love God. true. Once again there s only one problem with this idea: it s simply not

10 10 You see, we could not first begin to truly love until we had a revelation of God s love. Then, we ourselves were able to begin loving. What came first was an increase in our Faith. Faith first (an increase in our understanding of what is true) and then love. Losing our first love is to lose our love for the truth and to begin to love our idea of love instead. You see, we must press on to the perfection of our faith, our pursuit of truth until we are married to our bridegroom, the Spirit of Truth. This is the meaning of; Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Yes, God is Love, but a true understanding of who He is will only come when we come into perfect union with the truth. Until then, we only have our idea of who He (Love) is. When we have fully lost our first love, we then become the church of Laodicea. We become neither cold nor hot, but lukewarm. This is because in loving our idea of love, we lose our passion and fire for the truth. We don t want to make anybody uncomfortable, it s all about love, not love really, but acceptance. Anything anybody wants to drag to the table, any idea, true or not, we ll listen politely, because not to listen or to point out why what they re saying is obviously not true would just not be love. There is no fire or passion. On the opposite end of this, the cold part, a person could be cold toward you because they believe what your saying is not true. Maybe they just can t see it. Either way, a person is cold or hot because they care about the truth. After we ve stayed in the state of having lost our first love long enough, we then become the church of Thyatira: Revelation 2:20 But I have this against you that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice sexual immorality and to eat food offered to idols... What is sexual immorality in the natural? Sexual immorality is a shallow expression of physical love outside the context of a marriage. In this case, what marriage? Us, those of us called to the royal Melchizedek priesthood, the holy nation, the sons of God, coming into union with our Bridegroom, the Spirit of Truth. That marriage! The marriage supper of the Lamb! The Day of our Atonement (at-one-ment)!

11 11 The doctrine of loving our idea of what we now understand love to be is the doctrine of Jezebel, and the words of that doctrine is the food offered to idols. It tries to control and manipulate those who would give a clear message of the truth by saying it isn t expressing love. Jezebel was and is a control freak, a manipulator, and she has no interest in the truth. Quite the opposite! We must realize that to love our idea of love is not to love the Father who is the real thing. The idea of love in this case is an idol because we don t fully know Him yet. A true knowing will come on the day of our Atonement. Our God and Father is a consuming fire, and such is the nature of the Father s love that all will come to the knowledge of the truth. Those willing to choose lies and the dark over truth and the light are subject to the wrath of the Father which is His irresistible desire that all shall know the truth. That unquenchable fire that will burn away every vestige of darkness and subjectivity. Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess the Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Back to the doctrine of Jezebel: Verse:22 Behold I will throw her (Jezebel) onto a (sick)bed, and those who commit adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation, unless they repent of her works, and I will strike her children dead... Who or what are the children of this doctrine? Her children are the movements that declare that there is no absolute truth; everything anyone believes has merit, no matter what the source. Bring it all to the table, we ll have a feast. We can all just pick and choose what we like from what s offered. The most important thing is that we just find unity and all express our love and acceptance for one another. These movements have no future, they ll all die, because in the end all that stands is truth. He (Truth) will kill them.

12 12 Finishing verse:22...and all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart and I will give each of you as your works deserve... What is He searching mind and heart for? For the truth. For His laws written on minds and hearts. He s searching for His five wise virgins who have bought oil to keep their lamps lit. What s the oil? Our love and passion for truth. The truth is the flame that lights the way. We ll be able to see when the Bridegroom comes. The five foolish virgins? They ve run out of oil. No love for the truth and no time to buy any. Is there a balance to all this talk about loving truth? How can we express love if all we do is go around offending people with the truth? Here is the balance: In our personal walk, we should always seek the truth and the perfection of our faith. There can be no balance to this...it s either everything or nothing. In our relationships with others however, we must follow the example of the Apostle Paul: I Corinthians 2:2 For I decided to know nothing among you except for Christ and him crucified... What is he saying here? Well, he was with babes, so he fellowshipped with them on their level of understanding. How can we draw this conclusion from the beginning of this passage? We can t, but if we go on to read we see this: Verse: 6 Yet among the mature, we do impart wisdom... So this is our example. We do not run around clubbing people in the head with deeper truth. We don t do this because we can only plant seeds as we re given opportunity. Some plant, some water, but God gives the increase. We can t take any credit for the increase, the glory all belongs to Him. We only relate to people on the measure of faith they ve been given. Does this mean we have to validate what they re saying, and what they believe as truth? Absolutely not!!!

13 13 Especially if they re teaching and misleading others. We have a responsibility to gently seek to correct them and to point why what they re saying is not true. This brings us back to the subject of love. What is love? More to the point what is Agape love? For as we know, Agape love is the love of the Father. Agape love is simply this: unconditional validation. What does this mean? It means that we do not send anybody to an eternal hell in our minds even if they re blind to the truth because the moment we do, we condemn them and an attitude of judgment is what s communicated. We violate the laws (principles) of love and justice that state we are all equal. The Father has bound all to disobedience that He might have mercy on all (Romans 11:32). So nobody is going to perish in eternal flames. Does this mean we have to validate what they believe as true? Once again, absolutely not!!!. Will they be offended by the fact that we won t validate what they re saying and teaching as true? Absolutely!!! Does this mean we re not acting in Agape love, the love of the Father? No, quite the contrary, that s exactly the kind of love we re operating in, for because of His love, all will come to know the truth. But if we re operating in love, why will they be offended? For this reason: they don t understand that what they re saying and teaching is not them. They don t know who they are, therefore their pet doctrine and dogma become who they are. In their minds, if you invalidate the dogma, you ve invalidated them. Is this true? No! The problem is in their hearts and minds. They re not pure, for remember, the pure in heart shall see God. He is everlasting truth. So if they ve fixated on a lie, it s because they don t love the truth more than any other thing. They love themselves. They re subjective and have issues of personal significance. They suffer from the malady that has afflicted mankind since the fall and this brings us full circle, so we can end here.

14 14 Becoming god of his own universe and blind to the truth, man began to die. The paradigm of subjectivity is being at the center of our own universe. Subjectivity is the essence of the carnal mind of man and this is what happened at the fall: man lost the mind of Christ and gained the carnal mind of his own. Beginning from this moment forward to love the truth more than any other thing including ourselves, we ll begin to reverse the process. Then, on the Day of our Atonement, the day when we come into perfect union with the TRUTH; this will be the Day when we truly begin to live. M.A. Houk Anyone who would like to respond to this writing can do so at