Neglected Kerygma -- Lecture 16

[Rebbe]

THE NEGLECTED KERYGMA OF CHRIST
a series of lecture essays on the biblical concept of a universal salvation in Christ

LECTURE SIXTEEN

Copyright © BRI/IMCF 2021 All Rights Reserved Worldwide by Les Aron Gosling, Messianic Lecturer (BRI/IMCF)

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Audio Lecture is now available for members: THE NEGLECTED KERYGMA OF CHRIST [16]: Lecture Sixteen

Billy Graham wrote, “Some mysteries have been fathomed by science. Others still bewilder mankind. This fact remains: All of the garnered wisdom of the ages is only a scratch on the surface of humanity’s search for the knowledge of the universe. For the most part, God retains His secrets, and man standing on his intellectual tiptoes can comprehend only a small fraction of the Lord’s doings. As the Bible says, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!” (Rom 11.33).

“This inability to fully comprehend the mysteries of God does not in any way curtail the Christian faith. On the contrary, it enhances our belief. We do not understand the intricate pattern of the stars in their courses, but we know that He who created them does, and that just as surely as He guides them, He is charting a safe course for us...

“Have you ever wondered about the tumultuous tide of evil in the world? How it overwhelms society, how it engulfs nations, how it infiltrates all races, how it devastates the individual, how it ruins the family and destroys the home?

“To read of the crime, injustice, intolerance, greed, deception and lust that plagues humanity is bewildering and perplexing. Our hearts are made heavy when we hear of broken homes, wasted lives and shattered hopes and dreams that are the product of evil in the world. 

“We see a principle of lawlessness, iniquity and sin in the world today. Dishonesty, licentiousness, murders, immorality and crime of every sort seem to plague all nations. Thoughtful persons are disturbed, wondering how people can be so wild, perverted and lawless.

“The mystery of lawlessness is the power unseen, unknown except by its effects, that is ever working in the world for evil. It is working against the law and will of God, corrupting what has been well done and well begun, causing misery in the natural world and in all that people do. We try to trace evil back to its origin, and we soon see that there is indeed a mysterious element to it...

“The Bible teaches that our sins will find us out, 'for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap' (Galatians 6:7). In this life, our sins will find us out in ruined character, broken homes, confused minds, disillusioned hearts and empty souls” (Decision Magazine, July 2, 2013).

EVERYONE enjoys a good mystery!

I certainly do! I find myself often researching biblical mysteries as well as associated issues involved in the uncovering of secrets regarding spacetime, neuroscience, creation, evolution, racial origins, alternative medicine, ecclesiastical history, ancient technologies and out-of-place-artifacts, photographic/video evidence purporting to support life after death, complex oceanic and earth issues, and not least the psychology of the workings of the human mind. I am always seeking to grasp the nature of creation in its balanced beauty and cruelty.

My expansive curiosity also pursues an esurient interest in crime thrillers constellating around “who dunnits.” I was early drawn to such authors as Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, John le Carre, John Grisham, Sapper (who created Bulldog Drummond), and Robert Bloch and the list goes on. I would often find myself (at such a young age) actually reading a book backwards – starting from the last chapter and working back to the introduction – in order to arrive at a proper conclusion as to motivational flow etc always looking for the weakness of an argument.

These days, when I seek to lose myself from the humdrum and naturally-stress-filled day-to-day existence, I watch one of my all-time favourite actors – James Spader – in the 8 Seasons American crime thriller The Blacklist – and I am only half-way through the 3rd season. I find myself, rightly or wrongly “glued to the screen” so please NO SPOILER ALERTS. I will no doubt be acutely disappointed when the series concludes with an ending that miserably fails to unfold an intelligent ascription to the great mystery: why is Raymond Reddington REALLY so attached to Elizabeth Keen?

Now, I mentioned at the start the phrase “biblical mysteries.” In A Guide to True Peace – which can be accessed (and should be accessed) on the IMCF Members Forum – we are encouraged to pursue “the true way to become purified from our many defilements” and this includes the necessity “to be instructed in [the] heavenly mysteries, to taste of the wine of the kingdom, and to partake of that bread which nourishes up unto everlasting life” (Preface).

THE MYSTERY OF GODLINESS
Assuredly, one of the great mysteries in the Bible is called “the mystery of godliness” (1 Tim 3.16). Paul nowhere explains what he means by this term. But we can know! For that mystery stands explained!

Make no mistake! It is nothing less than “godliness” AS human flesh. More than this, it is an awakening to the fundamental reality that God not only indwells Messiah's disciples BY HIS PRECIOUS HOLY SPIRIT but that – as the Scripture has said – we are GOD WEARING A MASK. You don't believe it? Do what Rav Shaul said and go look in a mirror. Of course, when we make such a remark as, “We are God wearing a mask” – we need to be extremely cautious as to our intended meaning. There are myriads of people on earth who literally believe we are literally God, the Creator. Such folk are out of their minds. God is God, but God IS reproducing Himself in those who are being created in the spiritual IMAGE of the Divine. Always bear this fact in mind.

In any event, Paul writes to the Greek Christians in the pagan city of Corinth...

“But we with unveiled face” – we've taken OFF the mask and what do we see? –
“beholding as in a mirror – THE GLORY OF THE LORD.”

The glory of God is looking back at us, not later in the resurrection, but NOW (2 Cor 3.18). We are the direct IMAGE of the living Creator GOD. We are the exact mirrored reflection of GOD. It is truly a mystery. In the world today there is a persistent taboo against knowing WHO we really are. But, when one realises his/her ONENESS with divinity he/she becomes a “new” man/woman (person). The “old” man/woman has passed away (Eph 2.11-22; 4.23,24; Col 3.10). The “new” man/woman (person) is renewed in knowledge by the renewing of the mind. And THAT knowledge to which Paul is specifically referring has reference to “the image of Him that created him [Adam]” (Col 3.10).

Remember that it was St. Theophilus who wrote “that a man, by keeping the directions of God, may receive from him immortality as a reward, AND BECOME GOD” (ad.Autol., ii, 27).

It was early church Father Clement of Alexandria who noted, “To be imperishable is to share in DIVINITY (to be GOD)” (Strom. v.10:63).

It was Hippolytus who stated, “Thy body shall be immortal and incorruptible as well as thy soul. FOR THOU HAST BECOME GOD. All the things that follow upon the divine nature God has promised to supply to thee, FOR THOU WAST DEIFIED in being born to immortality” (Philos x. 34).

And it was Athanasius (who really must be credited with giving us the Nicene Creed) who related that Christ “was not made man, and then became God, but he was God and became man AND THAT TO DEIFY US” (Dictionary of Religion & Ethics, 11, 703). He added, “By [Messiah's] death an immortality has reached us all... for he was made man THAT WE MIGHT BE MADE GOD” (ibid.,705). Again, with unequivocal conviction, “The Son of God became Man so that we might become God” (On the Incarnation of the Word 54.3; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 460).

Even Eusebius who served under the Emperor Constantine declared, “The Word of God [Christ] is now God as he had been man, in order TO DEIFY MANKIND TOGETHER WITH HIMSELF” (Demonst. iv. 14).

The biblical revelation states clearly enough that we shall “bear the image of the heavenly” (1 Cor 15.49). “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predetermine to be conformed to the IMAGE of his Son” (Rom 8.29).

None of this originated in the satanic “New Age” – the so-called “New Age” stole this truth from the Messianic Community (later to be called “the Church”). Even the phrase “New Age” was an outright theft from Christianity and counterfeited by them to distort God's Truth.

So... do we get the point? And what is this present ministry all about?

IMCF TEACHES OUR NEED FOR UNION WITH GOD
We are teaching people as an educational ministry about our essential UNION with God, emphasising the long-neglected Jewish thoughtform, pointing to the hidden knowledge of the LORD as comprehended by the BRI/IMCF student body (the adepts) in the UNITARY, non-dualistic view of creation. We are pointing our students to the UNITY OF THE DREAMER behind the dualistic “Dream,” concerning which we are all participants whether we wish to be or not.

It is when we connect in our realisation of WHO we are that we transcend the limitation of not knowing God. Intriguingly, the Greek original early “church” Fathers had this understanding – possessed this knowledge – and it is still available in ecclesiastical records today (particularly in the Ante-Nicene Fathers) but it became lost in the turbulent rise of, and horrendous persecutions by, Constantine's Catholic Church.

There can be no doubt that the Bible is filled with mysteries (Mt 13.11; 1 Cor 4.1; Rom 11.25; 1 Cor 15.51; 2 Thes 2.7; Rev 1.20; 17.5; Rom 16.25; Eph 1.9; 5.32; 6.19; Col 2.2). One of the great mysteries of the biblical revelation constellates around the notion that Paul informs us that Christ's disciples are in fact – the Messiah! And this does unquestionably involve a mystery! (see 1 Cor 2.7).

But there is another mystery we need to take a long healthy look at – Billy Graham spoke of it in biblical terms as “the mystery of lawlessness” (2 Thes 2.7).

THE MYSTERY OF LAWLESSNESS
I cannot count how many times over the decades I have been asked by Christians to explain why it is that God “allowed” and “permitted” such monumental evil to overwhelm the earth in innumerable ways, methods, and in such volume, as we have witnessed and which has been recorded in the tragic history of humankind.

God plainly states that He created evil to begin with. I did not say “sin.” I have written “evil.” Christians will not have it to be the case. But it is the candid WORD of God in Isaiah 45.7 where it is candidly enunciated by God Himself: “I create evil.” The word used by Isaiah the prophet is ra – evil, calamity, everything bad that can happen. When you point this FACT out to Christians, sadly they almost choke.

Rejecting God's Salvific purpose, plan and intention for the world, Christians have had to take refuge in creating fables to replace the plain Word of Almighty God – often resorting to a silly story of some perfect heavenly choir master called Lucifer who began to inwardly inflate with a sense of personal pride, and then rebelled against his Creator God. He fell, taking fully a third of the angelic hosts with him, and now he stalks the planet creating opportunities for sin and evil and anguish to prevail everywhere he treads.

Of course, there is no substance biblically for this horrid account which robs God's GLORY from our Creator and which indeed detracts from His Sovereignty and awesome superintendence of the planet (and frankly the entirety of the universe). In such a fallacious argument as put forward in fanciful stories of this ilk, God is virtually forced to do the only thing He can possibly do to salvage His original intention for the human race – and that is to have a contingency plan of providing His Son as a Saviour whom He “offers” to the world. Those who accept Christ as their Saviour will be saved, and others who fail to accomplish this are doomed to the eternal damnation of a fiery hell.

I have been stating publicly for well past four decades that from the turn of the third century CE, the Gentile “Christian community” (by and large universally) had got the design, goal and programme of God for humankind wrong. Certainly, there is no doubt that...

(1) It got the beginning of the biblical story wrong.

(2) It got the eschatological ending of the biblical story wrong.

(3) And it got the GRACIOUS biblical story-plot itself wrong.

Get these three points WRONG and you get the ENTIRE Salvation process and conclusion – WRONG.

In recent lectures I have pointed out the plain truth of the biblical record – that Adam did not “fall” – rather he was pushed. Eden was a virtual “set-up.” God had already planted in our “Original” – and in his female partner – two drives that can be enunciated as “the yetzer hara” (the evil inclination) and the “yetzer hatov” (the good inclination/impulse). John the apostle articulated the yetzer hara as categorised to be “the lust of the flesh,” “the lust of the eyes,” and “the pride of life.” All three aspects of this drive are located in human nature in the opposite of love... which is essentially lust.

God placed this drive in humanity in order for it to be overcome by His holy Spirit. Our GOAL is to become ONE WITH GOD IN EVERY WAY. Only by overcoming the yetzer hara can this be achieved as a consequence of building the CHARACTER (NATURE) OF OUR CREATOR.

BRI/IMCF MISSION
Now most of our students are well aware that I am a student of Jung. I make no apology for such a stand in my personal philosophical belief system. The psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung was a very capable student of the Bible. The Jungian philosophy embraces the biblical concept of God incarnating in human beings.

Consider some of his expressions about the Bible:

“Christians often ask why God does not speak to them, as he is believed to have done in former days. When I hear such questions, it always makes me think of the rabbi who was asked how it could be that God often showed himself to people in the olden days while nowadays nobody ever sees him. The rabbi replied: "Nowadays there is now longer anybody who can bow low enough."

“Man doesn’t only grow from within himself for he is also creative from within himself, The God becomes revealed in him. Human nature is little skilled in divinity; and therefore man fluctuates between too much and too little” (The Red Book, 253)

“I too was afraid, since we had forgotten that God is terrible. Christ taught: God is love. But you should know that love is also terrible” (The Red Book, 235)

“The spirit of this time of course allowed me to believe in my reason. He let me see myself in the image of a leader with ripe thoughts. But the spirit of the depths teaches me that I am a servant, in fact the servant of a child: This dictum was repugnant to me and I hated it. But I had to recognize and accept that my soul is a child and that my God in my soul is a child” (The Red Book, 234)

“The prophet loved God, and this sanctified him. But Salome did not love God, and this profaned her. But the prophet did not love Salome, and this profaned him” (The Red Book, 248)

“Now the Divine mind wants dialogue and man emerges to answer that need. The deity is straining for Self-knowledge and the noblest representatives of mankind have the burden of that divine urgency imposed on them” (Edward F. Edinger, The Creation of Consciousness: Jung's Myth for Modern Man, 1984, 56).

It is my personal belief that this ministry is on course in the PERFECT TIMING of God's revelation of His Salvific will for all humankind to be at last heard and largely acknowledged PRIOR to the second Advent of our Lord and Saviour Yeshua the promised Messiah. There is no doubt whatever that (in my own mind at least) “the Divine Mind wants dialogue” and is “straining” (as it has been from the beginning when God made Man in His own IMAGE) “for Self-knowledge and the noblest representatives of humankind” in the BRI/IMCF are gladdened and joyous to eagerly take that burden upon our own shoulders with a sense of “divine urgency” to get this GRACIOUS “Gospel of God's universal salvation in Christ” out to the world at large – using any and all means to accomplish this aim and goal.

SO... HERE'S THE QUESTION
If the world is in the mess it's in, and this is the creative plan, purpose and intention of God for Earthlings and the angels that serve humanity, from the very beginning, why did God place within human beings the negative drives, motivations, ambitions and the seed within that would take them astray from Him in the first place? (And recall my oft-repeated statement that it is highly difficult, if not impossible, to rescue glory for God out of the tragedies of life!)

The answer is so simple as to be easily overlooked.

STOP and THINK! God, the eternal always living and loving Creator, has ever only, and always, possessed a plan of SALVATION in the outworking of HisHer intentions for His ENTIRE creation. To think otherwise is absurd in the extreme. Yet billions of “Christians” actually believe that God was caught unexpectedly with a calamitous disaster in Eden involving our first parents and that He had to be reduced to providing a contingency plan in accord with His attempted working with human free will.

This is beyond absurd. It's utterly disgusting.

I have already taken pains to explore the nonsense of an Adamic “Fall.” Adam was pushed! Eve gave every indication of possessing the yetzer hara BEFORE Adam ate the fruit which she offered to him.

Again, STOP AND THINK a little more!

Without the consumption of that “fruit” God would NOT have any plan of SALVATION. God's very NATURE of SALVATION is an indication – along with His NAME (which means “Yehovah saves”) – that whatever was IN the MIND of God at this strategic moment in SpaceTime was already consumed to the “max” with a Godly intent of just that same EXPRESSIVE SALVIFIC WILL of God. God does not, and by Nature cannot, EXIST WITHOUT being SALVIFIC at each and every moment of His eternal existence! The character of our SALVIFIC GOD is what makes God – our SALVIFIC GOD.

Aberrant dogmatism in the thinking of the modern church-going Christian makes them entirely comfortable with the god made in his or her image. When the glorious light of the biblical revelation is shared with them it is not unusual that they hide their faces and RUN from its penetrating wholeness and potential healing power. They not only eagerly shy away from that revelation of love, they attempt to CLOSE – to “lock off” – any forthcoming intelligent thought as to even its possibility of being correct and they become at once “self-cursed.”

Let me explain something about God's secret intention that was revealed way back on Sinai to Moses. For centuries the truth has been obscured by translators who (I would like to believe) were unaware of their erroneous interlingual rendition of biblical Hebrew – which language incidentally has no reference to tenses (unlike Greek and English).

GOD'S SECRET INTENTION NO LONGER A MYSTERY
We find it written in the AV and in most other Bible versions that Yehovah very early in the Mosaic dispensation (or administration) “by no means clears the guilty.” In the AV (or KJV) “the guilty” appears in italics so we should read this as a red light about its actual rendering. Please take a good, hard look at Exodus 34.7 in your own Bible. It will most likely appear something like the following: “

“And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation.”

One notable Christian author admits, concerning the terms guilt and guilty, “Current theology is entirely too free with the term. 'I am a guilty sinner' seems a commendable confession, but it is contrary to the great truth of justification. Our translators introduced it into the argument of the Roman epistle at a most unfortunate juncture. After stopping the mouth of both Jews and Gentiles, Paul does not sentence them all as 'guilty before God' (Rom 3:19). The word is hupodikos, subject to the just verdict of God. What is the verdict? For us, who believe, it is 'not guilty!' We are acquitted, vindicated, justified. We were sinners, but when brought to the bar of God, His grace in Christ made us guiltless sinners. This is real justification. This truth alone is worth all we can do to make it known.”

Look closely at the verse with the italics removed. The forgiven and those not cleared are identical. They are the same group. Questions indeed arise! BUT, and this is vital for our understanding...

The English transliteration of the literal Hebrew stands as: “to make innocent not is making innocent.” The Hebrew rendered “clear” in the AV occurs about 4 times, but (with its root) is rendered elsewhere throughout the Hebrew Scriptures as “innocent” around 40 occasions. So a new reading of Ex 34.7 is imperative if we are to comprehend God's will in blinding the vast overwhelming majority on earth to His purposes and goals for the eventual salvation of humanity. Accordingly, we read:

“Yehovah, Yehovah! The Deity compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and of much kindness and truth, preserving kindness to the thousandth (generation), Who bears with depravity and trespass and sin, Who is not making innocent to make innocent, visiting the depravity of the fathers on the sons and on the son's sons, on the third and on the fourth (generation).”

To forcibly contend that the AV is more correct in its rendering of “that will by no means clear the guilty” is a direct, incontrovertible REJECTION of the Nature and character of God's Grace and compassion and love.

Writes Knoch (and again I must agree wholeheartedly with him in this matter), each one of us human beings “inherits the depravity of his ancestors. Adam's depravity did not die with him. Each parent transmits his failings to several succeeding generations.  This is in line with the... statement that 'Jehovah is not making them innocent”... These are remarkable statements that are to be incorporated into 'the name of Jehovah.' At first sight they seem in conflict with his compassion and kindness. Why does He not immediately make men innocent? Why does He shut them up to depravity? Because it is only in this condition that He can be gracious and compassionate and bear with their depravity and trespass and sin. If He is to be a Saviour they must be sinners.”

He continues, and at once realise that a sound mind (and even one who has the spirit of a sound mind), must observe the propriety of this matter: “The point that has been lost in all this is its temporary term.... If He is not making innocent it is in order to make innocent. He has a goal set before Him, which is the revelation of Himself” (as set forth in Ex 34.7) “...how necessary it is that there should be sinners to give exercise to His Grace. But all this is of no avail unless the compassion is exercised and the sinners are saved” (A.E. Knoch, All in All, 1978, 53).

The apostle Paul, some many centuries after Sinai, apprehended what Yehovah was revealing in Ex 34.7 in his articulation that God “is not making innocent to make innocent.” He echoes much the same in Romans 11.32. “For God has bound [Gk., imprisoned] all men over to disobedience [the Greek can also mean “unbelief”] so that he may have mercy on all.”

He goes on to explore more deeply this mysterious vision, much further, in Romans 8.

God's plan is ever, only and always a plan of salvation. Indeed, the Bible explains that Christ was slain from eternity, long before any planet Earth even existed. But before one can experience salvation one must of necessity recognise a need for salvation. In other words, and put somewhat crudely, you have to be lost before you can be found. You have to be dead before you can be given life. You must be a slave before you can be free. You must be in need of redemption prior to redemption. Paul grasped this understanding fully. He wrote,

“For the eager longing and earnest expectation of the creation waits for the revelation (revealing and manifestation) of the sons of God” (Romans 8.19-23). That will be at the Advent of Our Lord. But can we accept his next statement? “For the creation was made subject to corruption, decay and vanity – but NOT WILLINGLY – but by REASON.”

Does Paul say the creation was made this way “by sin”? No, he most certainly doesn't. “By choice”? No, the creation wasn't “willing” to go along with it for no free choice was permitted. He writes “by reason.” Continuing, “by REASON of Him who has subjected the same in hope. Because the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage and slavery of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the sons of God. For we know that the entire creation groans and travails in pain together until now. And not only the creation, but ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the Sonship, the deliverance and redemption of our body.”

What an astounding revelation! Paul tells us that the entire creation – the world as it is now – entered a condition of entropy – slavery, the bondage of decay, at the hands of God as the Subjector. He adds that it had absolutely no say in the matter. “Not willingly!” But according to the actual “reason” or “reasoning” of God.

What was God's REASON for subjugating, imprisoning, the Earth in unbelief and disobedience?

So that He, in His always creative mysterious wisdom, could SAVE ALL and bring it ALL back into Himself as Paul articulates in Colossians 1.15-22,25-29.

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of ALL creation; for in him ALL things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—ALL things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before ALL things, and in him ALL things hold together. He is the head of the body, the Messianic Community; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him ALL the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself ALL things, whether on earth or in the heavens, by making peace through the blood of his cross. And you who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him” …

Continuing from v25 concerning the Gospel:

“I became its servant according to God’s commission that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the MYSTERY that has been hidden throughout the ages and generations but has now been revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this MYSTERY, which is Christ among you, the hope of glory. It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in ALL wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil and struggle with ALL the energy that he powerfully inspires within me.”

I may say the same. May my words – and yours as they are ignited in your spirit – also fulfil our commission to restore the lost Jewish thoughtform to the biblical revelation at this time, and along with that same restoration may God bless the restitution of the original Gospel of GRACE which is visualised by God as being promulgated to the world immediately before the second coming of Our Lord Yeshua.

And remember the words of Ann Landers as they are most appropriate to the occasion.

“The Lord gave us two ends – one to sit on and the other to think with. Success depends on which one we use the most.”

THIS CONCLUDES THE CURRENT LECTURE