Before you begin your Bible study, as a believer
in the Lord Jesus Christ, be sure you have named your sins privately to God the
Father.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to
forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
(Known, Unknown and Forgotten sins) (1Jn 1:9)
You will then be in fellowship with God, Filled with the
Holy Spirit and ready to learn Truth from the Word of God.
"God is spirit, and those who worship Him
must worship in Spirit and Truth," (Joh 4:24)
Reversionism
TECHNICAL CATEGORIES OF TRUTH
Vocabulary is absolutely essential to all thought: you
cannot think without words! Vocabulary
may be classified as either technical or non-technical, but by definition all
categorical subjects are technical. Every occupation or professional sphere of
life — medicine, philosophy, law, engineering, music, art, science, military —
requires its own technical language. Every invention, every scientific or
technological advance originated in a specialized field and necessitated the
formation of new terminology.
The same principle is true in the categorical study of Bible
Truth. It is impossible to advance in the knowledge of the Word without the
development and use of descriptive categories from a technical vocabulary. Yet,
when confronted with unfamiliar nomenclature, many believers immediately
criticize or reject this terminology, either because it is new to them or
because they fail to understand it. It must be remembered that much of the
Biblical expository teaching today reflects the stylized and limited
expressions of Reformed Theology, which date back to the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, and which may well have had the same unfavorable reception
then.
Because of the philological changes in the English
language, many of these terms have since become meaningless, and there has been
little attempt, perhaps even a lack of courage, to replace the traditional
terms or to establish suitable theological designations that relate to the
contemporary mind. It has been one of the aims
of this ministry to take up the slack in this respect and to develop a
meaningful technical vocabulary with which to expedite categorical teaching.
Throughout
this book, I will refer to technical categories of Bible Truth which are basic
to the study of reversionism. To comprehend what I am
teaching; you must become familiar with these specialized terms. If you
have ever been told that you can advance Spiritually simply by reading a
chapter a day from the Bible, you have been completely misled. No believer is
capable of completely understanding the Word of God by reading the King James
or any other version! If you were competent to interpret the Word on your own,
there would have been no necessity for the Spiritual gift of pastor-teacher.
Both the communication of the content of the Scriptures by the pastor and the
assimilation of Truth by the positive, Spirit-filled believer are a necessity
for Spiritual comprehension and growth. I have designated the mechanics that
lead to this objective as “Operation Z”
OPERATION Z
In grace, God has provided the means by which every believer
can understand the whole realm of Scripture and advance to Spiritual maturity,
regardless of education or human IQ. As in any learning situation,
however, the student must begin with the simple precepts and develop a frame of
reference and vocabulary before he attempts to assimilate the more complex
Truths. Failure to comprehend a Truth often indicates a lack of the necessary
background or vocabulary to grasp its significance. All
Biblical Truths are meant to be understood; however, in any given passage there
may be “addition,” “number theory,” “geometry” and “calculus,” which must be
mastered before the believer can fully-comprehend the “equation” of the
passage. The Divine Plan is so designed that you learn all of these
Truths precept by precept through, Operation Z. (Ecc
7:27)
When, by the
filling of the Spirit, you take in Truth on a daily basis through exegetical,
categorical and isagogic teaching, ICE. God the Holy Spirit makes this
information understandable.
God has
supplied us with everything for learning His Word: The completed canon of
Scripture, a pastor-teacher, books, the MP3 player, the DVD player and now the
Computer, the filling of the Holy Spirit, rebound, (1Jn
1:9) the human soul, the human spirit, physical life, Spiritual life
and protection in the devil’s world. (Isa 41:13)
These grace provisions are part of the grace apparatus for perception, which is
"Operation Z" To summarize, the believer filled with the Holy Spirit, (1Co 4:20) concentrates on the
pastor’s message, resulting in gnosis, “Knowledge,”
in the mentality of the soul. The mentality has
two parts: the human spirit or right lobe,
God's Knowledge, and the kardia, “heart.” or left lobe, human
knowledge. (Jer
17:9) And
is the home of gnosis; the right lobe
is the repository of epignosis, “Full
Knowledge.” (Eph 3:19) Gnosis in the left lobe is receptive
comprehension: "academic knowledge" which is not usable for application in the Spiritual life.
A believer may be able to quote many verses or talk at length about many
Biblical subjects, but if his knowledge is only gnosis, it is not edifying. Academic arrogance can exist in
theology as easily as in any other field of learning. (1Co 1:19-21; 1Co
2:14; 1Co 3:19-20; 1Co 8:1) If Truth is
not believed, or not understood or not used, it is removed! (Mat 13:19-23;
Luk 8:11-15) The
application of gnosis doctrine is
misapplication, and the Word misapplied generates legalism, inflexibility,
insensitivity, and intolerance, pride and arrogance. (Heb 3:12; Heb 4:2)
The believer clearly perceives a point of doctrine
and now faces the issue of faith: does he, or
does he not believe what he has learned? (Pro
3:5-6; Mat 7:7-11) If he believes: that Truth is transferred to the right lobe
and becomes Spiritual Thoughts and
Spiritual Words! (1Co 2:13) By means of
faith, it becomes genuine understanding of Divine Truth. (1Co 4:20) Only God's Thinking can
be applied as Spiritual Wisdom and Spiritual common sense. (2Co 10:5) Epignosis is also
the building material for the edification complex, (The Temple) of the soul. (1Co 3:10-14) The process of transferring the Truth from the heart to the
spirit is faith-perception. Truth always has the merit; we who believe do not!
According to
the grace of God which was given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a
foundation, and another is building on it. But each man must be careful how he
builds on it. For no man can lay a foundation other
than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. (Salvation) Now if any man
builds on the foundation (Growth to maturity)
with gold, silver, precious stones, (God's Thoughts)
wood, hay, straw, (Satanic and human thoughts) each
man's work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be
revealed with fire, (Mar 9:49) and the
fire itself will test the quality of each man's work. If
any man's work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. (1Co 3:10-14)
REBOUND, RECEPTION, RETENTION, RECALL, RESIST SINNING,
REPEAT!
According to, (Jas 1:22) you are at this point a “hearer of the
Word” only. You may be able to recite all the reasons for the Church Age, and
you may know every characteristic of the Millennium, but
as long as this knowledge remains in the staging area of the soul as objective information only, it
has no real value to your Spiritual growth or application to experience.
To be usable toward Spiritual maturity, Truth must be
transferred by faith into the human spirit where it is converted into Spiritual Thinking.
While the
meaning of epignosis (Spiritual
Thinking) is generally said to be “full knowledge,” this word actually becomes
a descriptive technical designation for a concept or a category. Formed from two Greek words — epi, “over” or “beyond,” and gnosis, “knowledge” — “over or beyond
knowledge” is Truth that is understood and
believed and has therefore been transferred by faith to be processed in the
human spirit. (1Co 2:12) Epignosis is the building material for the construction of the
“edification complex” (Temple) in the soul. From the human spirit, Truth is also
cycled into the right lobe to enter the frame of reference with its memory
center; here, the application of Truth actually begins.
As epignosis Truth filters from the frame
of reference into the conscience, Divine norms and standards accumulate. The
vocabulary, from which concepts are formed, plus the norms and standards of
Truth, shape the Divine viewpoint of life and fulfill the principle of “bringing every thought into captivity for Christ.” (2Co 10:5) At this
stage, you possess wisdom the application of Truth to experience. You now
become a “doer of the Word”!
EDIFICATION COMPLEX OF THE SOUL
In compliance
with the command to “grow in grace, (Fellowship) and in the knowledge
(Thinking) of our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ,” (2Pe 3:18) the first objective
of the Christian life is the construction of the edification complex in the
soul. (ECS) I have coined this term from the literal meaning of “edification”
in the Greek. A compound word composed of the noun oikos, which means a “house” or “structure,” and the verb demo, “to
build” or “to erect,” oikodemos describes an immaterial “Temple” constructed of Truth in
the soul of a mature believer! (Heb 13:10)
From the
foundation of Spiritual Thoughts in
the human spirit, a five-story superstructure is erected in the soul: (1) Grace
orientation, (The proper perspective of your place and purpose in the Plan of
God) (2) Mastery of the details of life, (The right scale of values regarding
materialistic things) (3) Capacity to love, (Personal love toward God) and (4)
A relaxed mental attitude, (Impersonal love; which is freedom from mental sins
and a stabilized attitude toward other members of the human race) (5) Inner
happiness (Termed “plus-H,” or sharing God’s happiness: a total spectrum of
happiness which is not dependent upon things, circumstances or people) These five “floors” form the inner structure that
characterizes a mature believer. (Eph 4:13-14)
Truth cannot be applied to its optimum capacity apart from
the edification complex in the soul and the resultant Spiritual maturity. This
principle is verified in, (Rom 15:2; 1Co 14:12; Eph 4:29)
where the edification of the Church, that is, believers with Truth in their
souls, is stated as the supreme goal in the Christian life. Constructed through
the function of Operation Z, to furnish the believer with stability for every
circumstance in life, the ECS becomes the backbone of the soul and the bridge
to Maximum Spiritual maturity.
The Adult Spiritual life
The moment
you trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation, you become a member of the
royal family of God forever, (Gal 3:26)
and you immediately advance from “saving grace”
into that phase of the Christian life which I call “logistical
grace” — the means by which God protects you and keeps you alive in the
devil’s world. (2Pe 1:3) This is God’s provision of the temporal necessities such as
food, shelter, clothing, air to breathe, and transportation, as well as the
Spiritual requirements for assimilating Truth. These
include the church as a classroom, or the computer, CD, MP3, etc. The Bible as
the textbook, and a pastor to study and teach the Word of God. Every item of logistical grace is supplied so that you can
move into that greater sphere of grace, the adult Spiritual life and the mature
Spiritual life.
Although a completed edification complex indicates
Spiritual maturity, it does not indicate that you have once and for all
“arrived.” You never stand still in the Christian life! Either you
progress into ultra-maturity and beyond, or you begin to retrogress into
reversionism, depending on whether or not you continue to function under
Operation Z. As the initial stage of maturity beyond the edification complex
and as the tactical victory of the angelic conflict, the mature status is the
normal Christian life, the normal exercise of the believer’s royal priesthood,
and the place of glorifying God. The nomenclature is derived from the literal
Greek of (Jas 4:6) “But He gives greater grace [Maturity]”
The believer who continues to progress beyond maturity will
pass through “no-man’s-land,” a period of intense pressures and rigorous testing, before he reaches maximum maturity, the
most advanced stage of Spiritual growth.
This status is characterized by continual maximum
satanic and human opposition. But because the
ultra-mature believer is totally occupied with Christ, these concentrated
cosmic pressures only serve to intensify his happiness. The mantle of
opposition is offset by Divine blessing! The
ultra-mature believer not only glorifies God but pleases Him as well. (Pro 29:3)
ADJUSTMENT TO THE JUSTICE OF GOD
The essence of God is the key to all blessing. His
integrity, often called His holiness, is composed of two attributes from the
essence of God — righteousness and justice;
righteousness as the principle motivation of His integrity, justice as the function. What
the righteousness of God demands, justice
executes. Omnipotence makes it possible for the justice of God to
provide both blessing and cursing, but God’s essence cannot be compromised.
God’s righteousness must be satisfied, therefore, His justice must curse sinful
man. In order for God to bless us through grace, we
must adjust to His justice first by believing in Jesus Christ and thereby
receiving the imputation of God’s righteousness. (Rom 3:22)
By its very
definition, justice is fairness; therefore, since we cannot adjust to God’s
justice on the basis of our own merit or works, God
always makes it possible for us to adjust on the basis of His merit. This provision is threefold: the instantaneous adjustments
of salvation and rebound, and the gradual adjustment of maturity or Spiritual
growth.
The crowning
demonstration of God’s justice was the Cross, where our guilt was transferred
to Christ and all personal sins — past, present and future — were once and for
all judged in Him. The judgment was total. Everything that justice demanded
against us was poured out on Jesus Christ; who took the place of the entire
human “race’ (1Jn 2:2) Satisfied by the effective sacrifice of Christ, the justice of God is “now free to pardon anyone who,
through non-meritorious positive volition, adjusts to His justice by believing
in Christ. (Act 16:31) On the
other hand, God is also free to condemn to the Lake of Fire those who by their
own volition reject the saving work of the Cross and thereby fail to adjust to
His justice. (Joh 3:18-21; Joh 3:36)
Since God did not compromise His justice in providing
salvation, we may be sure that He will never violate His own integrity at any
point; thus, He will always be fair to us throughout our lives as believers on
earth. Although we have eternal life, we nevertheless continue to possess our old sin natures,
and we will continue to sin as long as we live in this world. (Rom 7:24) Every time we choose to
function under the old sin nature by committing a sin, we are maladjusted to
God’s justice. Rebound, however, provides
instantaneous restoration to fellowship with God and recovery of the Filling of
the Holy Spirit. (1Jn 1:9; 1Co 11:31) This is the
initial temporal adjustment to God’s justice. When we simply acknowledge a sin
privately to God, His justice is free to forgive us because that sin has
already been taken to court and judged at the Cross. (Col 2:14)
Spiritual growth is gradual adjustment to the justice of
God, and maturity is maximum conformity with and dependence upon His justice.
Hence, God is free to bless the mature believer.
God’s fairness will not permit Him to bless us in time; unless we have the
capacity of soul to appreciate the blessings and, more important, the One who
blesses! How do we develop capacity? Again, God provides everything
necessary. As in salvation, non-meritorious positive
volition toward Christ is the mechanics, but
this time the object is Truth. God’s justice
demands that we adjust to the reality of His character and His Plan through the
consistent, daily function of Operation Z; under the Filling of the Holy
Spirit.
The believer
who seizes and holds the high ground of Spiritual maturity receives the blessings
of two special sections that were written into the Plan of God specifically for
him.
"And those are the ones on whom
seed was sown on the good soil; and they hear the
Word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold."
(Mar
4:20)
Included in
"blessings for time" are
five categories of blessings: first, Spiritual blessings of occupation with
Christ, sharing the happiness of God, capacity for life and love, and the inner
resources from Truth to meet every exigency of life. Second, there are temporal
blessings of promotion, success, wealth, and various areas of prosperity
— social, sexual, economic, cultural, mental, technical, military — as well as
leadership dynamics. Third is blessing by association for those in the
periphery of the mature believer. Fourth are historical blessings to the
nation, which means that a mature or ultra-mature believer becomes the
Spiritual Atlas holding up his generation of history. Fifth, when a Spiritually
advanced believer makes the PCS, (Permanent change of station) from time to
eternity, he crosses the high golden bridge of dying grace and is blessed by a
period of great happiness prior to or coterminous with dying.
On the other
side of the bridge, the Spiritual adult believers receive their second section
— the surpassing grace rewards and blessings over and above the normal
blessings of eternity.
That in the approaching ages [Eternity] He
might demonstrate His surpassing grace riches in generosity toward us in Christ
Jesus. (Eph 2:7)
When a
believer possesses, Spiritual Self-esteem, (Thirty) Spiritual-Autonomy, (Sixty)
or Spiritual Maturity, (Hundredfold) capacity; God
can pour out fantastic blessing by which He is glorified in time and eternity. Spiritual Maturity is a marvelous goal to reach. Here, you
reap what God sows, not what you sow. On the other hand, the believer in reversionism reaps what he
sows — self-induced misery and Divine
discipline. Moreover, reversionism eliminates
the special blessing sections both now and in the future. (Heb 3:10-12) Exactly what is reversionism?
DEFINITION OF REVERSIONISM
Many terms in fundamentalism have been used to describe
reversionism, such as “backsliding” and “falling away from God,” but these
terms have failed to fully define the concept.
Reversionism is maladjustment to the justice of God. For the
unbeliever, the basic maladjustment is rejection of salvation. For the believer in carnality; it is failure to rebound,
(1Jn 1:9) and
continue in the sphere of Spiritual growth. (Pro
1:23) Maladjustment is reversionism, a state
of Spiritual decadence brought on by rejection or neglect of Bible Truth.
When a believer fails to grow Spiritually or recedes
from any stage of the partial or completed edification complex or the status of
adulthood, it is evidence of reversionism. Consequently,
reversionism is the condition of the believer who is negative toward Truth and
refuses to function under Operation Z. As a
result, he remains in a state of carnality, (Out
of fellowship with God through failure to confess sin) and is therefore under perpetual Divine discipline! (Rev 2:22-23) Mankind
must either adjust to the justice of God, or the
justice of God adjusts to him in cursing or punitive action. (2Ch 21:14-15)
Reversionism and evil are actually two sides of the same
coin. Evil is what the reversionistic soul thinks; (Satan's thinking) reversionism
is the condition of that soul. In both
believer and unbeliever, reversionism is a revolt against God or His Plan.
For the present, the discussion will be confined to the believer’s
reversionism.
BIBLICAL DISTINCTIONS
EVIL (Is motivation) AND SIN (Is function)
It is
important that we recognize certain Biblical distinctions which relate to the
subject of reversionism. First and foremost, we must differentiate between evil
and sin. Although Satan is the author of both evil and sin, (Joh 8:44) they are not substitutable. Evil encompasses the entire thinking of Satan as the ruler
of this world and reflects his motivation: Evil
is Satan’s thinking! Sin is part of his and
evil's function! But evil also includes the function of the old sin
nature as the sovereign of human life.
While it is
true that evil involves sin, the Word of God makes a distinction between them
because of their differing treatments at the Cross: personal
sins were imputed, while human morality and evil were not imputed. Sins were judged, morality and evil were rejected. Morality and evil could not be imputed to Christ because
they must remain an issue throughout the angelic conflict. Sin is the product of the old sin nature when the Law of God
is transgressed and results in carnality. Evil
also originates in the sin nature, but it is essentially a system of thought by
which Satan seeks to capture and control the soul. (2Ti 2:26)
Evil is applied in the human race through the intensification
of sin "and or" moral and immoral degeneracy! Whenever one or both disrupt or adversely affect an entire
system or society, they become evil! When even
legitimate good deeds, (That are performed out of fellowship) are parlayed into a system
that stifles Truth, Divine establishment” or the Spiritual growth of an
individual, the "good" turns to evil. Satanic
evil, therefore, is the total inclusion of human ability, human talent and
works on the one hand; and it is the total
exclusion of Virtue and Truth on the other!
A believer
can be carnal as a mature believer or as a reversionist; but in reversionism,
he falls under the influence of evil and becomes entangled in Satan’s thinking.
Every believer sins, (1Jn 1:8-10) but
not every believer is a reversionist or under the influence of evil. Only when
his failure to rebound becomes a pattern, preventing the intake of Truth, does
the negative volition of the believer end in reversionism and conformity to
satanic policy. (1Sa 28:7; Gal 2:14)
CARNALITY AND REVERSIONISM
The distinction between carnality and reversionism parallels the contrast between Spirituality and maturity — the absolute
versus the proportional. At any given
time, a believer is either Spiritual or carnal. Both are absolutes in
which either the Holy Spirit or the old sin
nature controls the soul. Maturity and
reversionism, “on the other hand, are relative conditions of the soul that vary
according to Spiritual growth or Spiritual decline. All reversionists are carnal, but
not all carnal believers are reversionists. The
carnal believer is under the influence of the old sin nature: the reversionistic believer is under the influence of evil as
well as the old sin nature! While the carnal
believer can be positive toward Truth, the reversionistic believer is
always negative toward Truth.
Although a
relative concept, Spiritual growth has an influence on the believer’s absolute
status. Growing believers run the gamut from Spiritual infancy to adolescence
and maturity. Any believer, the mature as well as the adolescent or Spiritual
infant, can be carnal. In carnality, the advancing believer is out of
fellowship for a relatively short period; he recovers quickly by rebound and
moves on. The reversionistic believer, on the other hand, perpetuates his
carnality indefinitely by repeated failure to rebound. He thus intensifies the
carnality through the various stages of reversionism until he gravitates into
the sphere of maximum discipline, the sin unto death, and is removed before his
time without benefit of dying grace. (1Jn 5:16)
He recovers only through a change of attitude toward
Truth and the renewed function of Operation Z.
Under the
concept of Spirituality, a believer in any stage of growth may be filled with
the Spirit through the application of. (1Jn 1:9)
However, the baby, devoid of the necessary Truth in his soul, is controlled by
the Spirit only a minimum amount of time and shows little or no evidence of
Divine Virtue and production in his life. (Gal
5:22-23; Eph 5:9) As the believer matures and achieves a balance of
residency, in which the filling of the Spirit and the residence of Truth
eventually complement each other in his soul, and
there will be harmonious production manifest
in all areas of his life!
You should be
warned that it is possible for a mature believer with an edification complex
well established in his soul to completely lose his Spiritual status and
succumb to reversionism. But just as the ECS was not built in a day, so
reversionism does not occur overnight. Rather, it is a gradual process, usually imperceptible at first to the one involved. It
becomes imperative, therefore, that we examine in depth the various stages of
reversionism. Although they frequently overlap, the stages must be isolated for
analysis.
STAGES OF REVERSIONISM
REACTION
As a believer, you can either respond to
circumstances, people or Truth, or you can react to them. You may be extremely
susceptible to reactor factors in life, such as disillusion, (False
expectation) self-pity, boredom, loneliness or frustration. These factors might
occur in every believer’s life at one time or another. You can meet them head
on with Truth or you can react to them. Reaction sets
in where there has been a haphazard or indifferent attitude toward Truth, or
even when
you have simply been unable to understand what is
being taught.
Reaction creates a veritable “Pandora’s box” — a productive source of troubles! The reaction period
of reversionism has both primary and secondary phases. Disillusion is often the
initial challenge to confront the soul. Basically a reaction to people,
disillusion gives rise to personality hang-ups with, for example, members of
the congregation or the pastor, as you begin to think, (Real or imagined) that
they have let you down. If you react to these
circumstances, you become discouraged and withdraw from those who have
disillusioned you or depart from the church entirely.
This
hypersensitivity and lack of objectivity leaves a void in your life and
invariably leads to boredom or the inability to cope with loneliness.
Unchecked, it activates secondary reactive forces — frustration, self-pity, and
the accompanying mental” attitude sins of jealousy, bitterness, pride,
implacability, vindictiveness, a guilt complex, etc.
These trigger Operation Vengeance or the attempt to build your happiness on
someone else’s unhappiness through gossip, maligning or bad-rapping. When
this negative attitude prevails in a congregation, objectivity and true worship
are destroyed.
The reaction
stage can include all manner of distractions, even such bona fide-pleasures of
life as, entertainment, family, social life, health and business. These distractions become detrimental when they lure the
believer from the routine of consistent intake of Truth. The reactor
factors are persistent snags to the believer in Spiritual infancy. While the
mature believer may experience one or more of-these attitudes from time to
time, he overcomes them quickly; but the immature
believer is often overpowered by them. If reaction characterizes your pattern
of life, you can safely conclude that you are not yet in the area of Spiritual
maturity!
The presence of any one of these types of reaction in your
life is your first warning signal to intensify your intake of Truth. If you ignore the warning and, in effect, blame your
circumstances on Truth or use them as an excuse to remove yourself from all
Bible teaching, you will only compound your problems and embark on a frantic
search for happiness!
FRANTIC SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS
As an
antidote to the reactor factors, the frantic search for happiness becomes compensation, (Honest is one
area, to fulfill lusts in other areas) escapism and "accepted
solutions" for the problems of loneliness, boredom or frustration. The
frantic search can be a stimulus for either, Operation
Lasciviousness (Self-indulgence) or Operation Asceticism, (Self-denial)
depending on the trend of the old sin nature. Although
one trend may appear to be more respectable than the other, both are equally
devastating!
The sin
nature has trends toward sin, morality and evil. Which trend dominates at a
given period in your life is often influenced by your background. For example,
if you have been reared in a legalistic Christian home, you will lean toward
asceticism, for any tendency toward lasciviousness will have been repressed.
Should your environment have been more on the liberal side, the trend could be
toward lasciviousness. However, reaction to your environment can alter this
common pattern.
The greatest danger of these trends lies in their
deceptiveness: the ascetic is often misconstrued as a Spiritual giant, whereas
the lascivious type is explained away as an unbeliever. Furthermore, the trend toward asceticism generally leads
to a false emphasis on experience in which Christian service, for example, is
construed as Spirituality or even maturity. If
you are in this bracket, you will go for the legalistic “victorious life”
conferences with their “faggot-on-the-fire” gimmicks and one-shot decisions. Or you will become involved in works programs, false
Spirituality, tabooism, discipleship, pseudo-love and social action. You will succumb to a desire for the emotional stimulation
of super-experiences, like the holy rollers and their pseudo-tongues, which are
at best energy-of-the-flesh works, and at worst satanic and evil. Indeed, many
of these signal the first entrance of evil in reversionism.
Under the trend toward lasciviousness, you may take the road
of drunkenness, debauchery, chasing, sexual promiscuity or perversion, drug
abuse or crime. Whatever direction you choose, your search for the
Elysium paradise becomes the alternative to the daily function of Operation Z. This search always results in self-induced misery!
OPERATION BOOMERANG
The failure
to assuage the reactor factors and to achieve the desired happiness only causes
the initial reaction to be intensified. When you lack true capacity for life,
which for the believer comes only from Bible Truth, and seek happiness through
some other means, your attempt will inevitably backfire
in an escalation of the reactor factors that initiated the misdirected search
for pleasure. In other words, frustration becomes greater frustration;
discouragement becomes depression; loneliness becomes gloominess. You lose your common sense and operate only on emotion! Thus,
the nightmarish search for happiness boomerangs and leads to a fourth stage in
the process of reversionism, where Spiritual factors enter the picture.
EMOTIONAL REVOLT OF THE SOUL
By the time you move into Operation Boomerang, evil is
expanding in the soul, and the first signs of Spiritual revolt appear. God’s order is reversed, and the emotion no longer
functions as the appreciator; but as the
dictator of the soul.
Just as God created the man to rule the woman, with Truth; (Gen 3:16)
so He has designed the right Lobe filled with Truth to
dominate the soul. (Pro 2:10-13) Under this concept, the right lobe is analogous to the
right man, while emotion is comparable to the right woman. As the right woman responds to her right man, so the
emotion is intended to respond to and appreciate the content of Truth in the
right lobe!
While all
normal people possess emotion, the stimulations which elicit individual
responses vary. For example, I always respond emotionally to beautiful music,
like “Dixie” or “The Eyes of Texas", but this emotion is simply a response
to music already in my frame of reference.
Emotion in itself is empty; (No ability to think)
it is entirely dependent on knowledge resident in the right lobe. Since emotion contains no doctrinal content, no mentality,
no character, no norms and standards, no common sense, it reflects the
character of that to which it responds. If the
right lobe Thinks Truth, the emotion responds with appreciation for Truth and
the Divine viewpoint; the result is great capacity for life! However, if the emotion responds to the old sin nature, it
rejects the authority of Truth; and comes under the influence of the sin
nature.
In the
ancient world, the functions of the soul were described in terms related to
various parts of the body. For instance, emotion is illustrated by the Greek
words splagchnon, rendered “bowels’
in the King James Version but meaning “intestines”; koilia, “belly”; and nephros
(kiljah in the Hebrew) which is
literally “kidneys” but usually translated “reins.” Just as the kidneys are
destroyed by reflux from the bladder, so the emotion is
corrupted by revolt from any of the old sin nature’s three trends, whether, by
mental attitude sins or by human morality, or by some involvement in evil.
Emotional revolt of the soul is equivalent to the
fornication of the emotion with the sin nature and with the satanic policy of
morality and evil; the true function of the emotion is reversed. In a state of revolution, the emotion begins to dictate to
the right lobe. Instead of a “responsive woman,” the emotion becomes a “bossy
female,” and a monster is created in the soul, the marriage and if there is a
large amount of people and families in this condition; the nation is destroyed!
(Lam
3:42-48)
Once the emotion assumes the role of aggressor, it not
only becomes a tool for the old sin nature but loses all capacity for life and
replaces happiness with the misery spectrum. Even
though the believer may have accumulated-a great deal of Truth, under emotional revolt; the
function of Truth in the soul is neutralized! This was the case with the
Corinthian believers who, although they had the benefit of four great Bible
teachers, they resisted Truth and suffered from it. (Pro 8:33-36)
Our mouth has spoken freely to you, O
Corinthians, our heart is opened wide. You are
not restrained by us, but you are restrained in your
own affections. (Negitive volition of the sin
nature) (2Co
6:11-12) This is the correct mental
attitude. I
opened my mouth wide and panted, For I longed
for Your commandments. (Psa 119:131)
They were in emotional revolt. Believers who are
controlled by their emotions or use them as the criteria for the Christian life
are disoriented, reversionistic and apostate. They
are not living according to God’s Plan for their lives. (Rev 2:23) As Truth is neglected or rejected,
Christendom becomes increasingly apostate, and emotional activities become the
order of the day. Christian experience must be based on Bible Truth; otherwise,
it is merely “experience.” The Christian life is
designed for optimum blessing and Spiritual dynamics, but people in emotional
revolt are seeking a “rosy glow,” or
pseudo-blessing, from hyper-emotional experiences. Frequently they become
suckers for such movements as the “charismatic”
heresy or various organizations outside the church that offer no provision for Spiritual
growth. Believers with such chaos of soul become first-rate troublemakers, and
other believers are commanded to separate from them.
Now I urge you, brethren, keep your
eye on those who cause dissensions (Problems) and hindrances contrary to the
teaching which you learned, and turn away from them. For such men are slaves,
not of our Lord Christ but of their own appetites;
(Sin nature) and by their smooth and flattering
speech they deceive the hearts of the unsuspecting. (Rom 16:17-18)
For the
believer, the power and dynamics of life reside only in Bible Truth. Apart from
Truth permeating the soul, there can be no capacity for loving God, no capacity
for life, happiness or love in any area. When you turn
your back on Truth, you cause an avalanche in your soul which no emotional
experience in the world can halt and you have had it! Emotional revolt
of the soul, or Spiritual anarchy, paves the way into the fifth stage of
reversionism: the believer’s negative volition toward Truth.
NEGATIVE VOLITION TOWARD TRUTH
While
negative volition toward Truth is present in every stage in the downward plunge
of reversionism, it now appears as a full-blown revolt. In the beginning,
negative volition is characterized by apathy or indifference to Bible teaching
and at this point is frequently as subtle as tuning out a subject that is
familiar and thus tedious to you. You shrug it off as needless repetition.
Subject
matter can be a primary reason for indifference.
There are literally hundreds of doctrinal themes in the Bible. Some may
be of interest to you; others may bore you. Some may be so contrary to your
background that you will react in violent disagreement. Yet all of them are profitable for instruction in righteousness, (2Ti 3:16) and the
command to the pastor-teacher is to communicate the entire realm of Truth.
This demands exegetical teaching of the Word verse by
verse, chapter by chapter, and book by book! (Isa 28:10)
A second
cause for negative volition pertains to antagonisms or personality hang-ups
with regard to the pastor and his authority. The Spiritual gift of
pastor-teacher provides the ability as well as the authority to communicate
Truth; it does not include what you might consider to be the “pastor profile.”
Most people think of a pastor as a stereotyped personality — a kindly,
self-effacing, pious individual who always makes the right noises, whatever the
occasion. This engenders the erroneous concept that in order for a pastor to be
properly prepared, he must assume a certain image. Unfortunately, the cinema
has generally broadcast this myth by casting some spineless model of sweetness
and light as the minister.
There is no
standard personality for the pastor. The fact that God uses many dissimilar
persons can be demonstrated by the apostles, who are a study in vivid
contrasts. Peter, for example, was impulsive and overhasty; John, aristocratic
and reserved; Thomas, intellectual and humanistic. Paul’s personality was
characterized by forcefulness, sarcasm and brilliant skill in the communication
of Truth. There was also a wide variation in vocabulary, presentation and use
of idiomatic expression by these individual teachers of Truth.
If you have
been accustomed to hearing the Bible taught in a certain manner, you will
always expect it to be presented that way. You may be shocked to hear some
pastor articulate in common “Koine English.” However, the main concern is that
he fulfills his responsibility by communicating Truth accurately yet within the
framework of his own personality. Your personal preferences are never the
criteria for the proper function of the pastor. The issue for you is, does he
have the Spiritual gift of pastor-teacher, and does he expound the whole realm
of Scripture? This is one reason why the filling of
the Spirit in the function of learning is so important: it helps you to
concentrate on the message without becoming entangled with the personality of
the pastor.
A third cause
of negative volition is antagonism or personality conflicts with other members
of the congregation. You might attend church regularly yet still be negative
because you are jealous or bitter or competitive concerning someone in the
fellowship. Your absorption of Truth always suffers when you are hung up with
mental attitude sins toward other believers.
A fourth
problem resulting in a delinquent attitude is failure to utilize the grace
provisions, which include assembly in a local church and application of the
rebound technique. Even when you are present at class and positive toward
learning Truth, it is impossible to assimilate the Word unless you are filled
with the Spirit. (1Co 2:14) You
accomplish this by confessing your known personal sins privately to God in
accordance with. (1Jn 1:9)
A Fifth
explanation for a lack of response to Truth is failure to recognize the Source
of prosperity. With many people, difficulty and
adversity are the only reinforcers for attending Bible class. When the
pressure subsides and prosperity surfaces, these believers disappear until
another catastrophe brings pain and suffering. Then, distraught and frustrated
and aware at last that the only solution is Truth, they scramble back to class.
Unfortunately, however, prosperity or lack of it
becomes their gauge for determining whether or not they need Truth, and this
on-again, off-again type of thinking develops into a syndrome of inconsistency,
instability and the erroneous conclusion that Truth really does not work. Prosperity
should never become an excuse for departing from Truth — the very basis by
which you enjoy prosperity! Your capacities to
appreciate everything worthwhile in life depend on Truth in the soul; therefore, the more prosperous you become, the greater
should be your desire for Truth!
The sixth
reason for rejection of Truth is disorientation to the many facets of
logistical or living grace. God graciously supplies all the
Spiritual-and-temporal provisions you need in order to remain alive, to take in
Truth and to grow in grace even in the devil’s world. Negative
volition to Truth inevitably results in failure to appreciate these temporal
and Spiritual assets.
Seventh, the
malfunction of the faith-rest technique can lead to negative volition. If under adversity or testing you fail to remove roadblocks
or hang-ups in the soul, you will be unable to apply Truth; because the hurt and or temptation is more real than the
Word.
Eighth, if the details of life (Food,
sex, money, entertainment, human security, or job etc.) are more important to you than Truth, then obviously you will be too preoccupied to avail yourself
of Bible teaching. (Mat 13:20-22;
Luk 8:13) Your
time and energies are immersed in the push toward sex, success, status, wealth or
power, to the total exclusion of Truth. The
allurement of pleasure, which may be anything from hobbies and sports to social
life, can also take the place of Bible class. Your friends or family may drag
you away. Even health and climate can be used as excuses: you don’t feel well;
the weather is too good (A perfect day for golf!) or too bad. (You will
be rained out or snowed in!) In other words, any detail
of life, no matter how pleasant or innocent, that takes precedence over Truth
eventually spells disaster! Once entrenched,
unchecked negative volition catapults you into the final stages of
reversionism.
BLACKOUT OF THE SOUL
The blackout
of the soul is produced directly by the malfunction of Operation Z through
willful rejection of Truth, and indirectly by the believer’s participation in
the previously described stages of reversionism. By
definition, blackout is that reversionistic state in which the left lobe of the
mentality, (The nous) devoid of Truth, is attacked
directly by evil thoughts, concepts and ideas.
In the
mechanics, negative volition toward Truth opens in the left lobe a vacuum
called mataiotes in the Greek.
Translated “vanity” in, (Eph 4:17) mataiotes is a technical word which must
be related to the context. In this case, since it
pertains to the soul, the term refers to emptiness in the soul. Into this void
are drawn those thoughts which are contrary to the Divine Thoughts. Satanic propaganda, the “thoughts, doctrine, and teaching
of [From] demons,” (1Ti 4:1) and every
distortion and human viewpoint of life are sucked into the soul. Demons function as a kingdom
of darkness, through the old sin nature, (Eze
38:10; Eph 5:11; Eph 6:12; Col 1:13)
and is therefore transferred into darkness of the soul!
When satanic thoughts or evil moves to the right lobe (The kardia) and corrupts the entire thought pattern, the BELIEVER is under demon influence. (1Ti 6:8-10) Since the body of the believer is
permanently indwelt by the Holy Spirit, he can never be demon-possessed.
However, the infiltration of evil into the believer’s soul is in some ways more
devastating than the demon possession of an unbeliever. The cover of evil in the soul renders the believer incapable of using the
Divine viewpoint. Objectivity is blacked out
in every area of life, from the Spiritual principles of Bible Truth to the laws
of Divine establishment, and is replaced by subjectivity, confusion,
instability and frustration.
The most
destructive people in the world are believers in reversionism. Their thinking
is under the influence of evil, (Satan's thinking) and is totally distorted. In
the Spiritual realm, subjective thinking is expressed in such activities as
blaming God for adversity, or taking one or all of the escapism routes in life,
such as alcohol, food, drugs, social life, entertainment, and or fornication
etc. It manifests itself in the inability to maintain a
relaxed mental attitude of love toward anyone, extreme inconsistency, obsessive-compulsive
and even paranoid behavior. In the realm of
establishment, subjectivity is the basis for all the ivory-tower liberal
operations: world peace and disarmament programs, pseudo-love and universal
brotherhood propaganda, “the greatest good for the greatest number,” social
action to aid the downtrodden, unrealistic schemes that promote the Welfare
State.
When the
blackout of the soul reaches the right lobe or heart, scar tissue begins to
form in the soul — the seventh stage of reversionism.
SCAR TISSUE OF THE SOUL
Synonymous
with “hardness of heart” in Scripture, scar
tissue develops from the influence of evil on both the left and right lobes.
Blackout of soul originates in the left lobe; scar tissue, in the right lobe;
from there, they spread throughout the soul. As scar tissue accumulates,
Operation Mataiotes draws false Truth (The Word twisted)
ever more rapidly into the left lobe, which exerts increasingly greater
pressure on the right lobe.
You might
imagine, for the sake of illustration, that the right lobe contains a number of
valves for the intake and distribution of Truth. In the frame of reference
there are two valves, one on each end of the memory center. One feeds into the
chambers of the conscience where the norms and standards reside; the other enters the vocabulary storage for the development
of the ability to Think with Truth. Next door to this is categorical
storage, which retains ideas and concepts by means of expanded and technical
vocabulary. This system of valves connects all the storage areas, by way of the
memory center, to the launching pad where Divine viewpoint is applied to
experience.
When the
effects of the blackout of the left lobe reach the right lobe, these valves
freeze so that Truth can no longer circulate in the soul. This means that Truth
cannot be fed into the vocabulary; categories wither; norms and standards
degenerate. The ability to utilize the frame of reference as a source of
Thinking evaporates, and there is no Divine viewpoint on the launching pad for
application in the believer’s life. Without the influx
of Truth into the right lobe, all Spiritual functions are paralyzed. Truth in the subconscious mind is abandoned.
Reversionism closes the door so that this information is no longer available
for application or growth. (Mat 13:12) This is the prelude to the sin unto death. Scar tissue and the sin unto death are companions!
Hardness of
heart becomes the curse for both the believer and the unbeliever. There are
numerous illustrations in Scripture of unbelievers and believers who departed
this life under the principle of scar tissue of the soul. Amenhotep II, the
Pharaoh of the Exodus, hardened his own heart through constant resistance to
the salvation message (Exod 7:22; Exod 8:15, Exod
8:32; Exod 9:34) Although he
was repeatedly exposed to the Truth from Aaron and Moses by both word of mouth
and spectacular demonstrations of God’s power, still Pharaoh remained calloused
toward grace. With negative volition toward the Gospel, a vacuum was created
which-adsorbed demon Truth into the left lobe. The result” was blackout-of the
soul, the wasting away of all Gospel information in the right lobe and finally,
hardness of heart that eventually became irreversible. (Rom 2:5; 2Co 4:3-4)
At that
stage, God hardened Pharaoh’s heart in the sense” of sending His Word and
allowing him maximum opportunity to resist grace. (Exod
9:12; Exod 10:1;) The
purpose of permitting Pharaoh to exhibit such vigorous rejection was the
evangelization of the world in his generation. (Rom
9:17; cf. Exod 9:16) Each
time the obstinate Pharaoh expressed his hardness of heart, a unique and
extraordinary manifestation of God’s omnipotence awed unbelievers who heard the
Gospel. and they were motivated toward a positive response. One of the
best-documented conversions was that of Rahab the prostitute who, in distant
Jericho, came to know the Lord as a result of Pharaoh’s stubbornness. (Jos 2:10-11)
The Jews of
our Lord ’s Day, including Judas Iscariot, (Mat
27:3-10) followed the same pattern as the Pharaoh of the Exodus.
They repeatedly rejected their Messiah, despite the overwhelming evidence of
our Lord's identity, which was clearly revealed in His messages, (Joh 7:46) in His fulfillment of prophecy (Joh 1:45) and in His miracles. (Mar 6:52; Joh 12:37)
Each time they rejected the Savior, the hardness of their hearts became more
complete until they were locked in total reversionism. Consequently,
the majority of that generation remained in unbelief as their nation went into
the Fifth cycle of discipline!
"HE HAS BLINDED THEIR EYES AND HE
HARDENED THEIR HEART, SO THAT THEY WOULD NOT SEE WITH THEIR EYES AND PERCEIVE
WITH THEIR HEART, AND BE CONVERTED AND I HEAL THEM." (Joh 12:40)
In quoting
from, (Isa 6:9-10) the Lord made it
clear that while the Old Testament prophet was addressing himself to his
contemporaries, his message applied to all people in every age who rejected
salvation and or growth to maturity. “He has blinded their eyes” is a
description of the blackout of the soul the opening of the mataiotes and the attack on the left lobe. “Hardened their heart”
in the Greek means “scar tissue” or “calluses” — the attack on the right lobe
as the inevitable result of blackout in the left lobe.
Thus, following the classic reversionistic pattern, the Jews
on the whole had reacted toward Christ with mental attitude sins of resentment,
jealousy and hostility. They became disillusioned because He did not
immediately establish the Messianic Kingdom by defeating their enemies and
resolving their national grievances as prophesied in the millennial passages;
they willfully hastened down the road of reversionism. Their
own stubborn volition blinded them to the Truth. They could neither
understand nor respond to the ministry of our Lord on earth. Instead of
accepting grace, the Jews continued to bow to the tyrannical legalizing of
their religious leaders. They refused the Light, (Joh
12:36) and accepted the darkness of reversionism; their resultant
scattering was a just and due punishment!
Scar tissue
among believers is perfectly illustrated by the Meribah incident. At this desert camp, the Israelites complained and revolted
against the Lord’s provision during their wilderness journey. (Exod 17:1-7) All the reactor factors were
present, particularly disillusion, (We do not get what WE expect) discouragement,
frustration and self-pity. The Jews did not know enough Truth to cope with
these problems, and their reaction spearheaded a frantic search for happiness
which later climaxed in Operation Golden Calf. (Exod
32:1-8) The rebellious Jews were annihilated on the spot when, upon
his return from Mount Sinai, Moses broke the tablets of stone, demolished the
golden idol and forced the offenders to drink a concoction of their own evil! (Exod 32:19-28)
The combination
of the first two reversionistic stages and the Jews’ blatant disrespect for the
authority of Moses continued to afflict those still alive. Ignoring the warning
discipline and judgment near Sinai, they too suffered blackout of soul and
hardness of heart until finally, at Kadesh-barnea, many of them had completed
the full cycle of reversionism, which they expressed by denying God’s ability
to bring them into the Land. (Num 14:1-11)
Divine discipline quickly overtook the stubborn Jews, and many were killed by
the Canaanites when the Israelites defied God’s command — this time, His order
that they were not to enter the Land. (Num
14:40-45) After thirty-nine years of desert wanderings, the chapter
closed on that disobedient, stiff-necked generation when they all eventually
died the sin unto death. (Num 14:31-37)
Only the mature believers; Caleb and Joshua remained to launch the next
generation on the successful conquest of the Promised Land.
“Hardness of
the neck” is a term for negative volition and hardness of heart, but they
emphasize insubordination against Divinely constituted authority, to the point
of revolution. (2Ki 17:14; Jer 7:26-27; Jer
19:15)
But they, our ancestors, acted
arrogantly; they hardened their necks [Revolution or rejection of authority],
and would not listen to Your Commandments. [Bible teaching] Therefore they
refused to listen, and they did not remember Your wonderful deeds which You
performed among them. Therefore, they hardened their necks and appointed a
leader to return them to their slavery in Egypt.. (Neh 9:16-17)
Hardness of
the neck is also related to evil.
Since the day that your fathers came
out of the land of Egypt until this day, I have sent
You all my servants, the prophets, daily rising early and sending them. Yet they did not listen to Me or incline their ear, but
hardened their necks. They did evil more than their fathers. And you
[Jeremiah] shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you
. . . (Jer
7:25-27).
"You
shall say to them, 'This is the nation that did not
obey the voice of the LORD their God or accept
correction; Truth has perished and has been cut
off from their mouth.
(Jer 7:28)
Because they
rejected Bible Truth, they came under the influence of evil! Evil is often
accompanied by certain types of sin, but sin in itself does not tear down what
Truth has built up in the soul of the believer. Since sin was judged at the
Cross, the problem of carnality is quickly solved by the rebound technique. (Isa 55:7) It is evil:
something that we think that can totally stifle our effectiveness as believers!
Yet the distinction between sin and evil has been obscured in our
apostate generation.
The wages
paid by hardness of heart are threefold: “strong
delusion,” which is actually a blending of:
blackout of the soul, hardness of the heart, (2Th 2:10-12) and the continuation of reversionism, resulting in
the practice of reverse process reversionism; (2Co
11:3) and intensified Divine discipline,
eventuating in the sin unto death. (1Jn 5:16)
REVERSE PROCESS REVERSIONISM
The eighth and final stage in the descent into reversionism
is characterized by the total influence of evil rather than of Truth, and the substitution of Satan’s plan for God’s Plan. The way of thinking of a believer in reverse process
reversionism cannot be distinguished from that of the unbeliever!
By
definition, “reverse process” means to face in the opposite direction, to
change or reverse a judgment of a criticism, to appear in an upside-down
position by a reversal of objects. Related to the Word of God, reverse process
reversionism is the reversal of the objects of the believer’s affection on one
hand and scorn on the other, in other words, reverse
process reversionism manifests itself when the reversionist rejects that which
he should love and loves that which he should reject. (Rev 2:4) All true values
are pushed aside and priorities are reversed.
In the
mechanics, the reversionistic believer experiences a reverse process in regard
to the true objects of his love or affection in love. He
becomes infatuated with counterfeit-objects of love compatible with his
distorted Spiritual condition. Instead of personal Love, directed toward
God, the reversionistic believer seeks personal glory;
instead of occupation with Christ in personal Love. He
also cultivates personal, hypocritical and superficial acquaintances, rather
than true love for God and fellowship with other growing and or mature
believers. (Pro 13:20) Under this process, the
bona fide object of love or fellowship becomes the target of indifference,
hatred, bitterness, cruelty, implacability, maligning, judging and revenge
tactics, while
inconsequential people become the recipients of attention, flirtation, social
or sexual advances, etc.
To the
believer who is in total reversionism and is obsessed with self-gratification,
the rightful object of affection, love or sex is unimportant.
Pride and
blind arrogance render the reversionist susceptible to flattery. The male
reversionist readily assumes that he is God’s gift to women. The more inflated
his ego, the more easily he can be deceived so that even a dumb woman can wrap
a very smart man around her finger! In “his arrogance, such a man becomes
entangled with an inconsequential woman. He may be of little significance to
her, but blinded by approval lust, he believes what
she tells him because it is exactly what he wants to hear! A woman in
reversionism also follows the reverse process. She gives her attention or even
her body to some other man, while she ignores or scorns her true love.
The Jews of Jeremiah’s day practiced reverse process
reversionism toward God and toward their right man or right woman. Immersed in
the idolatry of the phallic cult, they transferred their love for the Lord
Jesus Christ, the God of Israel, to Baal, whose evil worship involved
degenerate sexual abuses. A similar situation existed with the
Corinthian believers, who demonstrated their reverse process reversionism when
they rejected the Apostle Paul as their right pastor and communicator of Truth
in favor of the Judaizers the false apostles, and teachers. (2Co 11:4) The
Corinthians lavished their wealth and affection on the Judaizers but heaped
criticism, maligning, animosity and cruelty on Paul. They paid the
Judaizers a large salary; Paul received not one penny! (2Co 11:7)
I have
presented the stages of reversionism separately; in order to portray the major
aspects of Spiritual retrogression in a logical sequence. Chronologically, however, these factors in the downward
process overlap and intertwine to form an intricate fabric of degeneracy, each
one of us, in his own way!
All of us like sheep
have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on
Him. (Isa 53:6)
THE PROBLEM
OF SCAR TISSUE IN EPHESUS
To illustrate
these principles, I have selected a passage from Ephesians, chapter 4. The
chapter outline is simple: verses 1-16 depict the royal family on the road to
maturity; verses 17-19 describe these believers on the road to reversionism;
and verses 20-32 teach reversion recovery. Our study will focus on verses
17-24, in which Paul launches his admonition to these tottering believers in
the Ephesian complex of churches.
This, therefore, I explain and testify
[Make an emphatic demand] by means of the Lord that you all no longer continue
walking just as also the Gentiles [Reversionistic unbelievers] keep walking by
means of the nothingness [Vacuum] of their mind.
(Eph 4:17)
The
demonstrative pronoun, “this,” draws attention to his message regarding the serious
problem of apostasy and reversionism. The use of the verb marturomai, “testify,” with lego,
“say” or “explain,” strengthens this warning, and
introduces an emphatic demand that they discontinue “walking” according to the
thinking, of the reversionistic society in which they live. Paul then
establishes the Source of his warning and confirms his apostolic authority by
the phrase, “by means of the Lord.” “Gentiles” is technical nomenclature to
designate unbelievers. Believers in reversionism are
always easily influenced by other believer or unbelievers reversionists in
their periphery.
“In the nothingness [Mataiotes] of
their mind” indicates the stage of reversionism they have reached. As we
have seen, mataiotes is a vacuum that
forms in the soul after negative volition becomes the consistent mental
attitude. This vacuum sucks false Truths (Evil) into the nous,
which generally refers to the left lobe, though in this context it applies to
both the left and right lobes.
Having become
darkened in their way of thinking, [Blackout of soul] having become
estranged from the life of God [The Spirit and Truth] because of the ignorance [Of Truth]
which keeps on being in them, because of the hardness [Scar tissue] of their
heart. [Soul and spirit] (Eph 4:18)
The perfect
passive participle of skotizo,
“darkened,” followed by the present active participle of eimi, “having,” means literally, “having become darkened.” Of their own free will, the Ephesian believers had
produced the action of the verb (Active voice) and have, as a result, received
(Passive voice) darkness — blackout of the soul. The intensive perfect tense
recognizes that-reversionistic stages one through four have already occurred,
while five through eight are just now developing.
The Greek
word dianoia (Thinking) confirms that
this darkness is in the left lobe. The Kittel’s Theological Dictionary states:
"that dianoia can be used as an
alternate for nous." And further
explains the meaning of dianoia in
terms of thought as a function: “the activity of thinking, the ability to
perceive, a way of thinking.” When a person thinks
only with his left lobe, (Human reality) he becomes subjective. (All of your experiences that determine how things appear
to you) And
corrupt thinking, (2Co 3:14; 2Co 4:4; 2Co 11:3)
replaces objective Spiritual thinking. The darkened perception adequately describes the blackout of
Truth in the soul.
As Bible Truth is excluded from the activity of thinking,
the mentality of the soul is thrown open to twisted Truth, false standards and
perverted measures of Divine Reality. The
result is reversionism, manifested by subjectivity, (Emotion
ruling Truth) pseudo-sensitivity, soul fainting, (Heb 12:3) frustration, unhappiness, frantic
search for happiness, slavery to the details of life, scar tissue and reverse
process reversionism.
It follows
that the believer whose thinking has become darkened will inevitably be in a
state of alienation (Apallotrioo)
from God. Used only three times in Scripture, (Eph
2:12; Eph 4:18; Col 1:21) All three apply to the unbeliever and
or believer with a blacked-out soul.
“The life [zoe] of God” — Spiritual life — denotes
a concept of life related to Truth. In our passage it
is linked to the Spiritual growth and progress that God provides for believers
through Truth. Notice that alienation from this Spiritual life is not
the result of any misbehavior or sin, but of ignorance
of Truth. Agnoia, “no knowledge,” and arrogance is the root of
all failure in the Christian life. (Rom 2:5)
It is a perfect description of a believer who is
suffering from blackout of soul. There is
never a legitimate excuse for ignorance of Truth. By providing the grace apparatus, God anticipated
everything that would be necessary to make Truth available and easy to learn.
We simply supply the positive volition!
If the problem of blackout of the soul stems from
ignorance of Truth, then obviously the solution
lies in Understanding. To go from ignorance to knowing requires a
process found in a Greek verb related to agnoia:
metanoeo and its cognate metanoia. Traditionally
translated “repent,” this word actually expresses: the change in the mental
attitude toward Truth! To recover
from any of the eight stages of reversionism, the
believer must change his mind about the
importance of Bible Truth in his life. However,
no one-shot decision will do the trick. Such a change "of mind" requires a continuous
series of positive decisions to take in Truth in spite of distractions,
hindrances or increasing pressures. (Eph
3:16-21; Eph 4:11-16; Heb 6:1-6)
If Divine warnings are repeatedly ignored, if no change of
mind occurs and if blackout of the soul continues, then the right lobe becomes
crippled by the insidious advance of scar tissue. Hence, the last phrase
of (Eph 4:18) “because of the hardness
of their heart,” portrays the reciprocal action between hardness of heart and
blackout of soul. Porosis actually
means “hardness” and represents the paralyzing buildup of scar tissue in the
right lobe.
The
devastation of soul which negative volition, blackout and scar tissue produce
is illustrated in the next verse.
Who, [Reversionists] while having
become calloused [with scar tissue] have betrayed themselves to promiscuous
debauchery, resulting in the practice of every kind of
fornication the sphere of insatiable lust [Intensified frantic search
for happiness. (Eph
4:19)
Once in a state
of callousness, (Apalgeo) or total
lack of sensitivity, the reversionist moves in one of three directions,
depending on the current trend of his old sin nature. He may be guilty of blind
arrogance and the accompanying mental attitude sin activity, as characterized
by Hymenaeus and Alexander in. (1Ti 1:19-20;
2Ti 2:16-17) He may take the route of
extreme nonindulgence or he may accelerate his quest for happiness, as in our
context, and commit himself to lasciviousness.
In its intensive stage, this headlong rush for happiness
results in self-betrayal, in which inner-misery triggers the desire for overt
stimulation, stated in this verse to be aselgeia, lasciviousness. This Greek word
encompasses all forms of promiscuity; adultery, fornication, debauchery,
seduction, rape, lewdness, and such sexual perversions as incest, bestiality,
homosexuality and autoerotism.
Sexual
expression in the right man-right woman relationship is a gracious gift from
God that not only preexisted the Fall but continues even though mankind is in
the state of sinfulness. It can still be a basis for true happiness.
Nevertheless, when a reversionist whose soul is covered with scar tissue faces
a reactor factor like frustration, any sexual activity for him will inevitably
be empty. But promiscuity or sexual perversion only adds to the scar tissue!
When sex fails to produce the happiness for which it was properly designed, the
reversionist becomes further frustrated and resorts to other forms of escapism,
such as alcohol, drugs or even the more desperate extreme of suicide.
“The practice of every kind of impurity” refers to
promiscuity and denotes all types of mental and overt fornication. The
addition of pleonexzia, “with
greediness or insatiability,” conveys the insatiable
lust which only becomes worse in the futile pursuit of pleasure!
(Eph 4:17-19) actually describes the interaction
between the stages of reversionism. Scar tissue and blackout of the soul
intensify negative volition, the frantic search for happiness and the reaction syndrome.
These, in turn, reinforce the scar tissue and blackout of the soul. It is extremely difficult to free oneself from this maze of
Spiritual anarchy, yet the Word of God never presents a negative
situation without offering a positive solution. The next four verses outline
the conditions for recovery from scar tissue of the soul and reversionism.
THE
IMPORTANCE OF LEARNING TRUTH
Any remedy to
a Spiritual problem must be associated with the Word of God; therefore,
learning Truth is paramount as the only answer to reversionism.
But you, members of the royal family
of God. [Church Age believers] have not been taught Christ in this manner. (Eph 4:20)
The
conjunctive particle de, translated “but,” sets up a contrast between their
present practice of reversionism and the alternative — the Plan of God
regarding the function of Operation Z. Members of the
royal family of God should be self-disciplined in the constant intake of Truth
so that they are advancing up the road to either Spiritual self-esteem or
Spiritual maturity. This passage reveals the royal family at its worst:
negative believers, in Ephesus and throughout the Roman province of Asia,
trapped in a reversionistic tailspin. The verse implies
that their condition is strictly the result of their own defiant attitude of
disobedience to the Word of God and insubordination to their Royal High Priest,
Jesus Christ.
Indeed, this
was not the manner in which they were taught! The verb manthano relates the process of learning; to the categorical
instruction from a pastor, and it is employed as a technical term for the
academic study of Scripture. Since the correct and accurate teaching of the
Word of God discourages any phase of reversionism, neither Truth nor the pastor-teacher
can be blamed for anyone’s reversionistic status. The responsibility lies
squarely on the unruly volition of the reversionist himself. In other words, there is no excuse for reversionism!
The accusative case of direct object, coupled with the definite article, ho Christos, is literally “the Christ”
and relates all Truth to Him. He has established not
only the system by which Truth is communicated but also the content of Truth to
be taught. To reject Truth — the “mind of Christ” (1Co 2:16) — is to renounce the authority of
Christ.
Inasmuch as you had begun to hear Him,
and had been taught by Him, since the Truth is in Jesus. (Eph 4:21)
While verse
20 focuses on the communicator, verse 21 directs our attention to the receiver.
Believers “hear” Christ through their own
Spirit-filled concentration on the pastor’s teaching of Truth. The system of Operation Z is the method by which Christ
communicates today to the believer-priest in the royal family of God, and the
pastor-teacher is the Lord’s representative in the teaching function of
Operation Z. That the believers in Ephesus had been previously taught is
affirmed by the aorist passive indicative of the verb didasko. Counterparts, didaska
and manthano “encompass the entire system of Biblical indoctrination: manthano denotes learning under
authoritative, categorical instruction; didasko
refers to communication. by monologue to a group under strict academic
discipline in the classroom of the local church or some other means, the
computer, MP3 etc..
The phrase,
“since the Truth [Aletheia] is in
Jesus,” again stresses that Truth has its source in
Christ and is the very Thinking of Christ. To place themselves back
under manthano and didasko is, therefore, essential if they
are to remove the scar tissue that constricts the soul!
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF REBOUND IN RECOVERY
That with reference to your former
manner of life, [Way of thinking] you put off
[Lay aside through rebound] the old man, [Human reality]
which is being corrupted [Depraved] according to
the lusts of deceit. [Reversionism] (Eph 4:22)
Depending on the context, the “former manner of life” can
refer to the thought pattern typical of either a believer or an unbeliever. In
this instance, it describes believers in carnality or in reversionism.
Lengthy negative volition and carnality without rebound have placed these
believers in the final stages of reversionism, a status from which they can
escape only by first utilizing rebound.
Rebound or
confession of sin, (1Jn 1:9) is essential
to any type of recovery in the Spiritual life. As the key to the ministry of
the Holy Spirit in the believer, rebound sets in motion the system of learning;
and is therefore prerequisite to advancement in the Christian life. “Put off”
is the aorist middle infinitive of the compound verb apotithemi, “to take off,” used in the figurative sense of laying aside or ridding
yourself of something obnoxious. What the believer must lay aside is
that deadly distorter of the soul, identified in the next phrase as palaios anthropos — the “old man” or the old sin nature's way of thinking.
In order for the Holy Spirit to execute the Christian life
in the believer, the sin nature's thinking must be cut off! While the
sin nature can never in this life be eradicated from the soul, certain of its
functions can be instantly halted by the rebound technique and more consistently nullified; by
Thinking with Truth and staying in fellowship!
As one of the
designations for the old sin nature, the term “old man” links carnality with
its origin at the Fall of man. It is in fact “as old as the Fall!” Totally corrupt and depraved, the old sin nature contains a
many-faceted lust and thought pattern which can become a source of motivation
when the sin nature controls the soul. (Eph
2:3) These range from approval and power
lust to sexual and materialism lusts.
Because
reversionists are carnal virtually all the time, lusts are woven into the
pattern of reversionism and are called in this verse “of
deceit.”
...Transgression speaks to the
ungodly within his heart; There is no fear of
God before his eyes. For it flatters him in his
own eyes Concerning the discovery of his iniquity and the hatred of it. The words of his mouth are wickedness
and deceit; He has ceased to be wise and to
do good. (Think
Truth) He plans (Thinks) wickedness upon his bed; He sets himself on a path that is
not good; He does not despise evil. (The old sin nature's way of thinking) (Psa 36:1-4)
In other words,
a believer in reversionism fires up the lust activity of the old sin nature,
which must be controlled before doctrinal intake can resume.
THE RESUMPTION OF OPERATION Z
And that you be
renewed in the spirit of your mind. (Eph 4:23)
The
continuative usage of the particle de, “and,” indicates a logical progression
toward recovery from the reversionistic deterioration outlined in the previous
verse. When the “old man” has been brought under
control by rebound, the next step is to reestablish. The present tense of ananeoo, “to be
restored,” is the iterative present, a tense of repeated action, which describes that which recurs at successive intervals.
It refers to the consistent exercise of, the
intake of Truth, by means of the Holy Spirit.
And put on the new
self, (New Spiritual species) which in the likeness of God
has been (And being) created in (Imputed and
experiential) righteousness and holiness (Integrity) of the Truth. (Eph 4:24)
There are
three infinitives in (Eph 4:22-24)
which describe the process of dissolving scar tissue in the soul in reversion
recovery: (1) the aorist middle infinitive of apotithemi in verse 22 — to lay aside the old sin nature by the
rebound technique: (2) the present passive infinitive of ananeoo in verse 23 — to operate consistently under the reception
principle; and (3) in verse 24, the aorist middle infinitive enduo — to
construct or reconstruct the edification complex in the soul.
In contrast
to apotithemi, “to take off” the old man,
we now have endue, “to put on,” or literally, “to clothe yourself” with the new man. Kainos is “new
in species” rather than in point of time; and when linked with anthropos, “man,” it indicates that the real person is located in the soul.
Consequently, to become a new person, there must be a
transformation on the inside! (Mat 23:26) However, this change must be “according to the standard of
God.” And what is God’s standard? THE WORD: Truth! Through Truth and the Holy
Spirit, order is brought out of chaos, and the soul can begin the process of
reconstruction. (Joh 4:23) The Holy Spirit and Truth create the Temple in the soul!
The completion of the Temple: means full recovery
from the control of the sin nature and or reversionism; and is the believer’s
entrance into the mature Christian life! The once-crumbling edifice in
the soul is restored “in the sphere of absolute righteousness.” [Dikaiosune]
While the
believer filled with the Spirit, or in fellowship with God, is in a status of
absolute righteousness, the actual “sphere of
righteousness” (Experiential righteousness) is maximum time and growth
in the Spiritual life. There must be righteousness in the soul by way of
imputation and growth before there can be righteousness in the life by way of
application. Thus, dikaiosune means the total fulfillment of Spiritual progress and
adjustment to the justice of God! Experiential
righteousness is the nobility of the Christian life; hence, members of the
royal family of God are expected to live up to their royal status.
Without the filling of The Holy Spirit and
maximum Truth applied to our Thinking; there can exist only a relative righteousness, which is
self-righteousness at best, and legalism or religion at worst! The perfect balance of Truth in
the soul and the filling of the Spirit changes righteousness into experience. This
balance prevents the superimposition of pseudo-righteousness, (Legalism) over
grace righteousness. (Grace Orientation)
“And true holiness,” kai hosioteti tes aletheias, is literally “devotion
to Truth.” In the Greek, “true” (Aletheia)
is a noun rather than an adjective. Arndt and Gingrich define aletheia as “the embodiment of knowledge
and Truth, especially the content of Christianity as the absolute Truth.” The derived meaning, then, is maximum Bible Truth in the
soul and human spirit of the believer! Ignorance
of Truth, (Eph 4:18) must be replaced by Thinking with Truth. (Eph 4:24) How do you
know when you are on the road to maturity? You
love Truth above all else; you cannot survive without it, even for one day.
Truth becomes your very life!
THE PRINCIPLE OF REVERSIONISM
You reversionists have become a
casualty [Ineffective, useless, neutralized]
from Christ, whoever are being justified [Vindicated] by means of the Law. (Or
energy of the old sin nature) You have drifted off
course from the grace. [God’s
Plan] (Gal
5:4)
This verse in
the original text begins with a good Texas expression] “Y’all.” Addressing the
reversionists in Galatia, Paul declares them to be “casualties from Christ” in
the angelic conflict. The verb katargeo
has several connotations in the Greek: “to be useless,
powerless, unprofitable, nonproductive, ineffectual, null and void.” In
other words, the believers had become neutralized as far as their effectiveness
in the royal family of God was concerned. The constantive aorist of katargeo indicates that the Galatians
had declined through seven stages of reversionism and were tottering on the
brink of the eighth — reverse process reversionism. Each stage carries its own
characteristic of ineffectiveness, and as a believer retrogresses, his
Spiritual dynamics and production decrease proportionately.
The tragic flaw of the Galatians was legalistic reversionism.
They were trying to be vindicated on the basis of the outward ceremonies
of Mosaic Law. (Luk 11:40) Although
they had been saved by grace, (Gal 1:6;
Gal 2:16) they were now adding the
works of the Law to the non-meritorious gift of salvation. The Judaizers had
slipped into town behind Paul and sold the Galatian believers a fraudulent bill
of goods: “Believe in Christ and be
circumcised! Believe in Christ and keep the Law!” But the Mosaic Law was never
intended to be an instrument of salvation or the Spiritual life. While it
reveals the sinful condition of man and directs his attention to his need of
salvation, it can neither save nor provide
Spirituality. (Rom 7:14) The non-efficacious works of the Law would be equivalent today
to joining or giving money to the church, being baptized, feeling sorry for
sin, giving up something you enjoy in order to obtain salvation or Spiritual
status in time. Anything and everything thought or done apart from the filling
of the Holy Spirit and Truth! (Joh 4:24)
The very
meaning of the word justification (Present passive indicative of dikaioo) means
a total grace function. God found a way in His
justice through the mechanics of the Cross to vindicate sinners. Justification;
a judicial act of God whereby at the moment of salvation He imputes His own
perfect righteousness to the believer, and is
based on the fact that God must keep His essence uncompromised and intact. God does not love us on the basis of whether we are good
or bad, moral or immoral. He loves us because
He has credited His own righteousness to our account — because of Christ’s work on the Cross! Man’s works have no part in God’s work. God cannot
change His character to accommodate Himself to you or to me; nor can He
compromise His integrity by a mushy, sentimental love that takes no cognizance
of sin. In order to be true to His righteousness and justice, God must
pronounce a penalty on sin: “The wages of sin [Adam’s original sin] is
[Spiritual] death. [Imputation of Adam’s sin to every old sin nature] “ (Rom 6:23) Yet “not willing that any should
perish,” (2Pe 3:9) Jesus Christ
voluntarily became “sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the
righteousness of God in him.” (2Co 5:21)
Christ paid the penalty of sin by His own Spiritual death as He bore our sins
in His body on the Cross. (1Pe 2:24)
The
righteousness of the Father was propitiated, or satisfied, by the impeccability
of Christ’s humanity as He hung on the Cross, and the justice of the Father was
satisfied toward us by the Spiritual death of Christ. Because the penalty for
sin has been paid in full, the justice of God is free to pardon and to
vindicate the sinner who accepts His saving grace by believing in Christ. But
He is equally free to justly condemn all who reject the Divine provision of
salvation. In spite of the continued presence of the old sin nature in the
soul, God credits to the believer’s account His own righteousness. Regardless
of his subsequent behavior or Spiritual status.
The Galatian believers received the only true justification
at the point of their salvation; yet in their reversionistic thinking, they did
not recognize the efficacy of God’s grace. By adding their own works,
they have taken the road of legalistic reversionism and Paul tells them, “You
have fallen from grace”The aorist active indicative from ekpipto means “to fall away from,” or “to drift off course.” This nautical analogy implies that they had departed from
the charted sea-lanes — God’s Plan for their
lives — and were heading toward the shoals of
disaster — the sin unto death. (Gal 5:4) The culminative aorist of ekpipto emphasizes the results of the
constantive aorist of katargeo: they
had become powerless and had therefore drifted off course they had moved in the
opposite direction from grace. To stay on course
requires that the believer function daily under Operation Z. To drift off course is rejection of Truth, which leads to
reversionism.
Now although
the Galatian believers were legalistic and reversionistic, they had not lost
their eternal life. They had failed to appropriate the grace provision from God
for the Christian life and had become nonproductive. The same grace principle
not only produces, but sustains and advances the Spiritual life of the believer.
Ultimately, all reversionism is the rejection of grace. The grace course mapped out by the Divine Planner is designed to glorify
Him: from saving grace to logistical grace;
through logistical grace to Spiritual adulthood; from Spiritual adulthood to Spiritual maturity; and across the high
golden bridge of dying grace into surpassing grace. This is sailing into the sunset of glory! At some
point, the Galatians disregarded the Divine compass and were caught in the
swirling currents of the reversionistic maelstrom!
THE DISCIPLINE OF REVERSIONISM
THE PRINCIPLE OF DISCIPLINE
The renegade
believer who persists down the disastrous path of reversionism is subject to
ever greater Divine discipline with each stage of his decline. Divine discipline
is the sum total of punitive measures by which God judges and corrects the
believer. In the final analysis, it is the justice
of God adjusting to the erring believer and represents the alternative to
blessing. Technically, discipline, or correcting, refers to punishment
for the believer in time only, while judgment usually designates the punishment
of the unbeliever in eternity. (Joh 3:18)
During Phase Two, Divine discipline is imposed for two reasons: carnality and reversionism. In
the sphere of carnality, the discipline is temporary and generally canceled by
the rebound technique. (1Co 11:31)
However, if after rebound the suffering is neither removed nor diminished, its
purpose is simply converted from cursing into blessing. (Job 5:17-18) On the
other hand, Divine discipline for reversionism is a more intensive warning
signal to halt the errant Christian.
When the
reversionist realizes the purpose of discipline, it is profitable; in fact, it
provides the only hope for the believer to gain the perspective necessary to
recover from reversionism. (Heb 12:7) Believers who are not teachable by Truth are only
teachable by discipline! The purpose of the
Divine “woodshed” is to correct the straying believer, not only to bring him to
the point of restoration but also to encourage him to advance to maturity.
To become disturbed or upset when punitive measures are applied is to forget
this vital Thought.
And so, you yourselves have forgotten
the principle of Truth which teaches you as sons: My son, do not make light of
corrective discipline from the Lord nor be fainting when you are reproved by
Him. (Heb
12:5; quoted from Pro 3:11)
The believers
to whom this was addressed were in reversionism and were apparently complaining
about the Lord’s disciplinary actions. Because of their persistent attitude,
they needed admonition and instruction concerning the purpose of discipline and
their proper response to it. In quoting, (Pro 3:11)
the writer of Hebrews cautioned them against a flippant attitude toward
corrective measures from the Lord. Why? All
discipline from God is designed to train, to teach and to strengthen the
believer. Paideia connotes
teaching via corrective discipline. As long as the believer remains in
reversionism, appropriate types of reproof or correction will be administered
by the Lord.
Reversionists
are susceptible to fainting in the soul, or discouragement; therefore, the
writer redirects their attention to the Lord and Truth.
For you see, whom the Lord loves, He
disciplines, and He scourges (Punishes) every son whom He receives by grace
(Heb 12:6; quoted from Pro 3:12).
For whom the Lord loves, He judges by
punitive action; therefore, like a father to a son in whom He delights. (Pro 3:12)
For these
immature, reversionistic believers the Lord must express His disciplinary
policy in simple terms. Such individuals lack Truth and have no frame of
reference for comprehending Divine justice, so God graciously encourages them
with an illustration that they can understand. A parent is responsible to
discipline his child — with the goal of training him to become a mature,
responsible adult. Normal parents love their children and know that the
frequent but short-lived pain of the paddle is much better for them than the
perpetual self-induced misery of a life without self-discipline or respect for
authority. Thus, God ascribes this type of illustration to Himself to encourage
“fainting” reversionists to take heart even under His severe discipline. Even
the reversionist can get the point: God has the believer’s growth and Spiritual advantage in
mind! The love of a parent, however, is not actually the Divine
attribute with which God deals with us. Since the Fall of Man, God’s point of
contact with us has been His justice. Justice is the action half of God’s
integrity; the other half, absolute righteousness, is the principle of His
integrity. What righteousness demands, justice
executes, and because God never violates His
integrity, all actions He takes toward us come from His justice in love.
Justice can either bless or discipline: if
righteousness approves, justice blesses; if righteousness disapproves, justice
curses or disciplines.
Justice is
the channel from the essence of God through which come all man’s blessings and
all man’s discipline. This means that as believers we now receive blessings
from God that are permanent. Christ satisfied the justice of God once and for
all on the Cross, and God is therefore free to give His own perfect
righteousness and eternal life to anyone who believes in His Son. Likewise,
even the blessings from God in time are encapsulated against the changing tides
of history and, moreover, will be "doubled up" into eternal rewards.
Thus we are secure, as the children in a family are secure, because He treats in
justice all members of the royal family of God. Even those under maximum Divine
discipline in the Final stages of reversionism possess in Christ an eternal
relationship with the integrity of God.
An anthropopathism ascribes to God human feelings, passions
or thoughts. It is designed to explain God’s policies, thoughts, actions or
decisions in human language, easily understandable within a human frame of
reference. Although God loves His own righteousness which we as believers now
possess, His true attribute of love is not the source of our blessing or
discipline; but is His motivation. (1Jn 4:8) Instead, the human love
of a father toward a noncompliant son is attributed to God in order to picture
God’s justice and to encourage the reversionist to respond to discipline with
renewed positive volition toward Truth. The
anthropopathism of human love illustrates the function of justice blessing the
mature believer, disciplining the reversionist, but in all cases expressing the
function of Divine integrity.
The word
translated “scourge” in, (Heb 12:6)
means “to flog” or “to skin alive with a whip” and vividly depicts the
concentrated punishment reserved for the reversionist. In, (Heb 12:5) the rebuke or reproof is less extreme,
such as God would administer to the carnal believer.
Paradechomai, “receives,” has several
meanings in the Greek, but here it corresponds to the Old Testament word
translated “delights” in. (Pro 3:12)
Ratsah in the Hebrew has the same connotation as paradechomai and means “to welcome home,” or “to receive
favorably.” A child in whom a father delights is
always welcome home; likewise all believers are welcomed back to fellowship. (Isa 55:7)
God keeps believers alive for two reasons: to bless them or
to spank them. (Deut 28:63) God is glorified by blessing believers who are adjusted to
His justice and are advancing toward or maintaining maturity! Again, the believer must adjust to the justice of God, or the justice of God will
adjust to him! Maladjusted believers in
reversionism are kept alive often simply to be disciplined. Before the final
axe falls and the believer loses his opportunity to glorify Christ in time, God
gives sufficient warning: grace always precedes
judgment. Thus, there is discipline in every phase of reversionism until
the believer departs to be with the Lord. (2Co 5:8)
so even the most severe chastening cannot be spared
if the reversionist is to learn the lessons of Truth now, while he is on earth.
THE STAGES OF DISCIPLINE
THE WARNING STAGE
Of the three
stages of Divine discipline, the First warns the believer that his negative
volition to Truth has drawn him away from the Plan of God. The caution signals
are generally flashing during the first four stages of reversionism: reaction, the frantic search for happiness, Operation
Boomerang and emotional revolt. Warning discipline can occur in either
adversity or prosperity, but the removal of the prosperity can be a test, (Job 2:6) or sound the alarm. Standing or
knocking at the door — a most gentle reminder — expresses this first phase of
punitive action.
Stop criticizing, brethren, “against
others of the same kind [Fellow members of the royal family] that you be not
judged. Behold, the Judge-stands at the door, with the result that He keeps on
standing at the door (Jas
5:9)
If you habitually gossip, malign and judge other believers,
your discipline is a warning that you are in reversionism! When
reversionism is checked in its early stages, before the loss of Truth becomes
critical, recovery is relatively simple: rebound
followed by the consistent reception, retention, recall, resisting sin, and
repeat! (Rev 3:20-22)
For the believer who rejects the Lord’s disciplinary
knocking on the door of the soul, the next step is intensified misery, again
with or without overt prosperity. This second category of Divine
chastisement is generally found in the last four phases of reversionism:
negative volition, blackout, scar tissue and reverse process reversionism. The pattern of discipline is individually designed for
each reversionist, but it is often characterized by alternate periods of
suffering and blessing. (Gen 42:28) This contrast is designed to alert the believer to the fact
that there is no advantage to prosperity or success without the advantage of
Truth! When the prosperity turns into adversity, the reversionist is in
the intensive stage, as portrayed graphically by. (Psa
38:1-14) Also part of the discipline during this period is the “strong delusion” of. (2Th
2:11-12)
THE DYING STAGE
The third
stage is the final discipline of the reversionistic believer before he arrives
in eternity; the sin unto death. (1Jn 5:16)
Instead of crossing the golden bridge of dying grace reserved for Spiritually
adult believers, the reversionist transfers from time to eternity under
agonizing and miserable conditions to use the military idiom, a low-crawl over
ground glass! The sin unto death is administered only after prolonged and
unchecked reversionism, and only after the reversionist has failed to respond
to the previous stages of discipline. (Jer 44:9-12;
Eze 20:13; Rev
2:16; Rev 19:21) Dying can be the most elevated or the most shocking experience in the life of a believer! The
period of dying might be a few seconds or several years, but whatever it is, the Spiritual adult or mature believer will enjoy it
immensely, while the reversionist will
experience maximum physical and or soul suffering. (Rom 2:9)
Under certain
circumstances, Satan is permitted the power of death, and the New Testament
records two instances of believers who were turned over to him by the Apostle
Paul for the administration of intensive discipline and the sin unto death. No
greater disaster could befall any individual than when Satan is allowed to do
his worst. Only Satan’s evil genius could devise such a torturous death!
I [Paul] made a command decision to
deliver such a one [Incestuous reversionist] over to Satan for the destruction
of his flesh, in order that his spirit might be delivered in the day of the
Lord. (1Co
5:5)
Be having and
holding the Spiritual life and a good conscience [Freedom from the influence of evil] , which certain
ones [Reversionists] having
rejected have suffered shipwreck concerning their Spiritual life. Among
whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have delivered over to Satan in order
that they might be taught by discipline; not to blaspheme. (1Ti 1:19-20)
In both
cases, Timothy, the pastor, had failed to live up to his responsibility and had
allowed these divisive individuals to run rampant through the congregation. (1Ti 5:20) Finally, the Apostle Paul was
compelled to step in and lower the boom! During the First century, apostolic
authority included the power to deliver a believer to Satan for discipline, but
so far as we know only Paul exercised this prerogative. Nowhere in Scripture do
we find that the pastor-teacher today has such authority. The apostolic gifts and power have been replaced by the
completed Word of God. (1Co 13:10)Undoubtedly,
there are times when God Himself delivers believers to Satan for maximum
discipline. It is, however, within the pastor’s authority and duty to
administer discipline in certain situations to unruly members of the
congregation (Tit 1:10-14) — certainly
a most unpleasant task and one that most pastors avoid. Yet when he faithfully
discharges his obligation to teach Truth, discipline will be minimal. (2Ti 4:2) Should he consistently fail to
communicate the Word of God, the problem is only compounded.
These three
believers — Hymenaeus, Alexander and the incestuous Corinthian — were placed in
the intensive and dying stages of discipline as a final warning to straighten
out or die miserably! Many times suffering awakens people to their reversionism
and spurs them back to Truth and complete recovery, as was the case with the
believer in Corinth. (2Co 2:6-8) But progress under discipline is slow and painful. How much
better to learn the easy way — by Truth!
It is always
characteristic of reversionists to reject the authority of Bible teachers. The
Jews of the Exodus generation resisted Moses; (Exod
17:3) the Mizpah remnant under Jeremiah became totally apathetic to
his ministry! (Jer 42:1; thru Jer 44:30) and the constant rejection and
harassment of Paul by the Corinthian believers is well documented. (2Co 10:1; thru 2Co
11:33) A classic Old Testament example of a bitter and tormented
departure from this life is the record of the last days of King Saul, a
reversionist who died the sin unto death after rejecting both Truth and the one
who communicated it. (1Sa 28:1-25; 1Ch 10:1-14)
All three
phases of discipline are found in: (1Co 11:30)
“For this cause many are weak (Warning discipline) and sick (Intensive
discipline) among you, and many sleep.” (Dying discipline, the sin unto
death)
Before the final
stage is reached, punitive action can be headed off, according to the next
verse, by means of rebound: “For if we would judge ourselves, we should
not be judged.” (1Co 11:31) Rebound must be followed by the resumption of maximum
reception, of Truth, retention, recall, resisting sin, and repetition for
complete restoration!
THE PROFILE OF THE REVERSIONIST
(Psa 7:1-17) views the profile of a reversionist
— “Cush the Benjamite,” or King Saul. In writing this Psalm, David recounts
Saul’s unjust persecutions against him but leaves retributive justice in the
hands of the Lord. Well aware of the three stages of discipline, David draws on
the verbal imagery of his day to illustrate the certainty of judgment.
If he [The reversionist] does not
repent. He [God] will sharpen His sword; He has bent His bow and prepared it.
[Drawn back the bow and loaded it with an arrow] (Psa 7:12)
In order to
impress his readers as to the seriousness of the offense, the last stage of
discipline is presented first. If the reversionist does
not repent or change his course from a negative to a positive attitude toward
Truth, God will “sharpen His sword” — the sin
unto death. Drawing the bow and aiming the arrow depict the warning and
intensive stages of discipline. To be completely
effective, each arrow must be constructed for its own bow; and just as every
bow required a certain type of arrow, so God
has prepared a special form of discipline for every category of reversionism as
well as for every individual reversionist!
He [God] has appointed for him [The
reversionist] the instruments of death; He shapes His arrows, the burning ones. (Psa 7:13)
“Instruments” in the plural indicate that God has many ways
by which He can remove the reversionist under the sin unto death. Whatever manner God chooses will be a traumatic and painful
experience! The “burning ones” (Dalak)
are God’s arrows aimed at those under Divine discipline. When God shoots, it
constitutes a warning. Please note that God shoots all the arrows! He is the
Divine Archer, and He will not tolerate amateur archers — believers who take
the judgment of a reversionist into their own hands. (Rom 14:4; Rom 14:10)
After all, God’s flaming arrows are far more effective than anyone’s vicious
little tongue! Avoid judging others — leave the shooting to God! David applied this
principle when he refused to touch Saul.
Behold, he shall have labor pains,
[Warning discipline] of emptiness, [Frantic search for happiness,
intensification of reactor factors, emotional revolt of the soul] because he
has become pregnant with frustration; [Reaction, warning discipline] therefore,
he has given birth to a life of deceit. [Negative
volition, blackout of the soul, scar tissue, reverse process reversionism] (Psa 7:14)
This verse
begins a dissertation on the gestation period of reversionism — from conception
to birth. “Behold,” the exclamatory Hebrew word hineh, is used to focus attention on “the importance of what is to
follow, i.e., the consequences of involvement in reversionism. It dramatically
introduces an analogy between a reversionistic life and the birth-pangs of a
woman in labor. (Chabal in the piel
imperfect) perpetual pain! Each stage of reversionism
carries its own labor pain in the soul. Suddenly,
in the midst of the labor pangs, the “baby” issues forth! And what is
this progeny called? Aven — “nothingness!” After all the agony of birth, what is
there to show for it? Only emptiness, the
production of reversionistic evil!
The likening
of reversionism to labor pains forms an apt analogy because there must be a
pregnancy before there can be a birth. In reversionism,
“pregnancy” occurs when there is negative volition toward Truth. Usually some
outside factor must fertilize the negative volition. The two most common
agents of conception are emotional revolt and the frantic search for happiness. At first, pregnancy
is generally associated with pleasure, just as sublimation for the reactor
factors usually consists of some enjoyable activity. In
the beginning, the intoxicating pleasure-whirl is all fun. When you are
emotionally stimulated, the frustration, disillusion, self-pity or boredom is
forgotten for the moment. Forgotten also is Truth, and you will soon become pregnant with reversionism!
Once you
disregard Truth, the emotional revolt is soon accompanied by pain. The “labor
pains” are comparable to warning discipline. Whatever generates the lack of
response to Truth carries with it the agony of discipline. The qal perfect of harah, “and hath conceived,” is
literally, “because he has become pregnant,” i.e., before he had the labor
pains. The labor pains were mentioned first to give them emphasis. The
pregnancy is called “mischief” in your English Bible, but the Hebrew word amal means “frustration” or “sin.” It
illustrates the inner frustration and anguish that result from the frantic
search for happiness, intensification of the reactor factors, and the emotional
revolt in the soul when these fail to produce the desired pleasure.
When you
persist in the early stages of reversionism, the pregnancy eventually “gives
birth” (Qal perfect of jaladh) to a
life of deceit, duplicity and hypocrisy. (Shaqer)
Every reversionist lives a lie. His soul is dishonest, and his life follows suit. He has no capacity for life and thus inevitably destroys
his relationships with others by his own divisiveness and deceptiveness.
This is the area of reverse process reversionism, where
some form of self-gratification pushes aside the Lord Jesus Christ and Truth. When you devote yourself to some person, pursuit or object
to the exclusion of Truth, you accumulate to yourself all the misery that
accompanies the later stages of reversionism!
Whatever
reactor factors caused you to become pregnant will in time develop into a
habitual life-style. If you originally succumbed to minor frustrations, you
will ultimately emerge a obsessive-compulsive person. If, in the early stage of
reversionism you began with indifference, by the time it is “born,”
indifference will have reached mammoth proportions.
He dug a grave and explored it’, therefore,
he has fallen into the ditch which he made. (Psa
7:15)
This verse
draws a new analogy, which explains the volitional aspect of reversionism. The reversionist of his own free will digs (Karah) a grave for himself. Every
time he makes a Satanic and or human decision; based
on boredom, disillusion, (Not to get what we expected from someone or something) apathy or frustration;
to go over the hill into escapism, and when he tries to satisfy his self-pity
by getting involved in emotional activity, he enters into a pattern of life
that if perpetuated solidifies indifference to Truth! By the time he is
in the advanced state of negative volition, he is also in the intensified phase
of discipline. He is caught in his own trap!
Not only does
the reversionist dig a pit for himself, but he goes down and explores (Chapar) the hole. In other words, he is getting ready to bury himself in his
own grave! As the discipline increases, so does his annoying quest for happiness and his emotional
revolt. Negative volition has opened the mataiotes, and the delusion of satanic
twisted Truth which is drawn in; accounts for his course of action. Now
he moves quickly into the last three areas of reversionism — the blackout of
the soul, scar tissue and reverse process reversionism.
To fall into the ditch is the last stage of discipline, or
the sin unto death. By his own negative volition he has manufactured his own
torture chamber and miserable death! He can
blame only himself; he alone is accountable
for rejecting the grace and blessing of the road to glory!
His frustration shall return upon his
own head; his violent oppression of others shall descend on the crown of his
head. (Psa
7:16)
What began one day as reaction to a little boredom, a little
apathy, (An
absence of enthusiasm for Truth!) a little self-pity, a little frustration, will the next day
become a horrible nightmare? The thoughts and
activities of reversionism can produce only frustration. The double
meaning of shub forms a humorous
paranomasia (Play on words) in the midst of a serious dissertation. The word
means “to return,” which implies Operation Boomerang, and “to repent,” the
means of breaking out of reversionism. The pun suggests that since your own
frustration is turning back on you, why shouldn’t you
turn back to positive volition toward Truth and thereby be restored? Otherwise, your self-induced misery will keep returning to
haunt you with ever-increasing intensity!
A “violent oppressor” (Chamas) is the reversionistic
believer who refuses to accept the responsibility for his own failure and takes
it out on others in vengeance, gossip, maligning, vindictiveness and is also
unmerciful. His meanness toward others, however, will fall upon his own head to
form a portion of his discipline. He reaps what
he sows! (Gal 6:7) Every believer is responsible for his own decisions which are
contrary to Truth. On the other hand, God
faithfully supports all decisions the believer makes in accordance with Truth.
Thus, blessing upon blessing is multiplied to the adult or Spiritual mature believer.
Then the LORD passed by in front of him and
proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to
anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and Truth; who keeps
lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty
unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the
grandchildren to the third and fourth generations." Moses made haste to bow low toward the earth and
worship. (Exod 34:6-8)
Since we can neither earn nor deserve such
blessings, we reap what God has sown!
BIBLICAL NOMENCLATURE FOR REVERSIONISM
There are
many terms and descriptions for reversionism in the Bible. As you become aware
of the doctrine of reversionism, you will begin to recognize certain words and
phrases which indicate the entire Thought. It might be just one or two words,
such as “wicked” (Pro 15:9) or the
“unstable soul,” (2Pe 2:14) or it may
be a phrase like “drifting off course from grace,” (Gal
5:4) which we have already discussed. We should note in detail other
examples of this terminology.
NEGLECTING THE GRACE OF GOD
See to it [Take the personal
responsibility] that no one falls back from the grace of God; that not one root
of bitterness sprouting up cause trouble, and through this the many be contaminated.
(Heb 12:15)
Mental attitude sins, represented in this verse by
bitterness, are the most devastating category of sin because of their
detrimental effect on the soul. Unchecked by rebound and Operation Z, they
become a major contributor to reversionism. The
failure to confess any mental attitude sin is to fall short, to be below
standard or to fall back from grace! (Hustereo) All reversionists are characterized by failure in the
sphere of grace, by refusal of the grace provision of the rebound technique,
and in effect retreat from Spiritual adulthood. Even though reversionistic
believers are kept alive by logistical grace, they
have failed to recognize that fellowship with God is maintained by the rebound
technique, equally a matter of grace. Rebound
means simply to name the sin. "Admit we are out of fellowship" and
want to get back in! The Scriptures do not specify that a believer must feel
sorry for sin, compensate (Make up for it) or do penance (Hurt ourselves) in order to be forgiven. Confession is a total grace
concept! (Pro
1:23) If
the believer has slipped down through the latter stages of reversionism and if
he is to halt his own retreat from grace, it becomes necessary to function under Operation Z to the
point of maximum resident Truth in the soul where God can pour out to him the
blessings of maturity.
The root (Riza) of bitterness draws an analogy
between the root and mental attitude sins. The root develops from a seed which
is dead and burned in the ground. (1Co 15:36)
The seed is an illustration of sin, and the death of the seed pictures a sin
which has been confessed and permanently forgiven under the rebound technique. The reaction situation arises if the believer begins to think
about the sin after it is confessed. From that root of remembering the
sin springs a mental attitude sin cluster of more bitterness, jealousy,
vindictiveness and implacability. When any” sin or failure has been blotted out
through rebound, any chain reaction or “chain sinning” that might result in a
relapse; should be ended!
The sprouting
upward of reaction to a previously forgiven sin has two devastating results.
The first is the believer’s potential for causing trouble (Enochleo) for himself by relapsing into reversionism. The “trouble”
is the self-induced misery of reversionism. While all
sin originates in the old sin nature, it is nevertheless linked with the
volition. (Jas 1:14) In other words, any time you are sinning, it is because you
want to!
Through a
recurrence of the reversionism, there is a second result. “The many” — those
who are in the periphery of the reacting believer — are defiled. (Miaino) Remember, the Bible must be
interpreted according to the time in which it was written. In the ancient
cities, sewage was collected in chamber pots and simply dumped over balconies
or from windows into the street below. Anyone passing by was drenched! The
victims were said to be miaino — “contaminated!” Reversionism is like dumping sewage
into the soul, and no one can have a soul polluted with the sewage of
reversionism without corrupting other believers with whom he associates. Under his influence, they too are drawn into reversionism.
ENEMIES OF THE CROSS
For many keep walking, concerning whom
I have told you many times and now, even weeping tell you, they have made themselves [By
negative volition] the enemies of the Cross of Christ: whose end [Reward] is destruction, whose god is
their emotion; (Old sin nature) their
glory is in their dishonor, (Shame at the Judgment Seat)
who keep thinking about earthly things. (Satanic and or human
reality) (Php 3:18-19)
The “many”
were the large number of reversionistic believers in the first generation of
the Church Age. The believer’s “walk” is his function and progress (Or lack of
progress) in the Christian life. Paul constantly warned those first century
believers concerning the danger of reversionism. So intense was his concern
that he was often compelled to figuratively weep over their grievous condition!
While these believers had accepted the grace of God in salvation, they had subsequently rejected the principle of grace and
turned to the old sin nature; rather than the filling of the Holy Spirit and
Truth. Grace begins at the Cross; in fact, the
Cross represents grace! Those who substitute legalism at any point in
their Phase Two experience,
(After believing in Jesus) become enemies of
the Cross and therefore of God. (1Sa 28:16;
Jas 4:4)
There were
four characteristics of reversionism related to the Philippian church. First,
those “whose end is destruction.” “End” is the termination of Phase Two for the
reversionist. Here, “destruction” is no reward.
(1Co 3:15) Second, there are those
“whose god is their emotion.” Koilia
describes the emotional pattern of the old sin nature. Reversionists
in emotional revolt of the soul become slaves to their emotions, and the proper
function of Truth is neutralized. A third snare to those who have become
hostile to grace is shame at the Judgment Seat of Christ: “whose [Own] glory is their dishonor.” (1Jn 2:28) The fourth, those “who
think about earthly things,” describes
reversionists whose thinking becomes enmeshed in human viewpoint — the satanic
policy of evil. (Act 17:29; Jas 4:4-5)
A TORTURED SOUL
And if He rescued righteous Lot,
oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men. (For by what he saw and
heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul
tormented day after day by their lawless deeds) (2Pe 2:7-8)
The context
of this passage is the judgment of the ungodly cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Lot, a believer, was virtually dragged out of the midst of danger. The word kataponeo, translated “oppressed” in
verse 7, means “to be exhausted by labor, suffering or pressure,” hence, “to be
overpowered.” Lot was helpless in the face of lawlessness and lasciviousness.
Although Lot should have separated himself from reversionism, in grace God
rescued him and secured his separation before destroying Sodom and Gomorrah. (Gen 19:19-22)
FAINTING IN THE MIND
For begin thinking about such a Person
as Jesus Christ, having endured such opposition by the sinners against Himself,
in order that you do not become exhausted, [Fatigued, enfeebled by
reversionism] fainting in your mind. (Heb 12:3)
The command
to concentrate on Christ (Analogizomai)
can be obeyed only by the steadfast function of
staying in fellowship. Truth in the soul is the
source of Divine Thinking and your sole defense against reversionism and the
influence of evil. Nobility of character,
impact for Christ, Spiritual dynamics, stability, confidence and glorification
of the Lord are all related to what you Think — the
proper function of the soul and human spirit. A
Divine Thought can make us, or a satanic thought
will break us! As a believer, you are literally
a walking battlefield: you are continuously
engaged in an inner conflict of mental attitudes — human reality versus Divine
Reality (Isa 55:8-9)
The Lord Jesus Christ endured (Hupomeno) unprecedented
pressure throughout His ministry on earth. By
carefully considering the Lord’s mental attitude under adversity, your own
attitude is invigorated. The perfect Thoughts of Christ are contained in Bible
Truth; (1Co 2:16) Truth must be your Thinking in life. (Php 2:5)
When you
succumb to pressure, complain and fall apart, your soul becomes “exhausted” (Kamno) and “feeble.” (Elkuo) Both of these are expressions
used to describe reversionism. In this state of soul-exhaustion, your own thoughts become your worst enemy. (Isa 65:2) Such mental activity adds up to
malfunction of the human spirit, and the result is a miserable, neurotic or psychotic ("madness") individual. As the
believer retrogresses through the various stages of reversionism, his soul is
increasingly enfeebled, and he becomes a casualty in the angelic conflict. (2Pe 2:15-17)
As Jesus Christ endured or persisted in Thinking with Truth,
(Joh 7:16; Joh 8:26; Joh 12:49; Joh 14:24; Joh 17:8) even under the greatest
barrage of human and satanic pressures in history, so your day-by-day
perseverance in assimilating Truth will enable you to meet and overcome every
problem, every disaster, every difficulty that you will face in life! (Joh 17:18; Rev 22:6-7)
UNCIRCUMCISED OF HEART
Behold, the days are coming, decrees
the Lord, when I will punish all the reversionists,
being circumcised, yet possessing a foreskin. (Jer 9:25)
The
prediction of impending doom for Judah’s reversionism will finally result in
the fifth cycle of discipline for that nation and the sin unto death for many
of its people. “Being circumcised, yet possessing a
foreskin,” is an oxymoron, which combines contradictory or incongruous
words for a particular effect. These Jews had been
physically circumcised as a sign of their salvation and also as a sign of reaching maturity: "the cutting off" the
thinking of the old sin nature!
Nevertheless, in reversionism, they still possessed “uncircumcised hearts,” or “foreskins
in the soul,” which allowed the filth of
mental attitude sins, emotional revolt and scar tissue to accumulate. In other words, reversionism and satanic thinking had not
been cut away from the soul!
… For all the Gentiles are
uncircumcised; but all the house of Israel are uncircumcised
in the heart. (Jer
9:26)
The Jews prided themselves on the ritual of physical
circumcision, but they had neglected the
reality behind the ritual; Truth in the soul! Without realizing it, they had become like the
nearby heathen nations who possessed no Truth and whose uncircumcised males
they haughtily disdained. To be thus linked with the Gentiles was a gross
insult to the Jews!
Reversionism
always destroys the distinction between believers and unbelievers. The
difference between Jews and Gentiles does not depend on the rite of
circumcision; but on
the function of Operation Z, and the construction of the edification complex in
the soul: the adult and Spiritually
mature life. These Spiritual accomplishments represent “circumcision in the soul” which
removes the dead skin of reversionism and the thinking of the old sin nature.
Ritual without reality is meaningless!
LEAVING YOUR FIRST LOVE
But I hold it against you that you have
forsaken your love, the first. (Rev 2:4)
In contrast to their former status of Spiritual maturity:
personal love for God, and occupation with Christ, the Ephesian church
had forsaken (Aphiemi) their love for
the Lord Jesus Christ and were practicing reverse process reversionism. In rejecting Christ, they had given Him the brush-off,
transferred their personal love for Christ; to
themselves and were in apostasy.
FALLEN
Recall to mind, therefore, in what way you have fallen, and change your mind [With
Truth] and do the first works. Otherwise, I Myself will come to you [For punishment] and will agitate and remove your lamp (Impact) from
its place, unless you change your mind [About and withTruth] (Rev 2:5).
The term for
reversionism in this verse is stated in the command to reversion recovery,
which begins with “remember.” (Mnemoneuo) To
regain their former status, the Ephesians must call to mind some particular
Truth, some specific Divine Thoughts, temporarily obscured, that will stimulate
their motivation toward renewed occupation with Christ! The fragrance of
memory of personal Love for God; is revived only through Truth. “Fallen”
(Perfect tense of pipto) is used in
connection with reversionism almost without exception. The perfect tense is a
state of completion and indicates that they have regressed through every stage
of reversionism.
“To repent” (Metanoeo in the aorist active
imperative) calls for making a decision a mental, not emotional, process of changing
the mind. They must make constant decisions to
rebound and to avail themselves of Truth in order to recover. Poieo, an ingressive aorist, means “begin to do.” The “first
works” was the construction of the edification complex in the soul by which they
reached maturity. (1Co 3:10-14)
Unless these
reversionists make the decision to recover, Christ will come to them. (Present
middle indicative of erchomai)
Although erchomai is sometimes used
for the Second Advent, in this context it refers to the immediate certainty of
discipline which Christ Himself will administer. Punitive
action will not only affect the individuals involved in reversionism, but it
can dissolve an entire local church or even a nation. (Isa 21:9) Their “lamp” (Preserving and protecting impact) will be
permanently extinguished unless they change their minds. (Mat 5:13) This time metanoeo is in the aorist active subjunctive. Above, the ingressive
aorist in the imperative mood commanded them to begin to recover; now the
constantive aorist implies that they must make a series of positive decisions
toward Truth. They may
or may not comply: the subjunctive mood is the mood of free will. Will we obey? (1Sa 15:22) To OBEY means that we
must learn and Think with every Thought from the Word of God! (God's Reality) Even when our eyes, sin nature, pride, people, or
circumstances would get in the way! (Our Reality) (2Ti 2:4) Because: Ritual, (Reading, praying, giving, etc.) without God's Reality is meaningless!
LUKEWARM
BELIEVERS
And unto the pastor of the local
church in the area of Laodicea, write. The One who is the Object of faith, (Jesus) the Witness, the faithful and dependable One,
the originating Source of the act of creation from God, communicates these things
(Rev 3:14)
While Jesus
Christ is the Source of all Truth. He did not convey this message directly to
the church but to the Apostle John. John in turn relayed the message to the
Divinely appointed pastor of the local church at Laodicea, one of the three
cities, along with Colossae and Hierpolis, in the Lyons Valley of what is now
western Turkey. In every generation, Jesus Christ is
faithful in warning reversionists — not
directly, but through pastors teaching the
Word of Truth. This passage contains as clear a warning concerning reversionism
as can be found anywhere in the Word of God.
I am aware of your production, that
you are neither cold nor hot. I desire that you were cold or hot! (Rev 3:15)
The Lord Jesus Christ in His omniscience knew that the
Laodiceans were not producing according to (Jas
1:22-25) — where the believer is Commanded
to be a “doer of the Word” and not a “hearer
only.” A “hearer only” is either a reversionist or a believer who suffers from
roadblocks of the soul which prevent his application of Truth. A “doer” is one who, is learning and Thinking with God's
Word continually! HOT!
The Laodiceans were a
church of believers! Had they been, cold — ignorant and or
arrogant — (Luk 12:47-48) the solution to their problem would have been simple:
Start learning Truth! Had
they been hot — adult or Spiritually mature
believers — there would have been no problem
in the first place. (Luk 12:37-44) This passage is therefore addressed to believers somewhere
between these two extremes. (Luk 12:45-46)
So therefore, because
you are lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I am about to vomit you out from my mouth. (Rev 3:16)
“Lukewarm” (Chliaros) implies that
they had once been hot but had now cooled off. Chliaros also denotes water mixed with salt which causes vomiting.
The Laodicean churches were made up of x-number of believers who, in a status
of reversionism, were nauseous to the Lord. Nauseous, yes; but dead, no. Where there is life. There is hope! The recovery begins with a warning of Divine discipline.
A combination of anthropomorphism and anthropopathism, vomiting expresses the
principle of discipline, both national and personal.
'Because you say, "I am rich, and
have become wealthy, and have need of nothing," and you do not know that
you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, (Rev 3:17)
While “rich”
includes having money, it encompasses much more. The Laodiceans possessed an
abundance of the details of life; which had accrued as they received their
mature blessing for time. Any time THE SOURCE is
ignored and the details of life (Money,
materialistic possessions, social life, success etc.) are given priority over Truth, even for a day, you have
become lukewarm; you have your foot on a banana peel, and you are beginning the
slide toward reversionism! (1Co 7:29-31)
Such a
believer is unaware of his true condition. His delusion (Satanic and
human thinking) are confirmed by five descriptive adjectives:
(1) “He is
wretched.” The compound adjective talaiporos
is formed from the Attic verb tlao,
meaning “to endure,” and the noun poros,
“callous” or “scar tissue.” “To endure scar tissue” is to be wretched or
distressed — the First stage of Divine discipline. The
Laodiceans, with all their wealth, succumbed to the outward prosperity and had
plunged headlong into pleasure-seeking escapism. (Pro 1:32) Spiritually mature blessings in themselves, can
neither purchase nor guarantee happiness! The awakening occurs when the mature
believer’s happiness turns sour or when some catastrophe hits.
(2) “He is
miserable.” Eleeinos denotes the
second or intensive stage of Divine discipline.
(3) “He is
poor.” Ptochos is best translated
“beggar” or “destitute” and connotes a dependence on others for support or
happiness. A person becomes destitute when the indulgent rat race does not
produce the desired result. Under Operation Boomerang,
he escalates his frenzied pursuit of that elusive happiness only to fall into
emotional revolt of the soul!
(4) “He is
blind.” Tuphlos, mental or Spiritual
blindness, refers to the blackout of the soul. At this stage, the believer is incapable of Divine Thinking or
common sense. Negative volition toward Truth has opened the mataiotes; the influence of evil has
penetrated both lobes. The believer is thus under
strong delusion! (2Th 2:10-12)
(5) “He is
naked.” Though generally used for lack of clothing on the body, here gumnos is employed figuratively for
nakedness of the soul. The nakedness results from the stages of reversionism
and represents the opposite of the capacity for life
which is acquired only through Truth resident in the soul. A believer in
this state always practices some form of reverse process reversionism.
I strongly
advise you to purchase from Me, (Isa 55:1-2)
(FREE!) From the
immediate source of Christ] (Pro
3:14-15) gold, (Truth) having been
refined from the fire, (A pastor who has
reached maturity) that you may become rich
(Reach Spiritual adulthood) and white clothes that you may clothe yourself, (Adult adoption, including the right to inherit) and that the shame of your
nakedness may not be revealed; and eye salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. (Luk 4:18) (Maximum maturity) (Rev 3:18)
God never issues discipline without ample warning — the principle of grace before judgment. Divine advice to the
reversionist therefore is that he reaches maturity! “Gold” (1Co 3:12-13) is
from the always-available source of Christ! Gold is
the Word of Truth, and it is the
pastor-teacher who refines it and prepares it for you!
Those whom
I love, (Believers, sons and daughters)
I punish and correct by discipline. Get hot, therefore, and repent (Rev 3:19)
Again, the
personal love between parent and child is ascribed to God to illustrate His
righteousness having been imputed to them. If the warning command to recover
goes unheeded, God provides further motivation through discipline. Reversionism
does not negate God’s justice, but the manifestation of His justice varies with
the individual’s Spiritual status. To the mature
believer, Divine justice is expressed in mature blessings; to the reversionist, in reproof. Corrective
discipline refers to the warning stage of discipline and is designed to alert
the lukewarm believer during his first stages of revolt against God. More
severe punishment is required to jolt a reversionist out of strong delusion;
consequently, the punishment described here is the intensive stage of
discipline.
The present
active imperative from zeleuo conveys
a command which, if obeyed, would rectify the lukewarm condition: boil or get hot; put the fire to it! In other words, turn on to Truth and stay with it!
The road to recovery is difficult and painful and demands much time and effort;
yet it can be conquered. The reversionist must first repent: (Metanoeo) change his mind about the
value of Truth in his life. Then he must make
constant decisions to ingest it into his soul.
Behold, I have stood up to the door
with the result that I keep on standing up to the door, and knock repeatedly. [Divine discipline] If anyone hears My voice and
opens the door, (Rebounds, and acquires maturity)
I will enter face
to face (Gen 32:28-30) with him
and have dinner with him, and he with Me (Friendship
with God is the reward for maturity; for time and eternity!)
(Rev 3:20)
It is
essential to bear in mind that this passage is addressed to believers;
therefore, verse 20 is not a salvation appeal but an exhortation to reversion
recovery. Here the believer is pictured as a house;
inside there should be the friendship and presence of Jesus Christ.
However, Christ has been evicted by reversionism: “ …Or do you not recognize this about
yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you--unless indeed you fail the test?”
(Reversionists) (2Co 13:5) “Unlike the indwelling of the Holy
Spirit, which is permanent, the indwelling of Christ
is conditional, since its only purpose is
friendship and fellowship. (Jas 2:23) While you are in reversionism, Christ cannot fellowship with
you!
The
believer has been adequately warned;
now Jesus Christ stands ready to aid him in recovery.
The Lord would rather come into the soul through
Truth than impose Divine discipline. The fact that you have a “door” or
volition of the soul is an example of a Divine provision of grace for Phase
Two. The Lord will continue to knock or warn until you either recover from
reversionism or die the sin unto death.
“Hear,” a word which means “to
listen and concentrate,” represents an affirmative mental attitude toward the
Word. The Word of God the Father, the Voice of
the Holy Spirit, and the Thinking of our Lord Jesus Christ; is heard today through Truth!
(1Co 2:16; Heb
3:7; Heb 4:12) Repentance and positive response to Truth “open the door”
and lead to restoration. As a result, there is renewed fellowship with Christ!
“Will dine”
denotes excellent food and wonderful fellowship in a relaxed
atmosphere. The food is the best Truth;
the relaxed atmosphere, THE REST: MATURITY. The Lord Jesus Christ, as the Host, pours blessings into
your “soul, cup” fashioned out of mature
Spiritual capacity, while you, as the guest, receive the blessings by which God
is glorified!
'He who overcomes, (The
world, the flesh, and the devil) I will grant to him to sit down with Me
on My throne, as I also overcame, (Joh 14:30) and
sat down with My Father on His throne. (Rev
3:21)
Any believer who
reaches and maintains Spiritual maturity, by overcoming the world, (Joh 15:19;
1Jn 4:17)
satanic and human reality, the flesh, (1Jn 2:16) and the devil,
(Twisted Truth) (2Ti 2:26; 1Jn 3:10;
Rev 12:9) receives
the paragraph of surpassing grace blessings designed exclusively for him in
eternity past; and will receive the over and
above blessings of eternity!
'He who has an ear, let him hear what the
Spirit says to the churches.'" (Rev 3:22)
Anyone who so desires can fire up a lukewarm soul! All he
needs is Spiritual ears. The lukewarm believer is commanded to hear and or
read, and assimilate Truth. The Holy Spirit
will perform His proper function in illuminating the Truth. (Joh 4:23-24)
FALSE
TEACHERS (2 Peter 2:1-22)
Like animals that live by the inherent instinct of their
nature, these reversionic believers--false
teachers operate on the impulse of their old sin nature.
But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, (The Word of God: twisted) even denying the Master
who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. Many will follow their sensuality, and because of them the way of the Truth will be maligned;
(2Pe 2:1-2)
Divorced from Divine Reality they think with evil;
satanically twisted Truth. And use the Word of God to make money!
And in their greed they will exploit you with false words;
their judgment from long ago is not idle, and their destruction is not asleep. (2Pe 2:3)
For if God did not spare angels (Demons) when they sinned, but cast them (Some of them) (Job 1:6-7) into hell (In the Greek; the deepest abyss. Tartaros) and committed them to
pits of darkness, reserved for judgment; (Luk 8:31; Rev 9:2; Rev 9:11; Rev 11:7;(Rev 20:1-3) and did not spare the
ancient world, (Gen 6:1-8) but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; (Demons, and demon-men; Nephilim) (Job 38:17) and if there existed reversonistic believers, (They are in Paradise until the last judgement)
(Rev 20:12-15) and unbelievers,
(Luk 16:23) and if He condemned
the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would
live ungodly lives thereafter!
and if He rescued
righteous Lot, (A mature believer; Gen 19:9) oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled
men, (For by what he saw and heard that righteous
man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day
by their lawless deeds) Then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly (Mature believers) from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous (Believers and unbelievers) under punishment for the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge the flesh in its
corrupt desires and despise authority. Daring, self-willed, they
do not tremble when they revile angelic majesties, (Gen 19:5) whereas angels who are
greater in might and power do not bring a reviling judgment against them before
the Lord. But these, like
unreasoning animals, born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed,
reviling where they have no knowledge, will in the destruction of those
creatures also be destroyed, suffering wrong as the wages of doing wrong. They
count it a pleasure to revel in the daytime. They are stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, as
they carouse with you, having eyes full of
adultery that never cease from sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed, accursed
children; forsaking the right way, they have gone astray, having followed the way
of Balaam, (A believer, Num 22:12; Num 24:2) the son of Beor, who loved the wages of
unrighteousness; (Num 31:16; Jude 1:11-13; Rev 2:14) but he received a
rebuke for his own transgression, for a mute donkey, speaking with a voice of a
man, restrained the madness (Reversionism) of the prophet. These
are springs without water and mists driven by a storm, for whom the black
darkness has been reserved.
(Jude 1:11-13) (2Pe 2:1-17)
The objective of true communication is the
inculcation of Truth so that believers can attain the mature Spiritual life
provided in Christ; but the apostate teacher
focuses attention on his own power
(Tongues, fake and demonic healing, "signs and
wonders" feelings and emotion) in order to
entice the unwary into accepting his false message. However, the issue is not
the "signs and wonders" of a pastor-teacher, (Mat 24:24) but whether or not he communicates the Truth! (Mat 24:45-47) Yet
personally charming, socially scintillating and
externally virtuous, (2Ti 3:5) these deceitful communicators receive a wide hearing. Since
false teaching requires little time for preparation, with characteristic lack
of self-discipline, they indulge in frivolous distractions which guarantee that
their unstudied messages will be superficial and inaccurate! (2Co 11:13-15)
The general trend toward apostasy and negative volition to
Truth is revealed by the fact that the false teachers’ outward manner of life
is praised as commendable. Yet God evaluates
them as a discredit to the Word of God; and a disgrace to society. The hapless
victims of their heresy are the real suckers. Such people not only accept the
satanic Truth, which leads to the strong delusion of reversionism, but they lavishly
entertain the very ones who lead them down the path to destruction!
For speaking out arrogant words of vanity they entice by fleshly
desires, by sensuality, those who barely
escape from the ones who live in error, (Unbelievers) promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of
corruption; for by what a man is
overcome, by this he is enslaved.
(Joh 8:34) For
if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world by the knowledge of
the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, (BELIEVERS)
they are again entangled in them and are overcome,
the last state has become worse for them than the first. For it would be better for them not to have known the way of
righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment
handed on to them. (Jude 1:11-13)
It has happened to them according to the true proverb, "A DOG RETURNS TO
ITS OWN VOMIT," and, "A sow, after washing, returns to wallowing in
the mire." (2Pe 2:18-22)
While the
apostate preachers are undeniably attractive, the lack of restraint on their
old sin natures spawns carnality and reversionism. Self-discipline
and Spiritual Virtue are essential for the function of a country, family,
church, and a pastor; but these people are
non-disciplined and self-seeking, a further manifestation that they are
antiestablishment, anti-gospel, anti-grace and anti-Truth! Who is always
deluded and trapped by this type of individual? The
unstable person; the one who is negative to Truth or who rejects it as a
Standard; (Psa
138:2) and depends instead on his own thoughts, feelings and
emotions! (Pro
28:26)
The hearts or
right lobes of corrupt ministers have already been trained for hedonism (“GREED”) through emotional revolt and reversionism. The
soul sets up a series of conditioned reflexes when it rejects authority. Once a
person becomes insatiable in his desire for pleasure, he puts himself under his
own curse — the self-induced misery of reversionism.
These reversionists are wells without water, [Truth] and
clouds being driven along by a squall, [Unstable]
for whom the blackness of darkness has been reserved (2Pe 2:17)
In a
figurative sense, water represents Truth and Salvation in; (Isa 55:1-2) the Holy Spirit in (Joh 7:38-39) and Truth in. (Eph 5:26) The water of the well stresses Truth.
The disappointment of finding a well in the desert devoid of water, filled with
nothing but sand is analogous to the inability to quench one’s thirst from the
perverted message of a false teacher. Rather than being refreshed by Truth, his
disciples are parched by reversionistic philosophy. (Jude 1:17-19)
"God is
spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in
Spirit (In fellowship) and Truth" (Learning
and Thinking with the Word of TRUTH) (Joh 4:24)
All reversionistic believers, whether teachers or pupils, are
unstable people who have no anchor — clouds
driven by a squall. Those who are overtaken by the storm, (2Ti 3:13) suffer from impaired vision. Zophos, “blackness,” is the blackout in
their right lobes, and in grace; instead of
the eternal torment of the Lake of Fire, (Rev
20:15) these reversionistic believers, are
in danger of spending Eternity in a dark pit, with Cain, Balaam, and Korah; and
with those who refuse to use the Spiritual life and or turn back from it! (Mat 22:2-14; Mat
24:48-51; Mat 25:24-30; Luk 12:45-46; Jude
1:11-13)
The treacherous teachers offer enticing promises of freedom,
or salvation, yet
they themselves are in bondage to their old sin natures. Enslaved in all the stages of reversionism, apostate
ministers are unable to free anyone. In fact, they actually set up a system
of: ETERNAL
SLAVERY!
By
this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness (Staying in fellowship) is not of God, nor the
one who does not love his brother. (1Jn 3:10)
Jesus answered them, "Truly,
truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the
slave of sin. "The slave does not remain
in the house forever; the son does remain
forever. (Joh
8:34-35)
For if you are living according to the flesh, (The old sin nature) you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds (Thoughts) of the body, (The old sin nature) you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are
sons of God. (Rom 8:13-14)
CATEGORIES OF REVERSIONISM
The detours
by which you can be sidetracked into reversionism are numerous. When you drift
off course from grace, your individual area of weakness invariably launches you
into the frantic search for happiness and ultimately establishes your own
reversionistic pattern. Such a pattern might fall into one of many categories,
areas in which you become obsessed with certain details of life. The Word of God in your soul, however, will guide you safely
past these pitfalls if you heed its warning signals. Therefore, you
should be aware of several representative types of reversionism in order to
avoid becoming ensnared by them.
MONETARY REVERSIONISM
Money in and
of itself is not sinful; it is, in fact, an extremely useful item. To not enjoy
what money can do would be abnormal. As a medium of exchange, it is necessary
for the efficient function of an economy and is therefore related to the laws
of Divine establishment. Monetary transactions are recorded from Genesis to
Revelation as a normal activity of life. To possess, to save and to spend money
are all absolutely legitimate as far as the Word of God is concerned; but when
any of these activities is magnified out of proportion and the love of money
becomes an obsession, it is evidence of monetary reversionism (Jas 4:13-14; Jas
5:1-6)
Monetary
reversionism is well documented in Scripture. A few outstanding case histories
are those of Solomon, (Ecc 5:10; Ecc 6:2) Ananias and Sapphira, (Act 5:1-10) and Balaam. (Jude 1:11) The “error,” or “deceit of Balaam”
connotes three areas of delusion regarding money: (1) that money is a means of
happiness; (2) that money brings security; (3) that money can buy anything! Yet apart from Truth resident in the soul, there can be only superficial happiness in possessing money
or any of the details of life. Security is provided through logistical
grace, not through the accumulation of money. (Mat
6:24-34) Salvation, peace, stability and
love are functions of the soul and cannot be purchased!
Let us note
the principle of monetary reversionism as found in. (1Timothy 6:3-17)
If anyone advocates a different doctrine and does not agree with sound
words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to
godliness, (Becoming a mature believer) he is conceited and understands nothing; but he has a morbid
interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which
arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction
between men of depraved mind and deprived of the Truth, who suppose that godliness (The Spiritual life) is a means of
gain. (Money) (1Ti 6:3-5)
As in all forms of reversionism, monetary reversionism is characterized by the neglect or
rejection of Truth! Paul therefore begins his discourse on this field of
reversionism by stating the great fundamental issue of the Christian life: sound Truth is the lifeblood of Spiritual growth, while false Truth is the poison that stunts the growing
process!
By rejecting the Truth, the reversionist has reversed the
correct priorities and has assumed that material prosperity implies godliness.
“Godliness” (Eusebeia) expresses
the duty toward God of every believer to reach maturity by establishing a
balance of residency in the soul between the filling of the Holy Spirit and
Truth. Godliness is synonymous with the
mature Spiritual life; in which material blessings accrue to the
believer under God’s grace provision. But in his inordinate occupation with
wealth, the reversionist distorts the true meaning of godliness by going
through the motions of functioning under Operation Z. His
motivation is not occupation with Christ but material reward. This is using Truth for illicit purposes. (Anything they can get) While temporal
blessing is one of the characteristics of maturity, every well-off believer
cannot presume that he is in maturity. Remember, the devil is also in the
prosperity business. As long as it advances his cause,
he exercises his ability to promote reversionists under the influence of evil. But
while the reversionistic believer may receive temporary happiness, promotion or
success from cosmos diabolicus —
Satan’s world system — all this can be removed by Divine discipline or used
against him for discipline where he does not have capacity to enjoy it.
But godliness (Maturity)
actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment. (1Ti
6:6).
Now we have
the true principle in contrast to the false in verse 5.
Wealthiness does not signify godliness, but godliness itself is Spiritual prosperity. The believer is godly because of maximum time filled with
God the Holy Spirit and maximum Truth resident in his soul! From this resident Truth, not from money, come the
capacities for life, love and happiness as well as the capacity for genuine
material prosperity.
For we have brought nothing into the
world, so we cannot take anything out of it either. (1Ti 6:7)
We entered
the world without things or the capacity for things. Things are the possessions
of life associated with happiness; capacity is the inner soul attitude which is
developed under the Grace Plan of God through Spiritual growth in Phase Two. (2Pe 3:18) The capacity
for life, a dividend of maturity, goes with us in Phase Three because of its relationship to God Himself: His Thinking! The only
possession we can carry on our trip to heaven is what is already stored in our
souls by way of the Word of Truth!
For the sake of
the Truth which abides in us and will be with us forever! (2Jn 1:2)
Make sure that your
character (Thinking) is free from the love of
money, (Wanting things!) being content with what
you have; for He Himself has said, "I
WILL NEVER DESERT YOU, NOR WILL I EVER FORSAKE YOU," so that we confidently say, "THE LORD IS MY HELPER, I WILL NOT BE AFRAID. WHAT WILL MAN
DO TO ME?" (Heb 13:5-6)
Now, having sustaining food and a change
of clothing, let us be content with these things. (1Ti 6:8)
What is the source of your food and clothing? They are DI —
“Divine Issue,” not GI! (Government Issue) God marked out your logistics in
eternity past. They may consist of little else than food and clothing, but they
will be sufficient to maintain life. If you advance all the way to maturity,
additional blessings are issued to you which glorify God. Verse 8 states the minimum standard for contentment.
It is not necessary to accumulate an abundance of materialistic possessions--to be happy. If you are not
content, it is because” you are minus Truth applied to your Thinking; if you are in fellowship
and have Truth in your soul, you will be content with food and clothing!
But those who
want to get rich fall into temptation and a
snare and many foolish and harmful desires (Thoughts) which plunge men into ruin and destruction.(The sin unto death) (1Ti 6:9)
The lusts and thoughts of false priorities are disastrous in
the life of a believer. If verse 9 describes
you, your priorities are reversed. Money becomes your master, and you scheme,
work all hours or cheat to obtain it. (Psa
127:2) While “temptation” is enticement to sin, the “trap” is the
self-induced misery of reversionism. You may possess money and everything that
money can purchase; but with all your money, prosperity and success, you will
be miserable and depressed. The trap becomes a life of
Divine discipline, and the reversionistic believer who departs from the world
by way of the sin unto death has lived a wasted life. Wealth, success,
prosperity and promotion attained in reversionism do not glorify God, nor can
the monetary reversionist ever be satisfied with any of his gains.
For the love of money [Greed] is a
root of all those different kinds of evil, through which [Love of money]
certain ones, [Reversionistic believers] by intensely
desiring it, [That is, giving money the number one priority] have
swerved [Gone astray] from the Truth and have impaled themselves with many
types of pains. (1Ti
6:10)
This verse is
often and mistakenly interpreted to say that money in and of itself is the root
of all evil. But notice, it is the love of money which creates the problem of
monetary reversionism — the greed, covetousness and
inordinate lust for wealth! “The root” (riza) is actually “a root”; there is no definite article in the
original text. The tree of evil has many roots.
The love of money is the root of certain categories of evil thinking;
especially materialism lust.
One of the
most dangerous snares in life is the love of money. The
minute you begin to love money and think about it all the time; instead of
Truth, that is when wealth has become your master, and you have succumbed to
monetary reversionism. Money is a useful
servant but a cruel master. You corrupt money when you allow it to
dictate to you; in turn, it corrupts you and motivates you to use it
illegitimately for bribery, to buy power or even love. When believers are
caught up in these diversions, they swerve off course from Truth. In defecting from the true source of prosperity, the monetary reversionist has pierced himself with Divine
discipline — the pain of mind and body which accompanies the last four
stages of reversionism.
But flee from these things, (This
way of thinking) you man of God, and
pursue, (Be
hot!) righteousness,
(Experiential)
godliness, (Staying in fellowship, as God
would have it) faith, (Learning and Thinking with
Truth) love, (Spiritual maturity) perseverance
(Keep moving) and gentleness. (1Ti 6:11)
Teach those that
are rich in this present world not to be arrogant, nor to fix their security on
the uncertainty of riches, but to fix their
security on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy (1Ti 6:17)
Timothy had
both rich and poor in his congregation. Paul charged him specifically to warn
the wealthy members against monetary reversionism. It is a real temptation for
the wealthy to feel secure in their material possessions; yet the
poverty-stricken are not exempt from monetary reversionism. In fact, poor
people are often more greedy--than the person of substance whom they use as an
excuse for harboring resentment and jealousy. The poor are also frequently more
devious and dishonest about money; furthermore, not having it, they assume that
money is a panacea. Thus, they easily become the pawn of politicians to demand
socialistic legislation, higher taxes to “soak the rich,” (A heinous fallacy)
and other systems to redistribute the wealth.
In view of the uncertainty of life, it is essential to
cling only to that which contains intrinsic value — Truth. God cannot give everyone money; most people would blow it!
Instead, He has given every believer grace capital — Truth
— by which to purchase time! For believers who utilize Divine capital, God hooks up
temporal prosperity which they can enjoy to the utmost! If we would just SIT DOWN and TAKE IN TRUTH and invest
God’s capital, the dividends would pour in, and we would have capacity for
them!
As a believer
in the Lord Jesus Christ, you must realize that you are His guest on this
earth. By His sovereign decision, everything you possess could be swept away in
a moment of economic or natural catastrophe. On the
other hand, whether in time of national prosperity or of national adversity,
God in His sovereignty can provide all that you count wonderful. Regardless of our circumstances, the issue is not the
possession of money or the lack of it but Truth in our soul. The only believers who are ever truly bankrupt are those
without Bible Truth!
VERBAL REVERSIONISM
Three
categories of personal sin exist in the human race: (1) Thinking sins, which include envy, greed, lust, jealousy, pride,
bitterness, vindictiveness, relentlessness, hatred, anger, guilt reaction,
self-pity, etc. (2) Verbal and thinking sins
like gossip, slander, maligning, judging, lying: and (3) overt and thinking sins, such as murder, adultery, theft,
drunkenness. All are a result of what we think! (Pro 23:7)
Each category
of sin originates in the old sin nature, and your volition is involved every
time you sin. You transgress Divine standards, knowingly or unknowingly, because you want to! That portion of the anatomy known
as the tongue is the instrument of verbal sins. The habitual practice of the
sins of the tongue is the manifestation of verbal reversionism. (Jas 4:11; Jas 5:9)
Of the seven
items on God’s “abomination list” in, (Pro 6:16-19)
three are verbal sins. These are categorized as slander, lying and the use of
the tongue for trouble-making. The three thinking sins on the list are directly
related to evil: pride, a right lobe devising evil conspiracies and feet which
run to evil. Murder, the only overt sin listed, can also be committed with the
tongue character assassination. (Psa 64:3-4)
The most devastating weapon any individual possesses is the tongue. Yet no country has ever enacted laws to remove it,
although that would undoubtedly benefit the nation far more than the
shortsighted folly of anti-gun legislation!
Sins committed with the tongue — one of the most vicious and vile forms
of carnality that emanates from the soul — is motivated by mental attitude sins. (Psa 5:9)
"But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from
the heart, and those defile the man. "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness,
slanders. "These are the things which
defile the man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the
man." (Mat 15:18-20)
People indulge
in verbal sins casually, thoughtlessly, almost haphazardly, and are often vindictive and unappeasable, as the
follow-through of some mental sin. Verbal
sins in the local church are commonly regarded as inconsequential and are
generally excused, yet they can wreak havoc with
an entire congregation (Jas 3:5-6)
Believers are
commanded to separate from anyone in the local church who is repeatedly guilty
of sins of the tongue (Rom 16:17-18)
since this type of individual is designated as a troublemaker. (Psa 52:1-2) Often
Christians find pseudo-compatibility with other believers and band together to
criticize, slander or malign some mutual, often innocent victim; they work each
other up in a relentless attack to destroy this person’s reputation.
Such activity eventually becomes a psychopathic social life, and these tragic
believers slide from one stage of reversionism to another!
Many people think that some shocking overt sin must be committed before
Divine discipline is administered. But we can find ourselves under
triple-compound discipline very quickly as a result of verbal sins.
Judge not, that ye be not judged. For by
which judgment you judge, you shall be judged, and by which measure you
measure, it shall be measured back to you (Mat
7:1-2)
First, there is discipline for the mental attitude sin
that sponsored the sin of the tongue. Second,
the verbal sin — gossip, slander, judging, criticism — also carries discipline;
now the punishment is doubled. Third, God
transfers to us whatever judgment would have gone to the one whom we accused of
sinning — and we are under triple-compound discipline. Furthermore, if the sins
we reported were real, our victim is relieved of the punishment. If we merely imagined the sins we so viciously enumerated, our innocent victim is blessed. If we would just
keep your mouth shut and our nose out of the other person’s business, whatever
sins he commits will receive God’s undivided attention and judgment, which, I
can assure you, is far more effective than our petty criticism or maligning. (Psa 64:7-8) However,
when we persist in verbal sins, our fate is sure: the sin unto death!
(Jas 5:9-20) is an illustration of verbal
reversionism and its resultant discipline — physical illness, (Jas 5:14-16) national catastrophe, (Jas 5:17-18) and the sin unto death. (Jas 5:20)
Stop criticizing, brethren, [Members
of the royal family of God] against others of the same kind [Fellow believers]
that you not be judged. Behold, the Judge stands in the past with the result
that He keeps standing before the door
(Jas 5:9)
The present
active imperative from stenazo means
“to vent, to complain, to murmur, to malign, to slander, to criticize”; in
other words, to be guilty of the sins of the tongue. The
customary present tense indicates a constantly recurring activity. In the active voice, the action is produced by a
reversionistic believer whose frantic search for happiness involves belittling
others by means of his wagging tongue. Verbal
reversionism operates on the principle of building our happiness on someone
else’s unhappiness!
The believer
who persists in this type of reversionism will most certainly be judged, (Krino) or disciplined. The Judge, or krites, is God Himself. The English word
“critic” is derived from this Greek word. The believer
who was critical of others must now face the Divine Critic! This is not
the judgment of carnality; the solution for carnality is rebound. The judgment
of this passage is strictly for reversionism, which results from negative
volition toward Truth. The pattern of discipline for reversionism is gradual:
first comes warning adversity — standing or knocking at
the door; then increased pressure, such as
illness; and finally, the sin unto death.
When the believer is in reversionism, God has no recourse other than to shock
him or to shake up his soul as a warning to rebound. (1Jn 1:9)
During Phase
Two, the believer has the choice of recognizing one of two authorities: the
authority of his right pastor who teaches Truth; or if he ignores Truth, the
direct disciplinary authority of God. When you absent yourself from the
jurisdiction of your right pastor, the only way God can capture your attention is
to inflict punishment. If you remain insensitive to the
cause of your suffering or if you strike back, you will go right on out of this
life by the shameful sin unto death.
However, (Jas 5:10-11) is parenthetically inserted to
remind us that not all adversity is punitive action. The growing believer or
the one who is in Spiritual adulthood often experiences suffering for the
purpose of blessing, and this is always true for the
mature believer. When the storm clouds are
overhead, you should take stock of your Spiritual status to determine whether
you are taking a nose dive into one of the stages of reversionism or whether
the pressure is being applied to help your Spiritual growth. If you are positive to Truth, then the latter will be true.
The discourse on verbal reversionism is resumed in verse 12.
And more important, [Before all things]
members of the royal family of God, stop making promises with a solemn oath
neither by heaven, nor by the earth, nor by any other oath, but your yes keep on being yes, and your no, no that you not
fall under judgment (Jas 5:12)
In this
passage, swearing falsely (Lying) is employed as the illustration of a sin of
the tongue. The present active imperative from omnuo means “to make a promise with an oath.” God’s name is often used as a means to cover a lie.
The oath “as God is my witness” can make a fabrication more impressive; the
false can masquerade as Truth when declared in the name of heaven or in the
name of some honest or respected person. Verbal
reversionists are dishonest in their souls; thus, their entire lives are
characterized by pretense, deceit and treachery. (Psa 12:1-8)
“Let your yes be yes, and your no, no” is idiomatic for
honesty and integrity of soul. It demands
that-the expression of the soul’s content in speech be candid, true, without
deception. We in this country are constantly being duped by dishonest,
reversionistic politicians — be they believers or unbelievers — who are seeking
an easy ride to power through hypocrisy and deception. With half-Truths and
fraudulent promises, many of these political people feed on the so-called
minorities, alleging to champion their greedy demands while actually using this
cause as a stepping-stone to power.
Any believer
who becomes embroiled in the final stages of reversionism, whether verbal or
any other type, is subject to severe Divine discipline — a life of untold
misery and suffering. (Psa 77:1-10) The
cursing can be turned to blessing only through the principles of reversion
recovery.
Verse 13
again interrupts the exposition of reversionism with a welcome interlude. In
contrast to the reversionist, a mature believer is
now described as being oriented to life and possessing true happiness in either
adversity or prosperity.
Is anyone among you suffering? Then he
must pray. Is anyone cheerful? He is to sing praises. (Jas 5:13)
The reversionist utilizes his voice for spreading deceit;
the mature believer expresses his capacity for life
in prayer and in joyous singing! The control
of the tongue is often a manifestation of Spiritual maturity. (Jas 3:2) In fact, a believer can actually
lengthen his life and find greater blessings by avoiding the sins of the tongue
(Psa 34:12-13)
NATIONAL
REVERSIONISM
While the
fifth chapter of James primarily stresses certain facets of prayer, three
categories of reversionism are brought into focus. We have covered briefly
monetary and verbal reversionism; now, beginning with verse 17, James records the experience of a mature believer in a
national crisis. In this third illustration,
the prophet Elijah, a fantastic Spiritual giant, patriot and mature hero,
stemmed the tide of national reversionism by his prayer. (1Ki 17:1)
Elijah was a man with a nature like ours,
(The old sin nature) and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did
not rain on the earth for three years and six months. (Jas 5:17)
Elijah faced maximum apostasy and reversionism, which
threatened his nation with catastrophe. Aware that Israel was on the verge of
the fifth cycle of discipline, Elijah entreated God on behalf of the people.
What was the content of Elijah’s prayer? That God
would “knock on the door!” And for three and a half years God knocked on the door of
the Northern Kingdom to warn them of impending disaster. (Deut 28:23-24) Elijah had fearlessly announced
God’s warning to Ahab, the king of Israel, who promptly
ignored it. Just as promptly, the rain ceased
and economic depression set in. The drought
devastated the agricultural economy and ultimately served to spur the nation to
repentance and reversion recovery.
While
believers and unbelievers alike had been wasting time in reversionism and the
practice of reverse process reversionism, (1Ki
16:30-33) Elijah had redeemed (Purchased) time through prayer and
learning Truth and became the man for the crisis! At the termination of
three and a half years of famine, Elijah, who by now had a price on his head,
went back to Ahab (1Ki 18:17-20) and
issued his demand to the people of Israel:
Elijah came near to all the people and
said, "How long will you hesitate between two
opinions? If the LORD is God, follow Him;
but if Baal, follow him." But the people
did not answer him a word. (1Ki 18:21)
Elijah’s
heroic challenge to the prophets of Baal is well-known. (1Ki 18:25-40) In a
period of great national apostasy, a Spiritually mature communicator of the
Word stands almost alone. (1Ki 18:22;
Rom 11:2-5) Elijah was no exception: he
was by himself as he ordered the four hundred prophets of Baal to offer their
sacrifice and call down fire from their gods. When they were unsuccessful,
Elijah called down fire from his God. Just as in the two instances of prayer
offered for the reversionists in, (Jas 5:14-16)
so after preparing his sacrifice, Elijah prayed for the repentance of the
nation. (1Ki 18:36-37) Should the
people respond, he would then be able to finish the prayer begun three and a
half years before. The prayer for the reversionist
does not become operational until he has a change of attitude toward Truth.
In answer to Elijah’s prayer, the fire from heaven,
which: consumed the sacrifice, sparked the necessary change of attitude. (1Ki 18:39)
Elijah had
begun his first prayer in Ahab’s palace; the prayer, interrupted by three and a
half years of national depression, would be concluded on Mount Carmel. (1Ki 18:43-45) This is explained in, (Jas 5:17) where Elijah began to pray.
(Ingressive aorist of proseuchomai)
In verse 18, the same word structure, proseuchomai,
is used; but this time, it is the culminative aorist he terminated his prayer.
Then he prayed again, and the sky
poured rain and the earth produced its fruit. (Jas 5:18)
“And he prayed
(Proseuchomai) again (Kai plus palin)” This grammatical construction indicates the resumption of
the original prayer after the elapse of three and a half years. As soon as Israel repented, or changed its mind, Elijah
went into action. First, he ordered the prophets of Baal seized and
executed. That was a manifestation of true love for his nation: as insurance
against further corruption of the people, the traitors must be removed. Then,
upon removing the useless, reversionistic king from the scene, (1Ki 18:41-42) Elijah’s prayer for rain became
effectively operational, (Jas 5:16) the
rains came, the land revived, and the nation was delivered. In place of the fifth cycle of discipline and slavery, God provided national
prosperity so that the inhabitants might recover from reversionism, be
evangelized where necessary and function under Operation Z to maturity.
One of the marked advantages of the believer in Spiritual
adulthood or the one, who is advancing toward the high ground, is the ability
to pray for himself in time of adversity. His
prayers have great power, and he can also pray effectively for the
reversionist. This is a vital function of the
mature believer, for there comes a time when the reversionist is in such an
advanced state of strong delusion, severe illness or dying that he can only
suffer!
Is it indeed
possible for an entire nation to sink into reversionism? The answer is found in
Hosea 4. We will look briefly at the first six verses in which this principle
is declared.
Hear the Word of the LORD, you sons of Israel; [Northern Kingdom] for
the LORD has a case against the citizens of the nation because
there is nothing of Truth being taught, nothing
of Virtue being applied and nothing of knowing
the LORD being accomplished in the Land (Hos 4:1)
“Hear,” the
qal imperative of the Hebrew verb shama,
connotes respect for the authority of the one who teaches Truth as well as
concentration on the message. Shama
is equivalent to the function of Operation Z. The indictment concerned the fact
that there was an obvious case of reversionism and evil in the Northern Kingdom
of Israel. God was presenting evidence against them
— not for the purpose of prosecution, but as a warning to change their present course! Should His grace be rejected, God would have no alternative
but to exercise His righteousness and justice by removing the nation from
history! Not only did the Jews fail in their
responsibility to distribute Truth to other nations, but they neglected it
themselves; and finally rejected the Truth altogether. As a result, Israel
began to decline, both Spiritually and materially. Truth is the very
lifeline of a nation as well as of the individual believer in Jesus Christ. In
ancient history, both Assyria and Rome exemplified this principle. SPQR
(Senatus Populusque Romanus) is the record-holder for the longest period of
time as a national entity; in all of human history, for it existed, first as a
republic, then as an empire, for over a thousand years. But the outstanding
period in its history occurred during the era of the Antonine Caesars, from
A.D. 96 to A.D. 192. For one hundred years, the Romans were free from warfare.
Why? No one dared to challenge them because they
possessed the strongest and best-disciplined army in the world.
An even more
significant factor was the presence of a superb unit from Cappadocia — the
Sixth Legion, known as the “Thunderbolts” — which was recruited from believers
only. Truth gave them a fantastic mental attitude and “made them fearless. Just
before the short punitive expedition against the Quadi in 174, this warlike
tribe had ambushed a Roman detachment, including the Thunderbolts. But these fantastic
believer-soldiers fought a rear guard action under almost impossible odds, and
by sheer courage and unconquerable will, they not only reestablished their
lines but soundly defeated the enemy! Their bravery and example bolstered the
entire populace and contributed to the tremendous” prosperity of Rome, which
has never been equaled by any other nation. None of the Antonine Caesars were
believers. Yet during this period the canon of Scripture was completed, and the
impact of Truth was being felt.
In the
Northern Kingdom at the time of Hosea’s writing, circa 700 B.C., religion and legalism had replaced Truth and fellowship with
God. When this condition prevails, it
inevitably results in confusion, anti-military concepts, loss of freedom, and
slavery for a nation. The worst disaster that
could befall any people is outlined in: (Hos
4:1) no Truth, no Spiritual life, and no
Friendship with God!
Instead, there is lying [False
swearing] and deceiving; murdering and stealing; they break in to commit
adultery, (Sex crimes) and blood reaches out and touches blood [Unrestrained
violence] (Hos
4:2)
Verse 2 cites
condemning evidence of the fact that the Northern Kingdom had violated the established norms of Truth, Virtue, and Knowing God! (Jer
9:23-24) False swearing is a violation of the third commandment, (Exod 20:7) which prohibits the use of the name
of God for evil purposes or as a front for unworthy causes. Also forbidden by
this commandment is false testimony or perjury in court sworn in the name of God
to be true — to say, for example, “as God is my witness.”
In addition
to being devoid of honor and integrity, people in reversionism are themselves
susceptible to deceit, so that a reversionistic land abounds in con artists and
liars. A man’s word is no longer his bond; business and professional
malpractice is the order of the day. (2Ti 3:13)
Once a country loses Truth, it also forfeits its principles, and trust is a
thing of the past.
In the second
pair, murdering (Ratsach) and
stealing (Ganav) are infractions of
the sixth and eighth Commandments, (Exod 20:13-15)
and refer to crime — a combination of sin and evil. Crime
increases in a nation in direct proportion to the decrease in the knowledge of
Truth and enforcement of the laws of establishment. (Freedom, privacy, property,
and protection)
Wrongly translated “adultery,” the next phrase is much
stronger in the Hebrew: it connotes sex crimes, adult and child sexual
exploitation and pornography including rape, and is a symptom, when abundant,
of a sick society, and a breach of the seventh Commandment. (Exod 20:14) In a reversionistic nation, murder
and violence reign, and there is neither Truth nor establishment to stem the
tide. But when human freedom is therefore in jeopardy, God Himself steps in and
purges the land through five cycles of discipline. (Lev
26:14-39) Under the fourth cycle of discipline, an enemy power
invades the land; under the fifth, the nation is conquered.
For this cause, the Land shall mourn,
and everyone who lives in it shall lose strength, along with the animals of the
field and the birds of the sky; and also the fish of the lakes shall be
destroyed. (Hos
4:3)
Where there is chaos of soul, chaos of the economy is a
predictable consequence. “Mourn,” the qal imperfect from aval, is the vocal lamentation for
economic depression brought about directly by the destruction of free
enterprise and indirectly by the infiltration of reversionism and evil. In the
beginning, the Northern Kingdom was a society of highly successful and
prosperous people; but as they succumbed to
reversionism, they began to think in terms of evil. This eventually overflowed into the economy. The
government instituted those systems which stifle and destroy freedom and rob a
nation of both its character and its vigor. Israel, originally a Theocracy,
eroded into an evil monarchy! Even the environment,
particularly animal life, is adversely affected when a nation is judged for
reversionism.
Only let no one [Reversionistic
believer] try to destroy the authority of someone who communicates Truth i.e.,
prophet or priest nor impugn [Reprimand] anyone who teaches Truth; since your
people resemble those who try to destroy the authority of the priest (Hos 4:4)
Turbulence and revolt in a national entity is symptomatic of
a saturation of reversionism and evil. Especially
guilty are the believers of that nation, since they have rejected the authority
of the communicator of Truth as well as his message. In the case of our
passage, the communicators were prophets and priests. The prophet imparted the
spoken Word of God; the priest, the written Word. When
a majority of believers in any dispensation resist the doctrinal teaching and
the authority of their right teacher, the laws of establishment are abandoned
in favor of satanic policies of evil, and national degeneration sets in!
Once the authority of doctrinal teachers has been
ridiculed and set aside in a nation, that nation has cut its own throat! No one can extract sufficient Truth to grow Spiritually and
become a preserver and stabilizer of his country simply by reading the Bible
for himself! The single hope for a people is
Truth, and this must be supplied by communicators with the proper Spiritual gift.
(Eph
4:11-14) Without
the communication of Truth, a nation has no future! Little wonder, then, that
the believer’s attitude toward Truth determines the state of the nation! Whether
or not the United States survives the liberalism, abandonment of Truth, reversionism
and evil which today threaten to submerge it, depends on positive or negative
volition toward Truth. The reversionistic Assyrians, on the brink of national
destruction in 754 B.C., responded to Jonah’s
ministry, recovered and prospered fantastically for 143 more years. The
Northern Kingdom of Israel rejected Hosea’s
ministry, crashed and burned!
Therefore, you have stumbled in the
daylight, and even the prophet will stumble with you in night-darkness; and I
will destroy [Silence] your Motherland [Northern Kingdom] (Hos 4:5)
“Therefore” begins to amplify the consequences of negative
volition to the Truth and authority of the true communicator, in this case the
True teacher was Hosea. Just as God
supplies an abundance of daylight, hajon,
so He had made Truth equally available to the Jews under Hosea’s ministry.
(Hos 8:12) He even allowed them a grace
lag of three years to take it in. Yet they squandered their days in frivolous
pursuits, reveling in a fool’s paradise of reversionism until they were
defeated by the Assyrians in 721 B.C. Even though
there was daylight all around them, the
uninterested believers were stumbling in darkness because they refused the
light. Every day is an opportunity to advance
Spiritually and to help save the nation because “daylight” must be in the souls
of the believers if a nation is to solve its reversionistic problems!
The false teachers, foolishly influenced by the people,
stumbled along with them. These communicators
followed the course of greed, religion, and least resistance and told the
people what they wanted to hear. (Hos
8:13-14; 2Ti 4:3) The blind were simply leading the blind! As a result of their failure to fulfill their
responsibility to study and teach, the unfaithful preachers were largely responsible
for tranquilizing the national mental attitude by advocating disarmament, world
peace and compromise with the enemy. The Assyrians would overtake the nation,
and the reversionistic teachers would be put to silence permanently, dragging
the nation to ruin along with them! Their fate
should be a warning to this country and to the false teachers who are primarily
responsible for undermining the thoughts in the souls of many!
My nation
is destroyed from lack of knowledge of Truth. Because
you have rejected the principle of knowing and Thinking with Truth, therefore I will reject you from being a priest to Me. (No impact, no ministry) Since you have
neglected the Truth [Torah] of your God, I even I, will
neglect your sons. [Citizens of the Northern Kingdom] (Hos 4:6)
You may
wonder, why, if Jesus Christ controls history, does He allow evil nations to
continue and better nations to be destroyed? Why do the wicked so often prosper
while the good suffer? There must be a certain amount
of pressure along the way, both personally and nationally, to put sinew in your
Spiritual character and to maximize your role in the angelic conflict. You must see the reversionist appear to prosper in order to
test your priorities. An ambush by friends or loved ones, for example, forces
you to draw upon the Spiritual assets of Truth resident in your soul and serves
to reinforce your determination to continue your advance. Does Truth indeed have First place in your life? At
this period in her history, Assyria was kept around as God’s whip to discipline
His chosen-nation should they fail, despite His warnings, to grow in grace.
God set up the
nation Israel as a priest nation (Exod 19:6) to be the keeper of Truth, to be the primary agent of
evangelism throughout the world and to be an example of the principles of
freedom and privacy, (Deut 4:1-9) and it had utterly failed all counts. Consequently, the nation would suffer total defeat and
slavery! When a priest nation becomes reversionistic and negative to
Truth, that nation is doomed. The word maas,
translated “reject,” is even stronger in the Hebrew — “despise, scorn.” Because they despised God’s Word and scorned it as the
solution to their reversionism, God will renounce them! There will be no one
left to teach Truth, for He will overturn and blot out the nation.
Believers are the “salt” of the earth, (Luk 14:34-35) and as
go the believers, so goes the nation. If
enough believers in a nation are pursuing Truth and advancing to the high
ground of maturity, the nation and its freedoms will be preserved in spite of
destructive foreign policies and decadent politicians.
Two nations
in history faced the Assyrian crisis: Israel and Judah. In grace, both were
warned. The Northern Kingdom failed to heed the warning and was destroyed. The
Southern Kingdom turned back to Truth, survived the “overflowing scourge” and
continued to exist as a nation for 140 more years. However, they too eventually
succumbed to reversionism and were defeated by the Chaldeans in 586 B.C.
Judah’s situation in Jeremiah’s day so closely parallels conditions in the
United States of America today that we should examine a few verses from
Jeremiah 8 and 9.
The wise have been dried up,
disgraced; [Reversionism] they have become terrified and snared; [By false Truth] they have
rejected the Word of the Lord: what kind of
wisdom is in them? (Satan's) (Jer 8:9)
The “wise
men,” chakam, were believers who once
had an edification complex of the soul and were in a mature status, but had
dried up Spiritually. Without the inner fortification of Truth, the Jews became
frightened when they came to the realization that they were on the verge of a
great catastrophe. And well they should have been, for when national disaster
finally overtook them, they were either killed or captured and their Land was
devastated.
What caused
the disaster? They had rejected the Word of the Lord
and were taken in by false Truth! “Rejected” means that they refused it to the
point of despising it. This is maximum negative volition. Therefore, “what kind of wisdom is in them?” The answer is satanic
wisdom. The mataiotes
opened up, and cosmic Truth infiltrated their right lobes.
"Therefore
I will give their wives to others, Their fields to new owners; Because from the least even to the greatest Everyone is
greedy for gain; From the prophet even to the
priest Everyone practices deceit. (Uses satanic and human reality) (Jer 8:10)
This verse
summarizes the disintegration of Divine establishment in a nation going out
under reversionism and anticipates chapter 9. First,
they lost their women to the invaders. Under
an agricultural economy, a field represents business; so they lost out in their
industry. A third loss was military defeat. God has ordained the
military as the basis for protecting human freedom. (Neh 4:14)
The blame for the national disaster is laid directly on the
false prophets and priests! Why? They failed in their responsibility to
communicate Truth! Instead, “out of demonic
influence, or false Truth, they manufactured lies.” What were their lies? They
advocated the satanic policy of human morality. (The energy of the old sin nature) It is not the responsibility of the ministry to clean up
the tenements, to equalize the races or to improve the environment! Ultimately, change in social and economic conditions can be
brought about only through Truth in the souls of individuals. The
responsibility of the pastor is to crank it out!
THE DIVINE SOLUTION IS THE ONLY SOLUTION! THE HUMAN SOLUTION IS NO SOLUTION!
"They
heal the brokenness of the daughter of My people superficially,
(Outward human morality) Saying, 'Peace, peace,' But there is no peace.
(No Spiritual Virtue and maturity) (Jer 8:11)
And thefore the priest and prophet, ("Pastors") and the people will be destoyed! Truth and the chance of maturity
"fruit" will pass away. (Jer 8:12-14)
The pseudo-pastors were pacifists, and their message is
identical to the “peace at any price” propaganda so prevailing today. “Brotherly love” never stopped an invasion; it has never
prevented war and never will prevent war, as demonstrated by. (Jer 8:15-17) The only
way for a nation to find peace in the world is to maintain Spiritual and
military strength and preparedness and, when necessary, to kill the enemy!
(Neh 4:9; Psa
127:1)That is the manner in which Jesus Christ delivered Israel from
the Assyrian invasion of 700 B.C., (2Ki 19:35)
and that is the means by which He will usher in millennial peace! (Rev 19:11-21)
The time of
the harvest has passed on; the summer has been wasted; we have not received deliverance (From; slavery to their old sin nature) (Jer 8:20)
Reversionism begets false security. The “time of the harvest” was, when they were to have had
"fruit" maturity, But notice, the
Scripture says, that time always passes on. No
anti-Biblical system has ever worked for a Spiritual life or a national entity;
nor ever will work! The word for “summer” is the gathering of the
harvest at the end of the summer; wasting it refers to human viewpoint methods
employed in formulating foreign policy.
For the brokenness of the daughter of my
people I am broken; I mourn, dismay has taken hold of me. Is there no
balm in Gilead? (Balm was worth twice its weight in
silver) Is there no physician there? (Lots of them, selling IT) Why
then has not the health of the daughter of my people been restored? (Truth IN the soul,
restores the soul not money IN the pocket or balm ON the boady) (Jer 8:21-22)
But He answered and said, "It is
written, 'MAN SHALL NOT LIVE ON BREAD ALONE, (Human
reality) BUT ON EVERY WORD THAT PROCEEDS OUT OF THE MOUTH OF GOD.'"
(God's Reality) (Mat 4:4)
O that my head was dissolved into
water and my eyes were a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for
the slain of the daughter of my people. (Jer 9:1)
Jeremiah was
shocked as he beheld the future of his own homeland steeped in reversionism and
evil. He expressed his sorrow and concern idiomatically: Oh, that he might be
blinded by tears so that he would not have to face the reality of what was ahead
for his nation! So traumatic was the revelation of Judah’s discipline that
Jeremiah preferred to forsake his mission rather than declare the tragic
consequences of his countrymen’s reversionism. Yet to
remain true to his prophetic office, he had to faithfully proclaim the message
entrusted to him. He therefore disregarded his personal feelings and lowered
the boom! In the remainder of chapter 9, he outlined the devastation
which would increase to the nation under Divine discipline: social decay,
(Verses 3, 4, 8) loss of integrity, (verses 5, 7, 9, 11) economic disaster,
(Verse 12) and military destruction. (Verses 13, 14)
"They bend their tongue like
their bow; Lies and not truth prevail in the land; For
they proceed from evil to evil, (Mar 4:24-25)
And they do not know Me," (Jer 9:24) declares the LORD. "Let
everyone be on guard against his neighbor, And
do not trust any brother; Because every
brother deals craftily, And every neighbor goes
about as a slanderer. (Jer 9:3-4)
SOCIAL DECAY was manifested by sins of the tongue by— maligning, slandering,
judging, condemning, and gossiping.
After rejecting Truth, the Jews went from one evil to another — from the early
phases of reversionism to the stages in which evil permeates the soul. In the state of strong delusion, it is impossible to know the
Lord. He cannot be understood apart from
Truth. Their verbal reversionism elicits Jeremiah’s warning to be on
guard against their neighbors. Why? Verse 8 states the answer:
A murdering arrow is their tongue; it
speaks from deceit (The old sin nature) with his mouth one speaks friendship to his neighbor,
but in his thoughts, he devises a plot or an ambush. (Jer 9:8)
Out of one side of the mouth they expressed brotherly love,
while out of the other they laid plans for destruction. Once law
enforcement is relaxed, then out of the cracks emerge all the criminal types.
All but forgotten is the Biblical axiom that it requires lawful violence to
subdue lawless violence. There must be a righteous
restraint on people’s old sin natures, which are always potential time bombs!
Without laws of establishment, “freedom and privacy, ” cannot apply. Instead, you must be on guard against those in your vicinity. LOSS OF INTEGRITY is
another characteristic of the downfall of a nation.
Do
not trust in a neighbor; Do not have confidence in a friend.
From her who lies in your bosom Guard your lips. For son treats
father contemptuously, Daughter
rises up against her mother, Daughter-in-law against her
mother-in-law; A man's enemies are the men of
his own household. (Mic 7:5-6)
"Do not think that I came to
bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.
"For I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER
MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW; and A MAN'S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD. (Mat 10:34-35)
"But you will be betrayed even by parents and brothers
and relatives and friends,
and they will put some of you to death, and you will be
hated by all because of My Name. (The Lord Jesus Christ) (Luk 21:16-17)
They will deceive (Cheat) each one his
neighbor, and will not speak the truth. (Be honest) They have trained their
tongues to speak lies; they wear themselves out
thinking about sinning. (Human sin nature reality)
(Jer
9:5)
May it never
be! Rather, let God be found true, though every man be found a liar, as it is written, "THAT YOU MAY BE JUSTIFIED IN YOUR WORDS, AND PREVAIL
WHEN YOU ARE JUDGED." (God is always right!) (Rom 3:4)
With the restraint of neither law nor Truth, reversionistic
people will deceive or cheat each other; they
will be unfaithful in business as well as in their social and sexual
relationships. When apostasy is the order of the day, they literally “wear themselves out perverting their thoughts!” This
is the story of. (Rom 1:24-32)
Your habitation (Place
of protection and blessing) is in the
middle of deceit--[Moral and immoral degeneracy] -- in deceit, they refuse to
know Me: declares the LORD. (Jer 9:6)
Although God
had blessed them exceedingly in the Land, yet His
chosen people refused to know Him! Negative volition toward Truth led to
blackout of the soul, scar tissue and reverse process reversionism. So what did
God do? He put them in the Divine refinery!
Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts,
"Behold, I will refine (Discipline) them and assay them; (Examine to remove the
false thinking and or people) For what else can I do, because of the daughter of
My people? (Members of My family) "Their
tongue is a deadly arrow; It speaks deceit; With his
mouth one speaks peace to his neighbor, But inwardly (His thinking) he sets an ambush for him. (Jer 9:7-8)
The Lord would keep them in the furnace until the unclean
thoughts were removed or they died; by not trying. Military action is used by God not only for the defense of
freedom but as a punitive measure to correct and or remove nations. This is the fifth cycle of discipline. A nation which has
declined Spiritually and has become degenerate and reversionistic has forfeited
its right to exist. When the majority of the inhabitants in a nation are
in reversionism and under the influence of evil, Divine
retribution is a certainty!
"Shall I not
punish them for these things?" declares the LORD. "On a nation such as this Shall I not avenge Myself?
(Jer 9:9)
God adds a very interesting clause: “Shall I
not avenge Myself on such a nation?” [Goi] He calls them Gentiles! To categorize the Jews as a
Gentile nation is the worst possible insult! Obviously, then, they were on the
verge of Divine excommunication. However, the complete significance of the term
Goi is gleaned from other passages. It actually affirms that the phallic cult (Sex cult)
was in full operation in Judah. The Jews had become irrevocably integrated into
the Canaanite practices and, like the Canaanites, would go out under the fifth
cycle of discipline.
For the mountains I will lift up
mourning [Weeping] and elegy [Song of wailing] , and for the pastures of the
open fields a song of lamentation because they are destroyed by fire so that no
one can pass through them, nor hear the voice of the flock. Both the birds of
the heavens fly away, and the cattle are gone. And I will give Jerusalem to a
heap of stones, a den of jackals. And I will give the cities of Judah to
desolation, [Heap of ruins] without habitation (Jer 9:10-11)
ECONOMIC DISASTER, the third result of
national reversionism, affects both its cities and the outlying
countryside. Either from natural disaster or at the hand of invading armies,
the pastures where the sheep industry of Judah was concentrated would be burned
up. The cities would be reduced to rubble, a den of jackals, without
inhabitants. Again, reversionism among the people of a
nation is traced to its pastors, who have ceased to declare the Word of God! Ultimately,
the overriding principle which staves off Divine discipline is the
communication of the Word of Truth — not the social gospel, or religion, not
emotion, not “getting involved,” not human morality or Madison Avenue gimmicks, but a Spiritually mature pastor; with the true message. (God's) (Jer 1:9-10;
Joh 3:34) Our
country, like Judah, has been blessed by historical grace but is being
destroyed by theological evil! (Religious false Truth)
Who is the wise man that may
Understand this? And who is he to whom the mouth of
the LORD has spoken, that he may declare it? Why is the land ruined,
laid waste like a desert, so that no one passes through? (Jer 9:12)
These two questions indicate the necessity for a
communicator to Know and Understand Truth, particularly prior to national
disaster! A man may possess the Spiritual gift
of pastor-teacher; but if he is devoid of Truth and or Spiritual maturity in
his soul, he is disoriented to contemporary history and is therefore totally
inadequate and ineffective as far as the crisis situation is concerned.
While he may speak with eloquent language and say nothing beautifully, it is
still nothing! Unhappily, this is true today of the majority of preachers.
MILITARY DESTRUCTION
is the finale of the reversionistic nation (Jer
9:12)… Along with military defeat comes
the loss of freedom; as those who are the victims of the invading army are
destroyed or enslaved. All privacy and property,
and all rights disappear, it happened in 586 B.C. in Judah. It is a real
possibility today in the United States! The
only way to avert disaster is the advance toward maturity! This illustration of national reversionism in Juda; is
comparable in our own country now, and
should alert us to our desperate need of Truth — and this does not mean just once a week! We
must ingest it, as well as digest it every day!
The LORD said,
"Because they have forsaken My law which I set before them, and have not
obeyed My voice nor walked according to it, but have
walked after the stubbornness of their heart and after the Baals, (Child sacrifice
and sex cult) (Deut 18:10-11; Jer 32:33-36)
as their fathers taught them," (Jer 9:13-14)
In order to forsake or desert something, it must have once
been possessed. These people knew Truth at one time and had either constructed
or were constructing an edification complex and were moving to maturity; but
they went negative and lost what they had gained. This will certainly be the case with those of you who
forsake face-to-face teaching and or do not consistently take in the Word of
God! Without the regular feeding of Truth into your soul, you become
vulnerable to the stages of reversionism, and reversionism must be met with
Divine justice. The Jews of Judah were judged because they went the entire
route and ended up in the phallic cult and Baal worship.
PHALLIC REVERSIONISM
Phallic reversionism is degeneracy through self-indulgence,
sensuality and eroticism. It is found throughout the Bible, (2Co 12:21; Eph 4:19;
Eph 5:5; Col
3:5; 1Pe 4:3; Jude 1:4) but its practice first flourished as a
religion with the idolatrous Canaanites before the Israelites occupied the
Land. Despite the direct Divine commands and strict warnings against "socializing" with the Canaanites, the Jews
repeatedly compromised with them and “went a-whoring”
after Baal. While the Jews conquered the Canaanites on the battlefield, the Canaanites conquered the Jews through the apostasy of
the phallic cult! (2Co 6:14-18)
This cult, was a virtual kaleidoscope of moral and immoral
degeneracy, (Lev 18:1-30) and
was practiced in groves of trees along with the worship of a nude female idol,
variously called Ashtoreth, Astarte, Ishtar, Venus or Aphrodite. Inspired by
demonism, which is always found where idolatry exists, (Lev 20:6) the worship included frenzied group
sex (Lev 20:23) autoerotism, bestiality,
incest and human sacrifice. (Deut 12:29-31)
Balaam, the reversionistic prophet employed by the enemies of the Jews, was
able to cast a stumbling block in their path because of their tendency for the
phallic cult. (Num 25:1; Num 31:15-16; Rev
2:14) Fifteen hundred years later, certain believers in Pergamos
were charged with phallic reversionism, following after the twisted Truth of
Balaam.
But I have some concise things against
you, because you have and hold there ones holding fast to the twisted Truth of
Balaam who taught Balak to throw a trap [Enticement] before the sons of Israel
namely, to eat animals sacrificed to idols [False
worship] and to fornicate. [Moral and immoral
Degeneracy] (Rev
2:14)
False worship toward anything including self; produces moral
and immoral degeneracy toward God.
Human morality toward people and circumstances
produces self-righteousness toward God! Worship toward God produces Virtue-morality toward people and
circumstances! The Divine solution is the only solution! The human sin nature solution is no solution! A supernatural Spiritual life demands a
supernatural Spiritual means to accomplish it! (Rom 8:4; Joh 4:23-24)
The earlier
Jews had become so occupied in sexual activity with the Moabite and Midianite
women that they fell into the entire pattern of reversionism. Their idolatry was reverse process reversionism in, Category
One Love: Personal Love for God, while their
fornication was reverse process reversionism in Category Two Love: Impersonal
Love for all mankind. The reason the phallic cult was so devastating was
that it attacked both of these categories of love and destroyed capacity for
loving either God or the opposite sex. Both idolatry
and fornication are Spiritually destructive to the individual and to the
nation.
The church in
Thyatira was likewise indicted for harboring a woman, who called herself a
prophetess, but was in fact a phallic reversionist. (Rev 2:20-23) A counterpart of the famous Jezebel, who brought
the phallic cult and worship of Baal to Israel when she married King Ahab, this
unnamed woman of Thyatira was also leading other believers into phallic
reversionism. The passage records her just retribution.
NARCOTIC REVERSIONISM
Often
associated with phallic cult activity is the use of narcotics or alcohol as
added stimuli for licentious orgies. To seek stimulation or happiness through
chemicals is another form of reversionism. Phallic reversionism-is linked with
narcotic or alcoholic reversionism in: (Gal
5:19-21)
Now the deeds from the source of the flesh (Old sin nature)
are evident, which are such a category as the following: fornication, (Body unfaithfulness) impurity, (Mental unfaithfulness toward God) sensuality, (Spiritual unfaithfulness) idolatry, (False worship) sorcery, (Drug
addiction) enmities, (Personal animosities)
strife (Disorder) jealousy, tantrums,
contentious self-seekings, dissensions, (Conflict in a group) factions, (New
leaders) jealousies, inebriations, lascivious parties and similar things to
these of which I forewarn you, just as I have
forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the
kingdom of God.
Blessed
are those who wash their robes, (Reach maturity; body, soul and spirit; no lust
of the flesh, lust of the eyes, or pride of life!)
so that they may have the right to the tree of life, and
may enter by the gates into the city. Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the immoral
persons and the murderers and the idolaters, and everyone who loves and
practices lying. "I, Jesus, have sent My
angel to testify to you these things for the
churches. I am the root and the descendant of
David, the bright morning star." (Rev 22:14-16)
Believers living continuously in carnality, that is, having an uncontrolled old sin nature; will not get into the city: the New Jerusalem; or have a
reward; at the minimum! (Php 3:18-19)
The Greek work pharmakeia can mean sorcery or
witchcraft, but it more specifically refers to the misuse of drugs; stimulation
through chemicals. A similar situation to that in Galatia existed in the
Southern Kingdom in Jeremiah’s day.
Therefore, thus says the Lord of the
Armies, the God of Israel, behold, I will cause them — this people [Judah] — to
eat wormwood, and I will cause them to drink the water of gall [Tears of opium] (Jer 9:15)
When Jesus
Christ was rejected as the God of Israel; and the worship of Baal and the phallic
cult were substituted, the decline of establishment was inevitable, along with
Spiritual and social decay. “Lord of the Armies” all the armies angelic and
human; this signifies the function of establishment in Israel, particularly the
role of the military in the maintenance of human freedom. “God of Israel,” on
the other hand, represents Jesus Christ in the operation of the Spiritual
principles of grace. Together, the Lord’s titles stress the two areas where
recovery is required. First, by means of an awakening
agent such as a great national catastrophe, the
people must be brought back to the laws of Divine establishment. Second, the believers in the nation must return to their
daily intake of Truth!
Wormwood, a
poisonous plant, depicts the self-destructiveness of negative volition. While a person might derive some pleasure or satisfaction
from eating the plant, at the same time he poisoned himself by eating it.
When the Jews became unfaithful to the Lord and
sought pleasure in the phallic cult, they poisoned their own souls with
self-induced misery! “Wormwood” is the Spiritual disintegration of the
soul. Gall was also a poisonous plant. In building up wormwood of the soul,
they tried to compensate with alcohol or drugs. (Gall) But such abuse only
destroys the brain chemically, which, in turn, impairs the ability of the soul
to function.
The Bible is inflexible in prohibiting the use of drugs
except for medicinal purposes. Abuse of drugs and alcohol is not only a
sign of reversionism, but it also creates the possibility of permanent
limitation and abnormality of the soul. To recover from drug addiction is a
difficult road, many times impossible without Truth. The reason is that
narcotics temporarily and often permanently knock out the neurons in the brain
which print information. There is neither blessing nor genuine stimulation in
becoming involved in narcotics. There is, however
fantastic blessing and excitement related to reality on the road to glory with
Truth!
Between
wormwood and gall, the Jews neutralized their own souls while rejecting their
only hope — Jesus Christ and Truth. “Tears” are the realization of their
failure and form a part of their discipline. Social anarchy and departure from
the laws of establishment will cause people who are not stabilized by Truth in
their souls to desperately seek happiness and substitute some form of
artificial stimulation. Drug addiction is always a
factor in national decline, and Israel was no exception. It therefore
became necessary for God to administer the fifth cycle of discipline.
And I will disperse them among the nations,
which they did not know, neither they nor their fathers, and I will send the
sword after them, until I have destroyed them. (Jer
9:16)
The Lord of
the Armies next turned His attention to the anti-military female peaceniks who,
fearful for those they loved personally, had contributed their share toward the
demoralization of the military establishment in Judah.
Thus says the LORD of hosts,
"Consider and call for the mourning women, that they may come; And send
for the wailing women, that they may come! (Jer 9:17)
They had
better reconsider their precarious position! “Funsville”
was over, and those who had been living it up were commanded to assemble for a
lesson in weeping for the country. Also ordered to appear were the professional
wailing women, who were to teach the reversionistic crowd how to lament for
those they loved; those who in vain attempts to protect their women would be killed
in thirty days!
Such lessons were designed to abruptly
awaken the women to what they had done in
reversionism. Not only had they brushed aside their right men and gone after
paramours, (Male prostitutes) but they had worshipped Baal instead of the God
of Israel. They had listened to the false prophets, and
refused the Word as communicated by Jeremiah. They
must now learn to face reality, for the Chaldeans would shortly invade
the Land to rape and pillage, torture and kill. Most of these women would soon
die or be forced into a slavery worse than death. Gone would be the voice of
Bible teaching and in its place only the sound of the wailing voices of the
reversionistic women. (Jer 9:18-19) Yet regardless of how forbidding may loom the future, there
is always a ray of hope.
For hear, O you women, the Word of the
Lord, and seize and possess with your ears the Word of His mouth [Doctrinal
teaching], and train your daughters elegy [Song of lamentation for the dead],
and each one her neighbor a death song
(Jer 9:20)
Truth must be first in importance, for Divine Thinking in
the soul is the “glory inside us, Christ the Living Word and our protection;
and He is also the wall of fire on the outside” that protects in personal and
national catastrophe, and IT is the only hope
for these women, and our ONLY hope as well! Truth
alone is the basis for happiness and recovery from reversionism and the sole
way to pass the prosperity test should they and or we survive. But why must they continue the death song? Because it will be
a testimony to the approaching fifth cycle of discipline — a means of alerting people to the importance of Truth while
it is still available!
ANTIESTABLISHMENT REVERSIONISM
Closely akin
to national reversionism is the antiestablishment principle which focuses on
individual rather than mass reversionism. To be in antiestablishment
reversionism is to reject the Divine institutions: to misuse one’s freedoms and
rights; to set aside the institutions of marriage and family; to reject a nation’s
authority, represented by its police and military forces; to condemn its system
of law and order and its policy of free enterprise; and
to favor instead some form of internationalism, socialism, liberalism,
communism or revolution. In other words,
antiestablishment reversionism resists, either mentally or overtly, Divinely
constituted authority, ranging from self-discipline to the authority of the
local, state and national governments. It
fails to take awareness of the fact that without authority the human race would
be in utter chaos. Some of the worst kinds of antiestablishment
reversionists are draft-dodgers, conscientious objectors, revolutionists and
sex perverts, all of whom contribute to the decadence; and, if not restrained,
to the collapse of a nation. (Rom 1:18-32;
Rom 3:13-18)
Because when they knew God (God Wrote in our minds at birth; Rom 1:19) they did not honor Christ as God;
[Negative volition] nor did they feel obligated
to thank Him. In fact, [As a result of their negative volition or maladjustment
to the justice of God at salvation and or in Spiritual growth] they received worthless thoughts: evil speculations, and
their ignorant right lobe received darkness [Blackout of the soul] (Rom 1:21)
Corruption runs rampant in a nation, when, in spite of a
saturation of evangelism, the Gospel and Truth are rejected. God never
judges a nation nor sets in motion the punitive measures which express His
perfect justice until He has given that nation every opportunity to accept the
remedy. The solution must begin with regeneration, (Joh
3:3) the entrance into God’s Plan. The previous two verses in this
chapter dealt with God-consciousness — the point at which a person recognizes through the function
of his own mentality the existence of God. In response to positive
volition at God-consciousness, God must, and always does, provide Gospel
information. Negative volition at God-consciousness and at Gospel-hearing
leaves the individual without-defense at the Last Judgment (Rev 20:11-15)
No matter how self-indulgent a national entity may be, that
nation will have had the opportunity of deliverance through response to the
Gospel and believers growing to maturity. Thus,
God in His grace first offers the individuals in a declining nation the
opportunity to adjust to the justice of God for salvation and Spiritual
maturity, and then uses that nations Spiritually mature believers as a means of
arresting the nation’s downfall. However, they
failed to make the necessary adjustment to the justice of God. Their emotions
revolted against and suppressed all establishment principles so that they fell
in line with the policy and philosophy of evil. Their souls were in
darkness, and their reversionism was complete. (Eph
4:18) Any nation saturated with such
individuals is finished!
Although they claimed to be wise, they
became fools. (Rom 1:22)
Their thinking that they were wise was evil thinking.
(Ignorance and arrogance)
Being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of
God because of the ignorance (Ignorance of Truth) that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; (Arrogance toward Truth) (Eph 4:18)
Darkness in the right lobe from reversionism
can be applied to life only as foolishness
— worthless thoughts and evil rationalizations.
(Human reality) The
reversionist cannot solve the problems of life because he is himself one of the
main problems — he can think only in terms of human reality. We are
plagued in this country today with people who think
what they are doing is wisdom — government leaders who advocate disarmament,
military cutbacks, welfare and socialism. Free
enterprise, privacy and freedom are disappearing from this land, and no
one dares to sit down and start taking in Truth and reach Spiritual maturity;
and then stand up and speak. What is the result? They exchange common sense for a
monstrous type of evil — idolatry and religion. (Moral
and immoral degeneracy)
And exchanged the glory [Essence] of the incorruptible
[Immortal] God for
an image in the form of corruptible [Mortal] mankind and
birds and quadrupeds and reptiles
(Rom 1:23)
Will we trade, what is Eternal and
Perfect for what is temporary and corrupted?
For we walk by faith, (The Spirit and Truth; God's Reality) not by sight (The old sin nature; in
ignorance and arrogance, human reality) (2Co 5:7)
God’s structure of Divine laws is designed to protect the
entire human race. In addition, He has a
series of Spiritual laws which make it possible for the believer to grow
Spiritually and to act as a preservative in the human race. “Exchanged”
means to transform that which is glorious into a state of depravity by a
process of alteration and decline. There are certain factors which contribute
to the alteration in this case, negative reaction to Truth and rejection of the
laws of Divine
Establishment. The glory, or essence, of the incorruptible
God is found in the laws of Divine establishment, which apply to the human
race. The darkness of the reversionist has no Spiritual
Understanding of the essence of God nor of His laws; he distorts these Divine
laws by setting up a system of idolatry, worshipping symbols of God’s creation
while at the same time failing to recognize the Creator. The arrogance
of reversionism seeks to corrupt the power and glory of God by substituting
some other object of worship. (Money, self, family, power, pleasure, social
life, etc., whatever we spend our money and time on is what we worship!) (Rom 1:23)
Systems and institutions are not distorted until those who
live under them have refused to use them. The
remedy, therefore, must be in the souls of the people. When the unbeliever or believer refuses to make the proper
adjustment to the justice of God, then the justice of God will adjust to him,
first, in temporal judgment, and finally, in eternal judgment. (Mar 14:21; Jude
1:11-13) Thus, because of their indifference
either at the point of God-consciousness or at Gospel-hearing or at the
teaching of God's Word; that segment of
humanity is delivered by the justice of God to a succession of Divine laws of
punishment. (Rom 2:9)
(Rom 1:24-28) Presents three “deliveries” of
reversionists to the consequences of their reversionism. The first is the
delivery to moral and immoral degeneracy; (Verses 24, 25) second, to
perversion; (Verses 26, 27) and third, to the function
of evil. (Maximum satanic mental and body
involvement) (Verse 28)
Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their
hearts to impurity, (Satanic and old sin nature
thinking) so that their bodies would be
dishonored among them. (Rom 1:24)
In delivering the reversionists to their own lust pattern,
God is actually respecting their free wills. They
have deliberately chosen against the principles of Divine establishment and the
Spiritual life; which protect and perpetuate the human race. When this happens, the old sin nature assumes full control
and expresses itself, both in sin and in the satanic policies and thinking of
religious human moral and immoral degeneracy. (Pro 7:10-19)
The unbeliever or believer who grows up, untaught and
untrained, under permissive parents possesses neither Truth nor Divine
establishment in his soul. He has no concept of the principles of freedom,
privacy, and the right of private property or respect for authority. If he then
expresses negative volition at God-consciousness and again at the point of
Gospel-hearing and or Truth his sole aim in life is to gratify himself.
(Luk 4:8; Mar
8:38) In emotional revolt, with nothing in his right lobe to which
to respond, he accepts chemical stimulation and other substitutes in a frantic
search for happiness. He will wind up in total anarchy and eventually become
psychotic. An all too frequent expression of this pattern is the abuse and
misuse of the body in the practice of homosexuality and other distortions of
God’s design for sex the corruption of right man-right woman. Thus, when
neither Truth nor the principles of establishment are operational in the soul,
the individual lives on a subhuman "normal"
level. (Psa 49:12; Psa 49:20; Ecc 3:18)
They [Unbeliever and believer
Reversionists] who exchange the Truth of God for a
lie, [False Truth of
Satan: evil] they [Reversionists under the influence of evil] both
worship and serve the creature [Satan and or self]
rather than the Creator [Jesus Christ], who is blessed forever. Amen! (Rom 1:25)
Always a poor
exchange for the Bible, reversionism never occurs unless
an individual is first exposed to the Truth and rejects it. The “lie,”
therefore, is evil propaganda, or any substitute for either the Laws of Divine
Establishment, (Freedom, privacy, property and protection) the Gospel or Truth, or the Divine institutions of, (Freewill, marriage, family,
and nationalism) and is often represented by legal institutions and organizations of degeneracy: religious and
civil: the Word of Truth mixed with such
corruptions as sexual deviation, heath and wealth, "wonders and signs,"
tongues etc.. The religion of Baal included
homosexuality, bestiality, pederasty, pedophilia, autoerotism and fornication. Since God is worshipped through the filling of the Holy
Spirit and Truth, a person whose content of soul
is expressed in these perversions; substitutes the creature, Satan and or self,
or something else as the object of highest worship.
God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit are the
only true Object of worship and will be eternally blessed! Eulogetos means more than the mere
praise of mankind. The adjective here connotes the inviolability of the
attributes of God but focuses on one in particular justice. This attribute
protects all the Divine characteristics from compromise in providing blessing
and or cursing for sinful man. Justice is free to bless the unbeliever who
adjusts to Divine justice at salvation; by faith in Christ. The maladjusted reversionist, who exchanges the Truth of God
for the devil’s lie, must be judged by that same justice. The validity of this Truth is affirmed by the final “amen.” (Rom 1:25)
The second
delivery — to perversion — stems from the distorted soul of the reversionist who exchanges Truth
for evil. Once there are kinks in the soul, they
are manifested overtly, and wrongful conduct of the body follows.
Because of this, [Reversionism] God
delivered them over to sexual passions of dishonor. [Perversions] For not only
their females exchanged the natural [Normal] function of sex for that which is
contrary to natural function. [Normal use of sex] (Rom 1:26)
Sex is an
honorable passion designed to be an expression of Virtue Love between the
husband and wife. (Male and female) Any sexual
activity outside this Divine structure is dishonorable. Without Truth or
establishment in the soul, sex ultimately degenerates into perversion. There
are three sexual responses forbidden to the woman: response to herself;
(Autoerotism) response to another woman; (Lesbianism) response to someone not
her husband (Fornication or adultery).
And likewise also the males, having
forsaken the natural function of sex with the female, have become inflamed with
sexual desire in their lust toward each other, [Of the same sex] homosexual
males with homosexual males, accomplishing the perverted act and receiving back
payment in themselves — that judgment of their perversion, which was
inevitable. (Rom
1:27)
There is no
double standard. What applies to one sex also applies to the other. Both male
and female are under the same Plan of God for right man-right woman. People are
not born homosexuals; we are born sinners, (Rom 3:10-12) and Therefore, anyone involved in
homosexuality or any kind of old sin nature
activity; is a depraved and Spiritually abnormal person. (Rom 3:18) The Bible states that homosexuality is
not only a sin from the old sin nature, but a disease of the soul; a cancer in
society. (Lev 18:22-30) To condone homosexuality is an attack upon human freedom,
marriage, the family and the nation. If this contemptible decadence is sufficiently
widespread, and legitimatized; society self-destructs, and the nation
eventually falls into total obliteration!
There is
special judgment and cursing on homosexuality and lesbianism. (Lev 18:22) Society may condemn the behavior of
the fixed degenerate, but reversionism or maladjustment
to the justice of God actually produces its own judgment of such abnormal
sinfulness and evil. The pay-off of sexual perversion is usually some form of
mental and or physical disease!
It takes
volition to become involved with homosexuality and fornication, etc. and it
takes volition to cease and desist from this, and every form of carnality and
reversionism. Since sexual degeneracy is an acquired
sin and cultivated evil, it is curable by the
same process as reversionism — through
instantaneous adjustment to the justice of God in salvation for the unbeliever,
or rebound for the believer, followed by maximum adjustment to the justice of
God in the persistent intake of Truth. Truth must reside in the soul and
motivate the volition to overcome the old sin nature! (Rom 8:13)
And just as
they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, (Controlled by Satan, 2Ti 2:26) to do those things which are not proper. (Rom 1:28)
In this verse is found the third delivery to the function of
evil. God, in grace and justice, revealed Himself to these reversionists
who, even after careful examination, (Dokimazo)
did not respond. In turn, God, in a humorous paronomasia, examined them closely
and disqualified (Adokimazo) them.
Finding them worthless, He handed them over to their
own worthless, reversionistic mind, which parallels (2Pe 2:20-22)
Rejection of the
Gospel and or Truth opens the mataiotes
vacuum, and draws into the mind the evil half Truths of Satan, and blacks out
the soul. His and or her thinking is choked
by scar tissue and evil, the reversionist is unable to orient to Divine
Reality, and openly rebels against all Divine Authority, The evil functions of
a person whose mind has been corrupted by reversionistic thinking are listed in
the following verses.
Being filled with all unrighteousness, (Staying out of fellowship) wickedness, (Using the old sin nature) greed, evil; (Satanic thinking) full of envy, murder, strife,
deceit, malice; they are gossips, (Rom 1:29)
“Righteousness,”
dikaiosune, is derived from the Attic
Greek and implies the Thinking of a judge.
Josephus described this word as “adjustment to the
law.” In bringing it into the New Testament, Paul
used it to mean the justice of God. Applied to the believer, dikaiosune does not refer to personal
righteousness but is a technical term for adjustment to the justice of God. Now
in, (Rom 1:29) we have its opposite, adikia, meaning “unrighteous act,” or “anti-justice,”
which is equivalent to maladjustment to the justice of God.
“Being fully
influenced by all categories of anti-justice” is actually the title for the
remainder of the passage, which lists the pay-off of reversionism. Pleroo has several meanings in the
Greek: “to fill up a deficiency, to fully possess, to fill with a certain
quality, to fully influence.” In contrast to the grace
wages paid by Truth in the soul, antiestablishment concepts fill the
reversionist. The evils mentioned in this passage completely occupy the life of
the reversionist: mental attitude sins, crime, anti-establishment; all these
fully influence the unbeliever who rejects the Gospel or the believer who
thinks contrary and or without the Mind of Christ: Truth! (1Co 2:16)
Paralleling,
(Rom 2:4) where three words are used to
describe the riches of grace — “goodness, forbearance and longsuffering” —
here, three words describe the categories of adikia or maladjustment: “evil, [Satanic thinking] inordinate
desire, [The frantic search for happiness, which
is the link between evil thought: motivation and evil function: sin]
When both believers and unbelievers in a national entity are filled with all
anti-justice and evil, as enumerated in the rest of the passage, the disintegration of the nation is a foregone conclusion!
Slanderers, God-haters, insolent,
[Haughty, overbearing, disrespectful] arrogant ones, boastful presumption,
[Braggarts] fabricators of evil thoughts, with reference to parents, disobedient
ones. Ignorant ones, [Blackout of the soul] contract-breakers, [Faithless,
treacherous] unloving [No instincts of love] implacable.
[Relentless, irreconcilable, unforgiving, and
unmerciful] (Rom
1:30-31)
Each of the
items in the list follows a natural progression and explains how a people
degenerate from antiestablishment to reversionism and moral and immoral
religion. (Pro 7:14-19)
Such are those who, though they have
total perception [Complete awareness] of the legal requirements of the justice
of God, [I.E., to make instant adjustment to the justice of God by believing in
Jesus Christ] that those who practice such things
are deserving of death, not only are doing the
same things, but also give their approval to those who practice the same evil
of: moral and immoral degeneracy. (Rom
1:32)
In God’s eyes, reversionists qualify for death! Both the
unbeliever who has rejected the Gospel and the believer who has refused Truth
have turned their backs on an issue which they understood: both were aware of the
judgment or the sentence of condemnation involved in their actions! Furthermore,
those who sanction the practice of reversionism are included in the
condemnation. In other words, they have made heroes out
of villains! Living out fellowship with God actually consists of both
the practice of antiestablishment and the approval of such practices by those
who are opposed to the laws of establishment.
As with the individual, so a nation in reversionism deserves
extermination, and so far in all of human
history: ALL NATIONS have gone out under this principle! Part of the
function of the justice of God toward living out fellowship with God; or
unbeliever reversionism is to abandon degeneracy to its life-style. Such
abandonment intensifies the deviancies and develops a self-destructing
increased depravity. The most awful disaster that can
happen to human beings or to nations is to be left to their own destruction by
the justice of God.
Only grace can reverse the situation, for grace gives us
what we do not deserve! Right now our country merits death; but because
of the grace of God, we have not fully reaped our just deserts. Where grace continues to operate, there is hope!
The hope for our country is not in politics or politicians; but in Truth. The door remains open because people are still positive
toward Truth.
PSYCHOTIC
REVERSIONISM
Reversionism
can and frequently does lead to, (Demonism; 1Sa 16:14) neurotic, psychotic or psychopathic
behavior. Balaam is also a prime example of this type of reversionism.
Abandoning
the straight road, [To
maturity] they have been deluded,
having pursued the road of Balaam of Beor [Reversionism], who loved the
reward of wrongdoing. [Living for the old sin
nature] (2Pe
2:15)
A
reversionistic believer, who has abandoned (Kataleipo)
the straight road, has swerved away from the normal Christian life; that is, he
is no longer taking in Truth on a daily basis or advancing toward the high
ground of maturity. The constantive aorist tense of kataleipo indicates a series of negative
decisions toward Truth. In forsaking the “straight road, the
reversionists in this passage; were deluded by satanic Truth which infiltrated
the two lobes of the mentality through the opening of the mataiotes. In their delusion, they
followed the devious path of Balaam.
Although a Gentile prophet, Balaam was truly born again:
(Num 22:18; Num
24:16) but his “road” was the pursuit of reversionism which
eventually resulted in madness. He had once functioned under Operation Z but
later rejected or neglected Truth and entangled his soul in the turmoil of
monetary reversionism. After Balak, the king of Moab, offered him “money” to
curse Israel, (Num 22:6-7) Balaam tortured himself with the dollar sign every day for
the rest of his life! The lust pattern of his
old in nature amounted to intense and insatiable greed and led to his insanity
— but not before he received an unusual warning.
But he received a rebuke for his own
transgression, [Demonism: Psychotic and monetary reversionism] the dumb ass,
having preached eloquently with the voice of a man, had forbidden the madness [Insanity] of the prophet. (2Pe 2:16)
Under the
strong delusion and unabated hardness of heart of reversionism, Balaam became
psychotic, described by Peter as paraphronia — “outside objective thinking.” Persistent
reversionism is a major cause of a neurotic or psychotic condition, and
believers are not immune! A person in this state loses common sense,
discernment and even his sense of humor. He becomes totally thoughtless of
others, selfish, self-centered and extremely unpleasant to be around. He does
not share others’ enthusiasms and has no capacity for compassion or love in any
category.
After Balaam
explored every avenue in an attempt to find a loophole in the Divine
prohibition; and earn the reward offered by Balak, (Num
22:17) God was forced to step in and forbid the prophet from
fulfilling his deceitful mission in Moab. A dumb ass
had the good sense to obey the Lord, even when the Lord’s prophet did not. Three
times the ass turned aside from the path when the Lord, invisible to Balaam,
blocked her way. After Balaam struck her the third time for her disobedient
behavior, the animal spoke (Phtheggomai)
in a forceful or eloquent manner in an effort to prevent the prophet’s death.
God, speaking
through the voiceless ass, was actually expressing His anger in grace, for He
would give Balaam three opportunities to obey Him - but no more. (Num 24:10-11) While the
Holy Spirit hindered Balaam from cursing Israel, forcing him instead to
prophesy blessing, Balaam still found a way to
eventually earn his fee. Aware that intermarriage with their heathen
neighbors would weaken the Jews and bring God’s wrath down upon them, Balaam advised the Moabite women to entice
the Israelites into fornication and the rites of the phallic cult. (Num 25:1-18) For their complicity, God
disciplined and purged Israel; yet they lived on under God’s blessing and
protection in spite of every satanic attempt to annihilate them. Balaam, on the other hand, rejected grace and died the sin
unto death. (Num 31:8)
ASCETIC REVERSIONISM
Ascetic reversionism is the practice of severe self-denial,
which is assumed to be a means of gaining the approbation of God for either
Salvation or Spirituality. A guilt reaction for some embarrassing or
regrettable activity often forms the basis for asceticism. For example, a
promiscuous woman, or a man who has been a heavy drinker, a woman chaser and
generally a “hell raiser,” may do a complete reversal and attempt to compensate
for a guilt complex by indulging in a little "self-condemning." Believers frequently try to “make it up to God” by some form
of abstinence or self-denial. These people are not positive to Truth.
They are simply keeping their noses to the ascetic grindstone because of the
rattling of the skeleton in the closet! Yet guilt
feelings are as sinful as any overt sin they may have committed! (Rom 8:33-34)
Everyone has
a trend in his old sin nature toward asceticism. This trend is more prominent in
some individuals than in others, as well as more pronounced at certain times
than at others. Asceticism is often an escape hatch
from reality. On the other hand, many people think they are not accomplishing
anything for God unless they are suffering. Anything done by means of the old
sin nature is not the Spiritual life! (Rom 8:6-8)
Since Ephesus
was noted for its phallic activities, many believers in the Ephesian church
were especially open to asceticism as a reaction to their former association
with the self-indulgence orgies of the phallic cult. Thus, the Judaizers found
ready acceptance for their teaching of asceticism. Two forms of asceticism were
employed in the attack on Ephesus: the prohibition of
sex in marriage and the abstinence from certain foods.
Men who forbid marriage and advocate
abstaining from foods which God has created to be
gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the Truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to
be rejected if it is received with gratitude; for
it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer. (1Ti 4:3-5)
Ascetic reversionism rejects the legitimate enjoyment of
sex in the Divine institution of marriage. Some believers in Ephesus went so
far as to forbid marriage altogether. Based on
reaction to the sexual excesses that always exist in pagan religion, acceptance
of asceticism by many of these believers was the solution to their guilt
problems.
The Greek
word broma, translated “meat” in the
King James Version, refers to food in general; but since asceticism often
teaches that eating meat becomes an offense to God, meat is the most commonly
prohibited food. Why did the ascetic reversionists consider the eating of meat
to be displeasing to God? Because it is necessary to kill a creature which He
has created. Paul wastes no time in refuting this erroneous concept.
Because everything created by God is
good for food, and nothing is to be rejected as unclean, if the food is received with thanksgiving. (1Ti 4:4)
God created
animals, birds and fish for food. (Gen 9:3)
The only prerequisite for receiving any Divine
provision is that we be thankful, whether for God’s provisions for happiness in
marriage or pleasure in eating. A person who
becomes an ascetic reversionist is particularly ludicrous because he purposely
avoids all capacity for life.
LEGALISTIC AND RITUALISTIC REVERSIONISM
Following the
current trend of his old sin nature, a reversionist can
go in one of two directions. If he is prone to lustfulness, he will wind up in
eroticism or some type of chemical sublimation;
if he has a tendency toward asceticism, he will steer a course toward legalism.
This latter may take many forms: monasticism, (To be a monk) tabooism (No
movies, wearing makeup, dancing etc.) or “holy roller activity,” to name a few.
Legalistic reversionism utilizes a system of human morality and
self-righteousness for personal elevation. Since it is
part of the sin nature, to want to feel superior to others, legalism: (Strict conformity to the
letter of the law "outside works" (Luk 11:39-41) rather than its Thoughts
"Inside Thinking with God's Thoughts on every subject!" is a common — indeed, an extremely popular type of reversionism. People
actually love to be self-righteous; somehow it makes them feel clean and good
even great!
The Books of
Galatians and Hebrews are both directed toward legalistic reversionism, with Hebrews focusing specifically on the problem of
religious ritualism. However, I would like to illustrate legalistic
reversionism from a passage in Colossians.
Therefore no one is to act as your judge in
regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath
day-- things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance
belongs to Christ. (Col 2:16-17)
Krino, translated “judge,” more explicitly denotes an evaluation of
other people which intrudes upon their privacy. In context, the source
of judging was from legalistic, self-righteous, ascetic believers, who sought
to build their righteousness on the legalism of
Judaism. The “son of the bondwoman” (Living and thinking by the old sin nature) always
persecutes the “son of the free-woman.” (Living and Thinking by the Holy Spirit and Truth) (Gal 4:29-31)
In other words, the legalist always judges the
mature believer not vice versa. (Mat 7:15;
Rom 14:4-13) Here,
the ones involved in judging were guilty of the worst type of legalism meddling
in the affairs of other believers, trying to run their lives or to squeeze them
into their own mold of pseudo-Spirituality. We
need to learn to Think with God's Thoughts; not
each other’s! It does not matter what we
think, it matters what God Thinks! (Isa 55:6-9)
The legalistic believers in Colosse sat in
judgment on those who violated their standards in two areas: (1) food and drink
comparisons, and (2) the observation of ritual days. While the background of
this passage is obviously Judaism, the problem remains existent today.
Fundamentalism
adopted a form of legalism around the turn of the century in relation to the
observance of Sunday. Like the pharisaical distortions of the ancient Sabbath,
certain activities were to be avoided by Christians on Sunday. In addition to
the Sunday taboo, other taboos were instituted, such as the restriction of
certain foods on specified days or seasons and the prohibition of alcoholic
beverage.
Believers
with a trend toward asceticism distort eating habits into a system of
self-righteous legalism. In this case, reverse process reversionism rejects
Truth and substitutes such inconsequential issues as food taboos. In reality, it is not what goes into the stomach but what
enters the soul that counts. (Jer 15:16;
Mat 4:4) Where the drinking of
alcoholic beverage is concerned, there are certain Biblical prohibitions
designed to protect the human race within the framework of each particular
society; but these do not determine Spiritual growth or lack of it. Drinking
becomes a sin when it escalates into drunkenness or alcoholism, which is always
detrimental and potentially destructive to society as well as to the
individual. The problem here, however, is building personal prejudices into a
system of pseudo-Spirituality.
The observance of special holy days is no longer bona fide
in the present dispensation of the Church. They
were legitimate in the Old Testament as teaching aids to reveal the Plan of God
for Israel and the two Advents of Christ. (Heb
10:1) The believer today is to regard every
day alike. We are not to remain in the shadows
of the ritual; that taught through illustration God's Thoughts for Israel, but
are to move into the sunlight of the Reality of Thinking with the New Covenant
Truth for the Church! (Heb 10:15-20) The infiltration of obsolete shadows and rituals into the
Christian way of life is indicative of legalism, pseudo-righteousness and
pseudo-Spirituality. To set apart special
days as holy, individually or collectively, bears the unmistakable stamp of
reversionism.
To concentrate on the unadulterated teaching of Truth under
a system of strict academic discipline requires Thinking! A large segment of society today finds it far less taxing to
blindly follow the nonsense of religious ritual, emotion, tongues, signs and
wonders, heath and wealth; to even" being God"! The next verse
lists some of the phony virtues which have been proclaimed from the pulpits of
ignorance as part of the Christian way of life.
Let no one
deprive you of reward, taking pleasure in
self-abasement (Asceticism) and in worship of the angels, [Demons] taking a stand on those things
which he has seen, [Namely: dreams, visions,
trances, hallucinations] being inflated with
arrogance under the influence of the thinking--from the source of his flesh [Old sin nature combined with demonism] (Col 2:18)
Most people mistakenly assume that what impresses them
also impresses God, and “humility” tops the list! However, the true concept of humility has generally been
distorted into self-abasement — that is,
catering to the asceticism of the old sin nature by a system of
self-humbleness. Nothing puffs one up so much
as to put oneself down! To interpret humility as
some external activity is a counterfeit! Genuine
humility is in the soul — saying yes to God: obeying God and His Thinking! (Php 2:3) Those who
take pleasure in self-effacement have succumbed to satanic religious evil,
thereby disqualifying them from the reward of; blessing from God.
The worship
of demons is a form of religious reversionism which attacks the soul and
affects overt functions. Remember that in the later
stages of reversionism, the twisted biblical Truths of demons — expressions of Satan’s policy of evil — influence the believer through the opening of the mataiotes when the believer has locked
in his negative volition toward God's Holy Spirit and Truth. Whenever a person becomes involved in any system of false
teaching or idolatry, necromancy or drug addiction, he is dabbling in demon
worship. (2Co
11:13-15)
A further
religious activity is implied by the pursuit of the invisible — trances, dreams
or visions. These hallucinations are construed to be on
a equivalence with the Word; but with the
completion of the canon of Scripture, revelation through these communications
has ceased. God speaks today only through His
written Word in the filling of God the Holy Spirit! Ecstatics are a snare for the Spiritual moron or the
reversionistic believer. The believer who yields to one of these attacks of
religion invariably becomes puffed up with arrogance.
Next, we have
a description of a believer who has voluntarily subordinated himself to a
system of legalism in the vain hope of gaining some blessing from God.
And not holding fast to the head, (Christ by staying in fellowship) from whom the
entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints (Doctrines) and ligaments, (Promises)
grows with a growth which is from God. (The True Spiritual life
is Thinking with Truth not by signs wonders and emotion!) (Col 2:19)
For we walk by faith, (God's
Reality) not by sight-- (2Co 5:7)
Since you have died together with Christ
from the ultimate source of the basic principles of
the world, [Food, drink, moons, seasons,
unclean things and animals] why, as if you were living in the world, are
you constantly submitting to legalism such as, "Do not handle, (Ceremonially clean hands for all food) do not taste, (Old Covenant prohibited
food) do not
touch!" (Asceticism) (Which all refer to things destined to perish with use)--in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men?
(Col 2:20-22)
Every
believer is in union with Christ and is therefore identified with Him both
retroactively in His Spiritual and physical deaths and burial (Rom 6:1-23) and currently in His position at the
right hand of the Father. (Col 3:1) According to the principle of retroactive positional
Truth, Christ rejected human moral and immoral satanic and human thinking at
the Cross and was separated from them in His burial. Under the present control of Satan, the world is filled with
satanic propaganda which centers in human moral and immoral degeneracy.
Christians, therefore, are forbidden either to
love the world, (1Jn
2:15-16) or to continue to live by this
worlds way of thinking! (Rom 12:2)
In fact, since Christ has overcome Satan's twisted
Truth, (Luk
4:3-13; Joh 16:33) believers
can also defeat the world's false reality, (Rev
2:7; Rev 2:17; Rev 2:26; Rev 3:5;
Rev 3:12) and become even
more than conquerors! (Rom 8:37)
Through retroactive positional Truth the believer is separated positionally (In the car)
from the rulership of Satan and the old sin nature, (Rom 6:1-4) but we must become experientially
dead to the control
of the old sin nature and the thinking of Satan! (Rom 6:11-12; Rom
6:17-18) This is: Experiential
Sanctification. (Maturity) The Word of God is designed to defeat the evil human
thinking of this world, (1Co 1:20;
1Co 3:19) along
with its instigator, the devil! (1Jn 2:14)
Paul
questions those religious Colossians, “Why wallow in the mire of legalism when
you already possess every provision needed to live on the highest plane with
Christ?” Yet believers continually place themselves
under the false cure-alls of the world — the
external and superficial taboos of asceticism or legalism — because they have an elevated opinion of their own thoughts.
They are impressed by what they have given up for God!
Legalism and asceticism often go hand in hand. The
legalist assumes that “touch not, taste not, handle not” are the means of
fulfilling the command to overcome the world. Worldliness
is a state of mind and can be conquered only
by a right mental attitude: God's mental attitude; that our lord used! (2Co 10:4-5; Php 2:5)
Which category
of thoughts, indeed, have a reputation of wisdom by means of a self-made system
of religion based on emotionalism, and by
means of self-punishment and by means of
unsparing, non-indulgence of the body, [Extreme
asceticism] but are of no value against
fleshly indulgence. (Cutting off the control of the old sin nature) (Col 2:23)
Taboos become a false system of Truth which passes for
wisdom. Yet when legalists or ascetics are put to the test, they blow it
every time. Under pressure, they will quickly show their arrogance.
ARROGANCE IN REVERSIONISM
Pride is not only a sin, but the fist sin in the angelic
conflict of Eternity-past when Satan’s policy of evil thinking sprang from his
original sin of pride, and is the main issue in our life on earth:
"But
you said in your heart, 'I will ascend
to heaven; I will raise my throne above the
stars of God, And I will sit on the mount of
assembly In the recesses of the north. 'I will ascend
above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.' (Isa 14:13-14)
Predictably,
therefore, he would appeal to the woman’s pride in his attack on mankind in the
Garden. (Gen 3:5-6) The basic mental attitude sins in the human race since that
time; have been; the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of
life! Pride is perhaps the most insidious
because it always stems from the influence of Satan's thinking--of
self-importance! And this is what Satan gave to
the minds of the people in the first Babylon:
They said, "Come, let us build for
ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will
reach into heaven, ('I will ascend above the heights of the clouds...; Isa 14:14) and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we
will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth." (Gen 11:4)
And these
same tactics will be used in the last Babylon! (Religion =
Moral-Immoral degeneracy; Pornography = Immoral-Moral degeneracy; with
Self-worship in both!)
The woman was clothed in purple and scarlet,
and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a gold cup full of abominations (Religions) and of the unclean things (Satanic and old sin nature thoughts) of her
immorality, (Pornography) and on her forehead a
name was written, a mystery, (A Doctrine)
"BABYLON THE GREAT, (The great confusion)
THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS (The Origin of pornography) AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS (Religions) OF THE EARTH." (Rev 17:4-5)
"To the degree that she glorified herself and lived sensuously, to the same degree give her torment and
mourning; for she says in her heart, 'I SIT (I will sit on
the mount of assembly...; Isa 14:13) as
A QUEEN AND I AM NOT A WIDOW, and will never see mourning.' (Rev 18:7)
A CITY DOES NOT THINK, THE PEOPLE IN THIS CITY DO!
This is what the citizens
of Satan's false spiritual kingdom are thinking right now! Self: pride of life; satanic and human thoughts: lust of the
eyes, and sensuality: (Pornography of every kind)
lust of the flesh and mind! (Eph 2:2-3)
But turning around and seeing His
disciples, He rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind
Me, Satan; for you are not setting your mind on God's interests, (Thoughts) but man's."
And He summoned the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself,
(Satanic and
human thinking)
and take up his cross (Lusts of the old sin nature) and follow Me. (Grow to
maturity) "For whoever wishes to
save his life (Old sin nature)
will lose it, (The new nature) but
whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it. (Complete
the new nature; and reach maturity)
"For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his
soul?
(The new nature) "For
what will a man give in exchange for his soul?
"For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in
this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man
will also be ashamed of him (No reward)
when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels." (Mar 8:33-38)
We
must learn Truth; to become proud of God and His Thoughts, and when this
happens in your soul, YOU ARE A MATURE BELIEVER! (Rom 8:6)
When you walk about, they (God's
Thoughts) will guide you; When you sleep,
They will watch over you; And when you awake,
They will talk to you. For
the commandment is a lamp (To Understand the world, the flesh and the
devil; outside) and the teaching is light; (To
show and clean the darkness from the soul; inside)
And reproofs for discipline are the way of life To keep you from the
evil woman, From the smooth tongue of the adulteress. Do not desire her beauty in your heart, Nor let her capture
you with her eyelids. For on account of a harlot (Porno queen or king) one is reduced to a loaf
of bread, And an adulteress hunts for the precious life. (Pro 6:22-26)
Now therefore, my sons, listen to me, And pay
attention to the Words of my mouth. Do not let
your heart turn aside to her ways, Do not stray into her paths. For many are the victims she has cast down, And numerous are all her slain. Her house is the way to Sheol, Descending to the chambers of
death. (Pro
7:25-27)
Politicians, clergy, football players, astronauts,
doctors, lawyers, cowboys, and Indians, you and me; have all been and or are
still being robbed by sensuality: PORNOGRAPHY!
Therefore,
since Christ has suffered in the flesh, (Tempted
in all ways and never sinned) arm yourselves
also with the same purpose, (Thinking) because he who has suffered in the flesh (Stays in fellowship and Thinks
with Truth)
has ceased from sin, so as to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for
the lusts of men, but for the will of God.
For the time already past is sufficient for you to have
carried out the desire of the Gentiles, having pursued a course of sensuality,
lusts, drunkenness, carousing, drinking parties and abominable idolatries. (PORNOGRAPHY) (1Pe 4:1-3)
Therefore, prepare your
minds for action, keep sober in spirit, (Pay
attention) fix your hope completely on the grace to be
brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
As obedient children, do not be conformed to the
former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One
who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; (Thoughts,
Words, and Actions) because it is written, "YOU SHALL BE HOLY,
FOR I AM HOLY." If you address as Father the
One who impartially judges according to each one's work,
conduct yourselves in fear (In fellowship) during the time of
your stay on earth; (1Pe 1:13-17)
Invariably, all carnal believers and reversionists are
arrogant. When you assume that your thoughts come before God’s, you are
arrogant! God’s optimum Plan for your life is
centered in Truth: His Thoughts! If you place
anything before Truth, you have a false system of thinking, and hence blind
arrogance. How many Pentecostals, who regard
speaking in tongues to be more important than Truth, will admit that they are
arrogant? In reality, they are on an ego trip.
For any believer to imply that he has achieved what no other
believer could, or that he has had some unique experience, or that his life has
more significance than anyone else’s, is blind arrogance. Christianity as a whole has replaced the pure teaching of
what God Thinks on every subject! Truth! With programism, emotionalism and
works, none of which contribute to Spiritual maturity. As a result, believers in our churches today are proud of the
way they have hustled in this or that organization, proud of the number of
Scripture verses they have memorized, the vows and victorious-life dedications
they have made, and all the other pseudo-criteria of Christianity which
constitute blind arrogance in our day. (Rom 8:13)
If anyone advocates
a different Doctrine and does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord
Jesus Christ, and with the Doctrine conforming to godliness, (Growing to maturity) he is
conceited and understands nothing; but he has
a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of
which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived
of the Truth, who suppose that godliness
(The Spiritual life) is
a means of gain. (Make money etc.) But godliness (Maturity)
actually is a means of great gain when accompanied
by contentment. (1Ti 6:3-5)
Believers in reversionism will not agree with sound Truth;
that is precisely why they are in reversionism. Thus, lacking Divine Thinking,
they inevitably become arrogant. It is
arrogance to imagine you can get along without something God has provided
namely, daily Spiritual food!
Blind arrogance is characterized by ignorance and the
inflation of a person’s opinion of himself beyond his true status. Under this
thin veneer of pride lurks a multiplicity of inner sins — jealousy, envy,
bitterness, resentment, anger, unforgiving, self-pity, guilt complex and a
variety of morbid obsessions. Once these
latent antagonisms are brought to the surface, they become verbal sins. The
reversionist’s pride is exposed in the emergence of its counterparts; he now
turns against anyone who poses a threat to his fabricated self-image, and he
retaliates with slander, maligning, gossip, judging, and vengeance! The proud
individual will exhibit different counterpart sins at different times and in
reaction to different challenges to his false opinion of himself.
For men will be lovers of self, lovers
of money' boastful, arrogant, revilers,
disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy
[Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of
life!] (2Ti 3:2)
Pride is not
limited to adults. Children express this sin early in life, and it often has
dire consequences in the teenage period. A teenage girl, whose vanity has been
inflated by undue compliments and who perhaps has been chosen the most
beautiful girl in her class, is likely to develop a case of arrogance. It may
not be obvious until her father, who has keen discernment, forbids her to date
a certain boy, whom she regards as a status symbol. The
pressure on her pride--causes it to emerge, and its counterpart becomes
evident: a mental attitude sin of resentment gives way to anger, deceit or open
defiance. Arrogance is a contributing factor to disobedience.
"For rebellion is as the sin of divination, (Demonism) And insubordination is as iniquity and idolatry. (Sin and Satan worship) Because
you have rejected the Word of the LORD, He has also rejected you from being
king." (No
reward; minimum) (1Sa 15:23)
Since appreciation is a part of capacity for life, an
arrogant person, devoid of both, is therefore always ungrateful. “Unholy” and
advertises a negative attitude toward Truth.
Hang-ups are
also counterparts to pride or arrogance. A hang-up is an obstacle in the normal
function of life related to pride. Labeled “syndromes” by psychologists, these
are symptoms typical of a condition: the condition is pride or arrogance; the
syndrome is the counterpart of pride. All hang-ups have their roots in pride.
There would be no hang-ups if pride did not exist! Hang-ups
or pride syndromes reveal the flaws of the old sin nature, which cause a person
to become snagged in some form of subjectivity or abnormality in thinking and
function. When pride or arrogance is under
pressure, the hang-up or character flaw becomes apparent.
Flaws or hang-ups limit a person’s ability to learn Truth.
They run the gamut from legalistic guilt, to emotional cowardice, inadequacy
syndromes to socialistic liberal anti-Semitic antiestablishment hang-ups.
Pride and blind arrogance reject all authority in
life! When a believer, so infected, is put under pressure by the
pastor’s message, the symptom is revealed, and the result is resistance to
Truth. The hang-up causes the arrogant believer to sit in judgment on the
message and to disagree on the basis of his own false, preconceived notions,
with no regard for the true exegesis of the passage being taught.
The solution to the see-saw of pride and its counterpart is,
as always, positive volition toward Truth, which insulates the soul against
pride and blind arrogance.
Then He opens
the ears of men [Operation Z] and seals their
Instruction, [Truth resident in the soul] that He may turn man aside from His conduct, and protect man from
pride. He keeps back his soul from the pit, And his life from passing over into Sheol. (Job 33:16-18)
REVERSION RECOVERY
THE HEBREWS’ REVERSIONISM
No
dissertation on the subject of reversionism would be complete without
mentioning that very real problem among the Jews in Jerusalem at the time of
the writing of the Book of Hebrews, for in this epistle’s admonition, also
places the solution to reversionism. Addressed to the believing Jews around A.D.
67, it was the last warning before the fifth cycle of discipline was
administered for the second time to the Southern Kingdom.
After
Nebuchadnezzar invaded the Land in 586 B.C., the Jews were dispersed for
seventy years. Judah was then restored to the Land and continued as a nation
until A.D. 70. Now, once again, the nation was on the verge of collapse. The
majority of its inhabitants were in reversionism, and they had been steadily
moving toward the point of no return. Yet the fact that they were alive
signified that God was giving them still another opportunity to recover.
The purpose
of the epistle to the Hebrews was to jar the recipients and awaken them to
their reversionism and their desperate need of Truth. Those
who Understood and applied Truth would depart from Jerusalem before the legions
of Titus invaded the Land.
The main thrust of the book is to teach the high
priesthood of Jesus Christ and the universal New Covenant priesthood of
believers. This
was a procedure entirely foreign to Jewish background. Why? Jesus Christ, the
High Priest, was not from the Tribe of Levi but from the Tribe of Judah. Nor was the newly instituted priesthood of the believer
dependent on physical birth, as was the Levitical priesthood; it was now a
royal priesthood based on the new birth. (1Pe
2:9) This meant that the Jewish believers
were under a new dispensation (Period of time) and now had a different
mode of worship! If they did not orient to the
new way of life, they would be enslaved or perish, along with a million other
Jews, in August of A.D. 70 — the last month of
the final year of the Biblical recognition of Israel as a national entity until the Second Advent of
Christ!
The writer of
Hebrews had scarcely begun his subject when he was compelled to interrupt
himself. The Truth was too advanced for the Jews in reversionism. He could not
continue until he had alerted them concerning their unstable position and had
presented the issue of reversion recovery. Consequently, he found it necessary
to insert a parenthetical dissertation on reversionism.
Concerning whom [Christ] we have many Truths
to communicate and hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.
(Heb 5:11)
Still untaught were the
Truths essential for entrance into maturity status and the normal function of
the believer’s priesthood. The advanced Truths
which relate the royal priesthood to being a mature believer, requires a
foundation of basic principles. Under repeated acts of negative
volition, these believers had gradually receded into reversionism and no longer
possessed the necessary frame of reference. All the
pieces, (Doctrines) must be grabbed and
learned and used for the next growth level. Momentum must be consistent, or you lose the pieces and have to start over! In math we need addition for subtraction, and subtraction
for multiplication, and multiplication for division, trigonometry, etc.. And if we forget by non use (By not thinking with them) we have to go relearn them!
THIS YOU MUST REMEMBER! OR WHEN YOU LOSE YOUR PIECES! YOU WILL HAVE TO
START OVER! OR DIE THE SIN UNTO DEATH!
For though by this time you ought (ARE IN DEBT) to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the
elementary principles of the oracles (Thoughts) of God, and you have
come to need milk (Basic Truth) and not solid food. (Mature
Truth) (Heb
5:12)
Many of them had been saved long enough that under normal
growth they should have been able to disseminate Divine viewpoint in the time of
national crisis; yet in the various stages of
reversionism, they were unable to assimilate Truth even for themselves! Whatever a believer might have originally learned is
ultimately lost in reversionism. Since Truth
is built on Truth, the “solid food” could not be taught until they had relearned
basic Truth!
For everyone who partakes only of milk is not
accustomed to the word of righteousness, (Mature Truth) for he is an infant. (Heb 5:13)
The reversionist has reverted from maturity to Spiritual
infancy and can no longer apply the Word to experience. The latter stages of
reversionism completely close-down the function of Truth in the right lobe.
But solid food
[Advanced Truth] is
belonging to the mature, [Growing and mature
believers] the ones who, because of self-discipline, and practice have their
senses trained to discern good (Truth) and evil. (Satan's thinking of
false twisted Truth) (Heb 5:14)
In contrast
to the Spiritual baby or reversionist, the mature
believer possesses all the prerequisites for consistent intake of advanced
Truth, not the least of which is self-discipline! Lack of self-control is a sign of immaturity in both the physical and
Spiritual realms. Under persistent self-discipline, the believer is able to
concentrate under the function of Operation Z, and he becomes obedient to the
authority of the Word! Therefore, he matures quickly and acquires discernment.
Therefore, brethren, be
all the more diligent to make certain
about His calling and choosing you; for
as long as you practice these things, (Constantly
Think with Truth) you will never stumble!!
For in this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you!
(2Pe 1:10-11)
To Understand what are God's Thoughts; and what are satanic and human thoughts! Is the most important distinction in the Word of God! (2Ti 2:15) Only a mature believer
can distinguish between Truth as the manifestation of God’s Thoughts, and evil as the expression of Satan’s genius, between the honorable function of the mature believer,
and the evil function of the reversionist.
RELEARNING BASIC TRUTH
The first six
verses of Hebrews 6 indicate just how bad the situation was with the Jews in
Jerusalem in A.D. 67.
Therefore leaving
the elementary teaching (Basics) about the Christ,
(Who Christ is and what He did) let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead
works (Ritual
of the Old Covenant, and also the energy of the old sin nature) and of faith toward God,
(Mixing the promises with faith) (Heb 6:1)
“Therefore” —
because the recipients of this epistle were in reversionism and because the
time for recovery was short (Only three years) — a command was given which
would spearhead reversion recovery: “Advance!”
Bear in mind that the writer was addressing believers in Jesus Christ. As royal priests, by now they should have graduated from
basic training; in reversionism, however, they were back in “boot camp!”
Now they were exhorted to resume their advance to
maturity; but the mood is potential: it
depended on rebound and relearning the basic Truths of Scripture.
These basics
are defined as the “elementary Truths of the Christ.” Every item on the list of
fundamental Truths which follows refers to Christology; therefore, this phrase
is a descriptive title of the list. Christology
includes the Incarnation; the Hypostatic Union; the substitutionary sacrifice
of Christ; the perpetuation of His priesthood as the King-Priest through
resurrection, ascension and session; the strategic victory, of the angelic
conflict: and the believer’s relationship to the strategic victory through the
baptism of the Spirit and through positional Truth.
After
rebuilding the foundation, they must make strides toward maturity. “Let us advance,” pharo, is a military word which has far greater strength than the
English suggests. It means to advance in combat, to
advance when you are under a barrage of pressure or when you are behind. And indicates that they were not advancing but were in
fact retreating. How can they regain their
ground? By relearning whatever elementary Truth is necessary to attack and
demolish their particular brand of reversionism which, in this case, is
legalistic reversionism. They must understand
the royal priesthood and how it differs from the Levitical priesthood. Knowledge of the subjects listed in verses 1 and 2 is
absolutely essential in order to master the rest of this epistle.
“Not laying
down again” implies a sense of urgency in view of the proximity of the fifth
cycle of discipline. There would be no future opportunity
to do an about-face should they repeat their lapse into reversionism.
The first item in the foundation which must be rebuilt is “repentance (Metanoia) from dead works.” Metanoia
always means a change of mind or a reversal in thinking. It has no emotional meaning whatever, not even when
used of salvation. It definitely does not mean to feel
sorry for sins!
In context, the change of mental attitude is toward “dead works”
energy-of-the-flesh deeds which are dead to God’s Plan. (2Ti 1:9) Any believer
who is sincerely working in an attempt to make points with God or who is simply
fired up by emotion is producing dead works; human morality. God is not
impressed with a facade of human morality. Why not? No matter how good, how
"noble" or what end results, human morality is from the old sin
nature and is an expression of the satanic policy and thinking of evil! Neither sin, human morality nor evil is acceptable to God.
(Isa 64:6; Rom
8:8)
The
legalistic reversionist seeks salvation or Spirituality by his own good deeds,
ability or ingenuity (Tit 3:5) But in
grace, God has already done all the work. Therefore, in order to carry out the
command to advance, the Jews must change their minds away from dead works and
toward God’s work. Spirituality! (Joh 4:24; Rom 7:14; Rom 8:4; Gal 5:22-23)
The second Truth in the list, “faith [Pistis] toward God,” has three connotations: Phase One — pistis entrance into the
Plan of God: Christ
is the object of faith in salvation; Phase Two pistis —
faith in Truth: as the written Word--is the object of faith
and faith-rest; and finally, that which is
believed, or Truth and or the completed body of Truth in the soul:
"Spiritual maturity!" which gives capacity for blessing and victory
in Phase Two.
Of
instruction about washings (Salvation,
confession of sin: Rebound, washing by the Word, and baptisms) and laying on of hands, (Ordination
for ministry) and the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. (Heb 6:2)
Item number
three is Salvation and also rebound. (Joh 13:3-17)
As well as “the Doctrine of baptisms.” The noun baptismos, from the Greek verb baptizo,
means “to dip, to immerse, and to baptize” and means
identification. There are eight types of baptisms in Scripture, five dry baptisms or actual identifications, Noah, Moses,
The Cross, The Holy Spirit, and Fire, and
three wet baptisms or representative identifications. John, Christ, and the
Early Church Age Believer; to teach the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The believer must be able to distinguish
between the different baptisms before he can advance to certain other Truths.
Fourth on the
list, closely related to the Truth of baptisms, is the parallel classification
of the “laying on of hands.” This refers to three types of ritual
identifications. (1) The Old Testament
sacrifices in which the sins of the guilty sinner were identified with the
innocent animal. (Lev 1:4) As the
priest laid one hand on the offering, the other on the offerer and symbolically
transferred the sins of the guilty to the innocent victim, he was representing
Christ’s identification with our sins on the Cross. (2) The laying on of hands
for blessing and healing. (Act 6:6; Act 28:8) This ritual was strictly a function of
the apostolic period and is no longer in effect. (3) The ordination to the
ministry — recognition of the candidate’s gift of pastor-teacher (1Ti 4:14)
The fifth
Truth on the agenda is “resurrection from the source of death,” (Luk 20:36; Joh 5:29;
1Jn 3:2)
The final
principle to relearn, “and of eternal judgment,” describes the Last Judgment at
the Great White Throne where all unbelievers will be resurrected to stand
before Jesus Christ, the righteous Judge. (Rev
20:10-15) Since they rejected His saving
work on the Cross, their indictment will be based on their own human thoughts.
(Rom 2:15-16) Their sins, judged at the
Cross, are no longer an issue. (1Jn 2:2)
THE PRINCIPLE OF VOLITION IN RECOVERY
And this we will do, if God permits. (Heb 6:3)
This verse is the spark that kindles reversion recovery. It
is one of those passages which demonstrate that human beings have free will,
but that free will must choose to operate in accord with Divine will in order
for anyone to find true happiness and capacity for life. That is the
purpose of the Word of God. The Jews had made a decision to take the road back
from reversionism, and they recognized that it would not be easy. “And”
connects the two major Thoughts in this paragraph: the reversionistic condition
of the believers in Jerusalem in A.D. 67, (Heb
5:11-14) and the challenge for them to recover. (Heb 6:1-6)
In the
process of giving up to reversionism, they had rejected the authority of their
right pastor as well as his message. To regroup would
require determination, persistence, time and the function of the day after day
after day after day, rebound, reception, retention, recall, resisting
temptation and repetition! Reversionism is not overcome by a simplistic
rededication, a one-shot decision or some other emotional claptrap!
“This” refers
to graduation from the basic Truths of Christology, (Who
and what Christ is) related to Soteriology, (What
He did) and the steady unbroken progress
toward maturity! The aorist active indicative of poieo is ingressive, which means entrance into a state or
condition. Therefore, they were actually saying, “This
we will begin to do.” However, the third class condition “if” recognizes
that the sovereignty of God is always a determining factor in Phase Two. Since
it takes time to learn Truth, the believers would gain the tactical objective
of maturity only if God permitted them to remain on
earth long enough to do so. Whenever it is
God’s time to remove us from this life, we will depart — period! The
writer did not know whether they would live long enough to recover; he knew
only that the fifth cycle of discipline was dangerously
close! (The same as with us; RIGHT NOW!)
THE HINDERING LIFE-STYLE
After the
dissertation on relearning basic Truths, perhaps you have said, “I come to Bible class every night. I’m learning all these
Truths, yet I’m no farther ahead. I’m not any happier. I don’t have any
Spiritual prosperity. Truth doesn’t work!”
If you fall into that category, this next section sounds a note of special
warning for you. What is the roadblock that hinders your advance to maturity,
even though you may be exposing yourself to Truth? The conjunctive particle gar, translated “for,” anticipates this
question and introduces the explanation.
While they have the positive volition to Truth which is
prerequisite to rallying from reversionism,
some routine or lifestyle, some pattern of behavior or thought, is preventing
reversion recovery. (Mat 13:22) In modern vernacular, these patterns are often
termed “satanic and human thoughts.” This might be some function of moral or immoral
degeneracy, some kind of religious activity or self-righteousness or a series
of thoughts which combine to form an evil pattern of life.
Rebound provides only a temporary reprieve because the
life-style remains unchanged! A person in this status will never know anything
of the normal Christian life, a life so fantastic
and so wonderful, it almost defies description! Normal
Christian function is living as royalty, in a personal friendship with the King
of Kings, with the attendant phenomenal Spiritual and temporal blessings,
mature happiness, as well as success and contentment! (1Ti 6:6-8) This passage
applies to all those in the royal family of God who are not living up to their
royal status.
We must remember that the Greeks did not
underline, highlight, rubricate or punctuate; instead, to express emphasis, they
used a syntactical system, which was far more accurate and lasting.
“Impossible” occurs at the beginning of the sentence to give it the greatest
possible intensity: “impossible, definitely impossible!”
In the emphatic position, “impossible” underscores and
highlights the total impossibility of learning Truth or regaining maturity so
long as a type of thinking exists which is in conflict with the daily Thinking
with Truth. “For those” refers in context to
the Jewish believers in legalistic reversionism who have reverted to a
life-style of religious activity in the Temple. While
they were giving lip service to Truth, their
thought pattern contradicted their actions and verbal profession.
And He said to them, "Rightly did
Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: 'THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME
WITH THEIR LIPS, BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME. (Mar 7:6)
For in the case of those who have once been enlightened (By
the Holy Spirit; regarding the Gospel: Common Grace and Efficacious Grace)
and have tasted of the heavenly gift (Believed in
Christ for Eternal life) and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good Word of God and the powers of the age
to come, (The Spiritual life) and then have
fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to
repentance, (Change of mind) since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put
Him to open shame. (Performing Old Covenant
rituals; false twisted thinking) (Heb 6:4-6)
Forward
progress is impossible, therefore, as long as two conditions persist. The first
of these is the present active participle, “they crucify again and again [Anastauroo] the Son of God.” How were
they crucifying Christ over and over again? By yielding to legalistic pressure
and offering animal sacrifices! They possessed the Reality but were returning
to dabble in the shadows. Jesus Christ was crucified once; He never again need
suffer for sins. His once-for-all sacrifice was completely efficacious. (Act 5:31) The believers in this passage had
accepted the saving work of Christ. They no longer needed to go back into the
Temple with their sacrifices, which in Old Testament times had symbolized the
future work of Christ on the Cross, or to enter into the other ritualistic
practices of Judaism. To do so was to submit themselves
to a priesthood that was now dead — the
Levitical priesthood. They were under a new
procedure — the Royal priesthood of the New
Covenant.
In the Church Age, the royal priesthood is the only bona
fide operation for believers. Every believer is commissioned a royal
priest with direct access to the Father. The High Priest, Jesus Christ, the
God-Man, won the strategic victory of the angelic conflict by His deaths,
burial, resurrection, ascension and session, which removes the old Holy of
Holies as a worship function.
The second
temporal participle is from paradeigmatizo,
“to put to open shame,” and means “to hold in contempt, to expose to ignominy,
to publicly embarrass.” Every time they returned to the Temple and engaged in
its ritual, they exposed Jesus Christ to public shame and contempt. This legalistic operation had become their life-style and
was blasphemous to their Lord. Any such thinking
reflects negative volition to Truth and sponsors apostasy. As long as a conflict existed between learning Truth and
going to the Temple, they could not escape from reversionism. Already
they were slated to die a horrible death in the siege of Jerusalem under the
fifth cycle of discipline. If they were to avoid the sin unto death, these
roadblocks must be eliminated.
While there is no Temple today, by application, whatever a
believer does habitually that keeps him from the function of Operation Z — whether it is something as
innocuous as television, the bowling league or an association with a male or a
female, or the more insidious practice of some form of human moral or immoral
degeneracy — this is equivalent to willful
disregard of Jesus Christ and obstructs reversion recovery. Attitude toward the Word determines attitude toward Christ!
The Living Word cannot be divorced from the written
Word!
No believer can move toward his objective while retreating
from it! He can regain fellowship temporarily
but never make any Spiritual headway so long as his life-style, (Thinking) compromises
the Lord Jesus Christ. Maturity is incompatible
with a frantic search for happiness. God has
provided a superior happiness in the adult and Spiritually mature life, but it cannot be achieved through man’s OWN THOUGHTS ability,
schemes, sinfulness or evil practices.
Because the mind set
on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it
does not subject itself to the law of God, (God's Thoughts) for it is not even able to do so, and those who are in the flesh (Living by the sin nature) cannot please God. (Rom 8:7-8)
And without
faith (God's Thoughts)
it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that
He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. (Heb 11:6)
MATURITY OR REVERSIONISM?
Reversionism
maligns God in several ways: first, it rejects His food Truth, and second, it
refuses His blessings. God has for every believer — without exception — immeasurable,
incomparable blessings; moreover. He desires to pour them out unrestrainedly. But He cannot pour unless the believer possesses the
capacity to receive them. Neglect or rejection
of Truth destroys the whole package. The
believer in reversionism is blasphemous. He says in effect, “I don’t want your
blessings. Lord; I don’t want your friendship, your success or prosperity; I
don’t want a life with meaning and purpose and definition; I don’t want
Spiritual power. Don’t interfere in my life I’ll
do it my way!”
Everyone
wants to be happy, but we must face the issue: by what means will you seek that
happiness? The road to maturity via the daily function
of Operation Z is God’s way; the path of
reversed priorities — seeking happiness and
success apart from Truth — is Satan's and man’s
way. Perhaps you never realized that you have blasphemed God by your
obstinate, self-indulgent life-style. You have never understood that He
possesses phenomenal capacity for giving and that He has been waiting possibly
for years to shower blessings in your direction. (Isa
30:18) It is His character to give, and
He gives on a grace basis. When you refuse His grace, He has no
alternative but discipline. From the moment you are born again, you must make
repeated decisions to accept God’s offer of fantastic happiness, or you will
wind up in the disgrace column and go out under the sin unto death!
Reversionists are losers all the way! Reversionism and
evil are sinister roadblocks in the path of tactical victory in the Christian
life; yet there is no excuse for any believer not to be a winner or to live
daily in the sphere of maturity. God is glorified by
winners, and He intends for every believer to be in this category. Truth in the
soul not only animates capacity for life, for love and for blessing, but it
enables the believer to emerge victorious in the angelic conflict.
The Jewish
believers who had reached maturity between A.D. 67 and A.D. 70 were delivered
from one of the worst national disasters in history and survived to enjoy
blessing and prosperity in many far-flung areas of the Roman Empire. The
reversionists, on the other hand, were caught in the catastrophe and died the
sin unto death. Should our nation continue on its present course, we will
undoubtedly find ourselves in the same situation. Likewise, in the Tribulation,
only mature believers will survive the awesome disasters, culminating in the
final conflict at Armageddon, to enter the perfect state of millennial
blessing.
It is the mature believer who knows what he is doing and
where he is going in life. Truth resident in
the soul is the exclusive means of maintaining sanity in an insane world!
Truth can not only change the life of the believer,
but it can alter the course of history, and reverse the tide of carnality,
apostasy, reversionism and evil. Yet only when
a maximum number of believers are faithfully taking in Truth are national
reversionism and the impact of evil diverted. (Neh 8:8-12)
END
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