Another gospel

There is an age old problem that has been at work for a very long time. Stephen identified it when he addressed the religious leaders of his day:

“Howbeit the most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands; as saith the prophet, Heaven is my throne, and earth my footstool: what house will ye build me? saith the Lord: or what is the place of my rest? Hath not my hand made all these things? Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers: Who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it”.

Jeremiah speaks of this calamitous problem:

“Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit. Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be ye VERY DESOLATE, saith the LORD. For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water”.

Jesus said of the Father, “Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come [again] unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I”. The Holy Spirit , whom Jesus said the Father would send in His name is also called the Promise of the Father.

“I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew unto you. All things that the Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that he shall take of mine, and shall shew unto you”.

So, how is the Holy Spirit the promise of the Father?

“Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more”.

The Teacher, the Spirit of Truth, He is the Promise of the Father.

Jesus said that the Name of the Father is Holy. He called Him “Holy Father”. He said that He proceeded and came forth from the Father, and that He returns again to the Father. He promised not to leave us, saying He will come again to us. The Holy Spirit is the fulfilling of that promise in us all. And He , the Spirit, takes the things of God and shows them to us.

Paul warned of “another” gospel. Paul said let them be accursed that preach it. Daniel spoke of it as the abomination that makes desolate. Jesus Said it would stand in the Holy place, where it ought not. “Father” in heaven, hallowed….Holy ….is YOUR name. When Jesus promised to send another in His place, He was referring to the Spirit, the Promise of the Father. He was not talking about a “vicar” , a man to be called “Father”. For a man to be referred to as “Holy Father” is for him to stand in a place where he aught not. The Holy Spirit is not Christ sent to live vicariously among us. It is Christ sent to live forever within us. The word “desolate” Jesus used means to lay something waste…to strip it of it’s treasures. The word “desolate” Daniel used means to stun…to stupefy. It means your mind is scrambled. The word “Babylon” means confusion by mixing. Certain things do not belong in your thinking. Consider the question the Lord asked in Amos, “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?”

Jesus said the Spirit is the Teacher. He will take the things of the Father and show them to you. He also said call no man on earth “father”. Christ in you is the hope of glory. It is your treasure in an earthen vessel. Let nothing, no other “gospel” strip you of your treasure. In Christ, the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily, and you are complete in Him. There is no room in that formula for any Father but one.

When one of our presidents, Ronald Reagan, received one such man, Reagan called him “holy father” and with my own ears, I heard Reagan say, “Our nation is ready to hear you now”. He was speaking on behalf of a nation, effectively announcing that one nation under God, now would embrace the broken cistern, and the elected collective would no longer exist to safeguard the right of individual choice , but would now defer to the message of flesh and blood, masquerading as the “Holy Father” . Every president since has cemented the nation’s journey down this calamitous path. Jesus said that the nations who commit fornication with the harlot system would be thrown into “great trouble”. This nation is experiencing great trouble.
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From Galatians:

Paul, an apostle, (not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead;)

And all the brethren which are with me, unto the churches of Galatia:

Grace to you and peace from God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ,
Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father:

To whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel:

Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.
 

But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.

As we said before, so say I now again, If any preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.

For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.

But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man.

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The doctrine of apostolic succession is but another myth. Christ in you is, in a word, the gospel. Christ administering himself in the world through a “vicar” who sits atop a hierarchical scheme, is what Paul called “Another Jesus, another spirit, another gospel”. Consider carefully, the conversion of Saul, on the road to Damascus. Saul, a student of a prominent Jewish teacher, was traveling from Jerusalem to Damascus with letters from the high priests and elders, to bring back for punishment, any who confessed Christ. In the way, Christ revealed Himself to Saul, and called Saul to preach the gospel. Saul , as he often wrote after, received grace and apostleship from the resurrected, glorified Son of man. None who were apostles before him, put their hands on him and pronounced him to be anything. Nor did Saul go up to Jerusalem to confer with flesh and blood ( referring to Peter, James and John), but Saul was directed to spend three years in Arabia, where, under the tutelage of the Spirit of Christ, his eyes were opened to understand the scriptures. In relaying the account ( Galatians 1), Paul feels it important to say, “Now the things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not”. And it is important. For even then, it was necessary to emphasize that anything and everything any individual has in Christ, he or she has received directly from Christ:

“But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ”.

Paul, in his account in Galatians 2 and 3 , is careful to draw a line in the sand. He will have no part of anything or anybody who teaches and supports the notion, that he, Paul, received anything regarding Christ, from anyone but Christ. He had already been burned once by the dunghill that Jerusalem beneath, and everything it touches, had come to be. Neither Paul, nor any other in Christ, is part of something that took root in Jerusalem over two thousand years ago, and has spread itself since, as Lichen slowly spreads itself over a rock, contending with other forms of Lichen for the finite space on the rock. Either we receive everything directly, person to person, from the resurrected, glorified firstborn, or we are under mediators, governors and tutors, and differ nothing from slaves, not receiving the adoption of sons (Gal 4). If we consider carefully, the meaning of the Kinsman Redeemer, under Moses, we see that if any fell hopelessly into debt, or lost property and inheritance, the right of redemption fell to the nearest living relative. The nearest living relative was empowered to pay all debts, and restore the estate of his kinsman. If The resurrected Son of God were not my nearest living relative, he would not have any right to redeem me:

(Gal 4) “Now I say, That the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all; But is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father. Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world: But when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ”.

So , how did the myth arise, that Peter is the foundation, the rock upon which Christ builds? As in most winds and doctrines of men, it comes from the carnal mind that bends scripture to fit carnal misinterpretations of things.

Jesus once asked His disciples who men said He, the Son of man, was. They said that some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, some say Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. Then Jesus asked, but whom do you say I am? Peter said , “You are the Christ, the son of the living God”. Jesus, in saying to Peter, “Upon this rock I will build My Church”, was not talking about Peter. He was talking about the revelation, from the Father, in the individual, that Jesus is the Christ, the rock and foundation in the individual, upon which all is built. The account of this in Mark 8 shows that upon Peter saying “you are the Christ”, Jesus tells the disciples to tell no man of Him. There is a reason for this. No man comes to Christ except the Father reveal Christ to him.

So , by the work of the cross, has Christ removed the handwriting of ordinances, which were against us, and has come again, by His own Spirit, He and the Father making their abode with us, as He told us. In so doing (as we read in Col 2), He has spoiled principality and powers, made a show of them openly (revealed them for what they are; resisters of the Holy Ghost, and murderers of the just one), and triumphed over them in it.

If Christ, all the object and fulfillment of the law and prophets dwells in you by faith, mediators are nothing to you, because all that they mediate is removed from you. This place, held in faith, is the place Jesus is speaking of, to many in the assemblies of Revelation 1 and 2, admonishing them to remember from whence they are fallen.

Paul said to those who desire to sit in Moses’ seat (1Cor 4):

“But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man’s judgment: yea, I judge not mine own self. For I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord”.

We are justified from all things, if so be the Judge of all things dwells in us.

Anything less than Christ in you, the hope of glory, is another gospel. Christ did not come to you via a circuitous rout, that winds it’s way from Jerusalem beneath, through the course of 2000+ years of human history, to you. Remember that He first said “I go to my Father and your Father, to My God and your God”. And now He comes to you, first person direct, from the heavens, both He and the Father, to make their abode with you, as He told us.

There is presently, as the scriptures bear witness, a Jerusalem beneath, in bondage with her children, and a Jerusalem above. There is a saying in the closing chapter of the Bible, and it is not a saying pertaining to the ages to come, but pertaining to the times we live in:

“Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie”.