One of the worst things that ever happened to Christianity was that it became official, as in, “This is the way you do it—this way and no other way.” And, of course, everyone has their own version of that.

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         It is still such a difficult truth to grasp, to compare what the Lord’s movement was way back then in comparison to official renditions of the present. To outside observers they were just a group of haggard men with dusty feet and sandals, and flowing threads from homemade looms, traveling around with yet another perspective on the national belief. Unlike every other message being perpetrated then or now, however, their message—the Word—was a word new in every way but which existed from the foundation of the world. Regardless of what those who couldn’t see saw, those men and their Leader preached not just one of many variations of truth, though such a thing is not possible and exists only as a mental construct, but the fullness of the only Truth. It was pure, it was powerful, and it was fully liberating.

CHOOSING THE KINGDOM AND THE KINGDOM MEN

         Their world had become gloomy and predictable and saturated with a longing for what once was but could never ever be again, and in that cold void a lower echelon creep class of really first class dark-souled sinister quasi-humans took over and rose to the top of control like scum on a pond. They were dream dashers and fermented vermin, and the Lord knew from the start what would be needed to destroy them.

         He chose men of the earth with tough skin and weeping hearts. They had done all their spiritual seeking in secret until He came and then the emotions flowed like streams in arid lands. They could not put words to the feelings they felt when He got around them but it was like someone turned on an internal faucet and allowed them to be what they were created to be. From the aforementioned gloom, great joy broke out among them. They became happy and secure, and had crossed over a spiritual threshold that previously had been hidden and denied, and they began to be fulfilled, soaking up the Lord’s presence like a dry and thirsty sponge.

         He chose them because He knew they would let it all flow—that Spirit river He released—and would then know how to help others exit the phony front and enter the King’s realm. He chose them because they had not become overcome by the powerful gloomy and mysterious forces that raid men’s brains like disease and cause them to walk about enchanted and lost though repeatedly told they are found, when they know in their hearts it’s not true. In reality, the only “found” ones among them, those whose lives actually amounted to something who acquired honor and respect, though misguided and coerced, were the ones who found their authority over everyone else to be the big prize. And they played it to the hilt in expertly covering their deception so none would know or see the resulting unfortunate enchantment or its cause that had descended upon the hearts of a captured people.

BEYOND THE FACADE OF SURFACE PERSPECTIVE

         The Lord could not afford to be fake in any way. His ragtag group was organic and real and made no apologies for being human nor did they even try to cover it up or dress it up or slick it down or make it presentable so as not to be human but a mere shallow façade of faded-out glory. Instead, the Lord taught them how to find their glory and walk in their glory and eventually be filled to overflowing with His glory, and that demanded an adherence to truth, and this is why the great vaunted fakers hated them so. They knew they had killed their own glory long, long before and could never get it back without Him because they had sold out to a false vision and identity of what they insisted was “the right way to do it—our way and no other way.” They, like so many fake Christians of now, were invested up to their eyeballs in a false anti-God paradigm masquerading as official spirituality.

         But their way then, just like the way of so many now, is nothing but a shiny version of death. And if the sacred zombies of now could talk to the sacred zombies of then the former guys would tell them they’ve died a thousand deaths since putting off their mortal coil and know it’s all over for them with no escape, and that their future is nothing but a deserving judgment into the eternal doom awaiting, and they would tell those who have taken their path to please get off of it and don’t be fools like they were.

         They can’t, however, speak from the grave and they cannot warn but they would if they could, not that it would do any good because the faux bros of now know they’ve sold out to the dead brand they’ve inflicted on so many others and they know they would never get along with fully submitting to the Lord Jesus anyway.

         So they go on in their splendor with so many deluded ones fawning over their every word, not even aware that the giant spotlight they walk in is supposed to be His and His alone, and instead of being fearful of what they’ve done and the price they will pay they just keep on running it out there day after day.

DRAMA QUEENS

         They believe they have reached a summit and deserve it and prove it since they actually have attained it in that they are actually up there, on a stage, raised up to be noticed and heard, but it is so strange that the higher they go the less sense with regard to truth they make, the less spiritual effect they have, and the more they fulfill the Lord’s perfect phraseology that transcends all time and every culture:

          “For you have taken away the key of knowledge;

         “You yourselves did not enter, and you hindered those who were entering.” [Luke 11:52] [1]

         What happens to all the many millions of those who sit out there in the faceless crowds on the other side of official legitimacy trying to enter? And why must they always be denied and somehow instead be satisfied with mere crumbs under a table? Why are those few who have mustered the high places continually denying everyone else the right to ascend as well? Could it be because they have actually achieved nothing at all? The Lord said that though they have gained full control and rule over everyone else and have deemed their respective versions of Christianity “official,” they have actually never even entered the place the Lord said we must and they refuse to let anyone else in their charge enter it.

         Does this not prove and reveal the existence of a deceiving sleight of hand process in the works?

         Christianity was never meant to be show time. It was the Pharisees, those great fancy-robed and headdressed thespians of yesteryear, who demanded a stage and a platform on which they could perform and pontificate, while pressuring all others to conform and desiccate, and who demanded the same vaunted high places of antiquity condemned by God on which demons danced undaunted and from which the unseen principalities and powers of this world ruled.

         Perhaps this is why the Maker of the universe went virtually unrecognized when He entered the very world that He created: He is the antithesis of the showboating religious stage player. Official Christianity has thus rendered Him unseen and effectively unknown.

         This is why the great many “official” Christians who have yet to enter His kingdom but desperately want to are told they are already in it by those who never entered it themselves.

         © 2017 by RJ Dawson. All Rights Reserved.

[1] Unless otherwise noted all Scriptures are taken from the New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.