End-Time Events Part V
True Discipleship of
the True, Biblical Christ
The Crucial Conditions
of Discipleship Laid Down By Jesus
How very, very far
this is from the conditions of true
discipleship of the True Christ, laid
down by Jesus some 2,000 years ago:
“If any man come
to Me, and hate not his father, and
mother, and wife, and children, and
brethren, and sisters, yea, and
his own life /Greek – psychan,
from psyche/ also, he
cannot be My disciple.” Luke
14:26. “The one finding his
(psyche) shall lose it, and the one
losing his psyche on account of Me,
will find it.” Matthew 10:39.
Christ Must Be Greater
to the Soul Than All Creation
Inherent in the Call
of Christ is the premise that the
True, Biblical Christ, Who is the
Creator God, must be greater to the
soul than all creation, including the
closest blood relatives and even
self, one’s psyche, in Greek.
The True Call of
Christ Breaks Up All Influences
Except That of the True, Biblical
Christ
The true call of
Christ breaks up the relationships of
immediacy, severs the controlling
influence of even those closet to
us, crucifies self, and places us
in direct dependence upon, and union
with, Christ the Mediator, Christ the
Creator. The human is lifted above
the controlling influences of man
– even those closest to Him, even
self, even one’s psyche,
and placed under the direct control
of the True Biblical Christ, his
Mediator and Creator.
The Breach of
Discipleship is Opposite of New Age
“Connectedness”
This is the radical
breach of discipleship – just
the opposite of Robert Schuller, Rick
Warren, and Wilkinson, and Walsch,
and Dyer’s
‘connectedness” with
everyone else through pantheism.
The True Mediator,
Christ, Protects Us From the Ravages
of Pantheism By Himself Being Our
Reality
In true discipleship,
even self is rejected and forsaken
for Christ. Self is crucified,
denied. Only Christ is King –
not father, mother, wife, children,
brothers, sisters, or self –
only Christ. Then all relationships
are entered into only through
Christ, the Mediator. This is our
great protection from the terrible
ravages of the sea of pantheism that
is rising all around us.
True Sanctification
In true discipleship
of the True Christ, we are then
prepared for sanctified and holy
living, for sanctified
relationships with others in which
the union with Christ always remains
supreme and unchallenged.
Supreme Allegiance To
the Claims of Christ
Christ did not teach
the interconnectedness of all
humanity through the internal,
conjured up ‘dream” that
everyone already possesses and just
has to find inside. That is
pantheism. No, He said that He came
not to bring peace, but a sword.
(Matthew 10:34) Even the closet
family members would be divided
over the issue of supreme
allegiance to the claims of
Christ. (Matthew 10:35,36.
“For I am come to
set a man at variance against his
father, and the daughter against her
mother, and the daughter in law
against her mother in law.
“And a man’s
foes shall be they of his own
household.
“And he that
taketh not his cross, and followeth
after Me, is not worthy of Me.
“He that findeth
his life shall lose it; and he that
loseth his life for my sake shall
find it.” Matthew 10:35-39.
Hated By All Men For
Christ’s Sake
Jesus told His
disciples: “Ye shall be hated
of all men for My name’s sake:
but he that endureth to the end shall
be saved.” Matthew 10:22. There
is no teaching of Jesus of
interconnectedness of Oneness, of
interconnectedness by
“Dreams” with all that is.
That is pantheism. “If ye were
of the world, the world would love
his own: but because ye are not of
the world, but I have chosen you out
of the world, therefore the world
hateth you…If they have
persecuted Me, they will also
persecute you; if they have kept My
saying, they will keep yours also.
John 15: 19,20.
True Discipleship
Forsakes All For the Christ Who Is
Greater Than All Creation
The true disciple
forsakes all for the true
Biblical Christ. Christ must be
held by the believer to be greater
than all creation. The
true disciple finds the Pearl of
great price. He finds the Hidden
Treasure. He sells all that he has to
find and buy that Treasure, that
Pearl. He then possesses all the
unreachable riches of Christ, the
things which eye hath not seen, nor
ear heard, neither hath entered into
the heart of man. He knows Christ and
Christ knows Him. He then understands
the depth of the revelation of God
given by the Holy Spirit. He then
possesses the very love of God that
binds him in ties of love for
eternity with all of Christ’s
true disciples, who have met the
conditions of true discipleship.
Jesus is The I Am, As
God Claiming the Supreme Affection of
the Soul
For God to be God to
us, He must be acknowledged as God,
as Creator, as the I Am, -above,
separate, and distinct from creation.
Only One Who is God can make this
kind of a claim for discipleship,
Jesus said, “Unless ye believe
that I Am, you will die in your
sins,” John 8:24.
We must find God
before we enter into relationships
with man – even believers –
and even then those relationships
must be established only through the
Mediator. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer
wrote, “Whoever cannot be alone
should beware of community.”
–Bonhoeffer, Life Together,
83, quoted in A Year with Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, New York: Harper San
Francisco, 2005, p. 313.
Obedience to The Call
of Christ Makes Us Individuals
We must find the true,
Biblical Christ, Who calls each one
of us alone, separately, and then
brings us together with other true
disciples, always in Him. In
the call of Christ, called alone and
separate from all others, we become
individuals. This is the basis of
individuality, which lies at the
foundation of all Western law,
thought and practice. We must be
willing to be called alone and
stand-alone before Christ before
entering into any other relationships
– relationships that always take
place with Him as the Mediator.
Called Separately,
Follow Alone
“Through the call
of Jesus men become individuals. The
honest-in-heart, they are compelled
to decide, and that decision can only
be made by themselves. It is no
choice of their own that makes them
individuals: It is Christ Who
makes them individuals by calling
them. However, men are
frightened of solitude, and they try
to protect themselves from it by
merging themselves in the society of
their fellow-men and in their
material environment.” -Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, The Cost of
Discipleship, p. 105.
Follow Thou Me
When peter asked Jesus
about what the future held in
John’s discipleship, saying,
“Lord, and what shall this man
do?
“Jesus saith unto
him, if I will that he tarry till I
come, what is that to thee? Follow
thou Me.”
John 21: 21,22. In other words,
Peter, John’s discipleship is
not your concern. Your concern,
Peter, is, Follow thou Me.
Pantheism is An Effort
To Hide From the Call of Christ By
Merging One’s Self In Creation
The “Dream”
message of pantheism
‘connectedness” and
“Oneness” is this very
effort to hide from the call of the
One True Christ by merging one’s
self in pantheistic Oneness of being
“one” with all that is
– the message of the pantheistic
New Age Christ. It is Adam and
Eve’s effort to hide themselves
amongst the trees of the Garden from
the presence of the Lord all over
again.
Nothing Can Protect A
Man At the Moment of His Call By the
True, Biblical Christ
“All this is only
a cloak to protect them from having
to make a decision. They are
unwilling to stand alone before
Jesus and be compelled to decide with
their eyes fixed on Him alone. Yet
another father nor mother, neither
wife nor child, neither nationality
nor tradition, can protect a man at
the moment of his call. It is
Christ’s will that he should be
thus isolated, and that he should fix
his eyes solely upon Him.
Christ Delivers Us
From Immediacy With the
World…And Thus From the Idolatry
of Pantheism as Well
“At the moment of
their call, men find that they have
already broken with all the natural
ties of life. This is not their own
doing, but His who calls them. For
Christ has delivered them from
immediacy with the world, and brought
them into immediacy with Himself.
We cannot follow Christ unless we are
prepared to accept and affirm that
breach as a fait accompli. It
is no arbitrary choice on the
disciple’s part, but Christ
Himself, Who compels him thus to
break with the past.” –
Bonhoeffer, 105,106.
True Discipleship of
the True Christ is the Opposite of
Pantheism
Thus, true
discipleship of Christ is the
opposite of pantheism. True
discipleship means an utter break
with all creation, and an eternal
union with the Creator – Christ.
That is why the Sabbath, and Creator
worship, which rest upon the
Creator-creature distinction, go hand
in hand – particularly in
these last days of pantheism –
an omega of apostasy. Jesus said,
‘The Son of Man is Lord also of
the Sabbath.” Mark 2:28.
The Call of Christ
Sets Up a Barrier Between Man and the
World
“We must face up
to the truth that the call of Christ
does set up a barrier between man and
his natural life. However, this
barrier is no surly contempt for
life, no legalistic piety, it is the
life which is life indeed, the
gospel, the person of Jesus
Christ. By virtue of His incarnation,
he has come between man and his
natural life. There can be no
turning back, for Christ bars the
way. By calling us, He has cut
us off from all immediacy with the
things of this world. He wants to
be the center; through Him, alone all
things shall come to pass. He stands
between God and us and for that very
reason He stands between us and all
other men and things. He is the
Mediator, not only between God
and man, but between man and man,
between man and reality.” –
Bonhoeffer, Cost of Discipleship,
106.
True Discipleship
Completely Delivers Us From the Foul
Idolatry of Pantheism
By cutting us off from
all immediacy with the things of this
world, from all immediacy with other
man’s natural life, from all
immediacy with other men, by
establishing His Lordship an His
Mediation over our lives, we are
utterly and completely delivered from
the foul idolatry of pantheism, which
rests upon the opposite position of
“oneness” with all that is.
Accepting the True
Christ Means True Freedom and
Individuality; Pantheism Means the
Collapse of Freedom and Individuality
Pantheism means the
end of the Christian economy, the
collapse of freedom, the destruction
of individuality. This is why the
Servant of the Lord warned that the
union of Protestantism with
Spiritualism and Romanism would spell
the destruction of
liberty of conscience.
The True, Individual
Christian Constitutes A Standing
Threat To The Collectivism of
Pantheism
The individual
who stands alone in Christ constitutes
a standing threat to the collectivism
of pantheism. This is why there will
be a universal death decree against
the faithful, for the Sabbath is the
sign of our union with the true,
Biblical Christ. In addition, Satan,
the Christ of the New Age, seeks the
destruction of his arch-foe Christ,
and all His followers. Therefore, every
development in the rising tide of
pantheism must be seen as a mortal
threat to true liberty in Christ.
How very, very
different true discipleship of the
True, Biblical Christ is from the
concocted, occultist, self-ginned
“dream” pantheism of the
New Age.
Clearly, the merger
between spiritualism, or pantheism,
in this case, and evangelicalism has
taken place, in fulfillment of the
warning of the servant of the Lord:
“The
Protestants of the United States will
be foremost in stretching
their hands across
the gulf to grasp the hand of
spiritualism; they will
reach over the abyss to clasp hands
with the Roman power; and under
the influence of this threefold
union, this country will follow in
the steps of Rome in trampling on the
rights of conscience.” GC
588.
Evangelicalism and
Spiritualism Have Clasped Hands With
the Roman Power
Through Ecumenical
Jihad, evangelicalism and
spiritualism have clasped hands with
the Roman power. Already the drive is
under way to ultimately trample on
the rights of conscience. Now
evangelical leaders are promoting the
Ten Commandments Day, and were held
on May 7, 2006, a Sunday, starting
what may become a drive ultimately to
pass a National Sunday Law. Step
by step humanity has been led down
this road of accepting the New Age
Christ, who will appear one day soon
as Christ in stunning portrayal along
the lines of the description in
Revelation 1: 13-15. (See GC 624).
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