“… come, take up the cross, and follow Me …”
(Mark 10:21, NKJV)
In this edition we return to the theme of Manna 1666, and for the sake of continuity it might be worth quickly re-reading it before you start with this one.
With the revelation that quail symbolically represent the negative part of your high calling, it is important that we learn more about it. Remember: your highest calling conceals your deepest wound. The counter of what God has called into light regarding your identity and your life, is used in the darkness to oppose you. That which opposes you, is the culmination of what we can call the opponent, or adversary.
When Paul then explains to the church in Corinth that God is busy positioning him for his calling, he frames it in such a way that it directly counters the positioning of his opponents: “For a great and effective door has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.” (1Cor. 16:9).
Our first thought when we encounter the Scripture above, is that Paul speaks of actual people as adversaries, and this may be the case, as Acts 19:9 then also notes: “But when some were hardened and did not believe, but spoke evil of the Way before the multitude …” But in 1Cor. 15:32 he notes that “in the manner of men, I have fought with beasts at Ephesus”, and in an earlier teaching we pointed out that this certainly points to demonic works. Therefore, we can understand 1Pet. 5:8 when the apostle warns: “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” This adversary is here explicitly linked to the devil. The adversary can be people, but can also be the devil, or most likely that the one manifests the other. Selah.
Verse 9 points out the counter strategy of the believer with a high calling – oppose the adversary: “Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.” You oppose him by positioning yourself in your most holy faith, which is to say faith in what God has called out over you. This is confirmed by the next verse, which links it all to the fact that we are called “to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you”. Note the exciting progression – first He perfects you, then He establishes you, then He strengthens you, then He settles you. One would think it should be in the reverse order: that you are strengthened, then established, then perfected. According to human logic this sounds like a better order, doesn’t it? But before we can look at this, there is something else that carries more weight (specifically this word) and deserves attention before we do anything else. The process alas does not begin with perfecting. It begins with suffering. For most believers this will however be a big disappointment. When one first finds out that you have a calling uniquely your own, and that God specifically called this out over you, there is an enormous expectation that takes shape. When you find out what your spiritual name is, or your spiritual tribe, your role and calling within the five-fold ministry, what tree you represent in Zion, the specific gifts that God has granted you, then it feels super exciting, makes you feel like you cannot be triumphed over.
[If you do not understand these different empowering facets of your Spiritual identity, then you have most likely not attended an Elijah 1 and/or Elijah 2-camp, but we will get to this in these teachings soon.]
But it is immensely important that if you start to ‘experience’ your calling within yourself before (we’ll explain this later, too), that you progress through a process which Scripture interestingly enough calls suffering. Verse 9 already prepares the way for verse 10 when Paul explains, “knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world”. It is thus a collective experience that everyone is called to be exposed to.
The word for suffering in Greek is paschō/pathō/penthō, which can be defined in a negative sense, according to Thayer: “in a bad sense, to suffer sadly, be in a bad plight; (said) of a sick person”. BUT the word also means “to be affected or have been affected, to feel, have a sensible experience, to undergo; in a good sense, to be well off, in good case”! Before your calling can commence, you must prepare yourself to, in all regards, rid yourself of that which opposes you WITHIN yourself.
The Spirit of God convicts of sin (John 16:8), which is to say it does so within the meaning of what the word ‘sin’ originally means: The Spirit convicts you of how, and to what extent, you are missing your mark. Laying that bare is often a painful process, and hard, as it confronts the ways in which a false identity has been established within you, that which opposes your original identity in all regards. This is largely what Jesus says to the rich young man: “Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, ‘One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.’” (Mark 10:21). Earlier He also made this clear to his disciples: “When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, ‘Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.’” (Mark 8:34).
In most of the translations suffering is presented as suffering a short while, or: bearing afflictions for a short time. But the AMP also offers this positive take: “will Himself complete and make you what you ought to be”. The latter is only possible if you are willing to identify yourself with Him to such an extent that you partake of His suffering (2Cor. 1:7). Just like the Israelites, you too can choose how long you stay in the wilderness or desert! The suffering, positive or negative, is how God manifests Himself within you, by positioning you anew with regards to your original purpose. Circumstances, habits, exposure, traditions, ways of thinking, whatever may be the case, have established you up until now. But in Christ ALL things must be made new (2Cor. 5:17).
This is the time in which your opponents, physically and spiritually, start to purposefully target you. Phil. 1:28-30 does however make it clear: “and not in any way terrified by your adversaries, which is to them a proof of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that from God. For to you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake, having the same conflict which you saw in me and now hear is in me.”
From 2Thess. 2:3-10 Paul writes extensively about this process. Alas it is a section of Scripture that is often misunderstood as being relevant with regards to what most believers understand as the second coming, and the time that precedes it, and the appearance of the antichrist that causes suffering for believers. But if you read the word coming as it appears in the original in verse 1, namely parousia, you realise that it is primarily concerned with the appearances Jesus makes IN YOUR LIFE! Paul notes that he writes about that “gathering together to Him”, and that you and I should not be frightened by our adversaries, and that we should not be “shaken in mind or troubled … as though the day of the Christ has come”.
What then is the “day of Christ”? This phrase, which also appears in Phil. 1:10 and 2:16, can deceive one to think that it is a particular day in the future, when Jesus will again return. But if Jesus already returned with Pentecost, as life-giving Spirit (1Cor. 15:45), the “day of Christ” is specifically the “the time of the Messiah” (Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible) in YOUR life. It is thus not a specific day where it is true for everybody, but for you: “the hour is coming, and now is” (John 5:25). There is a day, and it is today (Heb. 3:15; 4;17). Every day has the opportunity to be the “day of Christ”!
But we need to also realise that there will always be adversaries, and therefore Paul warns us in 2Thess. 2:3-4: “Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.”
This opponent is the spirit of the antichrist, that which TAKES THE PLACE OF CHRIST in you and in your life, which prevents that the “day of Christ” takes place today. We are misled by the adversaries and their primary goal is to reveal “the man of sin”, in other words the dark identity which the world and the princes of the world have conspired to present as identity. It’s not for nothing that Jesus said, “the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me” (John 14:30). This man of sin has been revealed WITHIN us, the product of “the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God” (2Thess. 2:3b-4.)
In verse 5 Paul reminds them that he often preached to them about this, and that they (according to verse 6) know “what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time”. When this happens, the day of the Lord comes in your life. But until then, “the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way” (verse 7). The opponents oppose you! Then, according to verse 8: “And then the lawless one will be revealed.” Remember what we quoted earlier from John 16:8, which showed that the Spirit of the truth, the life-giving Spirit, convicts “the world of sin”, BUT ALSO of “righteousness”! Take note – not unrighteousness!
The “unrighteous” can be equated with the adversary, and ON THE DAY OF CHRIST, “And then the lawless one will be revealed [epiphaneia], whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His [Jesus’] coming [=Parousia].” Parousia is the unfolding-interior presence of the Godhead within you; an everyday, enduring reality. Also: the word epiphaneia is defined as “an appearing, appearance”, His appearance of appearances. In summary this verse thus says: through the revelation of Jesus in your everyday reality He will destroy your adversaries with His Spirit and/or the rhema-words (the breath of His mouth) [both are interpretation possibilities].
Verse 9 in the James Murdock New Testament explains: “For the coming of that [evil One], is the working of Satan …” There is thus a similar Parousia of Evil, too, where they oppose the believer’s true identity. Verses 9 and 10 explain further: “The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved.” But: he is DESTROYED!
- Selah: Ponder the Parousia of the Christ.
- Read: 22-30.
- Memorise: 22:38 (the ABP translates word as rhema!).
