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lots of good points raised by this woman named Elena Gonzalez in New York City.[email protected]
The Doctrine of Death
The statements of Jesus concerning eternal life were so startling to the hearers of his day that they thought him insane and dangerous and sought to kill him.
We must ask ourselves why his words concerning eternal life provoked such a response.
This violent reaction is in marked contrast to the way in which Christians today receive his words.
As a result of 2,000 years of religious programming and false teaching, Christians today interpret Jesus’ words in a way that nullifies and robs them of their power.
What we see reflected in the theologies of all Christian denominations is the common sense understanding which declares:
“He could not have meant physical death because, after all, everybody dies”.
Thus begins the process whereby the powerful statements of faith proclaimed by the Word of God -- and there is no statement more powerful than the promise that believers can overcome death -- are interpreted in light of the collective experience of Christians who were never exposed to the truth.
Christians die because the necessary precondition for conquering death, which is an overcoming faith, is not encouraged and then the fact that Christians die just like unbelievers is used, in turn, to justify the doctrine of death.
The religious system, which God calls Babylon in the book of Revelation, teaches that immortality applies after we experience a physical death and relates basically to an afterlife.
This makes the concept of immortality contradictory, if not absurd.
Paul tells us that Jesus Christ was manifested to abolish death and to bring life and immortality to light.
If immortality becomes effectual after we die, why did Jesus need to bring it to light?
To the Hebrew people, there would have been nothing radical about the proclamation of an afterlife – certainly nothing that would produce scandal, shock and provoke persecution.
If the Father, through Jesus, was merely ushering in a new, glorified after-life for believers as the system teaches in its interpretation of the scripture
why does the writer of the book of Hebrews describe the heroes of faith in the Old Testament and then go on to say that this cloud of witnesses surrounds believers in the flesh looking to us in the here and now to bring them into perfection (Heb. 11 and 12)?
This tells me that the focus of the saints in the spirit realm is on the saints who are still in their physical bodies.
Why?
They are looking to us to accomplish in the flesh that which they could not attain to in their lifetimes – victory over death.
If the ministry of Jesus was to cleanse us from sin so that, after we die, we can enjoy eternity with God, why was he the Passover Lamb?
The blood of the Passover lamb in the Old Testament was a covering to protect the children of Israel from the angel of death and was a type of Jesus’ true ministry: to deliver us from death, in all its forms, by delivering us from sin.
Death Enthroned
While Jesus came to deliver the creation from the bondage of death and corruption, the goal of the enemy working through the Babylonian religious system of man is to keep believers in the shadow of darkness where death reigns.
Not only are the common sense assumptions of the carnal mind (“everybody has to die”) never challenged by the teachings of the religious system, they are, in fact, reinforced.
Christianity, in all its various forms and manifestations, accepts and even glorifies physical death.
It is seen as the gateway to heaven, to eternal rest and to the great celestial family reunion.
Death is seen as a homecoming or graduation.
It is in the after-life that we will finally see Jesus face to face and will instantly be made perfect.
The powerful and literal “brainwashing” of the doctrine of death can be seen in the Catholic Church’s ritual of spreading ashes on the forehead of believers.
This ritual -- which has no new testament foundation -- dramatically illustrates the point that while the religious system may portray itself as pro-life in its advocacy of the rights of a fetus or in its stand against euthanasia or capital punishment, the “life” that the system seeks to protect and preserve is fundamentally different from the meaning Christ attaches to the term.
When Jesus spoke of eternal life, he was referring to the Life that is contained only in him.
Through him, the believer enters into the life of the Melchisedec priesthood where we have no carnal genealogy, no beginning nor end of days. In his eyes, those who do not have this life are no better than dead men
he said to a follower who hesitated following Jesus because he felt the need to bury his recently deceased father.)
It is only through the intimacy of our relationship with Christ that we enter into Life and as this life takes hold of every aspect of our being, death in all its aspects is overcome.
It is the second birth, which removes us from the realm of the Adamic life to the life of Christ, that is precious in the sight of God because it is only through the manifestation of the born again Sons of God that the creation, in its entirety, will be delivered from the bondage of death.
While the religious system champions the rights pertaining to the Adamic life, it fights tooth and nail to prevent the second birth from occurring in the lives of Christians. This is symbolized in the 12th chapter of the book of Revelation by the dragon seeking to devour the manchild:
…and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born. Rev. 12:4
It is a reflection of the hypocrisy of religion that it opposes the manifestation in the physical of the crime, abortion, that it practices in the realm of the spirit. In fact, there is no evil, no perversion, no violence in the world, including death, that does not stem from the spiritual rebellion of the religious system against God.
Christianity’s alliance with death, which borders on a form of spiritual necrophilia or death worship, is nothing new.
According to the Word of God, the religious system that the Hebrew people were entangled in made what God calls in the book of Isaiah a “covenant with death”. He goes on to say:
In Hosea He says:
These are just two examples of the wealth of scripture in the Old Testament, both in the books of the Law and the books of the Prophets, which reflect the fact that, especially with regard to His people, God views physical death (“the grave”) as part of the curse and as something unclean and abhorrent. God’s promise is that through the atoning work of Jesus, all aspects of the curse, including death, will be overcome. In the meantime, for the obedient and righteous in the Old Testament, the reward was a long and prosperous life.
Nowhere in the Old Testament is death portrayed as a gateway to blessing as Christian theology views it.
The Unfolding Kingdom
The positive image of death as the time or place where we come into our inheritance -- whether it be mansions, crowns of life, reunion with loved ones, the settling of scores, questions answered, rewards distributed to the worthy and punishment doled out to the disobedient or reprobate – perverts the very concept of inheritance: it is the testator’s death and not the heir’s death that makes inheritance possible.
This distortion derives from a misunderstanding of the spiritual revelation Jesus was imparting when he expounded on the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. The fundamental problem is that the underpinning of virtually all Christian theology is the carnal understanding of heaven as a physical place inaccessible to us until a specific time (physical death). The fact is that not once in all four gospel accounts does Jesus equate the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven with an afterlife.
What Jesus does do is describe the availability of a place in God in which He establishes total dominion over every aspect of the believer’s life. This is a realm in the spirit that has nothing to do with time or space (“The time is coming and now is…”) but it has everything to do with our readiness and willingness to sell all our “wealth” (which means, above all, renouncing our carnal understanding), to become as children, to die to everything in our life that is unlike Him, and to bear His reproach. This means taking Jesus at his word when he says: “He that believes in me shall never taste of death” and bearing the consequences of that faith – which are considerable.
cont. prt 2
edifying hey....Father really does Show His remnant the Truth..and may this lady continue with divine edification....
The Doctrine of Death
If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death. John 8:51
We must ask ourselves why his words concerning eternal life provoked such a response.
This violent reaction is in marked contrast to the way in which Christians today receive his words.
As a result of 2,000 years of religious programming and false teaching, Christians today interpret Jesus’ words in a way that nullifies and robs them of their power.
What we see reflected in the theologies of all Christian denominations is the common sense understanding which declares:
“He could not have meant physical death because, after all, everybody dies”.
Thus begins the process whereby the powerful statements of faith proclaimed by the Word of God -- and there is no statement more powerful than the promise that believers can overcome death -- are interpreted in light of the collective experience of Christians who were never exposed to the truth.
Christians die because the necessary precondition for conquering death, which is an overcoming faith, is not encouraged and then the fact that Christians die just like unbelievers is used, in turn, to justify the doctrine of death.
The religious system, which God calls Babylon in the book of Revelation, teaches that immortality applies after we experience a physical death and relates basically to an afterlife.
This makes the concept of immortality contradictory, if not absurd.
Paul tells us that Jesus Christ was manifested to abolish death and to bring life and immortality to light.
If immortality becomes effectual after we die, why did Jesus need to bring it to light?
To the Hebrew people, there would have been nothing radical about the proclamation of an afterlife – certainly nothing that would produce scandal, shock and provoke persecution.
If the Father, through Jesus, was merely ushering in a new, glorified after-life for believers as the system teaches in its interpretation of the scripture
: “O Death, where is thy sting?”,
This tells me that the focus of the saints in the spirit realm is on the saints who are still in their physical bodies.
Why?
They are looking to us to accomplish in the flesh that which they could not attain to in their lifetimes – victory over death.
If the ministry of Jesus was to cleanse us from sin so that, after we die, we can enjoy eternity with God, why was he the Passover Lamb?
The blood of the Passover lamb in the Old Testament was a covering to protect the children of Israel from the angel of death and was a type of Jesus’ true ministry: to deliver us from death, in all its forms, by delivering us from sin.
Death Enthroned
While Jesus came to deliver the creation from the bondage of death and corruption, the goal of the enemy working through the Babylonian religious system of man is to keep believers in the shadow of darkness where death reigns.
Not only are the common sense assumptions of the carnal mind (“everybody has to die”) never challenged by the teachings of the religious system, they are, in fact, reinforced.
Christianity, in all its various forms and manifestations, accepts and even glorifies physical death.
It is seen as the gateway to heaven, to eternal rest and to the great celestial family reunion.
Death is seen as a homecoming or graduation.
It is in the after-life that we will finally see Jesus face to face and will instantly be made perfect.
The powerful and literal “brainwashing” of the doctrine of death can be seen in the Catholic Church’s ritual of spreading ashes on the forehead of believers.
This ritual -- which has no new testament foundation -- dramatically illustrates the point that while the religious system may portray itself as pro-life in its advocacy of the rights of a fetus or in its stand against euthanasia or capital punishment, the “life” that the system seeks to protect and preserve is fundamentally different from the meaning Christ attaches to the term.
When Jesus spoke of eternal life, he was referring to the Life that is contained only in him.
Through him, the believer enters into the life of the Melchisedec priesthood where we have no carnal genealogy, no beginning nor end of days. In his eyes, those who do not have this life are no better than dead men
(“Let the dead bury the dead”
It is only through the intimacy of our relationship with Christ that we enter into Life and as this life takes hold of every aspect of our being, death in all its aspects is overcome.
It is the second birth, which removes us from the realm of the Adamic life to the life of Christ, that is precious in the sight of God because it is only through the manifestation of the born again Sons of God that the creation, in its entirety, will be delivered from the bondage of death.
While the religious system champions the rights pertaining to the Adamic life, it fights tooth and nail to prevent the second birth from occurring in the lives of Christians. This is symbolized in the 12th chapter of the book of Revelation by the dragon seeking to devour the manchild:
…and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born. Rev. 12:4
It is a reflection of the hypocrisy of religion that it opposes the manifestation in the physical of the crime, abortion, that it practices in the realm of the spirit. In fact, there is no evil, no perversion, no violence in the world, including death, that does not stem from the spiritual rebellion of the religious system against God.
Christianity’s alliance with death, which borders on a form of spiritual necrophilia or death worship, is nothing new.
According to the Word of God, the religious system that the Hebrew people were entangled in made what God calls in the book of Isaiah a “covenant with death”. He goes on to say:
And your covenant with death shall be disannulled and your agreement with hell shall not stand… Isa. 28:18
I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death I will be thy plagues; O grave I will be thy destruction…. Hosea 13:14
Nowhere in the Old Testament is death portrayed as a gateway to blessing as Christian theology views it.
The Unfolding Kingdom
The positive image of death as the time or place where we come into our inheritance -- whether it be mansions, crowns of life, reunion with loved ones, the settling of scores, questions answered, rewards distributed to the worthy and punishment doled out to the disobedient or reprobate – perverts the very concept of inheritance: it is the testator’s death and not the heir’s death that makes inheritance possible.
This distortion derives from a misunderstanding of the spiritual revelation Jesus was imparting when he expounded on the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven. The fundamental problem is that the underpinning of virtually all Christian theology is the carnal understanding of heaven as a physical place inaccessible to us until a specific time (physical death). The fact is that not once in all four gospel accounts does Jesus equate the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven with an afterlife.
What Jesus does do is describe the availability of a place in God in which He establishes total dominion over every aspect of the believer’s life. This is a realm in the spirit that has nothing to do with time or space (“The time is coming and now is…”) but it has everything to do with our readiness and willingness to sell all our “wealth” (which means, above all, renouncing our carnal understanding), to become as children, to die to everything in our life that is unlike Him, and to bear His reproach. This means taking Jesus at his word when he says: “He that believes in me shall never taste of death” and bearing the consequences of that faith – which are considerable.
cont. prt 2
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