FLIGHT FROM BABYLON

 

The Coming Salvation From The Works Of Collective Society

 

 

The Ministry of Jesus


          Now that we have seen what happened to the original line of Abraham's descendants, we are ready to appreciate the significance of Jesus' ministry and a much more complete understanding of the scope of His mission. Let us have then the immediate context at hand:

     The time is approximately 4 B.C. The unseen war for control of earth through the collectivizing of man still rages. To date, the drive for collectivization has pushed on to encompass much of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East under the headship of Roman Imperialism. Meanwhile, the nation of God's called-out people lies in abysmal slavery under the crushing foot of this empire. Israel has failed.

 

The Missing Ingredient

     The essential nature of the struggle with babylonianism was spiritual, not physical or material. The manifesting of empires and armies was motivated and energized by satanic spiritual force.1 Therefore, to overcome them and live by faith outside the works of collective society required more than sheer human determination. God's People required an inner spiritual Life-force that was equal to and could supersede the force behind the works of man's societies. For lack of such a power Israel failed her calling. She had been no match for the power of Nimrod.

     The mission of Jesus Christ was to bring this very Life and to plant it within His People. Once rooted within them, His Life would enable them to fulfil their true calling and eventually bring about the end of babylonianism. But how was this Life to be procured for His People and what was to be the means of planting it into them?

     According to God's wisdom, the only way His Life could be procured was through the death of God Himself. Jesus Christ was the Son of God. He was God. It was His own Life which He came to make available to His People. The only way it could be procured was by His own death. Therefore, the ultimate goal of Jesus' coming was to die. By the breaking of His own body like an alabaster box, His Life could pour out as ointment and become accessible to His chosen People for their salvation and empowerment.2

     But once procured, how was this Life to be planted into His People? How was it to become activated? Ah! The strategy for this was ingenious. The means God ordained for planting His Life into His people was through their hearing of the message which described how that Life had been procured! The message that described how Jesus procured Life for His People by His death carried within it the very life it described. The power of the Life of God travelled on the wings of the words that described it as pollen in the air. All that was necessary was for the message to be received by the "flowers" who heard it and the hidden Life within the message would take root like a seed in their hearts. To think that by the unassuming ordinariness of spoken words the Life capable of overthrowing all world babylonianism could be planted in the People of God. The plan was so simple as to be deemed foolish.3 Therein lay its genius.

     Thus the message of Jesus became the key to the new strategy of God in the earth for empowering His people. Before His own death, Jesus preached His kingdom message of salvation. As He did so, His own Life was released through His words. In Him was Life and He was the embodiment of the Living Word. Unlike the prophets before Him, His Words carried the very resource necessary to their fulfilment in the lives of those who received them. The name for this message was "the Gospel.”4 

 

The Gospel of Salvation

     Closer examination of the Gospel Jesus preached will reveal to us the complete nature and scope of the Life brought to us through it. The Gospel carried its own blueprint describing how it works in His People to save them. This blueprint was "coded.” Instead of plainly describing how His message worked in His People, Jesus used parables—stories from nature to illustrate the operation of His saving Life.

    The parables of the Gospel centred about the theme of growing seeds. Together, Jesus' parables communicate the following realities about His salvation: 

1. The essential force behind His salvation is unseen (i.e., spiritual)  
2. His unseen salvation begins inside the hearts of His People and works its way outward through their lives. It is a process that grows.
3. His Life within His People progresses through definite stages of salvation from dead works until the whole world is affected by them. Within His salvation are levels to be attained.5 

     Consider this more specifically through some of the parables Jesus used. In a parable about a woman who hid leaven in three measures of meal, Jesus showed that His salvation moves through three definite, basic stages in the lives of His People.6 (He also demonstrated this in the parable of the sower where the good ground brought forth three levels of fruit.)7 Using a parable about a seed growing into a tree, Jesus showed these stages of eternal Life to be a process beginning inwardly and working its way outwardly to affect our relationship to the world-at-large.8

      God's salvation begins as an invisible spiritual seed when the Gospel message is planted in the heart.9 This is hidden, explaining what Jesus meant when He said, "The kingdom is within you."10 From there the seed of the word works its way through our souls.  Watered by the outpouring (baptism) of the Holy Spirit, His living word germinates within us to take dominion over the world of our thoughts and passions, destroying the power of indwelling sin and changing our character. At last, His salvation in us breaks through the ground of our entire way of life, causing us to walk in grace outside all the systems of the world with its works. Now the tree is highly visible. Their power is incontestable. Jesus is ruling through His People.

 

The Inseparable Concepts of Salvation and Kingdom

     Did we say "ruling"?  Yes indeed. In the completeness of their salvation, God's People are a ruling People. You see, in presenting His Gospel, Jesus spoke of salvation in terms of a "kingdom.” His parables were given in terms of the "kingdom of God.” He called His Gospel the "Gospel of the Kingdom.”11 By placing His teaching about salvation in terms of God's kingdom, Jesus made it plain that in coming to save His People, the ultimate goal of His eternal Life in them was to enable them to rule earth with Him.

     If this is true, and if earth is presently under the dominion of the enemy babylonianism we have been studying, then we conclusively realize that the salvation of Jesus had to include salvation from the works of fixed human economy and social community. For how could God's People fulfil their ultimate destiny to rule with Christ if His Kingdom salvation didn't provide for their deliverance from the works of the world's kingdoms?

      No, dear Relative. Salvation by grace through faith was not just from spiritual darkness, nor even only from the power of indwelling sin. It is not a salvation that just gives us a personal relationship with God. In its third degree, Kingdom salvation touches our relationship to the whole world. It brings us into the place of sharing Christ's Lordship over His creation (mandating  salvation from slavery to the systems of human society).  It works in us the fulfilling of the Lord's own prayer that the kingdom of heaven be brought to earth in victory over all the kingdoms of this world.12

     Yet as a kingdom, its resemblance in order and structure in the earth is utterly foreign to the babylonian concept of kingdom. God's kingdom is a Shepherd's kingdom. It is the rulership of the meek, the gentle, the lowly, the peacemaker, and the pure in heart.13 It is a kingdom not made with human hands, not built through conglomerations of sinful men called cities, not built on the laws of earthly economics, and not built on the traditions of human families or customs of their cultures.

      It is a kingdom that emerges from the inside out of His People until they walk in total grace outside the world's works unto its destruction. They need never lift a sword. They need only let God become Himself through them till He breaks out through their very flesh. For it is in the manifest glory of God Himself shining through His People that the kingdom of darkness is overthrown.

      Using a parable of a seed that lives after it has died Jesus showed that in the ultimacy of their kingdom salvation, God's People are given to walk in the grace of an entirely new body.14 Death is abolished for them. In their perfected holiness, they can withstand to see the King Who at last deems the earth ready for His return.15 This is the complete kingdom gospel of salvation.


Jesus and Israel 

     For centuries before His coming, the prophets who had called Israel back to repentance had also foretold the coming of the Messiah-king who would save Israel and ultimately rule the world.16 But what happened?

      At the time of Jesus' birth, Israel was still in dispersion for having become like the nations. At this time, they were under the Romans. Despite their judgment under the feet of the various empires, Israel never learned from their slavery. So they seized upon the prophetic hopes of a coming king. But based on their entrenched false kingdom teaching, they desired the Messiah according to the very first king they had desired and for which they had ultimately entered into slavery. They desired a babylonian-style messiah, one like the kings of this world who would throw off the Roman yoke and restore them to their earlier imagined "golden age" under David and Solomon.

     But Jesus' kingdom was not of this world.17 He had come to specifically destroy the babylonian works of the devil they still craved. When Jesus came therefore, they did not recognize Him. Their time under foreign rule had never taught them how to look for another kind of king or kingdom.

     It was under these conditions in the chaotic milieu of Roman-governed Palestine that Jesus released His saving Gospel of the Kingdom. The message of Jesus was directly descended from the message given to Abraham, bringing it to completion. Because He was a king after the way of faith, Jesus' teaching was anything but "kingly" to the ears of a babylonian. Instead of promising the Jews the things they had come to accept as the norm for human society over the centuries, He called them to the things that were opposite:

·        Instead of telling them to fortify their cities and build great metropolises, He told them to scatter throughout the world and bring the word of salvation to all people.18 He told His followers to be mobile and, as necessary, to flee one city and enter the next.19

·        Instead of telling them to build financial empires through great enterprises based on the economy of the land, He told men to free themselves from the entanglements of human economy, divest themselves of all but the most necessary possessions20 and enter into an economy based on giving.21 Trusting God to meet their necessities,22 such an economy would facilitate their mobility. (Jesus lived this way and every one of his first followers saw his natural employment ultimately terminated.)

·        Instead of encouraging His followers to "permeate" or "take over" or "reform" social community life, He called them to forsake their relationships which supported the world social order and to give themselves to freeing others from such systems.23 

     This was the true message of the kingdom of God—a kingdom to be executed in the here and now by faith, but not after the fashion of the kingdoms of this world. Because of their babylonian blindness, however, the Jews had no ears for such a message. They had all but forgotten the purpose of their calling. As a nation, Israel had forgotten the war against babylonianism and the way of faith begun with Abraham. Any concept of the "kingdom of God" they had was now permanently redefined in babylonian terms according to false kingdom teaching. At the last, all they could say was, "We have no king but Caesar."24

     When it became clear that Israel would in no wise receive her King, Jesus turned from Israel to begin preparing His closest followers to start a new society that would live by the way of faith, obtain complete salvation, and ultimately overcome the rebellion begun under Nimrod. Meanwhile, as it became clear to Israel that Jesus was not going to serve them as a babylonian king, they turned from Him. In one final act of adultery, the Jews consorted with their Roman conquerors to deliver Him up to the same fate as the prophets before Him. As the prophet who had been foretold to come25, Jesus was their last chance. By this act of crucifixion, they sealed their permanent disfranchisement as the called-out nation of God.

 

 

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References:

1 Dan 10:13,20  

2 Rom 5 - 8 {3:21-26 > 5:1-2,21 > 6:6-8}  Gal 2:16-20  

3 I Cor 1:18  

4 I Cor 15:1-4 > Rom 1:16-17 > Eph 1:13>19 > I Thess 1:5 > 2:13  (I Cor 4:20)   

5 Mt 5:19; 11:11; 18:1-4; 19:30 > Phlp 3:14  II Tim 2:20-21  Rev 3:11  

6 Mt 13:33

7 Mt 13:8,23  

8 Mt 13:31-32  (Ezk 17:22-24  Dan 2:35)   

9 I Pt 1:23,25  Jms 1:18 > I Jn 3:19  

10 Lk 17:21  

11 Mt 4:23; 9:35; 24:14   

12 Mt 6:10 

13 Mt 5:3-10     

14 Jn 12:24 > I Cor 15:35-57  

15 Heb 12:14  

16 Is 9:6-7; 11:1-10; 32:1  Jer 23:5; 30:9,21; 33:15  Ezk 37:24  Dan 7:22  Mic 2:13; 5:2  Zec 6:12-13; 9:9; 12:10-14; 14:1-11      

17 Jn 18:36    

18 Mt 28:19-20  Acts 1:8  

19 Mt 10  

20 Mt 10:9-10  (I Ti 2:4) 

21 Lk 6:38     

22 Mt 6:24-35  

23 (Acts 2:40)  

24 Jn 19:15  

25 Dt 18:15

[5. COMMISSIONING OF THE NEW COVENANT PEOPLE ]

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