Before continuing with the seventh part of the curse, I want to share some parenthetical thoughts.

First, I want to correct the last line of my last letter to you. I said, "The casting off of the skin of the beast is being caught up to God and to His throne."

What I should have said is, "Being caught up to God and to His throne is the casting off of the skin of the beast." There is a significant difference.

It is so easy, when considering any word that God is speaking, to come under a sense of obligation and duty - and then to impose that obligation on ourselves and on others. We expect God for physical healing. Do we then look at ourselves or another who is suffering from physical disability and say, "Aha, you must not be expecting God for healing!"? Of course not.

The expectation of God is an expectation of joy. We know that He with us is working all things for our good and for a continually better future. But we also understand that this expectation is held in the midst of tribulation. Jesus said, "In the world you will have tribulation (everything that can go wrong will go wrong), but be of good cheer, for I have defeated the world." John 15.

In my book, The Jesus Secret, I made this statement: "I can believe anything God speaks in the New Covenant, and God will fulfill it in me."

Everything begins with God. God would not have spoken something and placed it in His Covenant with us if He did not intend to fulfill it in our lives in this age. The prerequisite, the quality that the Word seeks as it comes to be planted, is faith. Faith is personally appropriating what God speaks, making it mine, claiming it for me now, and then expecting God to form in me that which His Word is saying. And that Word is Christ Jesus. More than that, faith sees that the Word God speaks is already completed fully in God and that we are not "waiting" for something to happen, but we are standing in the full expectation that all that God is speaking is always fulfilled in its entirety in us right here right now.

Let's take something God says in the New Covenant: "that you might be filled with all the fullness of God." Ephesians 3:18. Notice the "might be." Does this place such a word in the "maybe, maybe, someday" category? Of course not. Nothing God speaks can be found in such a category; it is a fictional place found only in a mind that cannot receive such a word from God.

The "might be" Paul is referring to here is that being filled with all the fullness of God is based on two prerequisites that He has just named. Here they are:

We must know the unknowable (the love of Christ) and we must comprehend the infinite (the breadth, depth, and height).

Can we do that? Of course we can.

Jesus is the unknowable made known and the infinite made comprehensible. I love that word "comprehend." It means "with seizing"; "to seize hold of something with a grip that does not let go."

And Jesus lives in my heart. That says everything.

So, can I believe that I am filled with all the fullness of God? Before I answer that, we must know what it means to say that.

John says in 1 John 3 that "we shall be just like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." Jesus did not walk this earth as God. He walked and lived here among us as man. A man - filled with all the fullness of God. Jesus accepted His humanity. He was not at war with Himself. He knew His own weakness and He was at complete peace with it. He understood, fully, that His human weakness was God's perfect order, that God had created Him weak - He had taken on Himself the likeness of sinful flesh (Romans 8) - that the excellence of the Power that was in Him was only God Himself. Jesus said, "I can do nothing of Myself, but what I see the Father doing, that is what I do." (John 5)

Jesus was fully man - filled with all the fullness of God.

I am fully man - filled with all the fullness of God. I am just like Jesus.

We like to define Jesus as one who was "great" in His humanity. And then we like to imagine that if we were like Jesus we would be "great" in our humanity. But this is not so. To be like Jesus is to be fully human and fully weak - to be at peace with ourselves as God made us.

And to know, with all certainty and joy, that we are filled with all the fullness of God.

Did God speak in the New Covenant that I, Daniel Yordy, might be filled with all the fullness of God? Did God say that?

What we have done in the past is to make an "idol" out of being like Jesus, and then consider that our idol has been blasphemed when someone receives what God speaks as being personal to themself.

Jesus was not an idol; He was a simple and weak man, a man who could do absolutely nothing. But Jesus was a normal man as God created man, that is, Jesus walked with the full knowledge that He was at all times filled with all the fullness of God. That is a normal man, that is a normal Christian life.

Always, let's consider Mary. I love having watched The Nativity; it made Mary real and personal to me. And the picture of this simple teenage girl who simply accepted what God said to her and trusted God to keep her through all things is a picture that needs to be central in our hearts.

God spoke something to Mary. It was God who initiated the conversation. Mary did not dream it up; nor did Mary have any inkling of any part of what God would do in her before the angel appeared. Yet take the word Mary heard - and lay it against all theology and all the theologians of the day, then and now. Look at all theology and all theological systems and all students of the Bible from Adam to today, and find one who would have told Mary that her theology was correct! All, then and now, would have quietly and gently explained to her how it was that her understanding of God was wrong.

Mary could not have planted the seed of God in her own womb; yet it happened the moment she said, "Be it unto me according to Your word." Her quiet acceptance of what God was speaking and doing was required; Jesus could not have come into this world without it - without Mary.

Mary could not have caused the baby in her womb to grow; nor could she have caused or prevented it from coming forth into the full light of day. Yet that baby belonged to Mary just as much as He belonged to God. Jesus was as much Mary's doing as He was God's doing. Jesus was birthed out of the union of Mary and God. And as Mary walked through the violence and unbelief of her day, she walked with the knowledge written so clearly upon her face that she was kept by God. That nothing could touch her because of the life that she carried inside of her belly.

Do you have any understanding of the Word God spoke into you that caused you to be born of God?

This is the normal Christian life; this is what it means to be human. "And her child was caught up to God and to His throne."

I am fully human, weak and unable to accomplish anything - and I am filled with all the fullness of God.

Nothing could be accomplished in my life or yours except God be doing it. But God does what He speaks. And He does what He speaks through those who believe. Mary accepted what God was speaking as personal to her. Theology will never do that. Theology will always say, "That's talking about something else - do not presume to think God is speaking of you."

But God is not speaking of "me," He is speaking of Christ. And Christ lives in my heart - and He lives there because I believe He lives there. That says it all.

I believe we are at the end of this age of human folly, now in this year of our Lord, 2009. I believe we are in the transition between this age and the next. But I do not believe that because of some "political" or "time-chart" interpretation of "Bible prophecy." All things that God speaks in the New Covenant, including the book of Revelation, are Christ in us in every generation of the church. All things in Revelation were as true in the day John received them as in Augustine's day, as in Luther's day, as in our day. John's vision did not come for us to "figure out" future events, but for us to understand God in us in this world now.

[Fred Pruitt shared a word recently called Christ or Anti-Christ that is most precious, poignant, and powerful.]

The reason I believe that we are at the end of the age of human folly is because I can believe nothing else. All that God speaks He fulfills and He fulfills it in me, this is what I must believe. I must expect the casting off of the curse in all of its meaning in my life right here right now. I cannot believe anything else. To believe that God "may not fulfill it in me" is to believe not God. To believe in God is to believe all that He speaks. And "to believe" means the full expectation and confidence with joy that all that God speaks is personal in me right here and right now.

This is the normal Christian life. This is Jesus.

Christ is everything God speaks fulfilled in me.

The Curse, It's Purpose, and Overthrow (Part 3)

A Video Recording of this Message

Part 7: Genesis 3:21 "Also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin, and clothed them."

The final part of the curse is the worst part and the best part - and the most important.

Adam could not escape God. The certain knowledge of God filled his consciousness. He tried, desperately, to hide. He covered himself with fig leaves; he hid behind tree trunks - both typifying all the many ways his descendants have developed to try, somehow, to hide from the reality of God.

None of it worked for Adam. Nothing shielded him in his sin and shame from the light of a pure and holy God. To have lived his entire life in that light, his sinfulness and shamefulness, his attempting to persevere in the presence of holiness, would have been a lake of fire for Adam; that is the lake of fire - God, without any protection from Him.

God, of course, did not condemn Adam. Adam condemned Adam - that is the nature of independent self.

But God had a different plan for Adam and for his descendants. It was not His plan for them to live in the lake of fire - even those who have died without Christ are not presently in the lake of fire, no matter what the fertile imagination of Christians has concocted.

No, God's purpose was first to redeem Adam's seed, and then to form Christ within those whom He elected as a firstfruits out of Adam's seed.

But that could not happen, so long as Adam was unshielded from God. Independent self, striving to exist in the full light of God, is hell.

The skin of the beast is the mercy and kindness of God.

The skin of the beast allows Adam and his seed to live long enough for Christ to come, first as our Redeemer, and then as our Life.

And so God took the skin of an animal, and He wrapped Adam and Eve in that skin.

It is easy for you to know that you are encased in the skin of a beast. Look around the room in which you are sitting right now. You are completely surrounded by all the Shekinah glory and power of Almighty God. There is no place in heaven more holy and more filled with God's glory than the room you are looking at right now. How do you keep your head up? How do you go about your business without falling flat on your face in terror?

Very simple - you are blind. You can't see the obvious. But even a blind man can sense when someone else is in the room. You can't. And the reason you can't see the obvious or even sense the presence of other persons in the room all around you, both holy and evil, is that you are more than blind, you are clothed with a beast skin.

[The beast skin is what makes the people of this world so beastly. The poet, Alexander Pope, said, "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." He was speaking of man's capacity to sin filthily and arrogantly in the very presence of Almighty God.]

James says that demons always tremble in fear, unable to separate themselves from God's presence. We know that the only way they can hide from that Light is to encase themselves in human flesh. That is the first part of the curse. [Demons hide from God behind any human mind that sees itself separate from God, that is, human flesh. When we see God in all things, inside and out, they have nowhere to hide and they flee.]

That beast skin is God's kindness to you.

You are not ready for His light, not until Christ is fully formed inside of you. Nor is He ready for you, not until you have abandoned all thought of independent selfhood.

Jesus was the last Adam; Adam ended upon the cross. The old man is dead. I am already crucified. Why, then, does the beast skin continue as part of my experience?

Romans 8:18-21 "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility (the skin of the beast), not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God."

Believing that Christ is our life does not come overnight. Even when God reveals to us that He did not lie when He says that we are already dead; even when He shows us that we are NOT an independent self, struggling to somehow please Him, but that Christ is the only life we have; even when He reveals to us that He did not lie when He said that old things are passed away, and that all things are made brand new; even then, it takes days and months, and even years, for the full knowledge of Christ living in us as us to permeate every part of our thinking.

We revert back to the old way of thinking so easily. Seeing ourselves separate from Jesus, now having to line up with a God who is surely displeased with us. We wake up in the middle of the night, feeling awful, feeling certain that God has departed from us. Over and over, we have to stop in our tracks, stop all such thinking, in spite of what we feel, and think that Christ is living as me right now, that He is my life; He is one with me even as I feel so bad right now.

And every time we do that, Jesus draws us a little closer to Himself in our knowledge of Him.

So long as I saw myself as someone separate from Jesus, I could not know Him, no matter how much I wanted to. The only way to know Jesus is to see yourself utterly inside of Him. Then you will know the sweet communion of His person.

Most believers in Jesus are not ready for the skin of the beast to be removed from off of them.

This word, the "revealing" of the sons of God, is the Greek word "apocalupsis." It means to take the cover off. The cover that conceals Christ in us is the skin of the beast. That cover is coming off.

What will be found inside? An independent self, desperately trying to please the implacable requirements of a holy God? Or will there be one who, with joy, has abandoned all sense of the independence of self, but who knows that Christ is his life, he has no other life?

But, of course, the passage from Romans 8 is talking about so much more than that. We know that out of our belly flows the mighty river of the life of God.

XXXXX

I wrote the first part of this a week ago. Last night, the Lord showed me the real reason for the continued presence of the skin of the beast, of this earthly blinder that keeps us from seeing and knowing all that God is and all that we are in Him.

I just finished a romance novel by Georgette Heyer. Let me briefly give you the story line.

A wealthy man of 35, kind, well-loved by family and friends, was being pressured to marry. He had once before been in love with a vivacious girl, but she had died in an accident before they were married.

The man chose to ask a friend of his, aged 29, a plain and simple girl who had been passed up by all eligible suitors, to be his wife. Her family was convinced that the only possible choice she could make was to accept.

With full respect, she refused him. She did not say why.

Meanwhile, he became involved in the life of a beautiful young runaway, who was trying to persuade her grandfather to let her marry an officer in Wellington's army when she was just 16. He was attempting to restore her to her family. In the process, he was accidentally shot.

In desperation, the lady who had declined his marriage offer was asked to come nurse him. She went secretly and spent several days caring for him. Finally, they were found by all who were concerned about "propriety." Her family demanded that the wounded man marry their sister to preserve her honor.

He refused.

When they had left, the two were sitting side by side, alone in a garden. They were finally comfortable together, having gotten to know one another in the midst of difficulty. Picture the most beautiful, romantic, garden scene possible. He told her that he could not marry her for obligation, but only for love. She told him that she had refused him because, though she knew they were friends, she also knew that intimate love would not have been the beginning of their marriage.

But now, they truly knew one another as friends and they both knew that they loved one another.

I finished the book and went to bed. As my thoughts turned towards Jesus, I instantly knew the purpose for God allowing the skin of the beast to remain upon us in spite of the cross and resurrection of Jesus. God speaks to us through story.

This relationship we have with Jesus is about marriage. He is betrothed to us and we to Him. That is what our union with Christ is all about.

But Jesus will not marry a woman who honors and respects Him, who is grateful to Him for His great kindness. Nor even more will He marry a woman who fears Him and who does what He says because she believes she is under obligation to do so. Nor will He marry a woman who chooses Him because of His great power and wealth and how honored He is before all creation.

Jesus wants to marry a woman who sits by His side on a "garden bench," who is equal to Him in heart and mind, who walks through the difficult places together with Him, leaning upon His shoulder, who knows that her union with Him is because she loves Him and He loves her. Jesus will marry only a woman who knows Him in the deepest and most intimate of friendships. Jesus will marry only a woman who knows that He has conformed Himself to her, that He loves what she loves, enjoys what she enjoys.

Listen, it is not up to the woman to conform herself to the man; it is up to the man to conform Himself to His beloved. This was the sacrifice that Jesus embraced in Gethsemane - for the joy set before Him - you and me. So long as I think that I must change to please Him, my heart is not comfortable side by side with His.

So long as you and I see ourselves as beneath Him in any way, we cannot love Him with the love that He alone will marry.

Jesus says the most extraordinary thing in Revelation chapter 3. He says, "Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man opens the door, I will come in to him and I will sup with him, and he with Me."

Jesus was not talking about those who did not know Him; He was talking about you and me. First we open the door to Him. Will you let Him be your sin and your shame? Will you let Him be your flesh? If Jesus could take your sin upon the cross 2000 years ago, why can He not take your self upon Himself now? Or, do we really believe that something happened 2000 years ago when we cannot believe that He swallows up our sinful flesh and all of our foolish mistakes today?

Then, it is He who comes in to us and it is He who sups with us. There are few statements more precious in the entire Bible. To sup with us is to share an intimacy of closeness with every part of our being. It is Jesus who conforms Himself to us.

And finally, we sup with Him. It is only when we surrender our heart to His love for us will we be able to return the love that alone is acceptable to Him.

Obligation and duty will always keep Jesus at arm's length, and it will keep us encased in the skin of the beast. He cannot marry a woman who is obliged to marry Him.

Revelation 12:11 "And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb (the absolute foundation of our return to the Father) and by the word of their testimony (we speak Christ and all that He is in us) and they loved not their lives to the death (we forsake any thought that we exist independently from Jesus Himself, knowing that all that we are is no more nor less than Jesus Himself)."

Jesus insists that His bride come to Him while she is still blind. He will marry a woman who considers herself His equal, equal in heart, in mind, in soul and who loves Him, not for His greatness of position, or for the mercy He has shown her, but who loves Him in an intimacy of equality - who "sees" Him by faith as the One who fills her heart.

And it is out of that intimacy of union, we in Him, and He in us, that the manchild of Revelation 12:5 is born.

Faith is that which walks in the reality of all that is unseen, now, while it is still unseen.

Faith makes everything God speaks in the New Covenant personal, right now.

God put the skin of the beast upon us. It is God who will remove it. And He will do so when we "see" all that He is in us. When God removes that skin that still limits us in this world, many will be astonished and amazed at what they see. But for those of us who "see" Him now in all things, both inside of us and outside of us, we will see nothing different at all. There will be no shock or surprise.

When we see in reality, we will see the same thing that we now see by faith. There will be no difference.

This "seeing" is a miracle of the Holy Spirit; and He overshadows you right now for that purpose.

< Parts 1-2: The Curse and Its Removal