Must We Repent of Augustine?

By Daniel Yordy – November 27, 2011
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I once believed that the life of an overcomer was a life of continual repentance, always "turning away" from self. I did not know that my "belief" was a continual action of gross unbelief denying the sacrifice of Jesus and His life inside of me.

Yet repentance is an essential element in our knowledge of God - at the beginning of each level or place of knowing Him. The reason God requires repentance is simple. He never shoves anyone around. God never imposes Himself on us; He always treats us with the highest regard. Thus God always refrains from doing anything in our lives without our permission. Once God has our permission, then He is free to release all the goodness and purpose of God in us, as us, and through us. From then on, continual "repentance" in the form we once knew is just another gimmick to deny God in our lives.

Now, part of slavery in this world is a desperate holding onto elements or things of security. Paul refers to these places of security or refuge in our foolish hiding from God as "strongholds." In Genesis 3, they were simply tree trunks.

True Christian repentance, then is nothing more than coming out from behind our tree trunks to stand in the light of God. In that light, the blood is always flowing over us. But the knowledge of the blood does not penetrate tree trunks. A stronghold is nothing other than any human attempt to hide from God. Continual "repentance" is actually such an attempt to block the reality of the blood from our hearts and minds. Continual "repentance" is just another tree trunk, one of many.

Strongholds are not part of us; they are, rather, fictitious constructions of our frightened minds as we attempt to hide from a God who terrifies us - or, is not under our control. Yet they become very large in our imagination.

Because the blood is continually flowing over me, I am not afraid of God. Much more than continually standing in the light regardless of any "self" or "not self," I am seated with Christ upon the throne of heaven. Upon that throne, I am very bold; yet the throne of God is always a throne of humility. God always serves; the "highest" always takes the lowest place, always raises others above itself.

The darkness of this world IS, however, a very frightening place in which to find ourselves. We do not know the way out. It was only 3 ½ years ago, when in a moment of the sweet revelation of Christ upon me, that I saw that "I" had fully disappeared into the Lord Jesus Christ - that He had completely swallowed "me" up into Himself, that I began to KNOW that Salvation utterly carries me.

BUT, I was able to see that Jesus is my life, I have no other life, only because the Father, in His extraordinary kindness, had coaxed me, bit by bit, out from behind my tree trunks over the prior eight years.

From 1977 until 1998, my life was worked upon in a very large way by the ministry of a particular individual in the move of God by the name of Buddy Cobb. I have probably sat under more hours of teaching by Buddy Cobb than any other person in my life. Now, I have no right or desire to comment in any way about Buddy Cobb's relationship with the Savior. But I am free to speak openly about his impact on my life because of the public place of influence he has held in the lives of thousands of people.

It is my own personal estimation that Buddy Cobb taught a different word than what was taught by Sam Fife or Jane Miller. Yet that word came always alongside all other word preached in the move. At the present time, Buddy Cobb's teaching dominates most everything in that fellowship and most other voices have departed.

There was a time when I held Buddy Cobb's view of things at arm's length, but eventually I embraced it and taught it. Now, when I read back through what I wrote at that time, I can only weep. It is too sad for me even to refute.

In a recent letter, "The Mystery of the Holy," I made the following statement: "Now, I once was taught that God was out to prove me, to see if I really loved Him or not, and the proof was in whether I heard Him speak every moment and did only what He said exactly as He said it. This teaching was the thing God used to bring me to utter hopelessness, that He might then show me the wonder and beauty of Christ."

When I say, "I once was taught," I refer to Buddy Cobb. More than that, he taught that God's love for us is, basically, incidental. What counts to God is for us to PROVE that we love Him. With great delight he taught over and over that when God says that nothing can separate us from the love of God, what God really means is that WE can walk away from that love so easily, and obviously, we live in a state of separating ourselves from His love all the time by our disobedience and therefore must prove to a hard-to-convince Deity that we really do love Him by a perfect obedience - and that is the only way WE can stay in His love.

He delighted further in teaching us that God "watches us with His eye-lids," meaning He makes us think He's not looking, so that He can catch us in our disobedience.

Now, that looks like idiocy and gibberish to us now, of course. The problem was there was a powerful psychological manipulation at play. And I am using the immediacy of my own personal experience to get at the very largest stronghold in Christianity.

Buddy Cobb is in the minor leagues compared to the solitary intellect that controls the breadth and sweep of what we know of as Christianity.

The whole church is the Beloved of our Savior, and since we are His revelation in the earth, she is very much our concern in her entirety. Not one individual believer has ever belonged to the manipulators and controllers, to the forceful intellects and self-willed powerhouses who draw on the anointing of God to cement their place "above" her, no matter what sect or group or denomination. And because each individual believer of every stripe from the upper room until today belongs to Jesus, each one is very much the concern of the One who lives in our hearts and who fills us full.

No believer in Jesus Christ belongs to or has ever belonged to that which is false. How could that be? Do they not belong to He who is Salvation? Yet, others have certainly laid claim to her; others have held a temporary and almost "fictitious" grip upon her. Do you see how bad an idea that is - to put your hand on the Beloved of the King of the Universe, the One who defeated death itself and is exalted above all the heavens?

Why did Buddy Cobb's teachings, so contrary to what God actually says in the New Testament, hold such a grip upon my mind and heart?

It is so very important for us to understand the answer to that question. I hope to show you that all of Christianity labors under the grip of an intellect far more powerful and far more pervasive than Buddy Cobb's - and for the same reasons. I truly believe that God intends to shatter through us the false hand that has reigned upon His Church for 1600 years.

When I wrote the letter, "God Is Beneath Your Feet," my whole understanding of God's order turned upside-down - or right-side-up, of course, though it still seems "upside-down." All through the years I lived in Christian community, I carried a question in my heart that found no answer. I loved Christian community, but for some reason, the whole structure of the communities, their purpose and focus, just did not jive with something I knew in my heart to be true. Then, seemingly separate from that question, through the years since we left that fellowship, another question has burdened my heart in deep groanings and travail before God.

Both questions were answered in totality as I wrote "God Is Beneath Your Feet."

I am unable to put the first question into words, indeed it never was a mental question, just a heart question that never left me. All I can do is tell you the same story my heart told me through my years in move community.

I grew up in the Mennonite church; many of my family lines are descended directly from the Anabapists of 16^th century Switzerland. You trace up the line of my father’s mother, the Stauffers, and you trace up the line of my mother’s father (through an ancestral mother – thus a different last name), and you come to two men, forefathers in each line, who lived as Anabaptists in the same Christian community in Switzerland and were driven out by the authorities, losing everything, in the 1560’s.

During my childhood years, I read a story set in 1500's Switzerland, a story that is the first question I held.

A group of young men, drunk and rowdy, seeking some fun for the night, alighted on the idea of doing some damage to those "heretics" in town. They found the home of an Anabaptist family, climbed up onto the roof, and tore the slates off the roof, flinging them in every direction. Meanwhile, the family beneath them busily prepared their defense. They cooked a meal; they made refreshments. As the young men finished, coming down off the roof, they found an open front door, warm smiles, and a welcome. "Come and have refreshments after your hard labor." Sheepishly, they entered the home to be served with great kindness by the Anabaptist family. The next day they returned and labored again to repair what they had destroyed. Some, I'm sure, found an open heart to hear this "heresy."

Something inside my heart told me that this was God's order for His church. There was certainly much love and kindness in move community, but the "order" of the communities did not ever agree with the story of my heart.

Let me now attempt to explain the second question, a question that I have held before God with many tears through the last decade.

God anointed Sam Fife more powerfully than anyone I have ever known. Sam Fife believed absolutely in what he preached, that Christ is a corporate man, and thus never ever ran any kind of a one-man-show. Rather, he lifted up a corporate ministry around himself, and the anointing of God upon him reverberated with the anointing upon them. To Sam Fife, the pulpit was always open to anyone.

Some may well argue that I am a very impressionable person. Whether or not, I do not judge myself, though I know that far more than being impressionable, I question everything, I require evidence of all things, and I search the Bible to see what God actually says equal to any man alive, and far more than most.

Maybe it could be that I see things others do not see and hear things others do not hear. Yet many others also testified that the anointing of God upon Sam Fife which flowed out within a corporate ministry was beyond anything they otherwise knew. Many others were the same as I, "This guy is crazy!" Yet they could not but remain upon their face before God, "God, if this be true, show me," as did I.

Now, the bulk of what Sam Fife preached came out of George Warnock's, The Feast of Tabernacles. If you read that, you will be reading the central truth's of the move of God while Sam Fife was alive. Certainly, Sam Fife added his own personality, his own wacky views of things. That is a given. God cannot speak except He speak through men. Christ lives as us in this world.

I left the move for two reasons. First, it had strayed too far from the word God had birthed in my heart in those early years. And second, something woven all through the move and move community was just not right. I did not know for certain what that something was.

In leaving the move, I threw nothing out. Rather, I put everything on the shelf, and I made an agreement with God. "God, You will pull off that shelf all that is truly of You and rebirth it in my heart. All the rest will simply stay there to be discarded as You reveal Yourself in my life."

But as time went on, the depths of the knowing of God that I once knew could not remain quiet. God had birthed a word and a vision inside of me, and I was pregnant with it. To be pregnant is to travail.

I had sat in the move conventions, listening to the most profound words I have ever heard. The anointing upon that word and upon those ministries lifted me up above myself. The throne of heaven was wide open and from that throne came into my equally wide-open heart a vision of the revelation of Jesus Christ.

I have never escaped from that heavenly vision; it grips and rules my heart to this day.

The anointing moved me. The river of power from the throne of God caught me in its flow. I cannot ever be content with an un-anointed world or with an un-anointed church. And I was not the only one moved by that anointing. That anointing moved us to abandon everything of this world to follow Jesus. It moved us to a life of power in the Holy Spirit, a life of walking together, a life of seeking the Holy, the revelation of Jesus Christ, on our faces before God.

Because people do not fear God, they play tiddly winks with Him. When God speaks, I tremble. God is always speaking; the reverberations upon my own heart and life never cease. I will not "discuss" truth with people who are not on their faces before the presence of the living God, with wide-open Bibles and wide-open hearts.

So my cry and question before God has been, "God, it is Your anointing visited upon Your servants that moves us to a higher level of knowing You than we have ever known. Where is that anointing today? How I long to be caught up again in its power! How I long for my children to know that same Throne Word that grips my own heart."

But the question I have held before God has a second part; it is this. "God, how could such an anointing, carrying such a vision of Christ, also carry something, I don't know what it was, that was false?"

I now know the answer to the second part of that question. Let me give you the short version here.

Augustine.

However, I do not want to talk about Augustine quite yet. Allow me to finish the foundation for the question: "Must we repent of Augustine?"

The false thing that was inserted by Sam Fife into the pure word from the throne of God, a word flowing out of George Warnock's The Feast of Tabernacles, is the very thing that caused me to give undue weight to the power of a man, Buddy Cobb, whom I knew twisted Scriptures and labored over nonsense, placing Solomon as the ruler over Paul's gospel, a weight that brought me to a place of utter hopelessness.

After writing "God Is Beneath Your Feet," I remembered almost exactly what Sam Fife had said. (I say "almost exactly," but since I will not go looking for it, I will paraphrase.) "The apostles and elders in the move of God are anointed by God because they are closer to God than you are. God has anointed them to be the expression and the covering of Christ to you." Linked tightly with that understanding were the words, "Touch not My anointed and do My prophets no harm."

We believed that; we believed that, because this most profound of anointings, continually proven by the experience of God in our midst over many years, did in fact rest upon the apostles and elders of the move of God; therefore, they were the covering of Christ to us. I submitted my life and my walk with God to that belief for 21 years.

We were hanging upside down. On that point, Sam Fife was completely wrong. Those anointed by God in the church are the ten percent who are wise and capable in this world. They are anointed for that reason - as servants to the heirs of salvation.

No one notices servants, nor honors them, nor asks them for advice. They are servants. What they have is not their own; it is in their hand only to be given to others. Once their service is given, they retire into the shadows, and no one notices them. Jesus made this very clear to the disciples.

To give honor to servants is to stand on your head. Yet in the church of Christ, we have done so. Look down, God is beneath your feet.

I am writing the next letter in the series of The Gathering Together and have titled it, "Turning the Church Right-Side-Up." In that letter I hope to show how ministry might function in a church turned right-side-up. Here, I will continue exploring the upside-down view held by almost all of Christianity, not just the move of God.

I find, here, that I can best express how and why I was caught under Buddy Cobb's ministry by sharing with you from an email I wrote to Chris Welch.

*****

Chris,

I've been sitting here pondering, wanting to put into words just what it was we practiced. You see, Sam Fife taught, "After the Due Order," that God has set a five-fold ministry into the church as the covering over God's people and that apostles were "first" and prophets second, but only as a confirmation ministry, not any authority themselves. It came down to a two-group ministry, apostles over all and elders locally. Thus all important decisions were submitted to the covering for their witness.  

It was not that the ministry ever told anyone what to do (except in the normal operations of practicing community). Each person was taught to hear from the Lord for themselves, and then to submit their leading to the elders for confirmation. Elderships submitted their leadings to the father ministry for confirmation. At both levels, prophets were asked to seek visions from the Lord without knowing what they were praying about. Thus, the visions were impartial and either confirming or denying. Many, many decisions were made based on the witness of the visions. Most of the visions received for me through the years were powerful and important. But near the end of my time, they became the opposite, confusing and devastating - not the visions themselves, but their role. But that's another, though very interesting, story.

Now, here's the thing, those who gave their hearts to this teaching and practice made a personal commitment to do so because of the word of the Lord made real inside of them. Then over the years, the power of God in anointing continued to confirm to our hearts that, yes, this was the move of God.

Yet here is what happened psychologically. Innumerable times, one had to tell one's self, "Submit to the ministry and thus you are submitting to God." There were times when one had to go against what seemed right. Always, those who were committed to the move, myself included, mentally told one's self that God holds submission to the covering above all. I have heard that preached so many times and held to it myself at great personal cost.

Now, as I said, God attended us with His presence and power. Yet you can see the powerful psychological bonds taking place. Thus, to finally break with that belief and "leave the covering," was for most a devastating experience mentally. Especially when you were also walking away from years of labor and all your investment with nothing.

And, of course, the flip side of practicing this mental story we told ourselves over and over, was that the greatest "sin," then, had to be leaving the "covering." Thus, those who left had demonstrated the greatest rebellion against God. They might "pretend" to continue as Christians, but we knew that God was no longer leading them. And no one was really "with God" until they made the same mental commitment to "the covering" that we had made. People who are still in the move do not deny that I am a Christian, but most will not practice fellowship with me or believe that I might be "hearing from God."

Now, inside of that structure was much truth and much wonderful word and revelation and outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Yet, as humans, we always take God's presence, not as a gift because of the blood of Jesus, but as a result of our "having it right."

"After the Due Order" comes from the passage where David brings up the ark to Jerusalem. You see, he had tried to bring it on a cart. It began to fall off. One of David's men tried to stop God's presence from hitting the dirt and fell dead. Then, three months later, David told the priests to carry the ark on their shoulders. He said, "We did not do it the first time after the due order." God's order was that the descendants of Aaron only would carry the ark on their shoulders.

Sam Fife preached all the time that his version of "Divine Order" was the New Testament "due order" that the Babylonian church had failed to follow. Yet what he set in place was just another form of putting the hand to the ark to keep it from hitting the dirt.

*****

In the summer of the year 2000, I had been separated from looking to the move ministry as "covering" for two years. However, the words and teachings of Buddy Cobb still weighed heavily upon my heart. I was astonished at times by expressions of the love and favor of God towards me through other Christians, but the icy weight of "God loves me, BUT . . ." only thawed slightly, it did not lift.

Finally, I was in a service of the church that blessed and helped us so much when we lived in west Texas. There was a mighty anointing of repentance and deliverance upon the service. People were going forward to stand in the presence of God. I joined them. As I lifted my heart up to God, Buddy Cobb came into my mind. I knew in that moment that I needed to be free of him. I said to God, "I repent of ever having listened to Buddy Cobb."

For the first time, I heard the words, "God loves me." And the need for a - ", but" - to follow no longer existed. The period at the end of the sentence was full and comfortable.

That repentance was a one-time act. It was necessary because of the agreement I myself had made in the past to place a tree trunk, a strong-hold of hiding, between myself and God. Now that I had repented, I could begin to hear God speak once again. It still took a few more years for the thawing to be complete, before I could hear God in the measure I enjoy today. But the repentance was complete in that moment.

An interesting conclusion is that I saw Buddy Cobb last at my mother-in-law's funeral at Bowen's Mill in Georgia just three years ago. I did not speak to him, nor he to me, but as I passed him in the viewing room, I heard him comment in very strongly spoken words to another move ministry something along these lines: "Those who do not submit to the covering are in rebellion against God." I have no idea if he said it for my benefit or not, of course, though he could well have - his wife had been receiving my Times of Refreshing letters shortly before that time.

I share all this about repenting of having listened to Buddy Cobb because Christ is made personal in each of us and to show you an exact correlation to a far, far larger intellect that holds all Christianity in its icy grip.

Before we look directly at Augustine, let me recount that darkest of all centuries in the history of the Christian church, AD 311-410. Across that darkest of centuries, the lowest point of the fall into Roman darkness, there strides five men - Constantine, Athanasius, Damasus I, Jerome, and Augustine. The crimes committed against the gospel of Jesus Christ by these five men are beyond belief. Yet they each hold absolute sway over all of western Christianity, Catholic, Protestant, evangelical, charismatic, and even deeper-truth.

Constantine began the orgy of darkness by turning the cross of Jesus Christ into the symbol of the psychopathic hubris of wicked men, slaughtering and ruling over the "weak." It was Constantine, a pagan, who turned the Christian church completely upside down. Christians today who celebrate the hired/slave serial killers some call "soldiers" continue under the egotistical power of Constantine.

Now, Constantine was the key that unlocked the door to the darkness. Read through the account of his life on Wikipedia. Constantine was the epitome of the power of human ego to dominate all others. Other tyrants equal Constantine, none surpass him. Athanasius was Constantine's ticket to total domination, "Christianity," that is, forcing everyone to "believe" the same thing.

Athanasius banished the Lord Jesus Christ from the One who walks among us, who now lives as us in this world, turning Him into "God the Son," far above, far away, something God Himself never, ever says. Athanasius took the definition Lucifer holds of himself and placed it upon the word God speaks, the undergirding fabric of our being. Athanasius separated Christ from us. In fact, the "Christ" of Athanasius looks more like Constantine's view of himself as Apollo, the sun god, than it does the Lord Jesus, who revealed God through weakness and through a life laid down for others.

Damasus I brought all the symbols and ritualism of satanic Babylon into the Christian church, so that godly Spirit-filled pastors today find it needful to spend much money and time erecting the most satanic symbol of human debauchery, the penis-pyramid, over the entrance to their church, or over the baptismal font. Why? Why? Why? - They have never repented of Damasus.

Jerome removed the understanding held by all early Christians for three centuries that God's judgment in Hades, the place the dead are held, was for an age, for a season, for redemption. He took the word "an age" found all through the New Testament and turned it into "eternal," forever and ever. By doing so, he created the conviction that rules all through what is called Christianity today that God tortures forever those whom He refuses to save in a place named after, of all things, the Germanic corpse goddess, and that whatever any of the great torturers of history did, they were only copying God.  

The "Christian" Republican hopefuls for President all endorsed torture as a valid American practice in a recent "debate," demonstrating the wicked hold Jerome has over their hearts. In fact my son just informed me yesterday that he was taught by his Bible teacher in the "Christian" school that God favors torture in this world as a means of discovering the truth.

Yes, we must repent of ever having listened to these guys, yet it is not so much they, but rather Augustine, last of the five and the capstone of all that rules over what we call "Christianity."

Why Augustine?

From Augustine until Luther, a period covering one thousand, one hundred years, most all people in the western world who learned to read, read Augustine first. They may have read the Bible or the lives of the saints, some also read Aristotle. But regardless, all read Augustine first. Then, as Luther and others translated the Bible into the common language of the people, many began to read the Bible ALONGSIDE Augustine.

The truth is, it is not Christ-ianity, it is Augustin-ianity. When people read the Bible, they read it through Augustine, when they read Aristotle, they read him through Augustine. When they looked at life and this world and God and eternity, they saw all of it only through Augustine.

From Luther until the 1800's, when other "books" began to circulate as normal reading, Augustine continued to be read equally with the Bible. No, we may not have read Augustine ourselves, it doesn't matter. You really have no idea how familiar his words are to you. They fill all the fabric of what you think about as you look at "Christianity" and as you read "the Bible."

All Catholicism is Augustinian. Luther and Calvin were fully Augustinian. The Anabaptists were Augustinian. Methodism and all Pentecostal churches are Augustinian. Even the move of God was about half Augustinian. In fact, take a bunch of happy pagan teenagers in any western country who have never been in a church and hardly know what Christianity is, and the truth is, their minds, their outlooks, the way they think, have been shaped, for or against, by Augustine.

I even see Augustine just a little bit in George Warnock's The Feast of Tabernacles, though when you arrive at his account of the fulfillment of the Day of Atonement in the life of the church, he gives you a view of leaving Augustine behind forever.

There is only one group I know of who broke free in critical ways from Augustine, and that was the Quakers. That is, until the Welsh revival and the Jessie Penn-Lewis/Norman Grubb connection. From AD 410 until 1905, Augustine ruled over all the Christian church with few exceptions. From the early Pentecostal outpourings until today, God has been separating us bit by bit from the harsh grip of that overwhelming intellect.

Anytime we hear or read someone say, "Let's get back to 'the Bible (so we do not get deceived)", they do not mean the Bible at all, they mean "Augustine."

Now, knowing this fact about the overwhelming influence Augustine has over all Christian discourse, I decided to pull Augustine off my book shelf and read him. My thought was to read the entire book, not the largest of the Great Books series, but not the smallest either.

I don't think, now, that I will. Augustine frightens me. Let me tell you why.

First, I read a ways into his Confessions. Now, if anyone was wordy, it was this guy, yet Augustine's Confessions is one of the most read books in history. Although there was clearly a mighty anointing upon his words, I found myself in sorrow as I read, primarily because of two things very noticeable to me. First, there was no love relationship between Augustine and the person of the Lord Jesus. His was the view of most Christians since, that Jesus is high and exalted in a carnal sense, that He sits above and commands, and we, here beneath, obey. Second, Augustine, like Tertullian and Jerome before him, despised the human and equated the physical with evil. It was this open disgust of his own humanity, a feeling never shown by Jesus, that sorrowed me.

Then, I skipped over The City of God because I wanted to see what Augustine said in On Christian Doctrine. In the introduction to that book, Augustine raised the issue of how do we interpret the Bible. Foolishly, I was hoping he would suggest that we hear by the Spirit and that we believe what God says, starting with the gospel of Christ that Paul preached. Augustine did the opposite. After establishing the need for "correct" Bible interpretation, he began immediately to pronounce "correct Christian doctrine." In other words, first have this doctrine about God and salvation firmly in your head, then you can "read the Bible" correctly.

Then I read 4-5 pages of Augustine's "correct Christian doctrine" through which alone we are to read anything God says in the Bible.

Augustine's words were 100% familiar. I had heard these words in the Mennonite church, in the Baptist churches I visited in childhood, in the Assemblies of God churches, in the charismatic movement, in Christian books and teachings. I realized that all anyone has ever done is simply repeat Augustine, and then, go looking at the Bible for one purpose - to prove in some way that Augustine is "correct."

In that moment of understanding, all personal intimacy with the Lord Jesus in my heart and mind vanished. The knowledge of Augustinian Christianity seized me. With horror, I realized that I have been teaching you false heresy this whole time. I saw that all I have written over the last few years is filled with darkness and blasphemy against the truth. I cried out for mercy for my great sin. I have taught you great error all through these letters!

Thankfully, I'm not stupid, and I knew exactly what was going on and what God was teaching me. I grabbed my Bible, hoping to find there some reassurance that Christ was indeed my life. I opened to passages of the New Testament that once gave me great comfort in the Lord. I saw no comfort there, nor any knowledge that Christ is my life, that I live in Him and that He fills all of me. Rather, those same words that had taught me Christ before, now whipped me with the harsh cries of "Christianity."

I set aside my Bible and turned to something else. I knew that this was God's doing, that there was no need to "fight" against anything. I knew it would pass. By the next day, Augustine was no longer pressing upon me, and I did what I always do, I looked inside myself and "saw" Christ. I looked at Him and saw me.

I neither need nor want to read Augustine. I know Augustine; I know all that he says, as do you.

Let me explain something. I place at the beginning of all my teaching, the Goal of the Believer, or Home as It Really Is. In that series, I hammer as strongly as I can against the idea that the goal of the believer is go to heaven after death. I do that because I know the power that "go to heaven" holds over the minds and hearts of most Christians. You can lead them into the wondrous truths of God's purpose for man on this earth, you can show them that Christ is indeed their life, but at some point along the way, they will most certainly hit up against, "but, we'll only really know AFTER we die and go to heaven." And you've lost them.

More than that, "go to heaven" rules so strongly that most Christians will not even listen to any other possible purpose or goal God might actually say. Thus, if "heaven" is not shattered and destroyed, they will never be able to hear the revelation of Jesus Christ.

I realize now that "go to heaven" is just one package, powerful, yes, but only one part of the real problem.

Something has always bothered me that I did not understand. I have known for many years, and more so now, that almost all Christians simply do not give a damn about what God actually says in the New Testament. I say that crudely, yes, but somehow no other words show the thing as it really is.

Now I understand the complete package of why that is so. "Go to heaven" was only one portion of that total package. Augustine is the whole thing.

Christians do not care what God actually says, they're not interested. The only thing important to them is what Augustine says. And they will fight you, call you a heretic and a false teacher, and burn you at the stake if you dare to suggest that what God actually says does not agree with what Augustine says. To them, the only possible way to read the Bible is to take Augustine and to force his intellect upon every word there.

There is not one place in the New Testament where the apostles ever equated or linked "salvation" with going to a place called heaven after you die. Christians don't care. In their minds, "going to heaven is salvation," that is, "where you spend eternity," MUST fill the New Testament, so there is no point at all to inquire otherwise.

I remember the moment when I knew that salvation and "heaven" are in no way connected by God. It was from a private study during my college years at Blueberry, writing down every verse in the New Testament containing "salvation" and every verse containing "heaven." God never puts the two together. It took great courage of heart to say to myself, "God never ever says that salvation has anything to do with where you go after you die." It takes even greater courage to say that openly and publicly. I knew full well the covering of darkness that sits upon all Christianity, striking down on every hand what God might actually say.

Now, let me get a bit dicey and personal here. You, my dear reader, brother and sister, are more Augustinian than you know. You do not read the Bible entirely through the eyes of Christ. I have no doubt that you read the Bible partly through the eyes of Christ, but also partly through Augustine. Thus when you read some things, you cannot see or hear the revelation of Jesus Christ, but you see and hear Augustin-ianity.

I do not say this to condemn, but only to enlighten and to show part of the battle the Lord Jesus has placed before us. I include myself entirely inside that same picture.

Paul said this in 2 Corinthians 3: "But their minds were blinded. For until this day the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament, because the veil is taken away in Christ. But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. Nevertheless when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away."

Paul, of course, knew nothing about a future Augustine. Here, he was referring to the natural Jew, yet these same words apply absolutely to us. Let me rephrase Paul's words to fit our situation today.

"But the minds of all Christians are blinded. For until this day the same veil of Augustine remains unlifted in the reading of the Bible, Old Testament and New, because the veil of Augustine is taken away only when we know that the Lord Jesus Christ is living now as us in this world, that we are utterly in Him and that He reveals Himself in and as every part of our humanity. But even to this day, when Christians read the New Testament, the veil of Augustine lies on their heart. Nevertheless, when one TURNS TO the Lord, the veil is taken away."

To turn is to repent. To repent is to walk out from behind the tree trunk and stand openly in the full light of God with no reference to any "self" or "no self" whatsoever. To live in the Lord is to walk always in the full consciousness of that same light.

When I look at me, I see Christ. When I look at Christ, I see me. "I am dead" is capable of becoming just as much of a fetish as "death to self." I do not refer to myself as a "self" being bent to Christ, neither do I refer to myself as a "not self." I see only Christ, yet not as a false merging that actually erases either Jesus or me, but in sweet communion, person to person, He in I and I in He, His consciousness inside of mine and my consciousness inside of His.

I walked through the mall yesterday afternoon while my lovely daughter spent time with her friends. First, let me reassure you, I am in no danger of actually laughing and dancing and leaping and singing in the middle of a crowded mall filled with shoppers. But I sure felt like it. I walked with the full and immediate awareness of the consciousness and person of Jesus inside of me and of my consciousness and person inside of Him. We walked together, He and I, through the mall. Yet much more than David's, "Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Thou art with me." Not "with" me only, but together in one another, side by side as equals, inside each other's heart and person, fully and for real.

This is Christ; this is "turning to" the Lord.

Constantine, Athanasius, Damasus, Jerome, and Augustine strode across the years of that darkest of centuries as anti-apostles - their task: to blast this union utterly apart and to replace it with a "Christianity" that could never find its way back, even though it "reads" the New Testament. To do this they worked in two directions. Constantine and Athanasius targeted Jesus, turning him into Apollo the sun god - "God the Son" high above, far away from man on this earth. Damasus and Jerome targeted man, turning him into a despicable and abhorrent worm, worthy of nothing more than to be flung into hell fire forever, allowing the few who met the correct "Christian" requirements by the skin of their teeth into the bliss of "heaven."

It's fascinating that the world Paul lived in had no such knowledge of man. Paul said, "No man ever hated his own flesh, but loves and cherishes it." He had no idea of the twisted perversion coming in the future where all "Christians" would be taught to despise and hate their own flesh. 

Then Augustine took all of that and wove it into an entire fabric of "Christian theology," placing it upon all that God speaks so that no Christian can hear what God actually says, but only what Augustine says God ought to have said.

So what does Augustine say God ought to have said? I will bring in three things here only. On the one hand, to attempt to go through all of Augustine and show point by point how he strips what God actually says of its power and meaning and replaces it with "Christianity," would be a dark and dreary task. I have no inclination to do it. On the other hand, all of my writing, all the way through is a continual refutation of Augustine. It is the hold of Augustine over the minds of Christians that I have been engaged against from the start.

I have passed a milestone in finally sharing the things publicly that God has placed in my heart over the years. Someone found my website by typing into Google search the words, "Daniel Yordy false teacher." This kind of accusation intrigues and fascinates me to no end. Over the next few days I read through all of more than three dozen of my articles, searching for anywhere I may have said something God does not Himself say in the New Testament.

The truth is, I am a "false teacher" only because I attack Augustine. And I do attack Augustine's hold over my brethren. And guess what! I will win, that is, Christ wins through me.

But understand this, Augustine is 700 pages in the Great Books, that means 1500 pages in regular book size. Every single one of those 700 large pages sits upon our thinking and rules how we read the Bible and approach God. People say concerning the fulfillment of the Third Feast in the life of the church, "What you teach is so confusing, it seems to make a "simple" gospel so complicated." They are interpreting their "confusion" wrongly. The complexity of Augustine fills their thinking. What we teach has no relationship with that way of thinking; it is built on an entire other set of assumptions about God and life and the gospel and who and what we are.

When we speak out of our assumptions, the gospel is clear and pure and simple, but to those who sit in Augustine, our teaching seems distorted and whacky and complicated. In equal measure, however, as we think and speak out of our assumptions a clear and pure and simple gospel, we look at the "gospel" most Christians push, and it appears to us distorted and whacky and complicated.

Here is Augustine's first piece of doctrine that all must have hammered upon their brains before they read and interpret one word of Scripture.

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. . . The Trinity, one God, of Whom are all things, through Whom are all things, in Whom are all things. Thus the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and each of these by Himself is a complete substance, and yet they are all one substance. The Father is not the Son, nor the Holy Spirit; the Son is not the Father nor the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit is not the Father nor the Son; but the Father is only Father, the Son is only Son, and the Holy Spirit is only Holy Spirit. To all three belong the same eternity, the same unchangeableness, the same majesty, the same power . . .

*****

Now, it is clear that Augustine speaks of God and truth and Scripture. But he begins with something God never says, "Trinity," he inserts something God does say, but with a slightly different meaning than what God actually says, and then he proceeds with things that sound as if God did and should have said them. (Now, as I read again through these words, even while editing this letter again, a shadow of darkness emerges from them to lie across my spirit; a darkness I gladly turn away from.) 

The problem is that God is not the creation of human intellect. He is a living, breathing Person, existing in dimensions and ways that we do not presently know. The Lord Jesus came to show us who and what the Father really is. God is meek and lowly of heart; He reveals Himself in weakness. When He is invited to dinner, He sits at the lowest place. When He has a chance to prove that He has what it takes, He stumbles and falls on His face in the mud. He lays down His life; He comes to serve.

Now, most of what Augustine says in these lines God never ever says. From these words, we get "God the Son," and "God the Holy Spirit," things also that God never ever says. When we say things about God that God Himself never says, we create an "alongside" god, one who looks like the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, but who is not the same One.

However, so much argument in "Christianity" circles around trying, so very hard, to prove that Augustine's definition of "God" is correct and to force that definition on the words of the New Testament. This is one-half of the removal from the knowledge of Christianity the wonderful reality that Christ lives as us in this world.

If we do not know Him IN our weakness, we will never know Him in His power. To claim that we can define Him in His power, speaking words He does not say, when we show no sign of knowing Him IN our weakness, is to delude ourselves.

Now, let me urge you not to be mistaken by the cries of, "Well, I just believe that's the way it is." Human "believing" isn't worth twat. We cannot create God by "believing." Faith does not believe things about God. Faith is specific to the word God speaks; that is, faith simply receives into itself what God actually says, and then reproduces in the flesh that same life and reality. And faith does so simply by agreeing with God.

But "Augustin-ianity" swinging in causes us to doubt what God actually says.

Here is another piece from Augustine. However, I include first the declaration of the Council of Nicaea, which creed almost all Christians hold as "gospel truth." Then, followed by Augustine's restatement of this same "truth."

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And although the Archbishop be among the bishops as an elder brother, who hath the care of his brethren, and to whom they owe obedience because he is over them; yet the patriarch is to all those who are under his power, just as he who holds the seat of Rome is the head and prince of all patriarchs; inasmuch as he is first, as was Peter, to whom power is given over all Christian princes, and over all their peoples, as he who is the Vicar of Christ our Lord over all peoples and over the whole Christian Church, and whoever shall contradict this, is excommunicated by the synod." (Council of Nicaea)

"He who is separated from the body of the Catholic Church, however laudable his conduct may otherwise seem, will never enjoy eternal life, and the anger of God remains on him by reason of the crime of which he is guilty in living separated from Christ." (Augustine)

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 It is interesting to read the arguments of classical Catholicism, that only those who have submitted to the Catholic hierarchy of "covering" are saved, all else are damned, no matter how much they might "believe" that Jesus is their Savior. I see in the Catholic argument the exact same argument we were given in the move of God, that knowing the fullness of God meant submitting to the hierarchy of covering. The principles and arguments are the same; the only difference is an apostolic ministry versus Pope and Bishops.

The vast majority of all Christians live under this same belief, that by being a member of a "group" called by the name of their own church, they are "in" with God.

I was asked by a reader to comment on a piece of "kingdom of God" writing he had found. This piece had some good things to say, but then it turned to the same definition of "Christ" pushed by Augustin-ianity, you see the words from the Council of Nicaea, "power over." That piece argued that Christianity has never known the unity of Christ BECAUSE . . .

Hogwash! All believers in Christ have always known the perfect unity of Christ the gospel proclaims. What has not known unity is this structure over God's people. And that structure will NEVER EVER know unity simply because it is not Christ. Who cares what any structure over God's people does or doesn't do? That kind of "unity" is the tower of Babel pointing straight "down"; it is confusion. Christ is One; His body is one. Anointed and gifted ministries attempting to move "in power" over Christ's body, no matter how much God and the idea of God thrills their souls, cannot and never will be one, for that is not Christ. 

Again, if you read the life of Constantine in Wikipedia, you will see the reason for this kind of "power over" unity pushed by the Council of Nicaea: control. The moment you see the words "power over," you know that Lucifer is talking, not the Always Talking of God, the Lord Jesus.

Then, Augustine's statement that was the last straw, blowing away from me the present knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ as my life in fullness right now.

*****

In what way did He come but this, "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us"? Just as when we speak, in order that we have in our minds may enter through the heart into the mind of the hearer, the word which we have in our hearts becomes an outward sound and is called speech; and yet our thought does not lose itself in the sound, but remains complete in itself, and takes the form of speech without being modified in its own nature by the change: so the Divine Word, though suffering no change of nature, yet became flesh, that he might dwell among us.

*****

 Now, reading through these words again, we might be tempted to think, "Wow, those words sound very similar to the things this Yordy teaches." Augustine is certainly talking about the Word made flesh.

How, then, did these words blow Christ my life right out of my knowledge and understanding? Let me explain; the distinction is so very important.

Augustine began by placing his declaration of theology on top of all "Bible interpretation." We are to read the Bible ONLY through the Nicene Creed. The Nicene Creed and Augustine's explanation of it comes first; the New Testament comes second, regardless of what God might actually say in it. That is, Augustine's explanation of the Nicene Creed is the lens through which we MUST look regardless of what we think God actually says.

Then, Augustine placed the apostate Catholic definition of "The Trinity" as the beginning of that lens. In other words, the Lord Jesus Christ is placed infinitely far above man. Then, between that beginning, and this "last straw" for me, Augustine established all of the correct "Christian" doctrine that the Christian is low, impure, and "being" redeemed.

Therefore, we read these words with the iron framework that Christ is far above and the Christian is far beneath. Thus, he says that a thought becomes speech, human flesh, as it passes from one mind to another, so Christ "momentarily" became human flesh with no reference to His "deity" whatsoever. In other words, human weakness is a momentary aberration.

And thus I was thrust totally back into the spirit that says: "Jesus is far above, you are far beneath. Your earthly time and your earthly form is something low and evil from which you must escape. And all the impurity of your low life, you must bring into submission to Christ by submitting to Christian authority in order to someday escape it."

This is knowing Christ "according to the flesh." I once knew Him this way only. I do not know Him that way now at all. To know Christ "according to the flesh" is to know Him as separate from us in exactly this way. Knowing Christ "according to the flesh" is to know Him as "God the Son," far above, and it is to know the flesh as something far beneath, far separate from Christ.

John said, so very clearly, that every attempt to separate Christ from flesh is anti-Christ. He was speaking directly of the still future Council of Nicaea.

You see, here is what we must know. You and I are blind and ignorant. If we don't know that we are blind and ignorant, we are hopelessly lost. We do not know who God is, and we do not know who Christ is. But most especially, we absolutely do not know who we are. John says this also, so very clearly.

Yet Augustine claims he knows who God and Christ are, and that he knows who we are. And Christianity takes up this same delusion.

In our blindness and in our ignorance, the only wise choice we could make is to say what God says and to account to ourselves that what God says is true. We do not see that what God says is true, of course not, we are blind. We do not feel that what God says is true, of course not, we are ignorant.

And therefore, in our blindness and in our ignorance, the only choice we have is to decide with all joy that God, through Paul's gospel, is actually telling us the truth!

Now, I have written another letter, almost completed, that stands as the opposite of the definition of "Christ" offered by Augustine. It is the Thesis, to which Augustine's "Christ" is the anti-Thesis. I have titled it, "Does God Take Your Breath Away?" I will send it soon.

I have only one question when I read other people's stuff about the kingdom of God. That question is this. Does the God who fills them full with His glory take their breath away? Does walking in an intimate union with Almighty God, shoulder to shoulder, heart in heart, mind in mind, person in person, both stagger them and yet fill them at the same time with all joyful confidence and expectation of goodness? Does the God who is meek and lowly of heart pour out of them in rivers of living water, a life laid down, a tenderness poured out?

Yea, I realize that's three questions, but they are all the same.

But before I can send you the next letter, we must answer the question of this letter.

Must we repent of Augustine?

Yes, we must.

That repentance is a one-time willful act. It is a willingness to depart from all Christian theology into what God says in the New Covenant of grace alone, a decision that what God actually says is actually true.

"Father, I come before you as Your Beloved Son, for He is my life and I am utterly in Him. Father, I repent of ever having listened to the arguments and doctrines of Christianity that would serve to drive a wedge of separation between You and me. Father, I accept before You that my repentance is a one-time act; that it is complete and sealed forever in You.

"Now, Father, I stand firmly in my own personal decision that what You say is true. Father, You say, that, yes, I am dead, but much more than that, Christ is my life. Father, what you say is true.

"Father, You say that Christ lives in my heart, that my heart is brand new, perfect and pure; Father, You say that old things ARE passed away, and that all things ARE made brand new. Father, You say that I am One in You, that I am filled with all the fullness of God, that rivers of living water flow out of my belly, that all creation is set free in the glorious liberty I live in all the time. Father, You say that I am in Jesus and that Jesus is in me.

"Father, You say that Your GLORY is made Perfect IN my weakness.

"And, Oh Father, with all confidence of joy, with all dancing and singing and twirling in exuberant abandonment, I know that what YOU SAY is true. Father, it is true!"