Man was created to rule.  He was made a judge.

Yet, he was also made as a servant, to serve and to worship and adore.

Man has been created in a unique position in all of creation. Surely, the psalmist spoke well when he said, What is man that thou are mindful of Him? (Psalm 8:4).

This creation, this creature, was fashioned from clay, yet is destined to judge the world.

This figure, as the scripture says, is placed a little lower than Elohim, often translated as “angels” but also used of God Himself,  and yet, man, who will judge the angels, will be judged by God Himself.  Some to everlasting salvation, and some to everlasting contempt.

This man, who was created to do something, was given a place and purpose to fulfill and way to serve in the Earth, yet he was eternally designed for connection with another.

In the Old Testament, we see men and women judging on the Earth, not through kingship, but by God’s providing.  We see that God desired to govern His nation through a judge, and not a human king.  We see that when Israel needed something, He raised up what they cried out for, and delivered them.  Yet, He was always their head.

Through the light of the New Testament, we might see this a little clearer.

This true  Man, this Carpenter’s son, knew the world which He had created.  He had formed all of its parts, both above and beneath.

For the lamp of the body is the eye.  That which a man beholds, it fills the whole of his being.

When the eye is single, not good as some translations list, but “single”, without folds, the whole body is full of light.  If this is the true light, the light that comes into the world, how great that light is.  If the eye is single upon that which is not really light, it is fully evil.

This is the path of the disciple.

For, Adam knew only one thing.  He knew His Father above, and He knew His voice, His presence, and His touch. He knew from where He had come.

But, the deceiver came as another voice.  He came speaking that which was untrue to the one that was pulled from man’s side.  She was told falsehoods, and she did not rightly divide the Word of Truth given to her.  She was deceived by the evil, and overtaken.  And the man, not deceived like the first, but sinning willfully, hearkened rather to the voice of his wife than to the one that created Him, and went with her in sin.

Some have claimed, falsely, that to eat of this apple must have been more than fruit, that Eve must have been seduced by the serpent, and the tree was really intercourse.  But, for this to be true, the same must have been said of Adam, which does not follow.  For, the serpent brought Eve to the tree, true, but Eve brought the man, so the pattern does not fit.

In the garden, before the fall, the man knew only one thing.  His eye was single.  Yet, for the love of another, unfaithfully, he defied the greater love, God Himself.   Putting man before master always results in a fall, and, as the Levites learned, who were willing to take up sword to slay their brother in the wake of the gold calf, those who were willing to fight and kill their own kin were called priests of God!

This is the difference between man’s standard and God’s.  Where man would want to please, and make fit, God says His is the only way, and Holiness demands no excuse.

For in the light of the Eternal, none can stand His light.

With Him is the fountain of life, and In His light we see light.  Psalm 36:9.

The Eternal demands that we worship Him, and not shrink back.

The Judges were men, called out and appointed by God.  In each generation or two, another deliverer would arise, and deliver the people from bondage.  Yet, all to often, after only a single generation, the people would fall back into their sin, their error, and rebel.

God had set up their laws so that they would be so different from them, that they would not fit.  They had dietary laws, they had washing laws, they had clothing laws.  God did not allow them to be like any other nation in their midst.  For, they were a holy and set apart people.

These instruct us even today.  As the nation was an unleavened loaf, without sin before the Lord, to celebrate the Passover feast (which pointed to the Messiah to come), they were prepared for the true leaven that would come from above at Pentecost.  For truly, the dough (community) with no leaven of the world, that receives the pure and holy leaven of the Holy Spirit, is a most blessed people in the Earth.  For, God gives His Spirit without measure to a people without mixture.

As the power of sin was like a yeast that works through an entire congregation if left unchecked, so the power of the Kingdom is such that, it too, will spread through a dough that is set apart, holy unto Himself (Matthew 13:33).

A man is judged by His words.  Every idle word will come before judgement.  It is by his words that a man is justified and a man is condemned.

As a man speaks, so is he.  And, death and life are in the power of the tongue.

A man scourged becomes like one who no longer hears, and cannot speak.  He is deaf and dumb.  David was like this.  He wrote,

 But I, as a deaf man, heard not; and I was as a dumb man that openeth not his mouth. Thus I was as a man that heareth not, and in whose mouth are no reproofs.

Psalm 38:13-14

A man under pressure finds no reproofs or rebukes come to his lips.  For, it is the nature of the upright to approve and disprove.  It is the nature of a man who has become deaf and dumb to have no dividing and discerning word.

For, the man who has lost his ability to speak clear, and the man who cannot tell the truth, both are not the master of their own vessel.

As the Proverbs say that a man who rules his own spirit is greater than he that takes a city, so the man who is fully in self control has in check all his faculties.

There is something about truth that “makes” a man.  The words of His lips are his garden that he has planted.  You cannot live in the presence and power of God and abide in a lie.  You cannot stand and continually, habitually live in falsehood and remain in the fullness of the power of God.  If a man is truly whole, it breaks him to tell a lie.  No upright man can willfully speak falsehood.

This is the nature of a man, and this is one of the few requirements of the Gospel, along with faith, love, and forgiveness.

For, the Spirit of Holiness is the Spirit of Truth, and to abide in Him is to live the truth (John 3:21).  For a man to lie indicates that there is something of more importance than the truth, whether self preservation, or gain, or reputation.

As Peter learned, the presence of even the slightest self preservation can be devastatingly brutal for the man standing in faith.  Peter found his place of forgiveness and restoration, ultimately, for the Lord Jesus Christ has prayed that his faith would not fail, but the pain, the shame, the humiliation of standing before the Lord, knowing his failure, undoubtably ripped and tore at his soul.

Until he found himself at the Lord’s feet after the resurrection, after having caught a catch of 135 fish, the rejection must have been immense.  To have walked with the Lord and denied Him in His most needed hour, to feel the feeling of compromise sink deep within his own soul.  These, while forgivable, are most grievous wounds indeed.

Yet, often times, in our modernity, we feel that to preserve one’s life by telling a lie is permissible.  We make aims that getting out of persecution by not speaking forth the truth is somehow wisdom.  However the Lord counts it on that day, for Peter, to not speak the truth concerning the one He loved was the same way when Peter doubted while walking on the water–deadly without the Lord’s ever present hand to save.

Yet, Jesus did forgive, and gave him leadership in His body, the church.  Peter made other mistakes later, misunderstood the leading of the Lord, and yet, was a pillar, a super-apostle as called by Paul.

Towards the end of his life, in writing his epistles, we see a changed man, who writes these words.

Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall:

2 Peter 1:10

What blessed words to be written, by a man who knew what it was to fall, to stumble.  For, if we do these things, to love genuinely and continue to grow, by the man who knew failure, we don’t have to.

But, man was created for love.  Man was created to know God.  Man was created to be intimate with others.

By this we know we are His disciples, that we love one another.  He who abides in love abides in God.  And, this is His command, that we love one another.

This is love made perfect, that we abide fully in His perfect love, which casts out all fear.  For fear has torment in it.

It must be clear that while we may or may not achieve a perfection in this life, it was John’s fullest intent of his letter that we might have the expectation to reach this place of being made perfect in love.  While the phrase, “be perfect even as God is perfect” could be translated as “be mature even as God is mature”, what are we saying?  God’s perfect maturity yields perfectly walking in love and righteousness, which produces perfection perfectly!  Yet, if nothing else, let us not be found to have not reached that place in Christ that He has called us to be, and diligently perfect holiness out of reverence for God, as we are called to by His Word.  For it is God’s call that we live godly in Christ Jesus.

For, even as David sat on his royal throne, it is said that a king that sitteth in the throne of judgment scattereth away all evil with his eyes.  When we sit with Christ, seated in His authority, we too sit with eyes that divide evil.

Suppose for a second we take the interpretation of the End Times that supports a literal millenial Kingdom upon the Earth, based out of Revelation 20.  What would an earthly Kingdom of Christ look like and resemble?

Would the King, Jesus Christ, mint coins in His image?  Would he usher out books of laws and decrees for His inhabitants to fulfill?  What would be the nature of His Domain, as represented by an Earthly rule?

If we consider for a moment, that this is not guaranteed by any any means to be an idyllic paradise state by reading that at the end of this chapter satan will be released from the pit, we cannot assume that this will be a perfect condition, but rather still somewhat of a mixture upon the Earth (not within the Kingdom itself).

It is interpreted that the King, Jesus, would sit and rule on His throne, physically and literally, in Jerusealem, governing the physical nation of Israel.  Yet, what does Jesus say?

He says that His New Covenant is one with the laws on our hearts.  He says not to lay up treasures on Earth, but in Heaven.  Further, the Kingdom itself is not of this realm, this world, but is unknowable to the unbeliever (John 3:3).

But, man was created to live in the heavens, while governing upon the Earth.  Man was designed to be under the headship of one, the Father and the Son and the Spirit, and to rule upon the Earth.

Today, this is called the church.  What we see is the feet upon the clay and stone, with a head reaching all the way up to the highest of heavens, beyond every title and name that can be given, truly seated with Christ right now.

This is He of whom it was written, the stone that the builders rejected has become the chief of the corner.  This is He of whom it is said, He who comes after me is preferred before me, because He was before me.  He Himself spoke, Before Abraham was, I AM.  He Himself invoked the holy name of God, as the Eternal, God made flesh, and dwelling among us.  He is He who is God, the creator and sustainer of the universe.   By His Word, the worlds were framed, and by the Word of His power, they hold together and consist.

Yet, like Adam was in the Garden before He fell, so too the church stands as a body upon the Earth, fully ruling here as it is in Heaven.

This is the nature of the church, for this is the nature of man, as God has designed.  He has built all things well, and His Word will never return void.

As man was incapable of living up to God’s requirements, God Himself alone passed through the sacrifices offered by Abraham, indicating that He alone would fulfill the entire covenant, with no act required of the man.  Abraham believed, and it was credit to him as righteousness.  And today, we too have access by faith to the Grace in which we stand.  It is His righteous blood that has qualified us to be partakers in the saints in light, and it is His right arm that did it.

The perfect heart is the singular, simple heart.  It has no conditions, it has no prejudices.  It is a single heart, without folds, without blemishes, that sees clearly, and loves purely.

Man has, in his ways, gone after many devices, yet the Lord bids us come, without shame and without pretense.  He sees and judges the motives of the heart.

As man looks on the outward appearance, God sees the heart, and calls us to as well.  God has been well pleased to call us little children, and to require that with a child-like heart we come to and abide in Him.

What other type of heart could pour out its fullness on the one it loves, and receive purely?  What other heart could simply fall at His feet when the pressures and demands of life seem to great, and rely only on Him for their every need.

Yet, in this hour and in every generation, this is the only kind of minister, the one fallen at His feet.

This is the only position of this “great” creation called man that is worthy in the eyes of God, the yielded child.

In the words of a man of this generation who has raised more dead than anyone else I know, your greatest ability is to fall at His feet and say, “I love you, Jesus”, “I need you, Jesus”.  Nothing else matters.

All of life flows from the vine, and all of life consists only of Him.

When all of life is gone and over, and we see only Him, we are clear.

Like pure flowing water, crystal clear, we have from within our bellies that ever flowing stream from the throne of grace.

It is at this place, where nothing else matters, whether we live we live to the Lord, and whether we die we die to the Lord, that we are useful to heaven, and not much before.

What good does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?  Jesus asked this after Peter confronted Him and spoke of Earthly things, rather than Heveanly.

The moment a man loses His focus, and looks again to the things of the Earth, and hearkens to the voice of another, rather than God, the same decay begins to take hold.  There may be grace, and there may be mercy.  God is a soverign discipliner of His children.  But, left unstopped, it could be the ruin.

The place of saftey, the only place of rest, is in His presence, beneath the shadow of His wings.

The moment ministry, or books, or profits begin to have any influence over one’s life, they become a chain grievous to be borne.  One may be able to make a profit and to earn a good reputation with the anointing and the favor in one’s life brought by right living and faithful stewardship, but in order to make real headway for the Kingdom, God has, in the words of Rees Howells, always demanded sacrifice, and not service.

Even after the fall, it was Abel’s offering of blood, and not Cain’s of the fruit and produce of the ground, that yielded a blessing from the Lord.

So too, today, whenever we leave the main, plain, path of death to self and the slow walk up the long hill to the cross of Calvary, we have departed from His steps.  We have gone in the way of Cain, and we have become thieves of the anointing.

Everything gained on that road is flesh, and will burn–there is no lasting significance to any of it.  For a man to make real progress towards heaven, he must lose everything gained through the self life, lose his own life, and find his way to the place where all life truly begins, at the foot of the cross, and the bloody, brazen altar, and begin again, from square one, on the way to the making of something Eternal, which is only done in God.

For, all flesh is as grass, and man’s glory is as the grass of the field.  They are here today and tomorrow thrown in the fire.  It is only the Word of God that is Eternal, and it is only as it is read, believed, and obeyed, that any lasting fruit remains.

Even today, God, Jesus Christ, said, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the leper, and cast out demons.  Today, we do everything but this with our programs, our policies and politics, and our doctrines, yet for all their worldly might, we cannot do these basic commands.  What else remains is of Him, yet everything that we can bring to Him is simply a heart, defiled, and acts as filthy rags.  He creates the treasure within us, and He seals us with His precious and perfect Holy Spirit.

Psalm 137

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a strange land?
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.
If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.
Remember, O LORD, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it, even to the foundation thereof.
O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us.
Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

Should we sing the songs of Zion in a foreign land, and titillate their souls for profit?  God forbid!  For even the law itself was unfit to be  mentioned to the unbeliever.

Happy shall be he, that taketh and dasheth the littlest work of Babylon upon the rocks.  May all that do so prosper.  For, there is no work of rightness there.

For everything of this Earth, for it to be sanctified, must pass through the fire.  How must one pervert justice to say that God can use Babylon for His good?  For what good?!  He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and there is none in all the Earth that is righteous.  He is not in need of finances or for us to “help Him out”.  All He needs is a simple, child-like believing heart that He can get to hear His voice and obey it, no matter the cost, the stress, or the pain.

This is the whole entirety of the Kingdom.  And, as we are faithful in little, he will give us more and more, until we are great in His eyes.

Any other path is always vain.  For, whoever would follow Him, must take up their cross daily, and follow Him.

Solomon the King declared in his despondency that there was nothing new under the sun.  Yet, Jesus had a greater wisdom.  Since the day of Pentecost, King Solomon was forever proved inferior.  For, as the Spirit of God was poured out on all flesh, today, on the Earth, is something New!  We are new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17).  There was finally, for sure, something new under the sun.

We, too, are new vessels, with new spirits and new hearts.

We are created to see.  The man who cannot see is called blind.  We are created to see the Kingdom.  The man who cannot see the Kingdom is called dead, while he liveth.

It is only those that can see that can be a guide to those who cannot.  If the blind leads the blind, they both fall in the ditch.

Those who wish to be guides, can they see the things of God, or are they babes in Christ?

If we do not know where we are going, chances are, we will get somewhere, so long as we walk far enough.  This is an idiom, but by its nature it is nonsense and lacks substance.

If we do not understand who were are and what we were created to be, we may spend our entire existence upon this Earth never even searching.  But, as we see the life of Jesus manifested upon the Earth, we see in Him the picture of what every born again believer is called to be.  He is the perfect measure of a man of faith and the Spirit, and His is the life we should all try to live.

This is how we know were are His disciples, that we love one another.  The man who does not love does not know God, nor is the truth in him.  But, as He loved us, so we love each other.

No man could live the fullness of the law, and so all were condemned under the law with its subsequent curses.  But, in Christ, we are given a new hope, a new walk, and a new living Spirit.

No one loves a real preacher any more than can your coach be your best friend.  It should be that we all, with perfect unity and harmony agree together in one accord on all things, but the flesh wars with the Spirit and the Spirit with the flesh.

It is no wonder that Jesus said that whoever receives a righteous man or a prophet as what they truly are will receive their reward along with them.  To preach the truth, unswervingly, uncompromisingly, and perfectly requires absolutely a man to become absolutely nothing.  As Paul put it, He resolved to know this nothing, other than Christ and Him crucified.

The preacher is a man already died.  He has been crucified with Christ, and it no longer him that lives but Christ who lives within Him, through faith, through the cross.

When we can say with the scriptures that the world is crucified to me and the world is it, that is, it is a bloody mangled corpse when I look at it and all it can offer me, then, we have free reign to speak the truth boldly as we ought.  We ought not fear men’s faces, nor be afraid, for as they prayed that God would look upon the threats, the place where they were assembled together was shaken, and they spoke the Word boldly.

But, as the body is built up, we give honor to those who have paid the price to purify themselves further, to present themselves as fit workers for His Kingdom.  Those who have risked their lives for the Gospel, according to Paul, are worthy of double honor.

This, then, is the purpose of life.  To glorify God and to keep His commands.  And, His commands are simply this, to love the brethren, those who are being saved.

It of course includes evangelism and church life, but so far as a dogma is made out of a preference, you have only recreated a dead system, a dead work, to your own hurt.

But, God has designated a new day, called today, that the dead come out of their graves.

And, even as Lazarus was four days in the tomb, and as Jesus lay three days in the belly of the Earth, God is calling, “Come Forth!”, and saints are coming alive.

For, it is a new day for the church.  Not of New Doctrine, but perhaps new, fresh light upon the old.

The main, plain Gospel is and always has been the only way to salvation unto the Father, and he who deviates from or finds need to modify it needessly complicates things, and some shipwreck their own faith in the doing.

This is a generation greatly taught.  The gifts have not ceased, nor has God stopped in His talking to His body.  But, the main, obvious truths of Scripture as plain as day, for those who would read them.

As one modern leader in the prophetic movement today said, to find new truths in scripture is not to find revolutionary new ideas, but to find the same ideas elsewhere presented in scripture in more places.  Also, in addition to this, it is sometimes simply to remove the layer of dust that has seemingly accumulated upon all too familiar passages, and, in the glow of fresh revelation from Heaven, to see afresh, and deeper, and richer, that which we thought we already knew, but has become alive and quickened in our spirits.

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword.

Hebrews 4:12

Man will be judged for His every word, according to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

He will stand as a judge over the Earth, over the angels, and over each other (Matthew 12:42).

It is his calling and his nature, and though the fallen man can never do this to the perfection of heaven, the man filled with the Spirit, doing only as he sees the Father doing, does.

With each step, the Earth is subdued, and the Word of God is fulfilled in our hearing.  Until all is brought into submission to Christ, and the last enemy to be defeated is death.

Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For he hath put all things under his feet. But when he saith all things are put under him, it is manifest that he is excepted, which did put all things under him. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.

1 Corinthians 15:24-28