Shabbat shalom chaverimn and welcome back to this second part on the abandonment of the self to Yahweh in Christ. Since the feedback I've been getting indicates that a real need is being met here and since Yahweh has been taking me deeper into this subject this last week I am definitely going to pursue this further. Given the disasterous political decisions being made in the nations currently we need ongoing assurance of Yahweh's presence in each moment more and more.

I've also been listening to some of the stories of former Christians who have since become shamans and are now following New Age practices because of near-death and psychedelic (hallucinogenic) experiences, and been made even more accutely aware not only of the enormous deceptions flooding the world currently that are turning people away from basically incomplete (usually lawless, existentialist, gnostic-type) versions of the Besorah (Gospel), but I am also seeing with greater clarity the dimensions and quality of the final end-time Good Cop/Bad Cop plan of the Enemy that is becoming increasingly visible. One of these was a former Congregationalist minister who had experimented with drugs.

This arrangement, as I've said a number of times, is essentially New Age/Shamanistic vs. Raw Satanic 'choice' that people are being chanelled into making to the exclusion of the Gospel, and what this means in terms of what's happening in this the penultimate judgment. You see, there are always three choices, not just two:

• 1. The Truth;
• 2. Something that looks like the Truth (which is a spiritual honey trap), Pseudo-Truth; and
• 3. That which is blatantly Evil (raw devil-worship involving pedophilia and child-trafficking, rape, torture, ritualistic murder, etc.).

Those who have consciously chosen raw evil have already doomed themselves for the most part. The main battle now is between the honey-trap Pseudo-Truth and the Whole Truth both of which usually appeal to love, forgiveness, and freeing oneself from blatant evil. What distinguishes the two are the resurrection of Yah'shua (Jesus) and the Torah of Yahweh because the New Agey/Shamanistic 'honey-trap pseudo-truth' claims physicality is illusion (maya) and inferior, and claims that every kind of formal, communal religion with written Scripture containing absolute truth propositions (dogma) is false. And whilst all religions claim to possess records containing absolute written truth (Judaism, Christianity, Israel, Hinduism, etc.) only the Bible has demonstrated itself to be internally consistent in spite of centuries of attack by critics and antagonists.

Though it waxes eloquent on the need to abandon ego (self), in reality New Ageism is an exaltation of the ego (self) by subtle means because it makes claim to a Nirvanic 'union' with an impersonal 'infinite' that turns out to be a deified collection of spiritually prideful selves which is itself 'God' to the exclusion of any personal Elohim (God) like Yahweh. And though it gladly wages war on raw satanism as we do, and therefore appeals to people who basically desire righteousness and goodness, it itself is satanism in disguise - well hidden satanism, to be sure - which is all about collective self-exaltation (the 'Force' in Star Wars language), but being a counterfeit of the real Echadic Union of the saved in Christ makes this collection of human souls to look very 'spiritual', 'deific' and 'holy' to the exclusion of the true Creator.

The other day a brother asked me if I still stood by my claim that what is happening in current world events isn't the literal fulfilling of all the ent-time events described in the Book of Revelation (which I promise you we will be returning to at some point, Yah willing) instead of (as I've been preaching all these years) the last foreshadowing of the same, and I told him that I stood by what I have been saying. Another believer, who is an acquaintance, following the Talmusic reckoning system and calender, is conveinced the mathematics absolutely establishes that the gatherong of the tribes in the land of Israel will absolutely be in the next 2-4 years. Christians and Messianics are staking everying on various human theological sches, calculations. And whilst there are all sorts of signs around us, it is hard to be absolutely sure whether they correlate to the final events of the Book of Revelation or whether, because they are penultimate events, they look deceptively alike.

This is a reasion we need accurate prophecy issues by true and consistently reliable nevi'im (prophets) who in our view are still being purified for their rôle at the very end. Moreover, I don't believe the endtime Elijah prophets make one or two prophecies and then just disappear - theirs is a continuous narrative over a lifetime or a large part of their lifetime. There are still far too many undiscerned and unjudged false prophets about who continue prophesying without ever being rebuked by true nevi'im (prophets). So I believe, once more, that well-meaning believers have been deceived into thinking that the final and exclusive form of the Enemy's deception is the kind of raw satanism that we now see gushing out of the pit as the works of the dark élites manifest more and more: pedophilia, genocide through gene 'therapies', chemical and sound poisoning of food, nature and the airwaves, etc..

Yes, the Adversary wants us all enslaved, miserable, dying, and finally dead, in the crudest sense possible, but that's not his main goal or purpose - all of this is just a 'softening-up' operation. His main objective is to get us to voluntarily and worship him using his own name and not just the name of a counterfeit 'Jesus' (for example), not by compulsion, but by our own choice out of a genuine, albeit misguided, sense of love. Involuntary, compelled worship is not nearly as satisfying as willing worship. It is this kind of free-will worship that true believers give to Yahweh through Messiah that he covets more than anything else and of which he is supremely jealous. He wants to be adored which is why he tried to bribe Yah'shua (Jesus) with global power during His 40 day trial in the Judean wilderness (Mt.4:1-12). Having failed to extract that, he is now trying the same on human beings - our love in exchange for power. The '1 per cent' have already bought into that deception lock, stock and barrel.

Raw satanism is by force - by compulsion - through fear, blackmail and terror, and though this satiates one side of the Devil's depraved nature, the other wants to be loved freely by human beings embracing the false light he has created that looks like the real thing. Those many (though not all) New Agers, shamans, and basically 'decent' people and others who don't want to surrender their 'independence' to the biblical Christ, pursue the pantheistic illusion that they are somehow 'God' in a collective sense. For now they are our allies in the fight against the overtly wicked élites. They aren't, however, aware of this final diabolical plan nor do they know that the Enemy will sacrifice them in the same way Hitler sacrificed his rowdy, more public, Brown Shirted SA in the murderous 'Night of the Long Knives' to replace them with his more disciplined Black Shirted SS acting behind the scenes. Nor should we deceive ourselves into thinking we are 'on the same side' with these New Agers. As with the West's alliance with the murderous Stalinist Bolsheviks in the Second World War, our alliance is only based on the ened to see a common enemy destroyed and is temporary.

By idolatrously following the 'christ within' (in reality, themselves), these New Agers are to be used by the devil for a final act of self-deception and sin against Yahweh. Though, like I said, they are our circumstantial allies right now in the fight against crass wickedness, they will in the end turn on us too. Many, I pray, will see the Light of Truth and respond to the message of salvation, by renouncing the false default 'christ within' and embracing Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ), the true Saviour of the world, who has to be invited in, and repent of their idolatry. In their ranks there are yet many who deep down want to be saved and are being saved now. And, yes, what is happening now is prophesied in the part of the Book of Revelation but it isn't all that's spoken of there, nor are they the main concluding events yet to come.

My task last week, and now, and possibly further if there is a need for it, is to help equip you in such a way that you can see through the Good Cop/Bad Cop deception in operation today and become witnesses leading New Agers to truth through your own experience of Elohim (God) that comes from your moment-for-moment obedience to His leading. That must first of all come with a humble appraisal of one's self, to realise that you are not a mini-god or godlet by simple 'realisation' of who you already supposedly are. Such an unsubmitted mindset is fraught with danger. Submission or abandonment to Elohim (God) consists in being faithful to the most menial tasks Yahweh sets us along with those which we might construe as being something 'extra special' making the resurrected Messiah the object of our contemplation and adoration. The same submission is required of kings, presidents, princes, clergymen, soldiers, reporters, tradesmen, labourers - in short, everyone, for none of whom is greater than the other. There are no New Age-type 'star children', 'initiates' or 'spiritual masters' ('ascended' or otherwise) - there is nothing like that in Elohim's (God's) ranks. There are no flesh-and-bones gods and goddesses because there aren't any gods and goddesses at all. Yah'shua (Jesus) alone was, and is, the 'Elohim-' or 'God-Man', the only begotten Son of the Father (Jn.1:14,18; 3:16,18; Heb.11:17; 1 Jn.4:9).

Last week I pointed out how easy, relatively-speaking, it is to become sanctified, qadosh, set-apart or holy. You have only to fulfil the simple duties of the messianic faith and our state of life, to accept with submission the crosses that go with those duties, and to submit with emunah (faith) and love to the designs of Providence in everything that is constantly being presented for you to do and endure, without searching for anything ourselves. The pursuit of Elohim (God) is simultaneously the pursuit of everything we could ever possibly need. This is the spirituality that sanctified the patriarchs and nevi'im (prophets) of old. This is the spirituality of all the æons (ages) and for all states of life. There is no nobler, more wonderful or easier way of doing this. It does not require that we do impossible spiritual acrobatics or jump through fiery hoops. This requirement is simply that we make use of what Yahweh, the supreme director of souls, gives to us to do or be in our lives.

We can choose not to believe this if we so choose in the same way flat-earthers deny the existence of gravity but that does not change reality. Holiness depends on following Yahweh's will and not leaning on our intellectual knowledge of the Besorah (Gospel) or the Torah (Law, Teaching, Doctrine). This will at first appall the intellectually-minded and particularly those messianics who, like the Talmudists and other gnostics they often unknowingly (but frequently and deliberately) imitate, exalt, prioretise, focus on, and use Torah as a cudgel with which to cower Christians into submission whose main object is grace - undeserved loving-kindness. The spiritual life does not consist of what they call in Yiddish, attending a schul. Neither is it mental suitcase crammed with Seminary knowledge that so often is contaminated by the philsophies and traditions of men.

A good cop/bad cop situation has also arisen between orthodox Christians and Messianics in which the seminary is pitted against the schul, or vice versa. That's one good cop/bad cop or 'false opposite' arrangement. Another is the intellectually-based Conservative Christian or Messianic verses the feeling-based, postmodernist Liberal Christian...and vice versa. Satan is an expert at pitting us against one another by dividing up truth into portions and then mixing each part with lies that are then pitted against one another. Just the act of dividing up the threefold nature of spiritual reality is destructive - and by that I mean:

• 1. Salvation by Faith in thev resurrected Christ;
• 2. Yahweh's Law of Torah; and
• 3. Compassionate Humanism/Wisdom.

Remove any one of these circles or spheres and you leave a vacuum that has to be filled by something else and the result is an incomplete Christian or Messianic. Of course, there are counterfeits to all of the three circles themselves. There is:

• 1. The false route to salvation involving trusting in a false god or in no god at all (which amounts to trusting in self);
• 2. False Torah consisting of man-made commandments (e.g. the so-called 'oral' Torah) mixed in with the the mitzvot (commandments) of Yahweh in various combinations; and 3. Inhuman, anti-human, selfish attitudes and lifestyles that turn us into worse than wild animals, and I am sure you can think of many of these.

It's plain for increasing numbers of people that the satanic élites are entirely devoid of human compassion. They don't care about our well-being, only their own. For these dehumanised people genocide is but a way to 'solve' problems getting in the way of their utopia over which they mean to have total, exclusive control. For Hitler, it was the explusion or murder of 'undesirable' or 'inferior' races like the Jews and gypsies. For Stalin, the extermination of undesirable classes of society - the bourgoisie, the aristocrats, the religious, rival factions, and indeed anyone who disagreeed with them, sometimes even those who did agree with them, killing for the shere pleasure of killing. For the 'religion of peace', the extermination of undesirable religions (Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism) and non-religion (Atheism). Communism, for instance, which makes out that it loves the idea of 'humanity' enough to brutally kill humans in droves, demonstrates by its actions that it actually hates individual people, much like Satan himself. There are so many skewed systems out there that lack both the essential elements of life and the necessary balances between them.

Now we, in our intellectual age, commonly think and talk about such things. The nature of our complex world forces us to do so if we are to reach every kind of person with the Besorah (Gospel). But the gound of our well-being does not require us to do this for ourselves. The ancients knew far less than we do and lived simpler lives. And whilst we should never wish to unlearn any truth, we cannot live and thrive by our intellects alone, or even predominantly. The ancients like Abraham, Moses, the nevi'im (prophets), and the shlichim (apostles) lived a much simpler life than we do, proving that you don't have to have a state education, go to university, or a seminary, in order to know Elohim (God). Holiness, that blessed state of spiritual liberty and harmony, depends on following Yahweh's will and not on our intellectual knlowledge of the faith which, though a bonus (especially for evangelists) is not a matter of life-and-death. We are cured of our infirmities by taking the appropriate, proven, and therefore trusted medicine, not by understanding its chemical composition. We quench our thirst by drinking water, not by reading about how it satisfies us in novels, movies or academic literature.

You see, someone who has an intellectual knowledge of the faith but does not concern himself with Yahweh's will in his life is like a doctor who has fallen ill. Indeed, for some it would be better not to have such knowledge and instead simply enjoy the sound spiritual health that comes from doing Elohim's (God's) will. That's how a healthy, mentally and emotionally well-balanced child lives after all, is it not? I didn't know any biochemistry or theology and very little astronomy when I was a child, yet I was enthralled by nature and the heavens, and delighted in them. I didn't know anything about the origins of Christmas as a little boy but something within me knew something wasn't right. I didn't know anything about Elohim (God) or theology when I was small but I was repulsed by the dry, loveless Anglicanism that just happened to prevail in the boarding school I was involuntarily incarcerated in that made me an enemy if 'church' and caused me to drift into atheism. But there were good Christians around whom I looked up to, and was attracted to, and tried to imitate, like my Scottish Presbyterian uncle who was my guardian for many years while my parents lived abroad, and taught me self-discipline, hard work, generosity, decency and love by his own example.

Everyone here knows I am not against the pursuit of knowledge. I'm, after all, an educator by profession, and believe it is important to teach everyone how to think for themselves. So much for my being anti-knowledge. We live in an information age and cannot survive without it unless you choose to go off-the-grid in the wilderness but even then you will still need to know quite a bit unless you want to live on the edge of existence as the ancients had to. The more you know, the less likely your are to be fooled by the world because your eyes will be opened, and if we are to be witnesses in the world, we need to know how our corner of the world thinks and lives to some extent. Someone coming from an Amish background is going to struggle as a missionary in a large modern city...which is perhaps why they don't evangelise but rather breed converts. And not just them. But knowledge is not how you get to know Elohim (God) any more than it is how a child gets to know its parents or trusted relatives and friends.

However, knowledge can, and often does, get in the way of our seach for holiness, shalom (peace) and simcha (joy), not that you should ever use that as an excuse to remain igniorant. Complex theories and needless speculation can prevent us from simply accepting what Yahweh discloses from one moment to the next. There are times - the more so the older I get - when I just close my books altogether, turn off my PC, and cease researching because it's time to just listen to the still small voice of the Ruach (Spirit). Yahweh said to David, "Be still, and know that I am Elohim (God)" (Ps.46:10, NKJV; cp. Ps.4:4). When Yah'shua (Jesus) commanded the stormy Sea of Galilee, "Peace, be still" (Mk.4:29, NKJV), it was principally to calm the fear of His talmidim (disciples) and teach them to trust Him in the storms of life. It was also a lesson on how to bring the emotions into alignment with the spirit (OB 268). As this Penultimate Judgment has got underway, I have needed far less intellectual stimulation and far more intimate communion. The whirrling wheels of the machinery of the mind can sometimes just make distracting and unwanted background noise when what is needed is silence to hear Elohim (God).

Yah'shua (Jesus) once said that "it is unthinkable for a navi (prophet) to meet his death anywhere but in Jerusalem" (Lk.13:33b, NEB) and explained that of the three metaphorical and literal days in which He had lived His ministerial life, two were devoted to casting out demons and performing healing and the third was for finishing His course or reaching his goal (v.32), which was to die and atone for us on the cross and then be resurrected as the firstfruits or bikkurim for all men and women who chose to follow Him into everlasting life (1 Cor.15:20,23; Rev.14:4; cp. Jas.1:18). There is much to be busy about in doing good, like casting our demons and healing the sick, for example, but a third of our time - and that's quite a bit - involves devoting time to dying to self-will in prayer so that we can commune with Elohim (God) and live out lives of holiness in peace with others. Once the flesh has been crucified, life is so much easier, so much more pleasant, so much more fulfilling and relaxing. It is unthinkable that we should suffer unnecessarily by being outside of Yah'shua's (Jesus') grace.

It is Yahweh's design - His good pleasure, His will - that we walk in freedom in Him by being free of sin. In the accomplishment of this 'third-day' goal, there is of necessity a combination of divine action and grace (undeserved loving-kindness), a mixture of being pro-active and passive, as I talked about last week, because they are one and the same thing, two sides of the same coin. Religious people have disasterously tried to separate the two. Perfection, to which we have been called, and as Yahweh Himself is perfect (Mt.5:48), is nothing more or less than faithful cooperation with the work of Yahweh, and it begins, grows, and is finally consummated in us secretly and without us even being aware of it. A righteous person is not conscious of his or her own righteousness, let alone talks about it to others, because that is the path of humility we have been called to walk on. That is for others to observe and comment on if they so wish. Anything else is boastful and prideful, and pride always preceeds a fall.

Because a righteous person is unconscious of this ongoing sanctification process happening within him, he is not inclined to over-theologise about it unless he can draw from a deep well of experience that will always point to the action of Elohim (God) on himself, and never claim to be the instrument of it himself. A theoretical knowledge of sanctification is in any case dry, and in my strongly held view, uninspiring and is probably a reason why so many theologies about it are false, like the claim by many Protestants that sanctification is instantaneous in anything by a legal sense.

Our legal relationship with Elohim (God) is one thing but who or what we are inside is wholly something else. We need the legal declaration of being declared 'righteous' so that we can fearlessly and confidently approach the Father through emunah (faith) in the Son. Going around believing that character or spiritual state is 'instantly sanctified' upon believing is wishful thinking at best, and harmful at worst. Character development takes place in slow increments usually just as maturation does. Someone who says he is trusting in Christ but is full of bitterness or fear inside is not yet sanctified in the literal sense, and this will be no better evidenced by the fact that he is usually not chossing to walk in the will of Yahweh moment-by-moment, a destructive effect of the false 'Once Saved, Always Saved' doctrine of Calvinism.

A child knows better because a child neither understands, nor is fooled by, the nonsense theologies of unregenerated men. Behaviour says all. As they say in computing, 'What You See Is What You Get' or 'WYSIWYG' because computers don't do illogical or self-contradictory theology. We need to be no-noncense, open WYSIWYG talmidim (disciples).

Understanding is a wonderful and desirable thing but it's important to realise that you don't need to have it in order to be qadosh or holy. Indeed, sometimes understanding can get in the way of holiness precisely because holiness is first and foremost by faith or trusting, not knowledge. There will always be limits to our understanding of Yahweh but not in trusting the One who died for us and has freely shed His great, great love on us through His blood, without cost because we know His promises are trustworthy.

As Western society, which has rejected its Christian foundations, becomes more and more chaotic, we are going to find it increasingly difficult to understand the madness that has now gripped it. As people realise that a secular society needs a spiritual underpinning, some will turn to Yah'shua (Jesus) but the rest will turn to an alternative - any alternative - to bring peace and stability once again but without the requirement by Yah'shua (Jesus) for self-abandonment or surrender. Unfortunately, they will choose Satan's counterfit way just because they are bloody-minded enough not to want Yahweh's. They will make the disasterous Barabbas Choice and that is how we will move increasingly into a New Age paradigm. Then, a few decades down the road, after 3½ years of the open prison of a false Paradise followed by 3½ years of total, murderous hell-on-earth, Yah'shua (Jesus) will return to end the whole demonic charade and inaugurates His own Millennial Kingdom.

As we are faithful to Yahweh's will, we will know how to live and how to live abundantly. May the grace and peace of our master Yah'shua the Messiah (Jesus Christ) be with us all. Until next time, then. Amen.

Acknowledgements

[1] Jean-Pierre de Caussade, Abandonment to Divine Providence (Christian Classics, Notre Dame, Indiana: 2021)