Of Coccoons, Silent Planets, and Deeper Glory

It is the glory of G-d to conceal a matter,

but the honor of kings is to search it out

Proverbs 25:2 NKJV, KJV, with slight modifications

It is the glory of G-d to conceal tings

But the glory of kings is to search things out.

Proverbs 25:2 ESV, NRSV, NIV with some slight paraphrasing

Now, glory and honor appear to be related in a few different ways, not just by the above texts.

In digressions, I am compelled to say, as a writer, one of the sheer pleasures I enjoy in composing an original work is the capacity to decide whether I want to tease a matter out through subtlety and understatment, or to sit like G-d at his computer in the Far Side comic and hit the SMITE button.

I am not consistently bald-faced or understated, but rather I do some movement and dancing between softness and satire-sarcasm. Humor and severity, gentleness and brazenness, perfectly-researched material, and impatient fully emotional diatribes. I tend to roll with those sorts of things.

What follows is an attempt to remain subtle while having a blaze (hikers’ terminology for a swatch of brightly-colored material planted in a conspicuous place so as to mark a trail) present on a matter. I am very VERY forthcoming about my frequent anticonservative bias, as well as my thorough disagreements with what happens in the lowest eschelons of government (the federal level).

And I have no doubts that what I may say might be destabilizing to some, on the whole, but it is indeed different in content from previous pieces, because I am looking at some other aspects of not just the coronavirus debacle, but maybe some way in which G-d is taking us on a guided tour of what is perhaps one of His greater purposes in this narrative of the current season.

So, while I wrestle to work out the particulars of what I wish to say, understand that I do not side with a left of a right, and I am liable to get called by lefts and rights all sorts of heinous names.

But this will likely be an important period piece.

My Precedent For Writing In This Way Sometimes…

When I was a Freshman in college, I was handed the book, “Οut Of The Silent Planet” by Jack Lewis. It was confusing and disorienting at first, mainly because at that time I was not walking as a Mercy, but as a disembodied Exhorter with a shared spirit mixed in at the time. I did not know how to be me because I was so busy being what everyone else wanted me to be, including what would have been a best friend at the time.

So, the first 92% of that book made zero sense, and I am not used to Jack’s style of framing narratives. Mind you, I was still a political science major at the time, and so I was not yet the writing giant I am today *ahem*. Thinking and feeling giant, always. Writing giant, not yet. And my head was elsewhere due to the Lewinsky Scandal. In those days, news consumption was a usual thing.

And then the last 10 or 15 pages came. And so all of these seeming loose threads of Lewis came crashing together like a flawlessly-timed series of hammer blows, and the planet that was silent at once began to speak, David, my friend, taking this all for granted.

And the Lion began to sing something into existence, in me. Understanding bent mindsets in the King’s fashion and whatnot.

Lewis, when he writes well (and not all of Lewis’ writings are excellent: The Last Battle comes to mind), stripe by stripe, and slat by slat, paints the reader into a corner through his work, and then forces you to admit the truth of what he is saying. I find his essay “The Weight Of Glory”, demonstrates this style the most readily. Because he knows something. Only the way a Amethyst can.

The Current Situation

I have written and dealt with the nonsense of the current plague in all of its facets. Nonsense, because of the manipulation, the fear, and the overall garbage that passes for research. When the very credible possiblity exists that the death tolls directly related to the plague are being monkeyed with, and when people are being told to call this death one way when another factor or underlying cause was more clearly the cause of death, then I begin this process of dumping out of suspicion.

And no, I do not trust a whole lot of the alphabet soup of government organizations for counsel on how to respond. Too much manipulation present there.

What I will say is….deeper than all of this…as I am no longer insterested in dealing with even cogent arguments about the current plague because of the level of gaslighting that is present and ongoing, I will ask, “what else may really going on…”

Which brings us to this morning.

Of Bible Studies With Gentle Prophets

I have a precious friend who lives in the southern half of Penn’s Woods (Love calling the sylvan region by that moniker). Every Saturday morning for the last 16ish months, we have gathered via Skype and with Accordance and hearts bent toward seeking Father, we have been engaged in discussion about the Scriptures as it pertains to the five levels of holiness.

Today, however, due to my obsession with the Shiloh prophecy towards the Tribe of Judah, my friend, Adam, and I went down a rabbit trail, possibly led by the elbow of the Holy Spirit.

And somehow we got onto Adam’s study of metamorphosis, and the four references of that word in the New Testament and Lance Wallnau’s discussion of butterflies and caterpillars and imaginal cells. And how the design imprints in the cells themselves move and realign and transform everything into what we know of as the butterfly.

2 Corinthians 3:17-18 is one of those metamorphosis passages, the passage that tells that we with unveiled faces are beholding the L-rd and being transformed into His image from one glory to another glory.

Romans 12:1-2 has the other Pauline reference to this word. Be transformed….Paul commands us to be transformed. But what is the illustration for what that transformation looks like?

Then we stumbled onto the other two references to that word not found in the letters of Paul.

The Transfiguration account in Matthew and Mark.

Here is Matthew’s reference, 17:2, in Greek with my very rough translation below it.

καὶ μετεμορφώθη ἔμπροσθεν αὐτῶν, καὶ ἔλαμψεν τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ ὡς ὁ ἥλιος, τὰ δὲ ἱμάτια αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο λευκὰ ὡς τὸ φῶς.

And he was transformed before them, and his face shone just as the sun, and his garments became white like light.

Matthew 17:2 Nestle-Aland 27 Novum Testamentum Gracae/ Translation mine

That was a very wooden translation, but I think you get the point there.

We are being asked and being exhorted to be transformed, and that can only happen when we allow the Father transfigure us, to change our faces, and the spiritual garments, and maybe the physical garments we wear, if it be His prerogative.

And instead of wearing the garments of our wounding, trauma, offence, bitterness, or betrayal, we choose to take on the garments of His humilty and grace and justice and his light and holiness.

I do not know about you, but if the L-rd transfigured me, then I would be fulfilling the exhortation of Paul, and a bevy of the old STRUCTURES (all you Megan Caldecourt fans) that served in the old season, would be dissolved accordingly, so that the new superstructure could be formed in me and on the outside of me, in accordance with the L-rd’s design for the new season. I would have been made conformable to his death (Philippians 3:10) and conformed to his image in fullness (Romans 8:29).

No more worm bastard Calvinist bullshit theology. Now a blue morpho. Transformed. Glory. To. Glory.

Perhaps in this season, he wants to dissolve our holding onto some of what we think are freedoms, so that He can stick us into a dark place of a chrysalis, and be transformed, so that our authority that we have earned through that productive pain, can result in the execution of something that will undermine both the crap the institutional fivefold ministry has built, the institutional government, and the institutional church have built.

Perhaps we were made to be in the secret place and we have been warring because we perceive our freedoms are being subtracted, when there has been something deeper G-d has been wanting to work into us.

I will say this, those of us that have been out of the institutional church for the last 20 years, well, the institutional church has been broken so that the rest of the church can join us on the outside, and come out from under the control of the garbage apostolic and prophetic with their claims to oversight and authority that are just striaght unbibilcal heresy.

Our job is to roll and dissolve so we can be transfigured.

And then as we search a matter out, we search more deeply, to our honor as the kings in authority, and to move from glory to glory. In order to do that, however, we have to be willing to let go what was in the former season, and that might include bad POV’s and bad associations, and it might mean we make sacrifices that we would not have thought of making in previous seasons.

The question is, do you want his fuller’s soap to touch you and your garments, and risk dissolution of the old so He can given you the new body and garments that He has been wanting to, or not?

And, more importantly, what does He want to give you. I am only handing out a few concepts. My take for these sorts of things is the same as Russian Epic of Cinderella: If shoe fits, wear it. If no fit, do not wear.

A Blessing

DISCLAIMER: This blessing is more a model than anything. It is not a “repeat after me” blessing or prayer or a covenant within a contract. You can read once or twice or eight times, amend as you need to, keep and toss out as you need to, and go back after you have pondered. Read a piece, ruminate on that piece, come back, write it out and edit as you want. It’s just given more as a jumping off point. My desire is not that you follow me. My desire is that you follow Him. No pressure. No manipulation. If you want to read this blessing to others, go right on ahead. If not, no hard feelings. With that, feel free to read on.

Beloved, I call your spirit to attention and invite him or her to the front.

Spirit, listen with anticipation to the word of G-d for you for today.

But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap.

Malachi 3:2

I will speak to that first phrase. Spirit, I think, given we are not in the Day of Judgment and WRATH of the L-rd, that you can now stand in His presence. You are no worm, spirit.

Spirit, you were made to stand before Him right now, and to ask for a personal visitation of my King, who is a King of intense love. Truly, he will purge from you everything that He wants, but He will not go beyond what you can handle in this season. There is a progressive transformation that awaits, a transformation for the season. Each season awaits its own form and intensity of transformation.

Spirit, you were made for standing in the L-rd’s presence, because He sent you here to work at a set of tasks and assignments for which you were exquisitely crafted and made. You were not made to fail, and I do not think you will fail. In fact, I am convicted that you will succeed marvelously. And it takes glory to do the work of the King of Glory, the L-rd Strong, the L-rd Mighty, the L-rd Whose Might Shews Forth In Battle.

Spirit, I bless you and your core to stand in the midst of that purgation, as the dross is removed, and as the soap is applied so that your garments may reflect the yieldedness of King Yeshua, your Husband. He has already endured the punishment necessary for you to stand in the Presence of the Great King (Hebrews 10, Isaiah 53:1-5 etc.).

Spirit, there is more and deeper glory. I would encourage you not to get cautght up in everything that is ancillary to the King’s agenda, so that you can fulfill the mandate on you. I bless you with life, and I bless you with love.

I bless your heart with the safety of the King’s presence, who knows what needs to be removed, and will not separate any parts that are designed to protect you. He will not seperate your enforcers and your littles and your system, but He will take them all together and minister life as He brings cleansing to them and love to them. He will gently wait. He might even administer the cleansing in the context of a bath that feels safe. For some, as with a bubble bath, for others as with epsom salts. Yet for others a massaging hot shower. This is not a one-size-fits-all sausage factory, lovely spirit.

I do not know what that looks like for you, spirit, but I bless you to see the Lion of Judah when you need connection with that fierceness of Him, and I bless you to see the Lamb Who Was Slain From the Foundation of the Cosmos, when you need to see that. The gentle and the protective warrior by turns.

Spirit, be free to seek the L-rd at your own pace as quickly or as slowly as you need to.

I bless you with that twofold fullness in the name of Yeshua ha-Mashiach.