Hey John,

I had an experience with God last night when I got into bed.  Our Father spoke to me and said, “Jesus didn’t sacrifice Himself.”  Immediately, my spiritual ears perked up!  And all of these thoughts started coming to me. 

Jesus was God’s Lamb!  When John the Baptist saw Jesus walking along the Jordan River, he said “Behold the Lamb of God”!  He didn’t say “Behold the Lamb of Jesus” or “Behold the Lamb of Christ”! He was God’s Lamb!  Abraham prophesied of that on Mt Moriah when he said that “God will provide Himself a Lamb.”

The Father was the One that nailed Jesus to that cross just as surely as He blotted out the handwriting of ordinances when He nailed them to the cross!  God nailed Jesus to that cross using a Roman soldier with a hammer and nails, just as surely as David slew Uriah the Hittite with the sword of the Ammonites!

Jesus was the sacrifice, but He didn’t sacrifice Himself.  God made the sacrifice. Jesus was as a Lamb, led to the slaughter, yet He opened not His mouth!  But because He was faithful unto death, even the death of the cross, God has given Him a name above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord! 

Oh, so many wonderful thoughts were coming to me lying there in my bed!  And I know that you know all these things.  But it was so good to me that I was going to tell it at the fireside this morning, but the Spirit wasn’t in it, so I kept it to myself until I felt an unction from the Spirit to tell it.

I felt that unction when I listened and read the Conclusion (IK4 Conclusion PDF) of the Iron Kingdom book 4 that y’all read around the fire yesterday. 

At the top of page 1, at the beginning of the second sentence, you wrote “Paul’s gospel proclaimed that Christ’s sacrifice was intended…”  When I read that, it felt like you were saying that Christ was the One making the sacrifice, even though I am confident that it wasn’t your intention to do so.  And, except for my experience last night, I probably would not have noticed it.  But I did have that experience last night, and I did notice it.  So I felt that I should write to you and ask if perhaps you could change that sentence to “Paul’s gospel proclaimed that the sacrifice of Christ was intended….?

Thank you for all of the labor that you do for us!

Billy H.

==========

Hi Billy,

Thank you for writing.  That is an interesting point.  I believe that to God belongs the eventual credit for everything the Son accomplished.  After all, Jesus did say once that “of myself, I can do nothing.”

But there is another side of the issue that we cannot ignore.  That is, even though it is the grace of God in anyone that enables that person to accomplish God’s will in his life, God gives that person the credit for doing it and rewards him accordingly.  The Bible says that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself,” which goes along with your testimony from last night.  But it also says these things concerning what Jesus did after he ascended back to the Father in heaven:

Ephesians 5

2. Live in love, as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us as an offering and a sacrifice to God for a fragrant aroma.

Hebrews 7

26. It was fitting that we should have such a High Priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens,
27. who does not need, as those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for their own sins and then for those of the people, for this he did once for all when he offered up himself.

Hebrews 9

24. Christ did not enter into holy places made by hands, the figures of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us,
25. not to offer himself over and over again, as the high priest entered into the sanctuary year after year with the blood of others,
26. for then, he would have had to suffer many times from the foundation of the world.  But now, once for all, at the close of the ages, he has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

Hebrews 10

10. We are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all.
11. Moreover, every priest stands daily, ministering and offering the same sacrifices, time after time, which can never take away sins,
12. but he, having offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, sat down at the right hand of God

Jesus was himself the sacrifice because he was, as you pointed out, God’s Lamb.  And as you know, according to the law that God gave to Israel, the owner of the sacrificial animal was the one who had to kill it.  That means that God was the one who had to kill His Lamb.

At the same time, it would be wrong to ignore the fact that Jesus performed the sacrifice for sin which God demanded.  The very reason that God made Jesus our high priest was to offer an eternal sacrifice for our sin—himself.  And he did.

It was all God’s plan, and it was only by God’s power and wisdom that Jesus was able to accomplish his mission.  The Father gets the glory for it all, of course.  Jesus would certainly say so.  Even so, if by God’s grace we would “rightly divide” the information provided for us in Scripture, we must conclude that Jesus offered himself to God as a sacrifice for sin.  God certainly gave him credit for doing so,  and we cannot be wrong to agree with God.

Thank you for the thought-provoking testimony.

Pastor John

========== 

Wow! Thank you John! That was some response! I agree with everything that you said! I got blessed last night while I was receiving all of those thoughts. And I was blessed again today when I wrote them out. And now I have been blessed again after reading your response. Feeling so blessed for being able to know and understand these things that are higher than I am.

Thank you for your help!

Billy H.

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Good morning John,

Ben and I read the first half of the edited section in your Iron Kingdom book on “Paul’s Gospel” last night, and it was really good.  I love everything you added.  The Shakespearean opening was perfect!  You got Billy H’s wonderful new thought in there about God giving the law and God taking it away.  One of my favorite lines from Sunday was still there about Moses’ law being robbed of its glory by the surpassing glory of the Son of God who was exalted above the heavens themselves.  I especially love that verse you included from Galatians 5:5 when Paul says, “For we await the hope of righteousness by faith in the SPIRIT!“ (Not by faith in ceremonies).  I remember that was the verse that triggered my testimony the night we were putting the Montanaus book (Going to Jesus.com – Montanus: Prophet to an Apostate Body of Christ) mailing together.

I love that all of Paul’s faith was in the Spirit alone!  I stopped reading last night and told Ben, “THAT’S the basket where you want to put all your eggs.  That is, the Spirit of God basket!” Putting your eggs anywhere else dishonors the sacrifice of Christ!!  I saw my own relatives who have walked away and are now worshipping in ceremonies without any regard for the Spirit of God that He so mercifully gave them, when I read from Paul, “You are estranged from Christ…you have fallen from grace” (Gal 5:4).

And I love that you included that amazing prophecy from Jeremiah about God making a new covenant with us.  The prophecy that God would write His law on our hearts and He would be our God and we would be his people is now our reality!  Praise God!  I love having his law written on my heart and being one of His people!!  To be one of His people is everything!

After we finished reading, I wanted to find something I transcribed several years ago from Sis Edna testifying in a meeting in her farmhouse about her love of the doctrine!  It’s so good!  Here it is:

“There used to be a scripture; they’d teach me it was [talking about] tobacco, and it said, “Taste not, handle not, with the using all are to perish.”  That’s [talking about] the doctrine and commandments of men.  Well, I’m glad I found God’s doctrine!  D-O-C-T-R-I-N-E.  Not doctors.  I thank the Lord for the doctrine of God, and because I love it, and I don’t care who knows it.  And I want you to know that I been a-standing for it for 50 years!  The doctrine of Christ is gonna live on!  It never dies!  This is something that doesn’t die.  The doctrine is just as fresh today as the day when I got it!  It ain’t gone dead, and it never will die!  Praise God!  I’m so glad of it, I don’t know what to do!  This thing is living now!  I’m so glad of it!  My Father is rich! They’re fussin over their inheritance down here, well I’ll tell you one thing!  My father is rich!  It’s all in his hands.”

Sis Edna testified this in a meeting at least fifty years ago, and I still feel it today because the doctrine she loved so much is still just as fresh today as it was when she said it!  The reason I love this section in the Iron Kingdom book on “Paul’s Gospel” so much is because it’s not some boring history about Paul.   It’s alive!  I told Ben I know exactly why Jesus put Sister Edna and me together in a dream.  We have the same testimony, and that one paragraph about her love for the doctrine is part of our testimony!!  I felt my spirit stirring while reading her testimony out loud to Ben the same way I felt it stirring while reading this section on Paul’s Gospel!  I love it!  Thank you for writing it!

My Father is rich!!

Lee Ann

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Pastor John

I think the Conclusion* of the IK4 book that you have written is one of the greatest things I’ve ever read/heard.  It took me some place that I couldn’t leave.  It really was a love letter at the end, as someone said, inviting souls to be loved and to live, versus the alternative to life that is being offered by the institution of Christianity.

At the end of the second page, you said the way out of that abomination was “obedience.” 

I LOVE that because it puts so many things in order.  It means that we are not at war with Christianity; it is not our enemy, nor is its destruction the goal of your work.  As you have said for years, “They can have Christianity; I just want God’s people out.”

Your work shines a light on where Jesus really is—in a life lived in Spirit and in truth—outside of that institution.

Your work sounds a trumpet and shines a light for God’s spirit-filled children to follow, if they will just obey his voice and come out.  That is our job.  To be what Jesus is and to shine with His spiritual light in a world that will ridicule and despise us, so God’s children can see the way to Him.  And he is not a “place,” but a Life.

If all the heavenly things that God teaches us does nothing else, it makes us burn brighter if we’ll become it, and it makes us more visible to his wandering children.  Wow.  So, all these things given from God aren’t just for us, even if they are only given to us.  Because if we consume them, we become brighter lights in this dark world.  Brighter lights for God’s children everywhere to see.  What a beautiful responsibility!

I’ve got to go back to work.

Jerry

* IK4 Conclusion PDF

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Hey,

A friend put this post (below) on Facebook.  It is an interesting possibility, and I feel like it is a much better translation possibility for Ex. 12:23, 27 especially.  The blood on the doors is a figure of the Spirit, so the idea of covenant and presence of God in this post has merit.

In Isaiah 31:5, the idea of hovering seems much better than “pass over her“, as we have it.

Like birds flying, so will Jehovah of Hosts defend Jerusalem; He will defend and deliver her. He will pass over her and spare her.

This article https://www.thetorah.com/article/how-pesach-became-passover was interesting as background to the history of the translation of the word.

Damien

“Most people think Passover means God skipped over the houses with blood on the doorposts. But the Hebrew word “pesach” doesn’t mean “to pass by”—it means to hover over or protect.

God didn’t avoid those homes…

He entered into covenant with them.

He hovered over them like a shield.

He stood guard as death swept through Egypt.

Passover isn’t about avoidance—it’s about presence.

A God who draws near to protect those marked by His covenant.”

===========

Hi Damien.

I have to wonder if this is an idea that comes from people wanting to help clean up God’s reputation, to keep Him from being a killer.  If He is only hovering over and protecting the houses of the Israelites, then what is He protecting them from?  A rogue angel.  In Ex. 12:12, He said this:

 וְעָבַרְתִּ֣י בְאֶֽרֶץ־מִצְרַיִם֮ בַּלַּ֣יְלָה הַזֶּה֒

He is the one (in the angel of death) who is passing through Egypt killing people.  It seems to me that God is not hovering over the Israelites protecting them, but is letting them live as He passes through the land killing the firstborn.

Exodus 22:23 says that God will “pass across/through” Egypt and will “skip over” the Israelites.  I don’t see the need to make that “hover over” them.  I don’t see a problem with “pass over” there.

All this seems suspect to me of a new-age type defense of God’s character.  That’s my take on it, anyway.

jdc.

PS

What would we do with “killing the Passover” as in Ex. 12:21; Dt. 16:2, 5–6, etc., “keeping the Passover” as in 2Chron. 35:1, or “eating the Passover” as in 2Chron. 30:18?

============

Yes, I think you have it right. Thanks.

djc

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Pastor John,

Oh my!  Ben and I watched the YouTube video, “Real Life in the Spirit”, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG2Lj3A01R8)

together last night, and the Spirit fell on us and we were both speaking in tongues and asking Jesus for that “higher calling“ that he wants us to have!!  It was an invitation from Jesus there at the end when you quoted Paul saying,

“I press forward to the high calling,” and then you asked us,  “The high calling!  Why not?? Why not, if it’s real?!!  Why not kick off the chains and run to Jesus and receive what he’s been begging you to have all this long time??  Why not??  It’s yours!  It belongs to you!  If you can answer ‘why not?’ you know what to repent of!  You know what to change.  What to run away from.  You know what to avoid!  What do you have that’s better?  What do you have that you want more?  What is that thing you’re hiding in your heart?  Why not have liberty?  Why not have perfect peace with God?  Why not know Him?  Why not be free?  He knows it’s there.  He just wants to hear you say ‘why not?  What’s better than fellowship with the Father and the Son?  What’s better than living free and clean and happy in the holy Ghost. Why not?  It’s freely offered.  Jesus received it freely and he freely gives.  Why not? when it’s being poured out from heaven.  Will anybody drink this?  Anybody want this ice cream?  Why not love the truth?  What’s it gonna do for you?  Is the ritual better?  Is the ceremony sweeter than this?  Oh God!  How foolish the flesh is!  Oh, why not?  I’ve been praying for you that you receive this blessing because I think you deserve it.  You sweet people.  I’ve been talking to Jesus about you, and he wants to be more real to you than ever in your life!  I love you!”

Amen! Amen!!

And I love when you said this pearl, “I don’t need a ritual, I just need more of the power of God!”  Amen!!  That’s all we need! “

Whew!  I feel it all over again, just typing the words this morning!  It’s real and it’s available to us, if we want it!!  Why not?!!

Lee Ann 

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Hey Pastor John, 

I’ve had this saved in my inbox since it was sent.  Today was one of my days off, since I worked this past weekend, so I sat down and listened to it this morning. 

Over the past couple of months, I’ve wanted to study the basics.  I’ve grown up in the truth and believe it, and feel it’s right.  But, I really want to know it and understand it.  And, even if I’ve heard it before, there’s always something more to get from it; it never gets old. 

There’s a handful of us that have been reading on Sunday nights at Aunt Lee Ann’s, and I’ve loved it.  I am thankful I am here to be a part of it.  When it was my turn to pick something to read, I kept thinking about “the basics”.  I could hear you saying, “You never want to get far away from the basics.”  There was a Youtube video on “Some Basics of the Gospel” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVUpSemIIgk) and another video called “The Minimum Requirements of God”.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NP3JbHihGYo)   We read over some notes from that, and it was so good!

I looked over all the gospel tracts online and picked some I thought fit “the basics” … there were several, one of them being, “The Sacrifice of Christ”, and this video explains it perfectly.  I’m thankful for what I can understand and feel. 

One thing you said that touched me was, “Your Holy Ghost that is in your body goes through the veil, to the mercy seat of God”.  That’s big. 

Later on you said, “This is eternal life.  This is the point of the Bible.  This is the point of you getting the Holy Ghost.  Don’t take it and play games with it.  Eat it up; let it change you.  If you eat this up and love it, if you consume it, you are going to become a different human being.  It will change your soul.  It will reconfigure your thinking.  It will cause you to be conformed into the image of His Son.  Nothing on earth will do it.  You can even study the Bible from now until the day you die and not be changed one bit.  The Bible won’t do it; the Word of God does it.  The Word of God comes so we can understand the Bible, so we can understand God, understand Jesus, understand one another, understand life.  That’s what the Holy Ghost comes for, and without the Holy Ghost, no body understands any of that.  That’s the point, the point of the blood being shed.”

“When Jesus was on Earth, he couldn’t be a priest; God already had an earthly priesthood.  But He could be a Lamb.  He could be a sacrificial lamb.…  But, on the third day … all we had was the dead Lamb of God.  There had to be a priest to get it up into heaven; so, God made Jesus one. God raised Him from the dead and let him stay on earth a few weeks longer to make sure the disciples were going to be ready for what was coming.…  When the feet of Jesus left the Mount of Olives, when they got half an inch off the ground, He began functioning as a priest.  He was entering into /God’s heavenly  tabernacle for the atonement of the sins of the whole nation.”

I’m sure I’ve heard that before, but something about it this time hit me. 

I read the tract, “The Sacrifice of Christ”, after watching the video. It’s good. 

https://goingtojesus.com/gtj_tracts.html?tname=tract-079-sacrificeofchrist

It felt timely, watching this, with Easter coming up.  So many people this Sunday are going to go through rituals and ceremonies, and never know the real truth, never get the point.  It’s humbling to think about what I know; it makes me want a deeper understanding, more appreciation for it, and to walk worthy of it.  I am thankful that our Jesus is alive and can change us—can change our thinking … our souls! 

(It also made me think of Brother Darren’s song, “Beyond the Cross”.)*

I’ve also enjoyed reading through the different “Ones” in Ephesians.  So thank you for taking the time and teaching us. 

Anyway, wanted to share. 🙂 

See you soon,

Danielle 

* Beyond The Cross

Darren Prater

Beyond the cross is liberty, beyond the cross is life

Beyond the cross is peace and joy, beyond a world of strife

Beyond the cross is all the love I never thought I’d see

Beyond the cross are many things, but everything to me

Beyond the cross is healing, beyond the cross is power

Beyond the cross shines the light of God in your darkest hour

Beyond the cross is harmony that makes God’s children one

Beyond the cross is that precious gift the Father calls his Son

Chorus

Beyond the cross the Spirit dwells in temples not made of hands

But dwells inside where you can’t see

The Father has a baptism not after that of man

That’s what He wants for you and me

Beyond the cross is mercy, beyond the cross is fire

Beyond is understanding, that’s meant to take you higher

Beyond the cross is knowledge, wealth and wisdom too

Beyond the cross, salvation, that’s meant for me and you

Beyond the cross is faithfulness, beyond the cross is truth

Beyond the cross is a simple life, that we can have from youth

Beyond the cross is discipline, when He sees the need

Beyond the cross the Father’s love allowed His son to bleed

Chorus

Beyond the cross communion is true fellowship with God

Not wine and bread for the world to see

The Father has a sabbath not after that of man

But spiritual rest for you and me

Beyond the cross is sweet, sweet life, beyond the cross is love

Beyond the cross is purity that cometh from above

Beyond the cross is perfection for those who will believe

Beyond the cross are endless gifts for those who will receive

Chorus

Beyond the cross the Spirit dwells in temples not made of hands

But dwells inside where you can’t see

In the Spirit is true life that cannot be had with man

That’s what the Father wants for you and me

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Hello Pastor John,

I was reading Michelle’s recent letter in the Mailbag this morning, and one thing she wrote stood out to me.  She said, Satan “offers people an alternative, using the name of Jesus”. (https://pastorjohnshouse.com/mailbag/15539/the-iron-kingdom-chapter-5/)   The reason it stood out to me, is because a few days ago I had a brief correspondence with someone I had met at the Bible College more than 20 years ago, and I basically told him the same thing. 

First, I shared some thoughts on Facebook that the Spirit had impressed on my heart about why Christianity is “such a mess”.  I wrote, “The reason for that is that it’s not from God, and it never was.”  I wrote about how the only true religion is whatever comes from the holy Ghost, and encouraged those who had already received its baptism to get quiet and hear the Spirit call out to them, “Come out of her, my people.”

Not much later, this friend of mine sent me a private message, telling me that he agrees with my post, saying that “the American Christian church” is indeed a mess.  He said he had hardly attended any church meetings the last 10 years and that he had cut ties with the church that ran the Bible College we both had gone to.  He added, “The pastors have zero accountability to anyone, and often overstep boundaries, and preach to friends.”

For a day, or so, I didn’t respond to him, because I didn’t know what to.  (I had already had a correspondence with him about a year earlier, I already knew he was critical of the church, but he hadn’t accepted the truth from me back then.  He had also said something like, Babylon was the United States.)  But then I had a feeling that I did need to respond to his message, so I started typing, and this is what came out:

Hey, thanks for writing.  When I say “Christianity”, I mean the whole religious system (regardless of geographic location) that claims to be the religion Jesus has started by his death and resurrection.  I believe that Jesus died, resurrected, and went back to the Father (in Acts 1) to offer himself up as a sacrifice in heaven, so that all who repent and believe in him can receive the born again experience (Acts 2:1-4), and be saved in the end, if, after being born of the Spirit, they stay faithful to God.

Life in the Spirit (a life of holiness) is what Jesus gave his life for.  Christianity, on the other hand, offers an alternative path (another Jesus, another gospel, another spirit; see 2Cor. 11), that includes ceremonies, such as water baptism and communion services – as a substitute for the real baptism of the holy Ghost (the new birth experience) and real communion with God and His people, in the Spirit.

If you’re interested, here’s a really good gospel tract on the difference between the way of Christ and Christianity, that my pastor, John D. Clark wrote many years ago:

https://goingtojesus.com/gtj_tracts.html?tname=tract-059-christorxty

I haven’t heard back from my friend since then.

Zoli

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Hi Pastor John,

Last night, I re-watched the Sunday meeting and read over our copy of Chapter 5 of the Iron Kingdom book again.  Two things really stuck out to me.

1)  You said, “The apostates redefined the new birth from the baptism of the holy Ghost to believing in Jesus” (https://pastorjohnshouse.blogspot.com/).  When you said that, my heart and my head were saying yes, but when I got still last night I believe that went in deeper.  I had the thought, “That sounds just like Satan!  That is what he does, he offers people an alternative, using the name of Jesus”.  That thought brought a holy anger with it.

2)  After we read Colossian 2:14 and Billy testified about the “He” in that verse being the Father, I slowed down and reread those scriptures again.  The feeling I got reminded me of my feelings after doing the Old Testament class (https://www.goingtojesus.com/gtj_otcourse-1010.html).  One of the biggest things that changed in my heart was my feelings about God.  I learned that He is merciful, kind, long-suffering and very loving.  These are the feelings I was having reading last night.  The relationship between the Father and Son became so much sweeter in my heart.  God created the law to teach His people who He was.  He prepared a way for his Son to come to take the place of the law.  His Son agreed to come and die for us.  Then the Son ascended to his Father and asked his Father for us.  The Father said yes!  It was love, back and forth.  They were together in everything, and everything they did was for us.  It put a better understanding of how Jesus wants us to feel about each other and how he wants us to live with each other.  Being one, being together.  I fell asleep last night feeling the overwhelming sweetness of the Father and Son.

I’m so thankful for what we have been taught.  It gets better and better!

Thank you, Pastor John, for passing it all to us!  I want to eat it up!

Michelle

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