FLESH AND BLOOD

FLESH AND BLOOD

                “Jesus therefore said to them, “Truly, truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the son of Man and drink His blood you have no life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life; and I will raise him up on the last day. For My flesh is true food and My blood is true drink. He who eats My flesh and drinks MY blood abides in Me and I in him. As the Father sent Me and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me. This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate and died, he who eats this bread shall live forever.” John 6:53-58

                “As a result of this many of His disciples withdrew and were not walking with Him anymore.”  John 6:66. (Isn’t it interesting that this text that talks about those who turn away from Jesus contains the number 666? Just saying.

                If you just breezed through the above quote, thinking that you already know all about it, or that I have quoted it before, please read it again carefully and pray that the Holy Spirit will give you a fresh revelation of what this means. Your life depends on it.

                First of all, whenever Yeshua started a sentence with a “Truly, truly” or Verily, verily, He is telling you that this is vital information that you absolutely must know and must believe.  Three chapters earlier, Jesus had told Nicodemus: “Truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” John 3:3

                This being the case then, we should make darn sure that we have the right definition of what it means to be born again. Am I telling you the truth?

                Today the definition of being born again is so watered down that there are countless numbers of Christians who think they are born again  when they are not born again and they will be among those who fall away from the faith as Paul describes it in 2 Thess. 2:3, 4.

                Jesus’ statement in John 3:3 about being born again is intimately related to what He said in John 6: 53-58. It is about eating all of His flesh and drinking all of His blood. It means dying completely to the world and living totally by His power. There is no way around this. There are no shortcuts. The new Birth involves a complete death and burial, to one life and a complete rebirth into a new life, lived only by the resurrection power of Christ. It is in fact the most radical process that can be experienced on this planet.

                Many of the Jews that had been following Yeshua up to that point turned away and left Him and dare I say that this is the exact point upon which God’s Remnant people will be separated from those who walk away?

                There are entire Christian denominations that don’t even believe in the New Birth, or who avoid the subject, or who teach a new birth that falls far short of that which is necessary to produce eternal life in those who listen.

                There are countless millions of Christians who have been baptized with the baptism of John in water for repentance, but who deny completely the baptism of Jesus which is a baptism with the Holy Spirit and with fire. The ministry of Billy Graham was right for its time and millions came to the Lord through his ministry. But those millions, for the most part became the nominal church because they were taught the baptism of John and not the baptism of Jesus with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

                But we have entered a new era of time and if you can’t see it, then you should be very much concerned. We have entered the time of the great harvest and the great shaking and from here on out it is going to become increasingly intense until we are faced with the antichrist and the mark of the beast and most Christians that call themselves Christians today will turn away from the flesh and the blood of Yeshua and they will embrace the global religion of the Beast and they will even turn and persecute those who are God’s remnant people. Jesus said so in Mt. 24:10

                Already we are seeing Christian denominations that are turning their backs on fundamental Christianity. They are denying the born again experience and even as they turn away from these foundational stones of Christianity, they are finding strength in numbers by joining the ecumenical movement and or by making a pilgrimage to Rome to kiss the ring of the Pope. (If you see your religion doing that you must run from it as fast as you can.)

                Listen to me: The Jews of Jesus day should have recognized what Yeshua was saying about eating His flesh and drinking His blood. After all He was talking about Passover. All He was saying was that He was the Lamb that they must eat in order to escape from Egypt/Babylon/Rome. It was His blood that would cause the destroying angel to pass over them.

                Yesterday I made some shocking statements that may even cause some to be offended because they worship a god of their own design… a god they have made in their own image and according to their own desires. But if we make a God that we can like and worship without dying, then we are already worshipping idols and don’t even know it. Satan has offered us the kingdoms of this world by some other way than through the cross.

                Let me say here that those who have a true Spirit filled relationship with Jesus will not be offended. Yeshua is indeed the center of their lives.

                Like I said, the Jews should have recognized what Jesus was saying, because He was simply reiterating the principles put forth in physical form in the Spring Feasts of Israel.

                Today Christianity, those who still believe, like to talk about and sing about the blood of the Lamb, but they don’t like to spend much time talking about the flesh of the Lamb and the fact that the Jews were to eat the entire lamb, head and inner parts along with bitter herbs and they were to do so with their loins girded for flight.

                Nor do we like to talk about what baptism really means, for when they fled from Egypt God marched them through the Red Sea and then He closed the water in again drowning Pharaoh’s army and blocked all access back to Egypt.

                Yes we sing about it…” No turning back, no turning back” but do we really know what we are singing?  In true baptism, we not only die, but we are buried  and that which comes up out of the watery grave is a new creature that has no life other than the life of Christ and the power of His Holy Spirit and fire by which they must live from now on. We have been bought with a price. We no longer belong to ourselves… so why is it that we go on living as though we are in charge? Why do we set all of our goals toward worldly success while seeking the Kingdom as a distant second, or third or fourth?

                Like I said earlier, we have now entered the time of the great harvest. In this time the pressure is going to keep building and building until either we find and enter into Yeshua’s definition for the New Birth and enter fully into the life of Christ, or we fall away. We are entering into an intense period of time when we must seek the Lord with our whole heart and cry out for Him to make us into something that we have never quite been before. The key that opens the door is Galatians 2:20, but then if we understand it correctly, it is the same thing that Jesus was saying to Nicodemus and what He was saying to His disciples when He told them that they must eat His flesh and drink His blood.

                This is covenant talk and it is a covenant based upon the flesh and blood of Jesus and we cannot truly enter into that covenant unless we eat all of His flesh along with bitter herbs and we drink all of His blood. This means that we can’t eat the flesh of a Jesus whom we have modified to fit our own desires. We cannot remake a Jesus into someone who no longer requires us to eat all of Him in order to be saved.

                Galatians 2: 20,21 says: “I have been crucified with Christ;  and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and delivered Himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.”

                What is this saying really? First of all it is telling us that we can learn all of the feast days and follow them oh so closely and all we will have at the end of the day is a dead religion. The reality of the feast days is that we must eat the flesh of Jesus… all of it… the parts we like and the parts we don’t like… and we must come to the point where we have no other life than the life of Jesus empowering us… and with no other purpose than to live out His life by His power.

                Of the remnant in the last days it is said: “And they overcame him (The antichrist) by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony and they did not love their life even to death.” The blood here is the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony is the Word of God, the flesh of Jesus Christ and nothing would divert them from their walk with the Lord, not even death itself. This is the bitter herbs that we must eat with His flesh. In other words, we live in enemy territory and we must be ready and willing at any point to sacrifice our lives rather than to deny His name.

                Today we have not only developed a weak and watered down Gospel, but we have built in an escape clause in which we will be evacuated out of here before we see trouble or face persecution. And we have developed this doctrine in the face of what Jesus said in Mt. 24:9, 10:

                “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and will kill you and you will be hated by all nations on account of My name. And at that time many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another. “ It is on account of His name that people are being persecuted and killed, so this is not talking about the Jews, but about Christian believers.

                Does this not sound like 2 Thess. 2:3, 4? And not only that, but Jesus said in verse 8 that this is only the beginning of the birth pangs. But it is he that endures to the end that shall be saved. V. 13. In other words, you can’t fall away and expect to be saved. You must learn to live solely by the blood and body of Christ and in that alone will you be eternally secure whether you live or you die.

                This once saved always saved doctrine won’t fly in that day, for you will either be faithful unto death, or you will fall away and it is that which will determine your fate in the end.

                Every day I speak with Christians who glibly say… “But we won’t be here for that anyway so why worry about it?

                Did we ever stop to ask ourselves why the entire Bible is devoted to the subject of the day of the Lord? Did we ever wonder why God describes those who will be faithful and those who will not? Did we ever wonder why there is so much detail given about the issues and trends of the last days and how the final years will involve a global government of the Beast and how we must not take the Mark?

                Some dispensationalists even go so far as to teach that the four Gospels and the words of Jesus are not for Christians because they were spoken before the cross and therefore they apply only to the Jews. How can they even think such a thing? Was the New Covenant not formed around eating His flesh and drinking His blood? Is that not the same age old message given to Israel in the Passover?

                And what about Pentecost? The Law was given on the first Pentecost just 50 days after they left Egypt and then the next major Pentecostal event happened 50 days after Jesus rose from the dead and at that Pentecost the Law was written on our hearts and we were baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire, just as John the Baptist prophesied… and yet large parts of the church avoid the baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire that was to empower us for the final harvest. And the Law was not done away. It was written on our hearts by the Holy Spirit so that it is now fulfilled in those who walk not according to the flesh but according to the spirit.

                There is a significant prophetic reason why God has raised up the Messianic Jews in our day. We need a refresher course on what the actual new Birth is. We need the DNA of our Gospel corrected, for it must be the Gospel of the Kingdom that we must preach before the end can come. It is a Gospel attended by the supernatural power of Christ to do His work in the world just as He did it. It is a Gospel of transformation in to the image of Christ and nothing less than that.

                But we will have totally missed the point if we make a religion out of the physical Feast Days, but do not actually come out of Egypt completely dead to self and the world and completely alive with the life of Christ as our only source. WE CANNOT AFFORD TO MISS THE MESSAGE THIS TIME. THE Jews had the feast days, but they turned away from the truth of the feast days even as He stood in their midst.

                Today we love to smear the blood on the doorposts, but we don’t like to eat the entire Lamb along with bitter herbs. We have a truncated Gospel and many will fall away when the full truth is proclaimed in the Gospel of the Kingdom. The full Gospel contains not only the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and how we truly enter into those things, but it also includes Yeshua’s return as King of kings and Lord of lords to judge the earth and to make a separation between wheat and tares, between grain and its chaff and how that He will thoroughly purge His threshing floor.

                Every manmade thing must be shaken out of us so that all that remains is the life of Christ in us. Everything else must be swept away, for there will be nothing in heaven if human construct. Only eternal things will enter into His eternal kingdom… and we must be about the business of allowing the Lord to weed out of our lives everything that is not eternal … and we need to do it now. This is why Galatians 2:20 is so vitally important right now.

                The prophet Sadhu Selvarage says that those who have not been fully separated unto God will not make it through the next few years. Many of God’s faithful saints will be laid to rest before the testing comes, either because of age and frailty or those who are too young to understand the issues. But we are being pressed into that funnel of the last and final events right now and God is forming an army… a remnant people who will stand and having done all to stand and they will overcome by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony and as Jesus showed us, the way to defeat Satan is to love not our lives even to the death. And if we have already died with Christ, we will not cling to that which is temporary, but will live and or die for that which is eternal. Selah.