LloydEllefson
DO NOT FEARBy Lloyd Ellefson
When Christ comes, things change! "All things become new!" All things have to become new because we were all in death; we all died in Adam! The fact is that death is the punishment for sin; it's not hell! When Adam died, ALL died! Unless we believe that, we will think that we are able to motivate and energize our own mind and our own sense of being to do God's will. This information comes through our natural senses from the things we have read and have been taught. It does not give us a true understanding of God nor of ourselves, and causes us to believe the delusions of the natural mind.
Jesus Christ was separated from all earthly rule. After His thirty-year period of walking in the law, He walked in the Spirit. This was a new dimension for Him and it brought Him a new realization of God. He did that for us, because it was His mission to come into our realm of thinking and to bring us into His consciousness of God as Father. God is the Father of spirits - not of flesh. The Word was made in the likeness of sinful flesh. Before Jesus was crucified, He said (in effect), "It is necessary that I go away, for then you can no longer see Me in an earthly body; for when I am raised up from the earth, that is, from an earthly sense of being, I will draw all men to Me." This forms the basis for our being taken in and generated into the kingdom of God, so that God's rule can come to us!
The rule of this world has brought disease, poverty, evil, hatred and wars. Jesus Christ did not come to correct that world; He came to take us out of that system of rule - out of our idea of self-preservation and delusion, that He might bring us into the truth. Since Jesus is the truth, there is no other truth at all; everything else is only a testimony of the truth! Only Christ is the truth! If we are to come into truth we have to come into Christ. He always comes as the truth! There are many different interpretations of the Bible. To think that we have the truth just because we have the Bible, is deception. The very fact that there are so many different interpretations of the Bible and misrepresentations of Christ, shows the necessity of coming into the truth. Natural understanding is in the realm of death or the flesh; it is not based on spiritual reality.
It is very difficult for most people to give up their false identity. Many wonder why God made them in the first place, if their end is death. Our false identity did not come from God; it emerged from the lie, from satan (the adversary, the devil or dragon) in opposition to God. The old sense of being that we call the ME or the I, no longer belongs to us. Paul said, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me." This I does not live anymore, because Jesus Christ has brought us a new identity! The old identity had to be done away with for it was a false identity. It did not come from God; its conceptions of God were from the adversary of God. So it is to our advantage to be separated from our I, our ME!
Yet people don't recognize that. The delusion they are in causes them to desire the identity that thinks there is something good in them; they think God is going to save that identity. This ME that we think we are, is not in God's plan of redemption. His plan is that our old identity must be put to death!
The whole world lies in the wicked one and therefore needs a new rule. The rule of this world is rooted in living by the law, in the consciousness of sin and in the wrong idea of God. The law causes us to live in a sense of morality, of behavior patterns, of good or evil works; it gives us either a good or bad conscience. This is all in the death realm. When Christ came we got a new rule in which there are no fears, no concerns about tomorrow nor regrets about yesterday. This new rule can only be obtained by Jesus taking us out of the death realm and bringing us into the place where we DO NOT FEAR!
Excerpts from SHARING THE MISSION OF THE SON
THE TWO KINGDOMSby Lloyd Ellefson
Since natural humanity is in the death realm, we need to be made alive. Christ is a quickening Spirit, and this is the kingdom that is expressed in Jesus Christ. He comes and awakens or quickens us. He gives us a mind which receives spiritual realities; His coming ushers out the natural "realities" - just as light ushers out darkness. Jesus obeyed the law, and did not cause any disturbance nor problems during the first 30 years of His life. He was not persecuted at that time because He was not identifying with the truth that is in the spiritual kingdom of God. But immediately after the anointing, when He became an expression of the Messiah, rejection and persecution came His way.
Truth has the power to replace the error in Adam. Truth cannot be attained by studying and dissecting the scriptures, nor by studying the Greek, and by fasting and praying, etc. The presence of the Christ in us brings us truth. This is the anointing which brings us the spiritual realization beyond the letter, the flesh, and the temporal - the things that are seen through the natural eye. So truth has the power to replace the bondage of false beliefs!
Truth brings about change! Once the rule of our life is changed from the mortal concepts of the natural mind to the immortal concepts of the spiritual mind which was in Christ Jesus, we will function in the mind of Christ. We have been living in a mortal man who has no immortality. If Adam would have had immortality he would not have died. Our old humanity was crucified together with Christ. In other words, Adam ended when Christ came.
How could Adam end when Christ came? Adam could not refer to our fleshly body - for how could it be crucified with Christ? It refers to our sense of being; the mistaken identity of who God is and who we are, was crucified with Christ. We had a false premise of life; we thought it was external. We thought God was not united with us, that we were separated from Him and operating outside of the union we have with the mind of God or the mind of Christ. This is death! The truth is that we have come into a union of life in Christ in a spiritual conception and realization.
It is not hard for us to believe that the physical body is mortal, because we are surrounded by death; the daily newspapers proclaim it in their obituaries. Some people thought they had received a revelation that the flesh is going to exist forever - but they died too. The mind has to mind something. The carnal natural mind minds the flesh; the mind of Christ minds the Spirit!
Everything has to be perceived by the spirit. Humanity thinks it is originating knowledge, but actually knowledge is just being presented to it. Everything was made by God in the beginning. Medical discoveries are also in the realm of mortality; they all have a beginning and end. Only those things which come through the Spirit are immortal. The mind that is only in union with creation, but not with the Creator, is dead. Jesus Christ is a quickening Spirit; when He comes He quickens us, He makes us alive to spiritual realization. This makes a big difference!
The image of God that is in Christ Jesus comes to us by the Holy Spirit who enlightens us. He brings us the realization that we are free from sin because God is not imputing sins to us. The message that comes to us in the Spirit is that Christ Jesus represents the one true God. Christ did not exhibit any of the wrath and fighting that is found in the Old Testament where God was working through the natural man. His manifestation could only come in the way the carnal mind could perceive and interpret it. People were dying because they were operating in death; they were worshiping their own idea of God. Jesus pinpointed this by saying that they did not know God. God's Word was not in them: if they knew God, they would know Jesus.
Whom are we worshiping? Paul said that previously we had been serving gods that were not God. Are we also worshiping gods who are not God? The consciousness of the Israelites did not contain a true concept of God! Jesus Christ proved that their whole concept of God was wrong! They thought He was a God of wrath, one who was interested in having them fight for their beliefs, and for the possession of lands and things on this earth. They thought they were better than the Gentiles who were dubbed DOGS by them. These ideas were contrary to the nature and teachings of Christ for He is meek and lowly of heart.
When Jesus Christ becomes our Lord, He gives us a whole new concept of God, self, and immortality. A death has taken place in our consciousness and we have been born anew. No longer are we in the Adamic man. We may be babes in our new life and may not fully understand what has taken place, yet we have the foundation for growing and living, and for discerning and rejecting wrong concepts. Our carnal thinking, our sin consciousness and our natural sense of being are constantly being rejected and replaced by a new realm of truth. The old is ushered out by the new understanding of God that is brought to us by the Spirit of truth. This is the way redemption works.
The kingdoms of this world are being made subject to Christ. He HAS overcome the world and He has already turned this over to the Father. This did not involve a big battle. Jesus said, "Everything I do is of the Father. I do nothing of Myself. It is the Father in Me who does the works." Every victory that was accomplished in Jesus Christ was immediately turned over to the Father; Christ did not receive any honor and glory for Himself.
I believe that John 16 gives us the best description of the coming of the Christ - the second coming if you will - in the coming of the Holy Spirit. That is the true second coming of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Those who are honest with themselves and God will see that a lot of things people cling to in their natural conceptions, are enemies to the truth that is in Jesus Christ! This stubborness of the ego, the "I", the self that wants to save its sense of being has to go! The self even wants to be enhanced by God that it may appear pleasing to God and to others. Self-rule causes us to think that our carnal nature is to be redeemed; it keeps us from understanding that we are being redeemed out of what we were. The natural conceptions of the carnal mind actually defy the Christ; they stop us from receiving the lordship of Christ's rule in the kingdom of God.
It is sadly evident that the main emphasis of most of religious Christianity is the same as the religions of the world. Its emphasis is upon making itself better and getting something from God. It wants to be redeemed without being changed, and wants to keep its many erroneous ideas or concepts of God. This does not bring us into a union with God; it separates humanity from God. Separation is death! People do not understand that death to that whole self is necessary before the new life, the new Christ, the new man, the new concept of God can emerge!
The kingdom of God is actually an invisible realm. Nobody has ever seen the Christ (who is the anointing or Messiah). When you are anointed, you are an anointed one. We notice that the word ANOINTED is an adjective - not a noun. It describes someone. When you are anointed, the anointing brings you into a union with the Messiah! As this anointing works in you, you actually participate in the Christ of God, for you are one with Him; He is your life! He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him!