Why We Are Attacked
Where does the basic conflict lie in the disturbances expressed over my booklet, “It’s As Simple As This” (which is a 57 page booklet condensation of the message presented in Yes, I Am)? It has even been suggested that I am among those seducing Christianity by teaching self-deification.
The point lies here: even the best of the evangelical Bible and Victorious Life teachers believe in a self-functioning human nature, taken captive by Satan through the Fall. Thus, by our nature we express his sin nature and are “carnal, sold under sin.” Through the finished work of Calvary, Christ’s nature replaces Satan’s, but the emphasis remains upon us to operate and express one of these two natures. There has been the radical change from Satan to Christ, through Calvary, but the responsibility is still laid upon us to do the “abiding” in this exchange. And we are constantly pulled back into responding to that former sin-nature. Therefore, the main emphasis is upon our need to walk watchfully.
But this is a mistaken emphasis. We humans were never created to be self-responsible; we only have the ability of choice as to who will spontaneously express his deity nature by us. There never has been an independent, human, self-operating self. Our main human drive is simply to walk in the spontaneity of the deity nature possessing and operating us. When pulls come from the opposite, now outcast, deity nature, our one response is to recognize those pulls and not be deluded into falsely seeking to combat them as if we are self-operating. We simply affirm in our recognition that He of the New Nature now operates us. In that faith recognition, His nature, as us, swallows up the pulls of the opposite one.
So the issue between us and the great majority of evangelical Bible believers is in locating the area of responsibility. They put it on us in our humanity as if we are the arbiters, and as we “abide,” so we remain free or captives. We, on the other hand, lay the total emphasis on the god who indwells us and expresses his nature by us—the god of this world, or the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we maintain that this is the Bible emphasis, the experience of Jesus Himself in His dove baptism, and of Paul, and of all believers after Pentecost whose eyes have been opened to the total truth.
But it is usually named as dangerous “mysticism” by most evangelicals. Our emphasis is not on us as responsible to walk this way, but on Him who is now joined to us in place of that Satan-spirit, the One who walks in us and as us. Our main human activity is the faith recognition that He is so walking in us and as us (1 John 4:17). This is our “suspicious” freedom which is attacked and warned against by all precious Bible believers who see themselves as having an independent human self and so still put their emphasis on human responsibility instead of on Him.
The whole point is that HE who is living His life in us and as us spontaneously maintains us in a totally responsible walk of holiness and the Sermon of the Mount standards of living. We who see, believe, and experience this total Christ walk as us are totally bold in witnessing to it and expounding its Biblical basis. It seems at present that we must be prepared to be largely outcast from our believing brethren, though there will be increasing numbers of those who become see-ers and knowers by Spirit illumination, and thus equally, totally absorbed in sharing our total truth to the whole body of Christ to whom it belongs.
