Читать книгу Truth for Born-Again - Perse D. Imm - Страница 6

Religion was the most effective tool of the Serpent to estrange men from God; children from their legitimate Father. Religion presupposes negativity in human minds in every way, keeps the negativity as inseparable instinct and prevents human minds from any challenges from outside.

The fundamentals of religion were all shown at one scene in the Garden of Eden right after Adam's sinning in the beginning of human history. After Adam and Eve's eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil:

1) Their eyes were brightened with the knowledge of good and evil,

2) They started feeling shameful about their nakedness,

3) They started to be afraid of seeing the face of God,

4) They hid themselves behind a tree.

These are the typical characteristics of a sinner, a dead man, a man with spirit-corpse, every modern natural man. Adam didn't have any of these before he violated His words. These are the results of the success of the Serpent's strategy of estrangement between men and God. The aftermath of that event, which would be performed through the human history, might be seen as a spiritual warfare between God the authoritative Creator and Satan the Serpent, the usurper among human world. God must want to regain the benefits of the open relationship with His own children, Adam and Eve, anyhow doing His best. The Serpent should do his best to keep the plunder forever under his ownership.

Religion is an instinct that men are born with. It presupposes:

1) The sense of good and bad,

2) Sinfulness of man’s mind,

3) miss-qualification to face God,

4) Something to cover, not to be seen or met by God directly.

Having these as a foundation, men wanted to build up something upon it. As much as they build up upon it, the foundation got consolidated harder and harder, which was exactly what the Serpent, who now became the kind adviser, had wanted. The negativity of their mental attitude toward God the Father contributed for them to be led into the complete oblivion of God the Father generations after the time of Adam. It was beyond their imagination that they could ever meet, talk or reason with God anyhow, just as Adam did in the Garden of Eden before the fall. Truthfully speaking, in the sight of God, man’s religious efforts to build up something good were just the denying and resisting the words of God, the truth: “None was righteous, not even one in His sight.” Religion had succeeded in urging and enslaving man’s sinful minds to believe the possibility and responsibility to produce something good for themselves just as God had created something good out of nothing. Struggling with that wrong concept apart from the Truth, man’s minds were too busy, too exhausted or too frustrated to consider and accept such a thing as the free gift of God.

God wanted to re-establish the normal relationship with all men. He wanted to meet, talk, walk and work with them. It was quite normal of psychology as the Father toward His own creature children. He wanted regain them at any cost.

If God Himself hadn't initiated, there could have been no hope for recovering because men had been dead in their spirits and enslaved by the Serpent with their minds.

At the basis of religion is man’s dead spirits. The cemetery of dead spirits is where religion burgeons, mentally and physically. Dead spirits are to be revived by the power of God, but the Serpent doesn’t want any change. The Serpent wants to keep all the dead spirits safe from resurrection until the end of time.

Religion lives on the smell of carcasses of spirits, which is felt as ‘fear of death’ by human consciousness. It required the covering of the nakedness out of the sight of God: the apron woven with fig leaves. The man-made covering had been thrown away by Adam and Eve when God gave them leather clothes. Feeling comfortable now, Adam must have well known that God had killed an animal, which he had named, to clothe him. God’s clothing Adam and Eve with skin of animals can be interpreted into the basic concept of the Gospel; substitution for sinners. The animal which had been killed by God represents ‘the descendant of woman’, Messiah, the Lamb of God, Jesus, the Savior and Almighty God in human flesh. Jesus had been sacrificed for the sin of the world so that men should be free from the result of sin forever no matter what.

It must be true that God should seek every human being with the zeal of almightiness. To be found by God the Father, men must be freed from the iron-curtain of religion, which had been driven and maintained by the serpent around man’s mentality, just as Adam and Eve had to give up the aprons of fig leaves in order to be clothed with new clothes by Him. They couldn’t throw away the man-made aprons until the new permanent God-made leather clothes being presented free of charge.

Religion and resurrection are enemies against each other just like light and darkness. Just as when light comes; darkness disappears, when a dead spirit has got revived; religion is evaporated.

Religion itself is a problem that must be solved away by knowing the historical truth. It must not be used as a source of foundation to build anything up. It must be disappeared away by knowing the truth.

Men needed to know that they had to resist their religious instinct. They had to demolish the foundation of religion instead of developing it into a substantial system. But, in reality, it was impossible for them even to think about it, because Satan was grasping their neck so firmly that they cannot do anything really on their own. They worshiped the Serpent as God the Creator, their Father. There was no way for men to be free from the Serpentine bondage for themselves. Men could never catch up with the wisdom of the Serpent for themselves.

When a child being gone astray, it is quite natural that its parents should initiate the regaining of the lost child, not to speak when it had been kidnapped. It was what God did through the execution of the Lamb Jesus. By the death of Jesus, man’s sin was forgiven once for all. Now it is the time for men to know about it and return toward God the Father with thankfulness and joy of revival.

It was God who came toward Adam and conversed with him. When God called "where are you?", Adam responded successfully out of the miserable, shameful situation. He couldn't resist His concern of perfect love. The attraction of His perfect love was more powerful than his inner religious instinct. The stinking dead corpse in the depth of Adam’s mind couldn’t hold him down from God’s calling because Adam knew so well that the voice of His calling should imply nothing but the revival of the dead, the salvation.

There's no room for love in religion. The truthful understanding of His divine love will melt away the entangling hard core of the negative religious instinct in the minds of men.

In religion, men are sinners behind the steel bars in the jail, the legitimate father and son relationship has been stripped away from men the inmates. It was God who paid the penalty of man’s sin. It is a mystery of the Gospel that man’s sin had been paid by God other than men themselves. A man of idealistic dignity may not accept that idea. But, if a man does not take the benefit of the substitutionary pardon, he has to go to hell, being separated from God the Father forever, hurting and discouraging Him forever as seriously as Jesus was suffering on the Cross.

Men need to know God's perfect love toward His own lost creatures, which had necessitated the severe cost of the life of Jesus that had been sacrificed on the Cross.

There is no room for religion in His divine love toward men, which has been proven visibly and historically by His cruel killing of Jesus on the Cross.

Every man is obliged to know that love of God toward him no matter what. There is nothing that is more important than that for all men to do during their individual lifetime on this planet Earth. That is the urgent purpose of human life in this world.

Men must not accept death as their final destiny, but they must fight against it, not for themselves, but by faith in Jesus who died and rose from the dead. It is the very practical, realistic, wise and sure way to solve the problem of death.

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And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, “Where art thou?” and he said, “I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” (Gen. 3:8-10)

As it is written, “There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. (Rom. 3:10-12)

Then said they unto him, “What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?” Jesus answered and said unto them, “This is the work of God that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.” (John 6:28-29)

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear: because fear has torment. He that fears is not made perfect in love. We love him, because he first loved us. (I John 4:18-19)