The Ascension Dimension: to A Topless Heaven from A Bottomless Pit

By John Fergusson

The Ascension Dimension: A Strategic Human Journey presents the reality, gospel and purpose of the New Covenant, which is brought to fruition by the will of God in His Son Jesus Christ—upon whose death the Will and Testament, written before the foundation of the World, immediately became effective. Discover what God has willed to you as your eternal inheritance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543997613

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© Copyright 2009 John R. Fergusson.

Revised Edition 2019

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9781543997613

John Fergusson

PO Box 307

Camperdown, NSW Australia 1450

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https://www.intoplessheaven.com/

https://www.theascensiondimension.com.au/

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Cover Artwork:

John Fergusson

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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holder, except as provided by International copyright law.

All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the ® New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

Extracts from the Authorised Version of the Bible, the rights in which are vested in the Crown, are reproduced by permission of the Crown’s patentee, Cambridge University Press.

CONTENTS

About the Author

Dedicated To

Special Thanks

Prologue

Introduction

Foreword

Chapter 1 My Body—What Use Egypt?

Chapter 2 My Soul—What Use Babylon?

Chapter 3 My Spirit—What Use Heaven?

Chapter 4 My Destiny—What Use Sonship?

Chapter 5 My Sonship—What Use Fellowship?

Chapter 6 My Relationship—What Use Creation?

Chapter 7 My World Plan—What Use Love?

Reviews and Feedback

About The Author

John Fergusson is an accomplished and highly respected teacher, public speaker, tactical planner, a pioneer strategist and fellowship catalyst of God’s Kingdom. He is gifted in revealing new ideas with inspiration and revelation and wrapping them in practical, everyday social and communal living conditions for the wellbeing and transformation of every human being. With his wife Despina John lives, works, leads and serves out of Sydney Australia.

John was ordained into the ministry of the Christian church in 1968 in California USA after graduating from seminary in 1967 in upstate New York. He pastored for many years in fulltime ministry in the US and Australia, while travelling to teach in many countries of the world, which he still loves to do.

John is also a businessman committed to communicating the Gospel of the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ at every level of the community. Like many he holds God’s world view of the ‘Kingdom of the Son of His Love’ in which he sees Christ building His Church strategically at a local and global level. He believes that it is our responsibility as co-workers together with God to preach the gospel of the Kingdom to the entire world—it is Christ’s responsibility to build His Church locally with us as his many members.

Dedicated to a very close and dear friend—the late Dr. Don Lawson—California USA.

When we were young men, Don was the first brother in Christ to challenge me after graduation to think outside the religious status quo. Only God knows the effect and impact this dear man and his amazing wife Carol have had in my life.

Special thanks

Thanks and all glory and praise to my Lord and my God, who sat me down one night in 1997 in front of my old computer and told me to write what the Spirit was to speak into my heart from God’s work in all of our lives, in Christ, from the foundation of the world that God so loves! Twelve years later this book and a double CD album of 14 songs from the journey in this book.

Throughout the time of writing I worked full time in business with a very dear friend and colleague of mine, whilst ministering and giving of the Spirit of Christ and the living Word, along with my wife Despina, to wherever God opened the doors.

We are seated with Christ in the heavenlies for God’s will and purposes on earth. God gave us dominion in everything before the Fall. However, we lost that dominion when all of creation was lowered by God through one man (Rom 8.20). To live and move in this dominion now, we must Rise and enter with Christ, by His full and total provision, into His Ascension Dimension—His Topless Heaven, in order to be transformed and equipped for this divine dominion as the one new man, with his new godly consciousness on this earth! My hope is that you enjoy some of this journey with Christ and me in these very special pages. For those who are hungry for more, get, search, hunt down, find and listen to the powerfully inspirational music CD’s!

Despina – My gorgeous darling! My precious wife. Without her I don’t think I would have made it, but she made it possible with her unending love and support, being fixed to the commitment of the heavenly vision burning in our hearts for God’s Kingdom!

Thank you my sweetheart, partner and dearest friend! My wonderful wife!

My family and many friends and countless godly colleagues and associates too numerous to name, who have been so patient and supportive, who have helped bring this all to pass—who worked so hard to critique and examine so many different concepts and proposals, for being so wonderfully disagreeable where you felt it really mattered—my sincerest thanks and gratitude—my utmost appreciation for your gifts of love and prayers—for your faithful godly input into my life throughout these many years. You will never be forgotten! God will so ensure!

God bless you and God bless everyone who reads and listens to the living message in this book and to the living message and music in the songs!

His grace, peace and love be with you all,

John,…your brother and co-worker in His Kingdom.

Prologue

This book is written to help discover and open doors to a heritage or inheritance that is our birthright.

The amazing thing is that we can be oblivious to some of the wealth and treasures of God’s provision that is ours. He has given generously for our enablement, first for the understanding of Himself, secondly, His revealed expectations of us and who we are in Him, and third, the empowerment that was given to live His life on this earth. Instead, we are in poverty of spirit, weak of faith and continue in lack of knowledge and are ignorant of our condition.

Throughout this book I have felt as though I entered a treasure-house that not only beckoned with revelatory wonders, but also demonstrated some of the most practical assurances for daily spiritual life, stockpiled by God, that I had not realized, was for my growth and good. The miracle and marvel, it is for us to touch, explore, examine, and put on, and to enjoy now, not just in eternity.

It is not often you find one who writes with such revelatory disclosures, opening up each with solid scriptural basis, but I know each apprehension has been tempered and strengthened by struggles, powerful and deep, and by trials, fiery and fierce, and by daring to dive into the deep and fly to the highest height that has no beginning and no end, empowered by the Holy Spirit promised and sent by Jesus.

I praise God for bringing forth those who journal their journey, who spend, and are spent, who will allow the Spirit of God to excavate and rebuild, who wait and then see the unfolding of understanding of God’s loving character towards man, the decrease (of self) and increase of the Christ within, and the fall and rise of all that is good and evil. His empowerment is there for the knowing, for the receiving, for the life.

‘Lay up treasure in heaven’ the scriptures tell us. But whose treasure? We have nothing of ourselves! But what we have, we soon discover, is provided by God and we learn to live by this revelatory knowledge, allowing it to become inculcated into the very existence and framework of who we are. It is this treasure that is laid up in heaven, but I must first attain it. Hallelujah! It is attainable,

I believe this book will change thinking and so change lives. Not many know about the Godly dimension we can operate in.

The ‘thinking’ changed because now we know that this is the way He thinks. It’s His mind in us. It’s a dimension known only to Him, revealed, and, it’s my heritage.

And the ‘life’ changed, because now we know Heaven is topless with no ceiling and our ascension to touch the heights of Heaven, like Paul, (who saw the 3rd,) is also our heritage. His Kingdom has no end, Praise God. This moves us up and out of the bottomless pit, which we so many times find ourselves wallowing in. I am living on a ‘higher plane’ filled with all the fullness of knowledge, wisdom and understanding, how to stay there.

Thank you John!

Carley Short (Dip. C.M.)

Scholastic Recognition from

North American Professors of Christian Education

Vice Principal. Co-Founder.

Faith Bible College, Welcome Bay

Tauranga, New Zealand

The Ascension Dimension

Raised and seated together,

With Him in Heavenly places…is

God’s intention for you and I.

So…

FAITH is the accelerator

And

Of course, the elevator,

To spur us beyond…and fly high.

HOPE then is the motivator,

And

LOVE is the activator,

To help us go that extra mile.

The Priesthood’s our vocation,

And

In Christ we learn to function,

Conforming always to His gentle will.

Such fellowship is pure enjoyment,

And

The mind renewed each moment,

And positioned and aligned with only Him.

It’s within…The boardroom of heaven,

And

The seat of governmental denizens,

Becoming the new dimension, for a bride.

T’is the seated position,

And

His Arms of love around us,

Hear the music, hear the song and Oh, the Praise.

And join in with His singing,

And

As the Bride and Citizen of heaven

Now seated together…WE ARE ALIVE.

RAISED AND SEATED TOGETHER

It’s true, if we want to access, receive, enjoy every spiritual blessing,

we know where they are…in the heavenly places…in Christ

Let us take our place!

Carley Short

(Inspired from the pages of this book)

THE ASCENSION DIMENSION

To a Topless Heaven—From a Bottomless Pit

Introduction

This book is written:

1.To present to people the reality of the New Covenant, its gospel and purpose, which is brought to fruition by the will of God in His Son Jesus Christ upon whose death the will and testament written in Christ the living word immediately became effective! This is God’s first and last will and therefore envelopes all of time.

2.To show this will and testament unfolds and unveils our destiny, our spirit’s eternality since we are born of God, our soul’s transformation and full development, finishing with a new immortal body in which God and I/you dwell eternally.

3.To help people come to terms with the purpose of body, soul, spirit, destiny.

4.To share the glorious purpose of being in Egypt, Babylon, Jerusalem.

5.To help many understand that the purpose of Jesus coming to earth; re His death, resurrection, ascension, is to qualify us in and by His perfection, to enable us to ascend into heaven immediately and instantly we believe in Him and His completed work for us. He came to earth so we could go to heaven now (not just in the future), and live our lives on earth from the ascension dimension realm, the heavenly places He promised in John 14.

6.To show that the Out pouring of the Holy Spirit on all flesh is the how we move into our heavenly places in and through Jesus Christ the door who is the way into His heavenly kingdom, which is not of the world of Moses and the Law, nor of empires such as the Roman Empire in the days of His flesh.

7.To reveal to all people that fellowship with the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ and each other (the members of Christ’s body), on personal levels, is God’s fast track into understanding and enjoying the ascension dimension. Large meetings/gatherings may deliver the Loaves and Fishes, but we must eat them in small/little groups, if we are going to have communion and fellowship. This alone builds relationship.

8.To help people understand Sonship and as God’s sons and daughters, stretch forward and upward to their eternal Destiny while on earth.

9.To challenge all to come to terms with the One source, many branches. One life, multiple expressions. One being, myriads of representations in His body. That there is only one road for us to reach God, this being in and through our Lord Jesus Christ, but God is ready and prepared to go down many roads to reach every one of us since it is His will and desire to dwell in us and us to dwell in Him.

10.To show that both Salvation and the Kingdom is an inheritance willed to us by God through our Lord Jesus Christ, for which we must qualify by grace through faith and by the disciplines of the Father’s living Word and Spirit, becoming co-workers and co-creators together with God revealing the will of God, the power of the Kingdom of God and the glory of God!

For centuries we have suffered a role reversal that nobody dared question – "God, you do your Kingdom thing, while we’ll build and run your church for you! From the third and fourth centuries, in most countries and nations, man has taken over building Christ’s Church" man’s way and has forgotten all about the Kingdom—forgotten mainly because God’s Kingdom doesn’t match man’s church—especially the way man portrays, plays and orchestrates church.

By keeping their members and congregations in a perpetual nursery state—the beginning state of ‘Christian life’—by majoring on the weakness and sinfulness of humans who are constantly fouling their sinful diapers (nappies) thus establishing their need for sorrow and constant repentance—the majority of Christians being systematically held in a perpetual state of ‘beginnings’ with most never leaving the nursery for the whole of their Christian life! It is absolutely shameful! Little progress (if any) is allowed! Just look at the content of the majority of so many songs still being sung with all lyrics majoring on the nursery state, the start and beginning of coming to Christ to be loved and made worthy to have their sins forgiven and then starting over and over again and again whilst being taught to placate God through it all by differing forms of worship.

All of this in order to be accepted as His lost sinful child cradled in a poor, weak and untrue portrayal of the ‘Gospel’ as preached or taught today as a way of escape, not from sin (that never seems to happen), but more as an escape route to bypass hell with an appeal to the sinner by offering an all-inclusive ticket to heaven for the afterlife! All this because you did God a favour by repenting of your sins over and over again and again and oh—not again!!! What a sick weak powerless ‘Gospel’ producing powerless workers by giving them a form of godliness with the power of God for the most part, wholly denied. There is no good news in that gospel, none whatsoever, so why do we tolerate it? This question needs to be answered! It is answered in this book.

As man’s church today stumbles around and glories in Old Testament ‘forms and rituals’, fumbling for existence in the minds of the secular, as secular society struggles to find the relevancy of New Testament spirituality as the searches for current structured social influence continues along with the quest for new adherents. Yet as the old dies off Christ is rapidly building His Church in a divine paradigm foreign to the religious mind and its long institutional bequest.

But man’s work is not all bad! We need to see the purpose that God has in all of this and find out why it is so important we all rise up to overcome the total lowered state in which we find ourselves BC (before Christ). We can achieve this only by realising we are seated with Christ in His ascension in the heavenlies, His Topless Heaven! Without man’s attempts we wouldn’t know God’s work. That is just the way it is! Without the child attempting to build for dad he won’t know how to become and do the real thing when he’s a man.

Nevertheless, we must move on and up from wood, hay and stubble, to gold, silver and precious stones, because one day, every man’s work will be tried by fire to see what we’ve all been using for God’s Kingdom and Christ’s Church.

Only with the reality of the Kingdom working within each of us will we see the reality of the church without! Remembering, that the church is a living organic body governed by the Kingdom within each and every one. The church is not an institution, nor an organization, but the living presence of God in His people who are being transformed and changed into the very same image of the Lord Jesus Christ by His Spirit. He uses everything to do this—yes everything and engages everyone sooner or later—whether descending, or ascending!

Foreword

1Thes 5:23 And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.

Eph 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

3 John 1: 2 Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers.

Hello, I am Israel, like you if you are a believer. I wish to tell you a little about my life and the dimensions of my journey. Hopefully, it will help you understand a little more about why we’re here now, on earth, as a four dimensional being—spirit, soul, body and destiny.

My body is in Egypt. My soul is in Babylon. My spirit is in the Heavenlies. My destiny is in Transit and Development on this present earth. All now, though somewhat mysteriously! One day my body will leave Egypt, my soul will leave Babylon, my spirit will leave Heaven and my destiny will shed its mystery by leaving its transitory journey to enter its full destination and dimension. I will go to Heaven where my spirit already abides, but I will also leave there someday with my Father, older brother Jesus and all the saints and take up our place on a new earth with new heavens in order to equip the universe! Why are we in these four dimensions all at the same time? What is God’s purpose in putting us in these four dimensions? Do you think you are ready to leave or have fulfilled any of them? Do you know where we are all going to end up? Well, in this book I will tell you what I presently believe and some of what I have experienced as I write.

God began His work at His ultimate end of total completion and utter perfection and then worked His way down to the beginning—finishing with the seed, which He then planted on earth. Our end ‘Being’ therefore is complete, long before our Being begins and its journey unfolds! Our doing eventually becomes the direct outcome of the development of our Being, from seedship to sonship and beyond.

The fullness of God is in the seed, but the seed, like all seeds, is without developed form and void of any kind of consciousness, and it is also enveloped in darkness just like Genesis 1:1-3 until the Spirit of God moves within our surface by His Word when He says Let there be Light!

Time, space, matter and mystery happen to be the domain in which God has chosen to plant His seed, which begins the life source and power that creates, grows, develops and conforms us into the glorious beginning where He predestined, began and ended, authored and finished, made the first and last, completed the alpha and the omega, fathered His many sons, made them heirs and joint heirs with Christ, and ordained mortality to put on immortality—all in Christ, before the foundation of the world!

However, to receive all our inheritance in the will and testament of our Father in and through the Lord Jesus Christ, we must first meet the requirements of the will in source, name, and place, and the qualifications of the will in age and obedience. Therefore, to inherit we must fulfill two criteria: 1) be named, identified and known as the son or recipient or beneficiary of the will, and 2) meet the will’s paradigm and requirements as the inheritee of the inheritor who is Christ and who is both our qualifier and ultimate total qualification.

If you have an open heart and mind I suggest you read this book as it is a book of fellowship, experience and thought about various issues that may challenge both your traditions and theology as the Lord has so challenged mine. It may witness to the experience and way the Lord is both leading and teaching you. As I write, the content may change through inspiration, revelation, experience and new understanding as I fellowship with God our Father, His Son and our older brother, the Lord Jesus Christ, and many precious brothers and sisters who belong in the faith.

I don’t have any faith in bible knowledge, yours or mine. My faith is wholly and totally in the Lord Jesus Christ and all that He is and has done! When it comes to knowing anything at all, it isn’t my ignorance I am concerned nor worried about because I know how very ignorant I am—it is the expert’s ignorance and all those who say or claim they are bible archetypes and defenders of traditions and who are ready to ostracise, excommunicate and proclaim unbridled heresy’s against all with whom they and their followers disagree. I know—I used to be a Christian Judge and Pharisee myself when I too followed the script, and then one day, I discovered salvation. I discovered in the very script that I used to bring condemnation and judgment to myself and others, an inheritance called salvation, which has been delivering, saving and changing me ever since. It is glorious beyond description! In this salvation we have with God and man, is peace that passes understanding, love which passes knowledge, and joy that’s unspeakable and full of glory.

If we were to consider the sum of all things (which we can’t or we would be God), but let’s say we could consider at least one percent of the sum of all things which would leave us ninety-nine percent ignorant of the sum of all things—would your one percent of knowledge be the same as mine? Probably not at all because your one percent of knowledge may be taken from a portion of the sum I know nothing about, at a distance not close to and be so vastly different from mine we possibly may not know what each other is really talking about even if we were privileged to share together, probably leaving us arguing forever, or until possibly we would both kill each other out of self-righteous indignation over what we think is truth or knowledge of truth, all in the name of God!!! Millions have been murdered and destroyed already, over this very fault.

Is it likely you and I can be different? Is it possible we can make a difference in our generation? Not without salvation!

This book isn’t written to convince anyone about anything except how glorious is fellowship with the Father, with His Son Jesus Christ and with the members of His body on this earth. In this fellowship we experience righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit and enjoy partaking of the divine nature. I wish above all that you enjoy this fellowship too and that you prosper and be in health even as your soul prospers in your inheritance of salvation.

We can never know truth by what we know or don’t know. We can know only by whom. When we are in Christ we are in truth but may not know so. When Christ is in us, truth is in us and we will know so!

There are two parts we must consider—God’s part and our part. The first is our life and being—God’s part, the second is our living and doing—our part. 1) Our eternal life is based on who knows and chooses us, and what He has chosen from the beginning to do in us, for us, by us and with us. 2) Our salvation is based on our choosing and knowing Christ and that which we choose to do in Him, with Him, by Him and for Him.

We are called to walk in the light, be immersed in the light because we are the light—not just reverie about it!

We are called to walk in love, be immersed in love and be love—not study or fantasise about it!

We are called to walk in truth, become truth—not learn about it and kill each other over it!

We are called to walk in spirit, be filled with the spirit—not research about it and fight over it!

We are called to walk in peace, be a peace maker—not deliberate about it and dictate it to each other over threats!

We are called to walk by faith, for by faith we live—not by the knowledge about it!

We are called to walk in the newness of the spirit—not in the oldness of the letter for the letter kills but the spirit gives life!

We have been given the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things (bible) that have been freely given to us by God. (1 Cor 2:12)

Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters in Christ, we have been given the Spirit who is from God that we might know the many things that have been freely given to us by God including the bible which was written by inspiration by holy men of God. We have not been given the bible that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God—we have been given His Spirit!

We will never understand nor will we comprehend God, by or through the bible, but we can understand and we will comprehend the bible, by and through God, because we have been given the Spirit who is from God

In our journey and pursuit of life there comes a time when ignorance and knowledge become cruel and equal masters. Where knowledge becomes the curse of all ignorance and ignorance the curse of all knowledge—where knowledge exposes the sum of its ignorance and ignorance the sum of its knowledge—where ignorance drives the intelligent to know and knowledge the need to know more. We shall see there is something far greater than knowledge—something so superior—something and someone to match, develop and enhance each person’s unique being and intelligence, spiritually, intellectually and biologically!

All knowledge does is note for us the sum of our ignorance. How else can one know one is ignorant? How else can one know what another ignores?

Contrary to common opinion knowledge is not a status symbol one gains by having more knowledge than another. All one can have is a little more information than another on that which has always been, which is available to everyone, but of which others may not be aware, or not yet had the opportunity, chance or time to discover.

Unfortunately the world’s decisions are made ninety-nine percent of the time in willful ignorance. Most of ours are also based on our own ignorance and the ignorance of others. It is our ignorance that keeps us in little knowledge and it is said, a little knowledge is dangerous —dangerous in the fact that whilst we feel we may know a lot, it is probably still less than one percent of the total there is to know, thereby leaving us in a position of making decisions in almost a complete state of ignorance. For this very reason God in Christ Jesus calls us all to live by another source other than knowledge based living and comparative learning, not that this is wrong—just that it falls drastically short all the time of the inherent potential that is ours in Christ Jesus.

The following pages are a journey of discovery by experience, inspiration and illumination with proposals, current opinions, convictions and suggestions regarding a variety of issues concerning our body, soul and spirit and above all our destiny. I hope you enjoy the read.

God has blessed you and I abundantly above all that we could think possible or imagine credible!

THE ASCENSION DIMENSION

To a Topless Heaven—From a Bottomless Pit

Chapter 1

My Body—What use Egypt?

Genesis 47:27 So Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the country of Goshen; and they had possessions there and grew and multiplied exceedingly.

Exo 1:1 Now these are the names of the children of Israel who came to Egypt; each man and his household came with Jacob: 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; 3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin; 4 Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. 5 All those who were descendants of Jacob were seventy persons (for Joseph was in Egypt already). 6 And Joseph died, all his brothers, and all that generation. 7 But the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly, multiplied and grew exceedingly mighty; and the land was filled with them. 8 Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. 9 And he said to his people, Look, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we; 10 come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and it happen, in the event of war, that they also join our enemies and fight against us, and so go up out of the land." 11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh supply cities, Pithom and Raamses. 12 But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were in dread of the children of Israel. 13 So the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigor. 14 And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage; in mortar, in brick, and in all manner of service in the field. All their service in which they made them serve was with rigor.

Isaiah 30:1Woe to the rebellious children, says the LORD, Who take counsel, but not of Me, And who devise plans, but not of My Spirit, That they may add sin to sin; 2 Who walk to go down to Egypt, And have not asked My advice, To strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, And to trust in the shadow of Egypt! 3 Therefore the strength of Pharaoh Shall be your shame, And trust in the shadow of Egypt Shall be your humiliation. 4 For his princes were at Zoan, And his ambassadors came to Hanes. 5 They were all ashamed of a people who could not benefit them, Or be help or benefit, But a shame and also a reproach.

31:1 Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, And rely on horses, Who trust in chariots because they are many, And in horsemen because they are very strong, But who do not look to the Holy One of Israel, Nor seek the LORD! 2 Yet He also is wise and will bring disaster, And will not call back His words, But will arise against the house of evildoers, And against the help of those who work iniquity. 3 Now the Egyptians are men, and not God; And their horses are flesh, and not spirit.

Rom 8:11 But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.

Rom 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.

Naive and Vulnerable

My Dad’s goal for my life was for me to become part of his business and eventually a partner.

I crept into his bedroom and laid my hands on his pillow and prayed earnestly to the Lord Jesus Christ, to give my Dad a dream that night which would change his mind concerning letting me travel to a particular seminary in the USA to study theology and become a minister in the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The next morning Dad told Mom he couldn’t get out of bed until he spoke to me and asked her to call me.

When I entered the room he motioned for me to sit down on the near side of the bed. As I did so he began to tell me he had dreamt an awesome dream. My mother stood silently on the other side of the room as dad explained his change of heart and mind in between blotting tears, which to me appeared to be looking for a water course down his dry and chubby cheeks.

My focus on his face was intent, so much so, I have never forgotten to this day both the reflection of agony in letting me go and the ecstasy that he’d heard from God in such an awesome and clear manner, to send me off with his blessing.

It seemed to me at the time to take eternity to tell me the good news. Soon we both hugged and I ran from his room with great joy and high spirits in anticipation of the adventure of a lifetime all around the world, after training and much studious work of course!

Little did I know how long the line, nor the subtlety of the many Pharaohs and their gender were waiting to hold me in their purposes and lock me in their personal and corporate ambitions and goals. I was to learn eventually that my dear dad was not the first. Thus did I begin my journey in what I have found to be both a bottomless pit and a topless heaven.

Land of promise becomes land of law

In Israel’s biblical history, Egypt is initially synonymous with protection, provision, security, procreation, personal development (under Joseph by faith), growth, national development and eventual crippling bondage (under the Pharaohs by works) and deliverance, freedom, miraculous supply, a 40-year trek through the wilderness (under Moses by faith), to a promised land by a new generation under a new leader—Joshua.

This was the beginning of Israel’s nationhood and expansion into a land promised by God, a land of rest, a land of milk and honey, and priesthood so the nation could commune with God. It was everybody’s dream but it became many people’s worst nightmare. Why?

The land of Promise became a land of Law through unbelief and Israel would remain under the Law of Moses (until the coming of Christ and beyond, being there still to this day), right through their eventual dispersion back into Egypt, into Assyria and Babylon from whence a remnant would return for the birth of the second man and last Adam, the Saviour of the world and the first-born of the true inheritors of the promises—the ones from all ages who live by faith.

All begin life in families in Egypt

Israel went into Egypt as a family in strife, with great need and promises given to them from God through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and came out a nation in its own right with great riches, more promises and a dream confirmed with cloud and fire given them by God to follow by faith. Egypt turns out to be a place of bondage, limitation, and equates to slavery and crippling internal duality. It is the carnal conscious awareness or mind-set of a sense of separation from God, self, spirit and creation itself. The word Egypt is also the source of our English word for ‘misery’!

Initially, a coexistence with Egypt was enjoyed until Israel became a threat to the Egyptians for reasons more than sheer numbers would tell. Secure sensual enjoyment eventually reduced to endurance, endurance to suffering and suffering to great pain and loss of personal possessions, rights and self-worth.

Israel wanted to leave and when they finally did, they emigrated physically by default through divine intervention, the enemies of just about everyone, not only with the Egyptians who were now behind them, but eventually with all nations, present and future. But it doesn’t end there! Is there a parallel here today? You bet there is! We may leave Egypt in a moment of time, but Egypt never leaves us without crucifixion, resurrection and transformation in ascension.

In Egypt ‘Things’ are more important than People

It is in Egypt where we learn to build and develop houses, temples, cities, etc. It is where we learn and develop trades, businesses, professions, crafts, occupations, careers, cunning livelihoods, jobs, industries, ownership, possessions, subjugation and control etc. This in turn leads to envy, jealousy, malice, coveting, competitiveness, enmity, pride, classes and categorization of the citizenry, servitude to power groups whose tendency is to drive the value of people below the value of possessions, prestige and power, making them usable market driven assets, tools or commodities, expendable in the relentless production and consumption of riches, pursuit of prestige and power by the same few. I have called it The Pharaoh Syndrome. It is a bottomless pit!

The Pharaoh Syndrome

Egypt, to Bible scholars is a type of the world—secular, mercenary, mean, fiercely competitive, trend-setting and governed by ‘the law of the jungle.’i.e. The survival of the fittest, strongest and most powerful is what Egypt is all about. It firmly believes in the evolution of the fittest, fastest, fortuitous, pretentious, deceptive, fraudulent, fictitious, the most fashionable facts of fiction, claims of science though unproven as its still evolving, illusions of educated grandeur and the delusions of virtual reality caught up in the paranoia of pseudo (false) success.

In Egypt the secular/religious thinking is pyramidal in structure, and dictatorial in application. i.e. Everyone is taught they must be the best—the best that is of someone else’s standard, vision or dream, and under the control and discipline of those who just happen to be at the top of the pile of whatever the particular pursuit happens to be.

Each one sees oneself at the top of the pyramid of whatever area or domain they are part of with everyone else underneath them. It is where MLM (Multilevel Marketing) began. I’ve got to be top of the pile in my field, industry, profession, work, ministry etc. My destiny is to be a king. God’s told me to be at the top! Be the head and not the tail! To sit atop of a pyramid of people—it could be in sport, music, business, civics, politics, commerce, social programs and religion etc.

Each one of us would sit at the top until or unless we face another more formidable or talented than ourselves, whom we either choose to fight or compete with, to get or keep possession of position, prestige or power, or abdicate quietly by default to someone we recognise as much stronger and more forceful than we ourselves can or are prepared to be—and so the pyramids are built and the dictators appear, great and small.

Egyptians—Taskmasters—Empire Builders

How does a Christian know if he or she is living in, or is being controlled by, Egypt? (The criteria are both positive and negative. I have listed the following examples that I have experienced myself or unwittingly imposed on others, for which I am very sorry.)

You know you are controlled and living in Egypt when you are indebted to a host who at will can control your destiny. When good news begins to become bad news! When the wonderful provision starts to become your worst nightmare. When you are considered less of an asset to leadership and community and more of an ass to put burdens on. When the workload becomes unbearable. When you are condemned for not accepting tasks. When you find out people are using you when initially you believed them when they told you, God was using you. When what you thought were halos turn out to be required hoops to jump through, constantly being raised above your ability to achieve so that you never attain, and always being moved so that you never, never qualify.

When you want or need to rest and are judged unfaithful to the mission, work, or cause. When you are berated for not giving your all. When you are shamed for not saving the world (Egypt). When you are punished for complaining you can’t find any more wood, hay, stubble or straw. When you are told to keep cleaning out those toilets, shovel and mix that mud, keep making those building bricks at your own expense and laying them in your own time. When you are reminded about your ongoing responsibility to submission when you question the present authority.

When you’re promised you might be given a place of ’leadership’ if you are faithful with their ’loadership’. (Oh yes! Been there too!). When you realise the taskmasters’ promises are just that—‘promises’ and nothing more, but made in order to keep you working for their cause or mission, always finding another reason to not let you go, move up, move on, to be free to fulfill your own destiny.

When they must hear from God on your behalf as God only speaks through ‘the leader,’ because if God spoke directly to you, they would lose control. When you have no rest and you are full of stress, because Egypt has overcome you.

When you’re in bondage to the task or masters and you know you are in need of a deliverer, yet when God sends you a Moses and Aaron they appear to cause more trouble in helping you overcome Egypt, than you had with Pharaoh keeping you in bondage to it. The greatest Pharaoh you will ever meet is the one within. The only one you will ever need to see die in your ‘Red Sea Crossing’ is the one within and only God can do that! Your Pharaoh will chase you all the way to your Red Sea where he will help force you though the waters before God uses the same waters to destroy your Pharaoh! This is baptism! But today, we do well to remember, Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world See 1 John 4:4.

Warehouse Christians

How easy it is for us to forget the value of individual persons and see them only as numbers, like cartons of souls in a warehouse of storage (keep away, these are mine), ready to be used when it suits or their talent rented out according to the perceived value or trend of the day, or sent off as merchandise, implements and tools to execute and expedite someone else’s vision and dream or fight someone else’s battle. Leaders of Nations are experts in this field when it comes to dealing with the citizenry.

It is only worse, when of our own will we sit in a ‘cozy carton’ in a warehouse, waiting for someone else to tell us what to do, where to go or when to do something. Then there are too many of us who through willful ignorance or laziness make it easy for some to keep the masses ‘equal’ by holding them ignorant and poor in certain areas, making it easier for the rich and knowledgeable as ‘experts’ to be the leaders. Beware those who proclaim and teach equality! Find out why they are so enamoured by it? Ignorance and poverty are the trowel and the rake—the levelling tools the ‘experts’ use to create and keep equality, but at the lowest common denominator. God made us equal in value as persons by the highest of all common denominators, but not in function or ability. We are as different as chalk and cheese regarding our gifts and talents and calling.

Rented gifts and calling

How many of us rent out our gifts and calling to the highest bidder, as if that is the will of God? And let’s not kid ourselves, I don’t care how much time you spent in ‘prayer’ seeking God’s will, if you were anything like the rest of us in our early days in Egypt, you kept seeking opportunities until you found the highest offer. That’s natural! When the high offers came rolling in all the time we then switched to ‘seeking God’ for the opportunity that would give us the most prestige. That’s quite natural! After that (you discerned right), we switched to what would give us the greatest power and influence, because in Egypt God wanted me to build the greatest pyramid of all pyramids. That’s very natural, possibly ‘carnal’ do you think! After all, I can’t help it if it’s God’s will that I should be the head and not the tail! The head of what and who and why, is the question? Having a super ego is just the opposite end of a super selflessness. God isn’t interested in either as they are both false in His eyes. Selling yourself and your gifts and calling to the highest offer is not found in God’s kingdom and economy (scripture calls this prostitution—playing the harlot—harlotry—an abomination to God and why Babylon gets destroyed and burnt in the fire and is undoubtedly amongst the adultery and fornication that prevents us from entering the Kingdom (Rev 17:3-7, Gal 5:18-26, 1 Cor 6:9-11), and neither is false humility and doing everything for nothing.

We freely give that, which we have freely been given, then we may freely receive what God and His people freely give us. This is a lifestyle of abundance, not a storehouse! This is being the head. Storing up wealth is being the tail! If we are resorting to doing deals ahead of time to make sure we don’t lose we are nothing more than a tail covering up a dirty big hole of fear and unbelief and possibly greed! Well, what else did you think that scripture meant? Jesus said, "It’s not what goes in that defiles a man, but what comes out." This too is a bottomless pit!

Wrongful selflessness

Poor me! I thought I was putting God first by doing what the Egyptian leaders wanted as the masters (covering) placed over me by God in His provision. Dummy! I grew up believing a destructive theology—which is still preached today in many of our churches—that my personal disregard of my own wellbeing and education, and self-sacrifice for the benefit of others, even to the point of a premature personal demise of myself was the ultimate Godly thing to do to hopefully persuade others to live like us for Jesus in this world. It is very much similar to the Muslim suicide theology of today. Unfortunately the Muslim suicide theology is not alone for there are many Christians who practice the very same, but in a more acceptably covert way in that they don’t give up their lives to destroy others in an instant blast to change our world. The deception is far more subtle in that our little Christian soldiers are destroyed much more slowly. I could fill a book on the casualties I have known so far over my lifetime, not to mention those who have suffered crippling burnout and abuse and then been tossed aside as collateral damage for the cause!

My own life almost ended in a New York City Methodist hospital when I was only twenty two years old, but for the grace of God. Let me burn and wear out for Thee dear Lord, was one of our theme songs in the seminary and city program I was working in at the time. It took many years before I realised how bottomless this path of destructive theology really is and even more to undo it and become disentangled from it. In fact I am still dealing with past vestiges of it to this day!

One can only be selfless for so long when one is hungry and there are bills to pay. When you become so skinny and have so little that no one appears to notice you, that even the dogs think you are a post in the street so they can enjoy a piss in the wind, you know you have reached the selfless limit and you can be really proud of it as you tell people how much you suffered. Nobody ever told me how far this selfless thing was supposed to go, but in Egypt it is preached not for its virtue, but so the endorser of the teaching can get in ahead of you and help himself to what was probably rightfully yours and talked you out of for whatever ‘godly reason.’ Egypt will piss all over you and then call it God’s dealings to ensure you don’t react—badly! Don’t you just love Egypt!

Using others for God?

It appears the more important we as individuals become, the less important others as individuals are and the more important numbers and crowds become to us—from a distance of course!

You know, the latest move of God, like God needs my help in generating new ways and means to reach His people and the world, or waiting for the fluctuating Christian market economy or the new trends and styles to determine where and with whom the value should rise or fall and thereby decide today’s new stars, yesterday’s has-beens and tomorrow’s super-stars, today’s obsession or trend, yesterday’s fads and phobias and tomorrow’s mania and obsessions. Well, if you haven’t got title, talent, position, prestige, power, fame, money or a madness of some kind, you’re a non-event! I just love mad people!

One-upmanship testimonies

I grew up in Christian circles that considered testimonies worthy of a congregation’s hearing had to include at least personal stories on smoking dope, drinking, illicit sex, fast women, slow horses, theft, beating up family, murder, larceny, mercenaries, drugs etc. Hence I never got asked to give my testimony because nobody wanted to hear about a cookie thief who stole cookies out of the cookie jar, who lived on M.I.L.K and H²O instead of LSD, crack, ice or heroin etc.

As a teen the only sexual material I had ever read was in the Old Testament in the Bible, the very book I was told along with everyone else I had to read in order to please God and be like God. Nudge, wink! Obviously not too many had read as much of the book as I had!!

The advantage was I had a very good memory and I never had to turn to those portions much to remember what was written there like some I knew had to. How do I know you ask? Because when I checked their bibles they were all worn and smudged in those places and I don’t think it was from them trying to rub the words out and don’t forget, I hate to remind you, this is all God’s word, so I’ve been told again and again and again!

The platform of Egypt

The church platform and pulpit looked for converted whoremongers and reprobates to tell their stories to draw the crowd while choirboys looked for virgins and sirens to get a story to tell the crowd. Talent wasn’t the only thing that got you on the platform when I was growing up, it was telling your dirty stories and all the sin God had delivered you from