The Double Yoke

By Minnie Hunter-Jackson

The Double Yoke is a Bible-based fictional story depicting a teenager named Lydia, whose household is changed by the transforming grace of God. God’s grace continues to abound, igniting the faith of an elderly Jew named David. The elder finds himself joined to a younger Christian grandson who is also named David. At first, David and his grandson, David, enjoyed the family bond brought about through the marriage of the older David’s daughter and the younger David’s father. But the bond began to grow as the Jew and the Christian became secured in the enveloping grace found only in the green pasture provided by the Shepherd of shepherds. The mantle of grace, which God himself has stretched over mankind, opened the heart of the pious Jew as the younger David shared the gospel message with his new grandfather. Whenever grace appears, the fires of love are set ablaze that no man can quench.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781682892770

Book preview

The

Double

Yoke

Minnie Hunter-Jackson

Copyright © 2016 Minnie Hunter-Jackson

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2016

ISBN 978-1-68289-276-3 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-68289-277-0 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

About the Author

Chapter 1

Lydia Sees Mary in a Dream

Lydia wandered aimlessly in the street, dreading the encounter that waited at home. The report cards had been mailed, and the mailman always delivered mail to her street early, before noon, in fact. There was no way she could have interceded the arrival of the mail. Like a cuckoo in a cuckoo clock, her mother stopped whatever she was doing at eleven o’clock each day and popped out of the stuffy house to grab the mail. Most of the time, before the mailman could deposit the envelopes in the mailbox hanging on the porch, her mother was there with an outstretched hand.

The imagined encounter that Lydia feared most never took place. The critic whom she called Mom no longer existed. When Lydia walked in the door, a light like she had never known seemed to illuminate the whole house. The smell of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies drew her right into the kitchen, where her mother hummed softly. The fearsome envelope lay unopened on the counter. Seeing her daughter’s glance, Lydia’s mother explained, Whatever is in there is just ink and paper, my precious daughter. Forgive me for all the years of pressuring you. I was only repeating what my parents did to me.

The archetype of love, the original, had seeped into the mother’s heart; the unconscious, invisible hold of love now began to relieve Lydia’s fears. Perfect love casts out all fear, and perfect love has no obstacles, no barriers. Love began again, to flow in two directions. The yoke of pure love seemed to draw mother and daughter into an invisible shied incapable of being severed. The leaven that had trickled in from previous generations was now in remission, and the wickedness that so easily beset man had been laid aside for the moment.

To everything there is a season. The heavenly light flows down, blazing through the earth, breaching through hate, disharmony, and pain. As the seasons change, needs, desires, and values change. The unchangeable one in need of nothing is the light that shows the existential need of man that goes beyond seasons. Every man born of woman has the seed of the old Adam. He is yoked to the devil, and with every effort, he tries to free himself. It is not only futile, but he also does not want to cast himself out of his own house.

God’s pinnacle of creation was struck in the garden, locked out of heaven, stuck in life, and could not die and could not get to heaven. Man was earthly and not immortal. Mortality could not exist in the invisible, spiritual place of immortality. The double yolk was twofold. Man was stuck in a mortal life, an existence that depended on his not eating what was forbidden and eating from the tree of life to continue his state of existence as a mortal man. If he ate from the forbidden tree, he would surely die. In his present state, God could come to him. but God could not take mortality (his creation) into immortality. If Adam ate of the forbidden tree, he would be cut off from all visitations by God.

God watched and God waited. God had given Adam the necessary provoker. One day, Eve gave the forbidden fruit to Adam and he ate. Death moved into Adam and spread throughout the world. Now Adam was again doubly yoked. He was separated completely from God, and he was in the clutches of an evil entity. Once dead, he would be forever lost, going back into the void and empty nothingness.

Adam, who, a moment before, could not go to heaven and who could not die, was now equally yoked with a double dilemma. He would now die and still not go to heaven. In fact, he was put out of the garden, forced to wander among the fields of the earth. Not only that, God cursed the very ground that he used to form Adam. The diabolical plan of the devil with his false promises had deceived Eve and had tempted Adam, and he acquiesced. Was Adam’s fate doomed to end in annihilation?

The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. The flesh found sin irresistible. But the spirit was grieved and saddened by the separation from God. Adam, who could not die unless he sinned, longed for God who could not sin and could not die. Adam could now die and could not live. Adam was as a wounded dog stuck in a barn with a deadly snake. But, God had already opted to kill the snake and heal the dog.

Much more, God would rescue Adam in a most extraordinary way. He would become the new Adam, an immortal Adam, and bring immortality to all his elect. Adam’s helpmeet would indeed be the helpmeet Adam needed. God would use woman to achieve immortality for mortal man. The sinless seed of woman would crush the head of the seed of the serpent. Adam carried the serpent’s seed. Through the woman, God’s seed would enter and destroy the fallacy of death, freeing men’s souls from eternal death and taking them to heaven in the seed of immortality. For a time, Adam would wander alone while God methodically transposed him into the new Adam, safely leading the now immortal soul across the great gulf separating life from death. The old Adam, the flesh, would return to the dust from which it came. The double yoke, which seemed like a bad joke, the trap that Adam fell into, would one day be revealed as God’s vehicle to the greatest gift the Creator could bestow on man and that is eternal life.

God had laid out every detail, and his plan worked perfectly, flowing smoothly at the exact time and place. The chief Shepherd had already gone before, and the events in the garden are repeated with every breath in man’s nostrils. The Torah is God’s jireh as recorded by Moses. God’s prophetic word is a sure word of prophecy. The chief Shepherd was tested in all points as Adam and had already become the atonement for the sins of man.

The double yoke that bounds man to sin and to death, threads its way through all of Scripture. All creation is bound by prophecy, bearing witness to the prowess of the Lion of Judah. Unlike a commander in chief, who eventually must seek counsel from others, God is the divine tribal Chieftain who has no peer, no equal, and no one to stay his hand. Looking through the lens of prophecy at the death of Abel at the hands of Cain, the double yoke, carried by the word of the sovereign King, both reassures and warns man. The intertwining of truth from whence both blessings and curses flow out of the eternal fount where the angel of God and the angel of death both reside, manifested in the lives of both Cain and Abel. The firstborn son of Eve was Cain, the murderer, and her second born was Abel, the murdered. Both came from the same womb.

Cain rose up in a field, and after talking with his brother, Abel, he picked up a stone and hit Abel. Abel fell dead, and Cain covered Abel’s body with dirt. The devourer who hunts men like prey had struck like a whirlwind. From the chimes of eternity, the winds carried forth from its womb whose origin cannot be searched out, the message of the eternal one, The day you eat, you shall surely die.

Abel’s name means breath, brevity, or vanity. Every creature whose breath is in his nostrils will eventually die. Abel is God’s jireh, showing the accuracy of God’s prophetic breath, the same breath that moved the prophets and was witnessed by the apostles.

Abel’s protest to God as his blood spoke from the dirt was not answered by god. Righteous Abel would remain a sealed book as truth continued to go forth into all the earth. The dead who neither speaks nor hears and the living God, who decreed death, were barred from one another.

Abel’s breath, where the vanity of man is manifested, soon fades like dew. Without the breath of life that God breathed into Adam, man soon fades, drying up like fruit plucked from its branches. Abel’s blood soon dried up and became silent. Just as the sun shines on the just and the unjust and the rain follows, sin comes to all men and death soon follows. Violence would sprout like mushrooms. Geed, envy, jealousy, and heartaches would race forward, covering towns, fields, villages, and farms. Like inflation running rampant, man’s initiatives would not bring any permanent relief. As the Spirit of Eternity hovered over the void and empty earth, he would travel in the midst of pain and sorrow, leading men toward restoration and hope beyond the breathe in their nostrils.

As the wind goes where it lists, truth would eventually creep into every crevice of the earth. From righteous Abel to the tanner by the sea, truth would rise as if on wings of an eagle arriving to rescue, deliver, and dry weeping eyes. As Jesus stood, looking at the weeping mourners after arriving in Bethany, Jesus himself, for the first time, openly wept. The tears that filled the oceans and seas and the rivers and the creeks flowed from his eyes.

"And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations" (Revelations 22: 1–2).

Every tear from the righteous hearts of man, God gathered in a bottle. The bottle that is large enough to contain the tears of all of humanity of all generations is but a drop in the bucket of eternity. As a tent over a grave site, God spreads his canopy of love over the earth. At the hearts of loved ones follow the casket. God’s heart has already entered the body through the Holy Spirit and set the soul free just like a man releasing a dove from its cage.

Every man born of a woman would pass under the cloud of prophecy. God’s word is a surety. The righteous and the unrighteous, like an endless procession in a parade, all pass through the shadow of death. God has stamped his souls as belonging to the eternal soul that died and, by the power of his word, caused his Spirit to release him from death, doing what no other power can do. He lives beyond the breath in the nostrils, his blood forever speaks, and his glory will never depart from the earth.

While the natural tears flow at the funeral of the deceased and the hearts hang low, the Lord’s heart rejoices at the death of another saint. Precious in the sight of the Lord are the deaths of his saints. As the funeral proceeds through the natural realm, angels escort the soul to the bridegroom, where the marriage of the Lamb and his bride extends beyond time and space.

The righteous and the unrighteous die alike. The human heart can accompany the body to the grave site and proceed no further. The divine heart accompanies man through the dimensions of time, space, and matter and escorts him into the eternal abode where the scepter is outstretched to welcome those passing right through the shadow of the greater death. Where there is no blood on the lintels and the doorpost, the second death waits to carry away the last vestiges of hope and life. The double blessings in the shed blood begin while man’s breath is still in his nostrils. While man is still breathing, he must be born again from above.

Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins. While the light of man resides in the natural day, the grace of God gathers the wheat into the barn. The spiritual barn of God is pitched within and without with the eternal balm of heaven, the precious blood of Jesus. In the barn, God reigns. As souls enter, they are received. He has given to his Son authority to gather the souls as a hen gathers his chicks. No man can pluck God’s souls from the Son, and no man can snatch souls from the Father or give souls to the Father. This is an eternal transaction between the Father and the Son, the double yoke of the elect.

No man can enter the barn by any way other than through the Son, in whom, and only in whom, the Father is well pleased. No man can build his own barn or barns. There is only one barn, eternal in the heavens. No man can store earthly treasures in the heavenly barn. What is earthly is earthly and remains on the earth. In the midst of the earthly barn, there is a barn above every barn. Men will die and leave their barns behind, whether full or empty. Those who come after may destroy barns made by hand. They may waste the owner’s possessions, and there is no voice of protest from the dead. Man can only work when it is day, but not when night falls. Jesus is not only the light of the world; he is also the light of the world to come.

And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon; to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it. And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day; for there shall be no night there (Revelations 21: 23–25).

The man that Jesus called you fool was storing the wrong treasures, and his barns were in the wrong place. In the place of no rust, no death, and no night is the place he missed through seeking things below and not above. Just as true treasures are misunderstood, so is true forgiveness. Forgiveness stemmed from the offended party who is God and was consummated on an old rugged cross.

Divine forgiveness rests on the world, waiting for whosoever will to receive it. The Lord’s Prayer And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us covers both parties. The two are yoked together in the forgiveness tent. To withhold forgiveness to another person is to reject the forgiveness the Lord has bestowed on all. When this happens, divine grace from heaven is therefore left unclaimed, and the one who cannot forgive is imprisoned in his own unforgiveness.

The double-yoked string that carries the eternal heavenly pattern guarantees that through every generation, heaven and earth will remain and is able to yank man to his senses. You must be born again. Unforgiveness is clear evidence that man is still yoked to his unregenerate nature. Because Jesus has preforgiven every man by grace, he who is born again, that is, walking under God’s canopy, is freed from unforgiveness, walking unyoked, unbound, in a world bound by sin. Unforgiveness is a clear sign, therefore, that man has not entered into the cloak of eternal forgiveness.

Bound to a patient and loving god, the vessel is unmoved by man’s cruelties, for the elect is not afraid of what is in a man. The Word of God is God and God is love. The Word is the vine and love is the fruit. The Word is the insulation, the beam, the support that carried Jacob and Joseph. In the beginning was the Word, and the prophetic utterance of Joseph describes the Word clearly: God sent me before you to save many alive. The Word of truth freed Moses from the idolatrous palace of Pharaoh, and the Word slammed the door to the misconceptions of the Jews, freeing Nicodemus from a world of unanswered questions. Rahab’s house of prostitution was shut down and led Ruth out of the land of her people. Ruth became the mother of Obed, who was the father of Jesse, who was the father of David. The greater overrules the lesser. The Word is the forgiveness, and the Word is Christ who paid the price. God’s forgiveness is without repentance or condition. The one who does not bestow forgiveness is lost, shut out of God’s divine forgiveness.

The Word focuses wholly on God, and God focuses wholly on his beloved Son. The acceptable sacrifice for coming to God is in Jesus, for Jesus is God the Son. Just as the Son focuses on God the Father, the Holy Spirit focuses only on Jesus. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, and Jesus is the truth. The truth is that man was stuck in unforgiveness like a man stuck in mud, refusing to accept the outstretched hand that can set him free.

The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. God cursed the earth for Adam’s sake. Adam’s word focuses only on earthly things. The earth, in obedience to God, focuses only on man. As man enjoys the bounty of the earth, the earth is groaning. Man is yoked to the earth, desiring the things of the earth, not aware of the yoke that the earth has on him. In order for man’s flesh to function, man is bound to the cursed ground. Adam became spiritually bound to another spirit, brought about through his disobedience. God sent his Son to become the last Adam through obedience. Adam became his life as a man in pristine paradise only to become accursed. Cursed is every man that hangs on a tree. (Galatians 3:136) The last Adam began his life as a pristine man in a cursed environment. On the cross, he took the place of the cursed Adam. He died by laying his life down, was buried, and then rose on the other side of death. Now wherever he is and in whom he lives, the curse is reversed and the righteousness of the last Adam reign. He is the Christ, the blessed Potente, sent by God to earth to redeem man from the curse.

The last Adam is all God and all man who walked about in a body of flesh and blood. He was sinless and perfectly obedient to God. He is the only one who ever walked the earth that has seen God face-to-face. God is Spirit and the last Adam is Spirit. The two are double yoked. Jesus is both God and man, and without either, he’s not Jesus the Savior.

As the sun sets on the day and darkness covers the earth like the end of a play and the darkness lingers for a moment, the anticipation of daybreak reminds man of the faithfulness of God. As one day merges into the next, God’s unbreakable chain of doubles is as an endless reminder of God, who is one, who created everything in doubles. Just as God is second to none, the heavenly pattern is second to nothing on earth. The heavenly pattern came to earth through the womb of Mary, and without Mary, man is still lost, for only through Mary did the faultless man appear. No other man and no other woman would suffice. Mary is second to no woman for through her, redemption came to all mankind.

There are two Adams in the earth. One is spiritual and the other is flesh; one is heavenly and one is earthly. One is blessed and the other is cursed. One is born from below; the other is born from above. There are two lights in the earth. One is eternal and the other is the light of men. Every prophecy is illuminated by another prophecy, which points to another prophecy. Every prophecy is fulfilled in Christ. Every cause has a cause, which has a cause. Every cause eventually comes to rest in the uncaused cause of all causes.

For every life, there is a death; for every death there is a life. For everything that is eternal, there is an earthly image that is for a season. As birds begin building their nest as the spring comes and goes on to begin again the next spring, everything on earth comes to an end, only to begin again.

God’s ways are contrary to man’s ways. All of God’s ways are pure and clean; all the ways of men are impure and loaded with sin. Man offers sacrifices to God devoid of love and purity of heart. God sacrificed the pure sacrifice of his Son from a pure heart of love, devoid of sin and false motives. Everything of man is temporary, imperfect, and conditional. Everything of God is eternal, perfect, unconditional, and impartial. Whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Isaiah 56:3: Let not the stranger say, the Lord will not receive me. The strangers, who join themselves unto the Lord to serve him and love him, will I bring unto my holy mountain, and accept therein sacrifices, for mine house is a house of prayer.

Lydia’s mother remembered the joy she had experienced when her darling daughter was placed in her arms. The chubby fingers were perfectly formed. Her toes were the exact number. The mother smiled. Those ears matched her father’s. Lydia’s father was a quiet man; he said little but he listened a lot, especially to his daughter. The two were like two peas in a pod. Those two seem to shut me out, the mother mused. Then she whispered to herself, Because I nag too much . . . A surge of pain, sharp as a knife, jabbed her very soul. With an anguished look on her face, a sob broke from her lips.

Lydia looked at her mother with a concerned expression on her face. Are you all right, Mother?

I believe I am, her mother answered.

God’s paradox of suffering is a great mystery. God’s ways are not man’s ways. God watches over his world as a father watches over a tender child sent out among predators. The tenderness of Jesus as he taught the people was as a beacon light of divine love, the provoker of repentance, which leads to salvation. The greatest predators of any child are the sons and daughters of the old Adam, the old lion of aggression, wrath, and hostility. Impatient fathers of sons and daughters provoke their children into greater evils. The double whip of disobedience continually divides like chromosomes in living organisms. So shall my word that goes forth out of my mouth! It shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. (Isaiah 55:11)

It was the kindness of God that brought David to repentance. His repentant heart lies open and naked for all generations to examine. As each child faces Goliath, he has only to examine the birth certificate of love that Mary gently nurtured so long ago. The birth is recorded in the prophetic stone of Jezreel. By faith, hope, and love, the eternal seed was planted in the spiritual Jezreel. The manifestation came through Mary’s womb, a dry stone.

Human love has memories; human love cleaves and claws. Human love eventually surrenders to the serpent’s charm, but divine love is ever present. Divine love is the love that reunites to truth. Divine love requires no club membership, no fixed adobe, for love goes where it lists. God is Spirit and his love is spiritual.

God’s paradox of true love is a mystery that the natural man cannot penetrate. God’s love is a paradox of extreme suffering and great joy where saints rejoice in the midst of pain. They have experienced the suffering of this world and the great joy that is in Christ. The contrast is as striking as heaven is from hell. But in Christ, the soul is securely sequestered in the rock of ages.

Love walked for a time among men, but love is no longer sequestered in time. Love cannot be contained in flesh. Love flows from one eternal source into eternal souls, who, for the moment, are locked in flesh. But the old man eventually will go the way of all the earth. The freed soul continues to live in Christ, whose own body was conceived of the Holy Spirit, which is eternal. Christ is the eternal spiritual house not of the earth but of the heavenly garment that is without sin, flesh, or the devil.

There is no mixture, no leaven in the last Christ. He simply passed through earth in bodily form, passed through the valley of the shadow of death, and returned to the Father, bringing many souls to glory. The external man is made of the earthly material where death reigns. Like leaves fading in the autumn, they go away, only for new leaves to reappear the following autumn.

The spiritual man, the last Adam, is both naked and fully clothed. He is clothed with glory that was his before the foundation of the world. He became naked for the good of mankind. He became the veil of flesh to be ripped from the top to bottom. He came to show the love that is eternal in his greatest weakness, he demonstrated the greatest strength. He came to show the way of God that is greater than the ways of man. Love that has no past but is presence itself is God’s gift to man.

The shame of man is seen in his nakedness. When Jesus gave his world-changing sermon on the mount, he shocked the world. He made the whole world reel like drunken men. The listeners were stunned, riveted by the message, the tone, the mood, and the setting. Never had any man spoken with such authority, and never had such love and compassion flowed from human flesh. The crowd stood at the foot of the mount as though suspended in time and space. Jesus was speaking to his disciples, instructing them in the ways of the kingdom. All who received the walking, living truth that spoke from the source of many waters and drank from the fount of his love are his disciples indeed. Jesus was preparing his sheep to go out among wolves in homes, villages, nations, and the whole world. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice (John 10:4). The voice is as of many waters; in like manner, he confounded the language of man. Whenever language declares his glory and declares to their neighbor his great love wherein he loves all of them, then and only then will weapons become tools to heal and not to destroy.

The men stood at the foot of the mount in long robes called cloaks. These cloaks stood between them and their nakedness. Only a brief piece of cloth barely bigger than strips of gauze protected their private parts. Along with the cloak, each man wore a loose-fitting coat. This double covering kept the men from being almost completely naked. The words of Jesus confounded them more and more.

Jesus looked down at the men and said, If a man asks for your coat, give him your cloak also. A hush fell over the crowd. How cruel, how embarrassing would it be for a man to uncover the nakedness of another man? Never had this culture heard of such! Which is more embarrassing, more humbling than to stand naked before a man who has stripped another man of everything? Woe to be the man holding the cloak and the coats.

After the death and resurrection of Jesus, Jesus looked down from heaven as Stephen was stoned. Stephen looked up and saw Jesus standing on the right hand of God. Saul stood on the ground below, and the murderers laid their clothes at his feet.

Jesus went on to say, Love your enemies, pray for those who deceive you. David often prayed against his enemies, but Jesus prayed for his friends. He said in John 17:20, My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message.

The profound words of Jesus broke through the tyranny of sin. Jesus simply spoke the truth that has no limitations and spans beyond space, time, and material existence. Staring up at Jesus, each man felt as if they were being stripped of their garments. There was nowhere to run, no place to hide. How could they escape their own evil inclinations?

The crowd stood before Jesus as though grieving for themselves. They wished to be but could never be. At the same time, the bittersweet relief at hearing the words pouring from the very lips of Jesus seemed to draw them closer, anxious for more of the living bread. Never had such tenderness, such deep knowledge of what each soul sensed was in himself, poured from a man such as themselves. Suddenly he was not some prophet from Nazareth; he was as God himself speaking. He was one of them yet he was not; he seemed to belong in another place, yet he stood before them. Each man seemed to belong to him alone, yet he belonged to all of them, even those who were afar off. The people were eager to hear more.

Jesus continued with his sermon. Jesus said something like this: What good is it to clean your house of dung, which the dog has left behind if the door remains unsecured. He has but to return bringing seven more, even more wicked than himself. All knew of the flaming sword and two cherubim that blocked reentry into the Garden of Eden. David’s bodyguards, the Cherethites and the Palethites, could not keep out the spiritual dung that caused sorrow and grief in his household.

Jesus said to the multitudes, If a man forces you to go a mile, go two miles. These words cut to the very core of the hearts of the stout and the brave. They were often forced by the Roman soldiers to carry their backpacks. The law required them to carry the weight for only a mile. How insulting was it for a soldier to ask for his package at the junction where one mile becomes the second mile? How insulting to run behind the man begging to have his backpack returned and the man just keeps on going?

Many marveled at Jesus’s words. They listened with awe and wonderment. His words were stabbing through pride and arrogance, slicing through evil like fat being trimmed from meat. Every injustice, every evil that each one of them had, that was forced on another, was being addressed. His words were taking them to places they had never traveled before, places they didn’t know existed. He was taking them into the realm of truth, attacking the very heart of evil.

No flesh shall glory in God’s sight; the selfless love of God stood before the masses, reaching into the places of evil inclinations where imaginations run amuck. Legions were there lurking, staring, agitated; this was not their hour. They recognized fully the Son of the most high God. Like insects, they scurried to hide, to disguise themselves, but the eyes of Jesus penetrated the flesh, drawing them out like a flea bomb draws out and destroys fleas.

Love is the very present help in time of need; love doesn’t weigh the opportunities for self-promotion. Love unfolds like a flower, goes where it lists, and never puts itself on display. Love seeks the greater good for man, that of stripping off flesh and putting on the immortal life of Christ. Love is active and man the recipient of love. Man’s lesser will become totally immersed in the greater and inerrant will of God.

Love goes right on through, traveling the second mile, going on into the greater good that supports the wrong. The man who has forced the load on his brother to carry will be greatly shamed when his commander appears. How does he tell his superior that not only did he force his brother to carry his bag, but he is also unable to retrieve his bag, that the man just kept on walking? Love takes man to places he didn’t intend to go! He who begins the good work will complete the work. The work is complete when evil is overcome with good, and in Christ alone are the brothers both resting.

Jesus had come to the lost sheep of Israel, preparing them to leave their pasture and go to the lands beyond where the Gentiles waited. He was preparing his people to go to where the people knew not the true and living God. He was preparing them for the arrival of the Holy Spirit, the time when the immortal King would come on the wings of the dove and indwell their mortal souls. It is then, and only then, when corruption would put on incorruption and mortally be changed to immortality. Through the power of the Spirit, the words of the prophets would become realities and not just be perceived as idle tales of madmen. Like a man plowing a field in preparation for the ground to receive seeds, Jesus began by saying to the crowd, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn for they will be comforted. The great Shepherd King, whose eyes are sharper than lasers and whose voice is more powerful that the blast of the rocket, was preparing the people, comforting those whose hearts would be broken by his words. He was telling them not to be afraid; he was comforting those who would eventually mourn at the Word that is sharper than a double-edged sword. The Word came to set the captives free.

Chapter 2

Yoked like an ox between two heavy burdens, Jesus carries death on one side and life on the other. The Son of God had come into the world to take on his shoulder the death of the first Adam. As he hanged on the cross, Jesus was yoked to death on one hand, which was man’s debt to his Father, and he was also yoked to life on the other hand, his free gift to man from the Father. Nailed to the cross was Jesus; embodied in him was every ordinance, every law, every precept, every decree and every other utterance that ever proceeded from the mouth of God.

As the sun went out and blackness covered the earth, two forces lined up, the forces of evil on the left and the forces of good on the right. Whenever one of the forces from the left would try to slip through the barrier of prophecy and mingle with the forces on the right, the spirit of prophecy would send him tumbling backward with a simple Get where you belong. The forces on the right are sealed with the Holy Spirit, having been predestined form the foundation of the world.

The sin that so easily besets man, the sin of unbelief, was being consumed by the lonely Savior, different from all the creatures that he had made, including Adam, who was but dust, conceived in sin and shaped in iniquity. The double yoke of prophecy, that of utter separation by Adam from God and the separation by God from the Son, was being played out on the earth in time and space. Everything necessary to demonstrate to man the salvation of souls, according to the eternal pattern, accumulated in his Son. Through disobedience, Adam had become separated from God. Through obedience to God, Jesus, the last Adam, had been abandoned by