Killing Our Creator, Usurping Our King
“You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this.”
“Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him. So it is to be. Amen.”
The Most Beautiful Story Ever Told
God alone is good. He created us in His image. From the highest heaven, He descended down to the dust of the earth to walk among us, to serve and heal us in our brokenness. Why? Because He loves us.
How then did humankind respond to such unfathomable love and humility? We tortured and murdered Him, our God. We deny that we are evil, yet we displayed the endless hidden depths of our innate corruption by murdering the source of all that is good. We revealed our evil insides by murdering the only one who is worthy to rule in Jerusalem.
Yet, what did Jesus do? He forgave us while we were actively killing Him. And not only that, but He put His shed blood to use for the redemption of those who would turn toward Him, to absolve us completely from the depth of our evil corruption and its accompanying guilt. He took our destruction upon Himself, and not because we are good, but because He is good.
The Father turned His face away from our Lord Jesus for our sake, punishing The Righteous Lord our Savior for our sins. But death could not hold our God, who was raised from the dead before ascending into heaven. Because our chastisement fell upon Christ, the Lord smiles upon those who love Him.
So now, we who know Christ are present in Him, patiently awaiting our savior’s return, at which time we shall follow Him into His Kingdom to rule and reign with Him. His followers are destined to follow in His path of resurrection. Our redemption is already present within us via His promised Holy Spirit, and yet is also coming soon in totality. His Kingdom is here working among us, and yet it still awaits the time when all shall see it plainly.
God is coming back for us. He came down to us from heaven where He has always dwelt, then ascended back up to heaven from the earth with the promise to return the same way He departed from us. Thus, we shall meet him in the air as His Kingdom comes to the Earth in totality to the destruction of all that opposes His rule.
“And I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and of pleading, so that they will look at Me whom they pierced; and they will mourn for Him, like one mourning for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.”
A 2,700 Year-Old Prophecy of Jesus:
“1 Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
4 Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was punished.
9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.
11 After he has suffered,
he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.”
I Saw Jesus in Capernaum
He Showed Me that I Would Have Killed Him Too
[Context: I went to Israel for free in 2018 by way of God’s miraculous provision. My trip was a Bible lands tour with about 30 other people from my denomination. I was a brand new (and very immature) Christian, not yet very familiar with the Bible.
My immediate background prior to becoming a Christian was that I was an occultist and an astrologer. Prior to becoming a Christian, I found my pride, identity, and purpose in the occult and in astrology. At the time of this event, I had left all of that behind, albeit, begrudgingly. At this time in my nascent Christian walk, Christ was finally prying my fingertips off of astrology and whatever other studies I thought the knowledge of would make me unique. He was working to cleanse my innate desire to be set apart by vesting this desire solely in identifying with Him. He was leading me to only be set apart from others (the world) for following Him alone, rather than for constructing some false and arbitrary syncretistic blend of Christianity and esoteric philosophies (which is very alike to what the Pharisees have been doing for millennia, for they interweave the Torah with Kabbalah, which is esoteric sorcery and forms the root of all occultic teachings). When you lack the power of the Holy Spirit (because you reject Jesus), but simultaneously claim spiritual authority, you have only one place to go to obtain spiritual power: the teachings of demons. If you don’t go through Jesus, then you are not receiving the power you have from God, but from His heavenly rivals who seek His usurpation as King of Kings. If you are claiming spiritual authority apart from Christ, you are establishing yourself as His rival, and as He said, there is only one Rabbi, and that Rabbi is Jesus. If you claim to be Rabbi yourself, you are attempting to Usurp Him, the Alpha and the Omega. This is what the Pharisees did when they murdered the Author of Life, their own Creator. This is what the power of darkness seeks: the death of God.
Around this same time, I was also given a dream in which I had a garden with all kinds of idols dedicated to ancient philosophers, esotericists, and pagan teachers. In the dream, a mighty wind (the Spirit of God) blew them all over, “even Pythagoras” a voice said (the Pythagoras idol was the largest and most ornate).
Christ, being thorough in His sanctification, confronted me for the final time in Israel, at Capernaum.
I recorded this description of the event shortly after it happened, about six years ago.]
Capernaum, Israel – 20 Years-Old; March 2018
“As soon as the bus arrives at Capernaum, I recognize an unusual-looking building that I have never seen before. In the front, just on the other side of the entrance gate, is a building constructed of black basalt blocks striped with layers of lighter colored blocks. I distinctly remember being in front of this building in a recent dream.
The tour guide prepares our visit by sharing information about the town before we even exit the bus. I didn’t know Jesus made His home here. I learn that this town was the seat of His ministry. Jesus performed many of His miracles here.
We enter the uncovered ancient city through an initial gate marked by a sign that reads:
CAPHARNAUM
THE TOWN OF JESUS
The group moves forward to the check-in kiosk. As our tour guide squares everything away with the kiosk worker, I walk past my group and into the mosaic floor of the vast square. The site is teeming with Christian tourists from many countries. Dozens of mesmerized tourists turn their attention southward to take in something that is across the square. Naturally, I turn with them to see what they are looking at. Just as I catch a minute view of a larger-than-life statue of Saint Peter wielding a staff and the Keys of the Kingdom, Jesus Himself appears directly in front of me to render every other spectacle obsolete.
I feel as though the earth has ceased its spinning. He stands in a white robe, peering directly into my eyes. There is fire in His eyes, fire that burns right through my phony appearances and claims I have about myself to reveal instead, exactly what I am. I see reflected in the fire in His eyes, what it is He sees in me. There is pride, egocentricity, and the desire to make a name for myself. That desire is in direct competition to Jesus’ name, which is the only Name that should ever be lifted up. It is the same competition for glory in which the Pharisees competed against Jesus 2,000 years ago. Their greedy desires to be followed and obeyed ignited their inexhaustible jealousy of Him, jealousy that could only be quenched by the successful murder of Rabbi Jesus. These were power-seeking, vainglorious men who devoted themselves to receiving the praises of human beings. They did so by teaching others self-derived and self-verified teachings. [They wanted men to need to go through them in order to arrive at truth. They became liars in desiring such, as they did not know truth. Jesus is the truth and is the only mediator between God and man. It is self-exalting and deceptive for anyone else to attempt to claim such a position]. If I were here at the time Jesus was conducting His ministry, I too would have been jealous of Him and therefore would have joined the murderous crowd that was opposed to Him.
He stands still, unmoving as I witness my own unraveling. Severe depression crushes me, laying me to waste. It is an agonizing, deadly sort of depression. How do I change?
The vision lifts in an instant, but leaves me crushed.
Life isn’t about me at all, yet I’m almost all I’ve ever thought about. My highest desires have always revolved around my personal enrichment and my selfish ambitions. All my aims to justify boasting in myself by receiving honor, praise, or attention from human beings are efforts to receive the exaltation that is only due to Christ. Christ warned Peter in Matthew 16:6, “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees.” Apparently, I have long fallen victim to that yeast.
The group enters the square, crossing it towards a pleasant area along the shore filled with gravel stones, planted trees and concrete benches. I rejoin them in the square.
Our group sets up in the pleasant area at the edge of the Sea of Galilee. While the others quietly observe the view and pray, I lay on my back on one of the concrete benches behind them, fully taken down from the vision and its excruciating accuracy.”