[Part
I] [Part II] [Part III]
[Part IV]
[Part V]
[Part VI]
[Part VII]
[Part VIII]
[Part IX]
[Part X]
[Part XI]
[Part XII]
[Part XIII]
[Part XIV]
[Addendum]
“All flesh shall come to worship before me, says the Lord.” Isa. 66:23
One of the deepest mysteries of salvation yet to be understood is the relationship of our destiny as redeemed worshippers to our new identity in Christ. Worship is more than the offering of songs and dances in praise and adoration to the Father. It is more than experiencing a spiritually empowered emotion or passion. It is deeper than the offering up of acts of obedience. Worship is even deeper than dedicating our lives to the purposes of God as living sacrifices.
In its deepest, true worship flows from the surrendering up of our native identity in Adam to receive and become perfected in His identity as we gaze on the Father in His separated identity. It’s from this deepest sense that all the preceding demonstrations flow in reverse order.
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Even though we know that worshipping the Lord is the be all and end all of eternal destiny, we haven’t harnessed this truth to the practical issues of identity conversion and sanctification toward conformity to His image. Failing to draw these realities into related understanding has left us open to false theologies of worship and final destiny, especially regarding “the nations.”
The present accepted belief is that eventually all humanity will come to worship the Lord, something that will be a positive experience for all beings, and that as worshippers, we will be left in tact with our “native” (ie, “nation-al”) adamic roots. That is, we will be worshipping him through uniquely “cultural avenues,” all of which bring Him glory.
It’s true that every creature will finally worship the Lord. It’s not true that worship will be a positive experience for all creation or that we can finally present our fleshly cultural distinctives as acceptable offerings to the Lord. The story of Cain and Abel teaches us that spiritual worship rooted in the sacrifice of the Lamb of God is acceptable. Fleshly worship based in what we can do and what we are outside of the Lamb is not acceptable.
We understand that fleshly worship based in works (such as Cain’s) is not acceptable to the Lord. But we don’t grasp that such works are innately tied to who we are outside of the Lord’s rebirthing us as new creatures. In other words, worship based in Adamic identity itself is ultimately not acceptable to the Lord:
"So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God" (Rom. 8:8).
Salvation and progress in destiny is ultimately an identity issue, and all this is inseparable from the issue of worship. Worship is not a facet of spiritual life isolated away from our progressing salvation and destiny. Worship is directly tied to the process of salvation, itself a process of ongoing identity conversion. The redeemed cannot forever worship the Lord and forever remain harnessed to adamic identity. (Only the eternally condemned in Adam will worship and remain this way, and, as we’ll see, for them, worship is not pleasant.)
Consider some of the basic yet critical facts about our salvation. Salvation begins as a new birth. What is a new birth? Someone newly born is a new person, that is, a new identity. A newborn is someone who has not been before. This conversion to new identity is what first makes our worship acceptable to God in that it flows from His own nature in us. Our worship means something now because it is tied to our knowledge of Him personally as a child.
Paul emphasizes that as new creations, all that is old is passed away, behold all things are new. It means our identity is new—all previous natural reference points for identity rooted in fleshly Adamic heritage are now old and done away in principle. This means national identity—tribes, groups, cultural bondings, families, and even gender. In present effect, these old identities are in process of passing away from us, being increasingly severed from us. Our hearts and minds are being washed clean and free of them. And this ongoing passing away of adamic identity is deeply connected to our increasing and maturing worship of Our Father.
This theme of ongoing identity renovation pervades the whole of New Testament teaching and culminates with the Revelation where we see the central eternal Throne toward which the redeemed are all being brought:
· Paul tells us that we are of no fleshly national identity—neither Jew nor Greek.
· Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that true worship is not related to a religious enterprise rooted in a national heritage.
· Mindful of the Father’s supreme search for worshippers, Jesus tells the apostles to “disciple the nations” by saturating (“baptizing”) them into the name of the Father at the expense of their ancestral identities.
· Jesus tells us that once we break the mortality barrier, we are as the angels in whom is no gender. (If there’s no gender, there certainly can’t be nationality!)
· Maintaining central focus on the Throne of God, Revelation tells us that all things are being made new, and all the former things shall be forgotten.
Can we connect these dots to see that all this ongoing change out of first adamic identity occurs in conjunction with our increasing approach to the Throne of God, the site of our worship?
The Throne as “Worship-Central” is like a magnet with a gravitational pull on us. That pull is not of mere “desire” to be in His Presence. It’s a pull of inward soul change—change out of original (native/national) identity into fully matured, perfected, purified immortalized new identity. It is a purification that resonates with His Holiness at the center of the universe. As John puts it, we are changed as we behold Him. Such beholding is what the worship of Revelation is all about.
Do we grasp this? Worship and identity change are inseparably linked realities. We are led from root identity change through soul transformation to ultimate physical transformation—all through worship and toward worship of Him Who sits on the Throne.
This has major major ramifications on our understanding of what it means when it says “All nations shall come and worship”—which in turn has deep bearing on our discussion of the Body and Beast and brings us to the point of this article.
If worship is keyed to the transformation of our identity out of Adam, yet it says that all nations shall come and worship—nations speaking of native origins in Adam—how are we to understand this? If the “nations” are all eventually going to worship as they are in Adam anyway, what difference does it make to become part of the Body? If it means the Body will worship while retaining her old identities, why be a disciple and separate yourself from the nations?
Discernment here is critical because right now, the Body is using the understanding that “all nations will come and worship” to actually hinder her separation from their identity. The Body is using the hope of international worship to reinforce her nostalgic ties to her old identities among the beasts rather than purify her identity from among them. A “monstrous” travesty is being wrought by this worship theology.
The beasts represent adamic identity. They represent the world. They are the kingdoms of darkness. And all nations are beasts. The distinction between the beasts and the Body of Christ is that the Body comprises those from among all nations who have received new identity in Christ and are in process of leaving behind all original adamic beast identity.
Yet we’re told that all nations will worship the Lord at the coming of His Kingdom. How can it be that beasts will worship the Lord? How can this be if true worship belongs only to the Body—to those who have undergone conversion to Christ in the inner being? Is this what it means? What must we rightly discern here?
Understanding Millennial Worship by the Nations
It is of course true that the Body will uniquely worship the Lord also. It is also true that the beasts—the nations—those still in Adam—will one day worship the Lord. But, what this does not mean is, A) all the nations are finally saved and so can worship, or B) the glorified church finally holds onto the filthy garments of all her old national identities after all to offer as an “acceptable offering.”
To understand how both the Body and the Beasts can simultaneously be said to worship the Lord while preserving our critical distinction between them, we have to understand that there is more than one kind of worship to be offered to the Lord, in fact several kinds, and that not all worship is indicative of eternal life or is of the class that the Lord finds alone ultimately pleasing.
The truth is that, yes, after the Lord Jesus returns in glory to establish His manifest Kingdom through His immortal Body, unconverted mortal “Adamites” will still dwell in the earth. They will still comprise “nations” as beasts though they will have no authority. These beasts will continue for “a little season.” That is to say, there is a period of earth history remaining in which even after the Lord returns, mortality inherited from Adam will continue. Men will still be born the “old way” and many will still die. Yet all authority will belong to the Lord and His Immortal Body.
Under the finally manifest authority of the Lord and of His Christ, all the earth will know who the Lord Jesus is and will worship Him. But this worship will be offered from a spectrality of platforms according to the variety of spiritual states men will occupy with regard to the saving knowledge of the Lord.
In particular, the worship offered by earth’s remaining unconverted mortals will not, indeed cannot carry the flavor of ultimate pleasing to the Father that only the worship from the converted heart can carry. Isaiah 45 describes the worship to be offered by such:
14 Thus says the Lord: "The labor of Egypt and merchandise of Cush And of the Sabeans, men of stature, Shall come over to you, and they shall be yours; They shall walk behind you, They shall come over in chains; And they shall bow down to you. They will make supplication to you, saying, 'Surely God is in you, And there is no other; There is no other God.' " 15 Truly You are God, who hide Yourself, O God of Israel, the Savior! 16 They shall be ashamed And also disgraced, all of them; They shall go in confusion together, Who are makers of idols. 17 But Israel shall be saved by the Lord With an everlasting salvation; You shall not be ashamed or disgraced Forever and ever…22 "Look to Me, and be saved, All you ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other. 23 I have sworn by Myself; The word has gone out of My mouth in righteousness, And shall not return, That to Me every knee shall bow, Every tongue shall take an oath. 24 He shall say, 'Surely in the Lord I have righteousness and strength. To Him men shall come, And all shall be ashamed Who are incensed against Him. 25 In the Lord all the descendants of Israel Shall be justified, and shall glory.' "
Once the Kingdom of God grows to the point of manifest immortality in the earth and the physical return of the Lord Jesus, three classes of worship will exist: forced worship, anointed mortal worship, and pure worship.
The enforcement of worship over all the earth will as never before have the gravitational pull effect to draw all men into the fold of saving converted new birth in Christ. It will lead to the increasing dissolution of adamic identity throughout the earth. One day, when there is readied an entirely new heavens and earth, it will lead to the absolute dissolution of adamic identity. A time will come when finally all human existence is to be found only in Christ throughout the universe! There will be no more beasts, period.
But until the unconverted of the remaining ages actually submit to identity conversion—to surrender their adamic nationality and become reborn into the ever-increasing Body of Christ—worship will be disciplinary. They will be forced to present an offering that is contrary to their essential adamic identity and nature. The more contrary they are, the more disciplinary the yoke of worship will be upon them. But this is the meaning of the word that the Lord and His Christ will rule and smite the nations with a rod of iron.
The less contrary and more disposed to the Lord the remaining mortal nationals are, the less disciplinary and more instructive worship will be to them. In fact, there will even be a more positive worship anointing upon this unconverted class of people—an anointing for worship not unlike the Cyrus anointing of the present age, except that the beasts will be entirely non-hostile to the Body.
From among this class of unconverted worshipping nations will come the daily and increasing numbers of converts to New Birth able to offer the finally pleasing worship to their new Father. These will join the ranks of all converted mortals for whom worship now works directly to lead them to full glorification as it does for us now.
Finally of course will be the Immortals, those whose worship has become manifestly perfected through deathless bodies. It is these whom the Bible refers to as the “kings of the earth” during the reign of Christ—the “King of kings.” They are those whose perfected worship enables them to ascend and descend from the Holy City, to stand directly before the Lord—bringing into it the worship offerings (“glory”) of the nations over whom they rule, but which as mortal and adamic nations are themselves unable to ascend to the City.
The thing to remember about the worship government in the coming manifest Kingdom is that the tables will be turned on the nationals! In that nearing day, it is the mortal nationals, the adamites, who will live in the earth as aliens, strangers and pilgrims—not the Body of Christ. The beasts that once ferociously devoured Christ’s Body will now be fully de-fanged, de-clawed, tamed and mastered under authority of Christ’s Body.
In that day, the Body of Christ will finally become the Keeper of the Zoo.
Understanding this relationship between worship and national identity is vital if we’re to escape the present delusions about worshipping nations that now infest the Body. It is vital because, before the manifest Kingdom can even break the horizon, the Lord must have at least a first generation Body that gains final Immortal victory over and severance from all national beastly identity.
The closing article of this series exhorts and incites us to obtain that final dissolution of original adamic identity within us.
Chris Anderson
New Meadow Neck, Rhode Island
First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org9/03
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Page updated January 9, 2017
