THE KING'S GREATEST SECRET or HOW TO BE PERFECT
God has a Secret!!! He would like to tell it to You! The angels and men of God wanted to know this Secret, but God wouldn't tell them for thousands of years. Then God told The Secret to the church through the Apostle Paul and the other apostles and prophets. That Secret was lost and forgotten again during the Dark Ages, but now is being told again in this special time to the church. It's the King's Greatest Secret! It needs to be told so very much. Almost no one in the Church today knows The Secret. We have ministered in many churches across the country and in most of them we ask a certain question to find out if they know The Secret. And in none of the places where we have ministered have they known. The question we asked them was, "What did Jesus take of ours with Him to the cross?" Will you take a minute to answer this before you continue?
We get answers, all of them correct but not complete, like "He took our sins, our sicknesses, our burdens, etc." We say, "That's true that He took these so we can be forgiven, healthy, and without worry (some folks cast their burdens upon Yahweh, the Mighty Right now God, but as a fisherman casts, they sit and reel these burdens back to themselves). But the people still have not told the main thing Christ took with Him to the cross! I suppose the reason they do not know is that it requires a revelation of God, or one who has a revelation from God to share The Secret, before they can know. What a Wonderful Mystery!
The Secret is found in plain sight in a multitude of places in the Bible, especially in places like John 17, Ephesians, Romans, Galatians, Colossians, etc. The Secret Mystery is this: When Christ went to the cross, He took us with Him there! When He died, we died! When He was buried, we were buried with all of our insufficiencies, inadequacies, inferiorities, insecurities, inabilities, and instabilities!!!! Everything negative. or nasty or weak or sinful about us He took to the cross, because He took us to the cross. Oh, dear one, if you grasp hold of this Secret it will make all the difference between Christ living your life, and you living your life; between you trying to speak good things, and Christ speaking His words through you.
Lord Jesus, please make this plain and understandable. We believe together that You will make the Mystery clear. "I praise Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou didst hide these things from the wise and intelligent, and didst reveal them to babes. Yes, Father, for thus it was well pleasing in Thy sight" Matt. 11:25 and Luke 10:21.
Please let me tell you more about The Secret. When The Lord Jesus Christ went to the cross He took you with Him there! You were there when they crucified my Lord! Christ looked ahead into time and saw you and decided that He could not help you any other way, that He could not beat or bless you into being what He wants you to be, could not educate or "religious" you adequately, hut that the only hope for you was to take you with Him to the Cross and kill you dead, along with all of your negative nature and qualities, and bury you.
Unlike many self-help books, Christ does not try to get you to "hype" or hypnotize, con or convince yourself into thinking that you are really good or nice, adequate or o.k., but that you are totally hopeless and helpless apart from Christ taking you to the cross witH Him and putting all of your self to death and burying it in the tomb with Him. So you do not need to kill yourself or commit suicide, nor do your friends, because Jesus Christ lovingly killed us softly already. But that is not the end of the story!
When Christ rose from the tomb He raised us up as a whole, new, beautiful, wonderful, adequate, sufficient, glorious, superior, perfect, secure creation in His image in newness of Life so He could come into us and be our Life,Live our Life, be our perfection, be our righteousness!!!
Perhaps you would like to see this Secret in the scriptures. The following verses can become attainable in the practical realm of the nitty gritty now:
I Cor. 15:57 Victory
II Cor. 2:14-16 Victory always everywhere
Rom. 6:7, 18, 22 Free from sin
Co!. 3:1-3 Risen with Christ our life
Eph. 2:6 Seated in Christ
Ps. 16:11 Fullness of joy; joy unspeakable
Eph. 1:3, 4 Every blessing
Ne. 8:10 Joy of the Lord-strength
I Cor. 2:16 Mind of Christ
Ph. 4:13 Can do all things through Christ
Jude 24 Walk blamelessly
Matt. 28:18 All power and authority
Matt. 5:14 We are the light of the World
Ph. 1:21 To Live Is Christ
II Cor. 9:8 All power and authority
John 14:13 Whatever we ask
John 10:10 Abundant life
II Pet. 1:1-4 We have all things for life
Rom. 8:37 More than conquerors
I John 4:17 We are as He is
Matt. 19:26 All things are possible with
I John 2:6 We can walk as He walked
John 14:12 Greater works
Luke 8:10 We can know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God
Col. 1 :25-29 Mystery of the gospel of the ages
I Cor. 1:30 Christ is made unto us Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification and Redemption
Galatians 2:20 says, "I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me!!!" In Colossians, God says that Christ is our life! The Bible says, "For me to live IS Christ" (Phil. 1:21), and "We have the mind of Christ" (I Cor. 2:16), and "As He [Christ] is so are we in this world" I John 4:17. Oh, dear heart, I pray for you with deep, unutterable longing and faith "That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him! I pray that the may be enlightened so that you may know. Eph. 1:17, 18.
HOW TO BE PERFECT
You simply know and "reckon yourself to have been crucified with Christ" (Rom. 6:6), and then consider and reckon yourself as "dead indeed unto sin, self and satan, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord!!! (Rom. 6:11) Allelujaweh!!! Thank you, Dear Lord Jesus, for taking us to the cross with You and for raising us up with You in newness of Life in You, Lord God, we receive You to be all that You are, in us, now and forever more. Amen. Jesus said, "Be ye Betherefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." Matt. 5:48. Jesus, as always, meant just what He said! He meant, " as perfect as God!" Or would you prostitute and change and twist and warp and non-effectualize the Word of God here or any other place?
It does not mean "try to be perfect" nor "be perfect sometime after your body has rotted," nor "give up on being perfect," nor "it's impossible to be perfect," nor "wish that you were perfect," nor "God isn't great enough to make or keep me perfect," nor "be theoretically perfect," nor any of that kind of silliness. 'Would be' disciples of the Kingdom, won't be disciples of the Kingdom of God as long as they are messing with the commands of the King of God's Kingdom in this way! One who changes the commands of the King is a Kingdom Anarchist and traitor. When someone asks, "What does this verse mean?" the
best answer is, "The Bible means what it says!" because the King means what He says. I believe that whenever there is a disagreement about a scripture, it is because one or more of them is not willing to accept what the scripture and King says.
THE GREATEST MOMENT OF MY LIFE
One day Patty Troug at Bethel College told me, "John, as long as you are calling 'idealistic;' 'unattainable,' or 'theoretical' what God calls necessary, practical, available, and attainable, you are calling God a liar!!! I had thrown a book away from me in disgust, Forever Triumphant, by Huegel, in which he quoted II Corinthians 2:14, "Thanks be unto God who in Christ always causes us" to triumph and manifests Christ through us in every place!" (JB) Victory, at all times and in every place! I had said "that’s too idealistic," but then I realized, as a result of Paticia’s gentle rebuke, thaa I had been calling God a liar in that He said, "Victory always and everywhere." And I had said, "Impossible." I did not want to call God a liar anymore, so I went to my room, got out my bibles, KJV, AMP, Gdspd, Greek,N.T., etc. and laid them out on Bruce Leafblad’s vacant bunk, to see just what God did say. Sure enough, God said, "Perfect victory always" and "More than coquerors" and "Abundant Life" and "Joy unspeakable" and "Full of Glory" and "WE have the Mind of
Christ" and "Christ our Life" and "whatever we ask" and "Greater works than these shall ye do" and "I can do all things through Christ" and "With God all things are possible" etc., etc., etc.; etc. All these Bibles said the same thing, so I decided to do three things:
1. Confess every known sin, including having called God a liar;
2. Yield myself completely to the Lord Jesus Christ.
I told the Lord Jesus that I would be willing to be sick, maimed, killed, single, celibate, persecuted, misunderstood, forgotten, married to anyone He said (I was sure He was going to make me marry somebody really terrible). Anyway, I really meant business.
Now, these first two steps I had taken many times before, but I took them again. In fact, we should always keep up to date with the Lord, staying free from sin and staying in a totally yielded state.
3. Appropriate by faith the highest level walk in God’s Spirit, with Christ AS your life! Ivite Jesus Christ to come into your life and take over completely as Saviour, Lord and Life!!!
Charles Trumble, in The Life That Wins, *says that on this
*From The Life That Wins or Victory In Christ, Christian Literature Crusade, Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, 19034.
third step of faith, everything now depends. He suggested that we take a step of faith with total disregard for the presence or lack of accompanying signs or proofs, because the transaction must be based on faith rather than some feeling or tingle, etc. So, I remember reaching out my hand to the Lord God and saying, "Lord Jesus, I believe You have a walk for me that I haven't been experiencing; a relationship and an experience with You that I haven't had before. Lord Jesus, I don't know what to call it, and I don't know how to get it, but whatever You call it and however one gets it, I receive it from You now in cold, blind faith, not depending on outward feelings or 'signs' as the proof of the transaction. Thank You very much. In Jesus' Name, Amen."
Can you guess what happened? You guessed it. Nothing. Outwardly, or on a feeling level, that is. I felt really dead. Oh, I had accepted the Lord Jesus as my personal Saviour many years before, and I had yielded my Life to Him many times before. But the same thing had happened to me as would have happened in the Old Testament if one would have taken a clean lamb of the flock without blemish and then sacrificed the lamb under the hot Israel sun . . . and that's all. Can you imagine the mess? The sacrifice needed the fire of God to come from heaven to light upon and consume the sacrifice as a sign of acceptance and anointing. But I rose from my knees there at Gerald Healy's house where Bruce Leafblad and I were renting while attending Bethel College, November 1960, my senior year. I put away all my Bibles and climbed wearily into my top bunk. After I was settled down, I thought, "If anybody asked me to praise the Lord right now, it would be like someone asking me to praise a haystack." I suppose I was remembering a time when I had gone to visit a church and had tried to get "ba'tzd wi' d' HoliGoz' " and the pastor was on one side telling me to say "Prayz Gawd" just as loud as I could, whilst the preacher's wife was on the other side, encouraging me to say, "How'lay-Iew'yuh." just as fast as I could. I recall how terribly difficult it had been to say either one either way. Folks who know me now are surprised that I didn't bound out of my mother's womb shouting "How'lay-Iew'ya." One time, at Bible
School, a staff member said the reason John Bohlen praised the Lord was because he had a 'sanguine personality. I told her, "Yes, Joyce, the 47th Psalm says, 'O clap your hands [al ye sanguines], shout unto God with the voice of triumph'!!!" By the way, that's not quite how it reads-it reads 'all ye people.' So it's not just those with an enthusiastic personality that are to beautifully and enthusiastically and constantly worship the Lord: all of us are.!!!
CATACLYSMIC REVOLUTION
Anyway, no sooner had that thought crossed my mind about praising a haystack, (indicating the lacking emotional level of positive feeling) when Christ became my Life!, and I have never been the same since. It seemed like a great dam broke on the inside and there came explosively gushing over me, and through me, and to me, and from me, and upon me, and around me, from deep within and from high above came the Glory of God, and the Joy of God, and the Love of God, and the Spirit of God, and the Life of God, and the Peace of God, and the Presence of God, and the Strength of God, and the Anointing of God, and the Overflowing, Effervescent Flooding Fullness of the Living God!!! I have never been the same! Fabulous! Incredible! Joyful! Invigorating! Beautiful! Astounding! Healing! Wonderful! Marvelous! Lasting! Satisfying! Miraculous! Life-changing! Christ became my Life! I saw myself as having been crucified with Christ, dead and buried with Christ, risen with Christ Jesus in newness of Life, and seated in Christ at the Father's right hand, far over and above everything that is named in heaven and on earth, and glorified in Him, Jesus Christ. This is described in Eph. 2, and Col. 3, Rom. 6, and Rom. 8, Eph 3, II Cor. 3, etc., etc., etc., etc.
From the Amplified Bible, Eph. 3:19b "That you may be filled (through all your being) unto all the fullness of God-[that is], may have the richest measure of the Divine presence, and become a body wholly filled and flooded with God Himself."
"The question for all of us, no matter what our theological background is: Are you filled with God right now? Jesus said, "He that believes Me, out of his innermost being shall gush forth flooding torrents of Living Water continuously." John 7:38 (JB-ANT)
Question-Are you full of God and His Holy Spirit right this moment? Are you up to date with Him and on excellent terms with Him right now? Do you minister and share from the overflow, or are you like a "small handful of water in a big empty barrel?" Pray with me.
Dear Father God, thank You for providing unlimited anointing and every blessing, and having "given us all things that pertain to life and godliness." I ask You to be my life; be all that You are, in me from now on. I reckon and consider the old to be dead. I receive You as my "Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification, and Redemption." Be my Perfection. Love through me, speak Your Words Through me, pray through me. Thank You, Mighty Right Now God. I believe from now on I can do all things through Christ my Life, and that nothing shall be impossible IN You. In Jesus' Name, Amen.
We can have an experience more real than if we fell dead, and Christ was looking around for a freshly dead warm body in which to live, that He could come into and be the life of, that He could live His divine glorious life through!!!
He's coming in the clouds-don't mistake that, and "Every eye shall see Him", but He also wants to be glorified and magnified now in all who believe!! "When He shall come to be glorified in His saints and to be admired in all them that believe, (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day" II Th. 1:10 (KJ).
So, back to the illustration-Say that Christ came into your available dead body and became its life, that is, started living His Glorious Life through you, loving through you, talking, walking, living, loving, blessing, healing, being all that He is-in you-being your Salvation, not giving you Salvation as an experience apart from Him.
I Corinthians 1:30 says that Christ, "is made unto us Wisdom, and Righteousness, and Sanctification , and Redemption." These things: Resurrection, Salyation, etc., are not a "thing", or an "experience" apart from Him, but are a Person. That Person's Name is Yahvah or Yahweh, The Mighty Right Now God, The Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ!!!
But you don't need to die or commit suicide-because Christ wants to become your life by your acceptance. Accept what He did when He took not only our sins and sicknesses, so we can be forgiven and healed completely, but He took our selves. Rom. 6, Col., Eph., etc. He killed us with all of our insufficiencies, inadequacies, inferiorities, inabilities, instabilities, and took us to the cross, put us to death, buried us and raised us up in newness of life, a whole, new, beautiful, glorious, adequate, sufficient, wonderful, creation fashioned in His image, that He wants to be the life of.
The story is told of an elephant that had a friend who was a flea that rode around behind his ear. One day they crossed a jungle bridge that shook, and swung and swayed. After crossing the bridge, the flea whispered into the elephant's ear, "We sure shook that bridge didn't we!!" And at the end of the day you can whisper into the Ear of God, your Friend, "We sure shook our world today, didn't we?"
This will come as a surprise to many, but Christ is not interested in helping you to righteous, or wise, or strong,or alive, apart or distant from Himself. He wants you to be your Rightness, be your Wisdom, be your Strength, be your Life, be your Everything. He doesn't want to help you say good words, or pray, or be disciplined, or heal, or bless, or love, as something distant or apart from Himself. He wants to pray His prayers through you by the Holy Spirit, to say His words through you, to bless with His blessing through you, to heal with His Healing through you, to love with His love through you. Do you see the difference?
So, we can have an experience greater than if we had a heart attack and Jesus Christ came into our newly dead body and started living in the earth disguised as us, because better than this can be ours by accepting that He killed us already on the cross in order to do this very thing! Now He wants to BE all that He is in us, BE our life, etc., and if Christ IS our righteousness, we'll be as righteous as the Father, because the Righteousness He manifests through us will be as righteous as the Father's! Remember Jesus said in Matthew 5:48-"Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect."That's how we do it. Simply reckon the old life to be dead (Rom. 6), and receive Christ, not only in side to be your Saviour and Master and total Lord, but also being all that He is, in you, as your Life!!!
He wants to walk around in your shoes, wearing your clothes, speaking His words, praying His prayers, thinking His thoughts, blessing His people,loving, healing through you. He wants to be the Parent of your children, be the Spouse of your mate, be the Worker on your job, be the Child of your parents, be the Friend of your friends, be the Leader in your church, the Leader in your community, the Changer of your world, the Establisher of His Kingdom, the Binder and Looser of situations, the Fulfiller of the Great Commission, and of all His commandments, in you and through you!!! (Matt. 28:18-20, I John 2). All this can be ours from now on as Christ is our life! ( I John 4:17) Amen!
Christ wants there to be no difference between who He is at the right hand of the Father and who he is-in us!! Amen!! The Bible says, "The very same image." "As He is so are we in this world." "In His image."
If you have any question about this, get in touch with us-because this must become absolutely clear to you, absolutely workable! It's theKey literally to everything you are in God.
Here it is then-God's Greatest Secret!!! Christ living His Glorified Life in you as your Life! !! Christ living His glorified life in you-in me-as our glorified life!!! "For me to live is Christ." "I live-yet not I, but Christ." This chapter-this concept-these' truths-are the most important thing in this book! If I only have a chance to tell people one thing, I tell them this. The vast majority of Christians, (I would say more than 99%), do not have a working knowledge of this Greatest Secret of God! I believe that the need is so great for people to know this truth, that if you and I dedicated the rest of our entire lives to sharing this one truth it would be worthwhile! What is your life being dedicated to at the present time anyway?
What would happen if Christ came to the earth to live in disguise in someone before His coming in the clouds? What if He came to live His glorified Life in Your town? Your family? Your church? Your factory? Your marriage? Your shoes? Well, that's exactly what Christ wants to happen!!! Exactly! No difference.
Please now let us make a prayer of at Thessalonians 1:10, "Lord God of the impossible, now and ever, please now come and be made all glorious in me and be marvelled at in me. I believe, Lord God, I believe, for You to live Your life-in me. Yea, be my Life! I reckon my old life to be crucified! dead! and buried! I consider my New Life to be risen! ascended! seated! glorified! and reigning! in You, and You in me-Right Now! In this world! In my life! AS My Life! From now on And to tell this Secret to as many as possible! As quickly as possible! By whatever means possible! In Jesus' Name, Amen!!
Now, let's look at one of the things that might happen if your friend learns this Secret.
Review Questions
THE KING'S GREATEST SECRET
1. Is it possible to live without sinning'? (explain)
2. What of ours did Christ take with Him to the cross?
3. What is God's greatest secret?
4. What is the difference between Christ helping you do or speak good things and Him speaking or doing good things through you?
5. Why was it necessary for Christ to take you with Him to the cross?
6. If Christ did not take you to the cross, and you don't know it-has positive thinking got much power?
7. Why is suicide not necessary?
8. The following phrases go with what scripture verse (you may look them up from the list of scriptures provided below)
Victory________,Victory always everywhere,_______,Free from sin ________,Risen with Christ our life________,Seated in Christ ________,Fullness of joy:joy unspeakable_________, Every blessing________,Joy of the Lord__________, Mind of Christ _______,Can do all things through Christ ________,Walk blamelessly__________, All power and authority _________, We are the light of the World___________, To live is Christ________, All power and authority ________, Whatever we ask _________, Abundant Life__________, We have all things for life_________, More than conquerors ________, We can be as He is _________, All things are possible________, We can walk as He walked_________, Greater works___________, We can know the mysteries of the kingdom of God __________, Mystery of the gospel of the ages __________, Christ is made unto us wisdom ______.
Jude 24; Ph. 1:21; Eph.l:3, 4; Rom 8:37; Col. 3:1-3; n Cor. 2:14-16; Matt. 5:14; n Pet. 1:1-4; John 14:13; Ps. 16:11; Rom. 6:7, 18, 22; Ph. 4:13; Ne. 8:10; Eph 2:6; I Cor. 15:57; I Cor. 2:16-29; I John 2:6.
9. Gal. 2:20-Are you living?
10. Can we be perfect?
11. What did Jesus mean when He said be perfect? (Matt.. 5:48)
12. How can we be perfect?
13. What is the main solution for most arguments about the Bible?
14. How is calling "idealistic" what God calls necessary and practical-calling God a liar?
15. What 3 steps are necessary for Christ to be your life?
16. Do you have the mind of Christ?
17. In the Word, what's the main evidence, sign, fruit, or proof that you are full of God?
18. Not "have" you been filled with, but are you full of God right now? (Give yourself a percentage)
19. What would happen to a clean and freshly sacrificed (killed) lamb under the hot Israel sun if nothing more happened after it was killed?
20. What else is necessary?
21. What
22. Who should praise
23. Why can we have an experi{lise up and become the Life of, living on the earth again disguised as you?
24. Who is the flea-the elephant in the illustration?
25. What is- the main difference between Christ helping us to do or be something, and Him being or doing it in and through us?
26. Can we be perfect? If so, how?
27. Does Christ want there to be any difference between who He is at the Father's right hand and who He is---in us?
28. If you devoted the rest of your life to sharing this secret-would your life be well spent?
29. Will you?