Covenentual Salvation by Allen Brooks

Part One
By Allen Brooks
http://allencommentary.blogspot.com/2010/07/covenantal-salvation.html

Several years ago, I began a furious pursuit of trying to understand the Bible from its historical and covenantal (testament) perspective. I spent thousands of hours studying the Bible, studying older theologians, and analyzing several hundred commentaries. I also began to study many of the words in the Bible in their original Hebrew or Greek language.
What is salvation? Today Christians and Pastors may say that salvation is being saved from hell to go to heaven. They also may say that salvation means believing in Jesus as one’s personal Savior in order to receive eternal (everlasting) life. These definitions come from the westernization or the neo-plutonian reading of the scriptures rather than a Hebraic first century church biblical rendering. But is that really how the Bible defines salvation? In Webster’s Dictionary salvation is defined as “deliverance from the power and effects of sin”.

In the New Testament, the word salvation in the Greek language is soteria or soterion which is translated: rescue, deliver, or save. [Strong’s Concordance #4991 and #4992]. Therefore, the word deliverance in Webster’s Dictionary is correct. The question then becomes “delivered or saved from what?” Salvation is deliverance from the power and effects of sin.

The scriptures states in 1 Corinthians 15:56; “The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.” Secondly, the Bible states in Romans 6:23; “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
To restate these passages, the power (strength) of sin is the law and the effect (wages) of sin is death.

We must try and determine from scriptures what this “death” is and what is the law?
I think that most Christians think this death is biological death and that when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, they produced physical death. This is incorrect.
Adam and Eve’s act of obtaining the knowledge of good and evil brought forth ‘sin death” or separation from God. This separation was the whole issue, not biological death.
Let us take a look at the story in Genesis.

I will paraphrase except where it is necessary to quote the scriptures. God created the world and created Adam and Eve. He placed them in the Garden of Eden and gave them one commandment. Genesis 2:16-17; “And the Lord God commanded the man saying, Of every tree of this garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die”.

Genesis 3:1-7,22 “Now the serpent was more subtile than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the Garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden; But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, ye shall be as gods [like God, see verse 22,ab], knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.”

Genesis 3:22-24 “And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever. Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.”

We must pose a few questions at this point.
Did Adam and Eve eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil? Yes, they did!

When Adam and Eve ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, did they die?
Why did God remove them from the garden before they could eat of the tree of life and live forever?
Why did God not want Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of the knowledge of Good?
Why did God not want Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of the knowledge of Evil?
What are the implications of Adam and Eve eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil?


Read the rest of this article at: 
http://allencommentary.blogspot.com/2010/07/covenantal-salvation.html

A Quick Thought on Salvation

I don't believe mankind as a whole ever needed to be saved in an eternal sense. To me the whole being saved thing was about the Jews back then being saved from the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70 & being "saved" from the curse of the Law, which is being separated from God, not in reality, but in our own mind / perception. 

As for us nowadays, it's not a saved or not saved issue... it's again a perception problem. God is at peace with ALL people, just most of them don't realize it yet because religious leaders have not been given a revelation of the true Gospel! Why.... Because as humans we tend to glorify those that we believe. If truth comes from our human teachers, we glorify them, instead of God... so God reveals truths to those who seek Him directly, not those who place their trust in the words of human teachers!

Even now, DO NOT believe what I am saying... ASK God, seek Him and you will be given truths that are hidden from most!

All saved by the sacrifice of Christ by Carlton Pearson

By Carlton Pearson

The loneliest moment in your life is not when you lose friends, family, or things. You are loneliest when you are away from, unaware of, or missing part of yourself… your own soul.

You are most lonely and depressed when you have forgotten who you are. Because of this – I call it “spiritual amnesia” – we have become transient souls, all-but-spiritual vagabonds seeking our own Self, our forgotten Self, the one we somehow and somewhere mislaid or misplaced and in some cases, replaced with the impostor. Eckhart Tolle says in his book, A New Earth: “In the seeing of who you are not, the recognition of who you are emerges.”

Most of our values, evaluations, responses, actions, and reactions are based primarily on what we believe about ourselves. Unfortunately, what we believe about ourselves is based on somebody else’s opinion that’s been handed down to us. We spend most of our time impersonating who we think people think, want, or expect us to be and in the process we either forget or never encounter who we really are. And when we don’t know who we are, everyone else becomes a stranger – a frightening, intimidating and threatening stranger – even those we love and who we believe love us.

You are lonely and/or lonesome because you somehow lost or perhaps forsook the real You and indeed the Only You, for the impostor, the mutant, the impersonator. You forsook the truth (accurate reality) for the lie (the imprecise, the inaccurate, the non-exact) and now you are feeling vexed and vulnerable to and by the absurdity and inauthenticity of the obnoxious illusion you have become both to yourself and to others. It is a false sense of isolation, alienation, lack, and self doubt.  

How do I know this? Because I’ve been there.

You May Remember

It was 1996. Rwandan refugees – weak, starving, and homeless – were returning to their homeland two years after the country’s massive genocide. Watching them on the television screen from the comfort of my easy chair, I was moved to despair. As a Pentecostal minister, I pledged to save as many souls for Christ as I possibly could in my lifetime. But this staggering challenge to reach hundreds of thousands of Rwandan souls certainly seemed insurmountable. I went to the only place I knew I could find an answer.

       

“God,” I prayed, “how can you call yourself loving and allow these people to suffer so desperately and then just suck them into hell?”     I trusted I would hear the voice of God; it had never failed me before. And, of course, I did.

        “Is that what you think I’m doing?”

        “They need to be saved,” I entreated, assuming they weren’t Christians.

        “Go save them.”

        “I can’t save all of them!”

        “Precisely,” I heard God say. “You can’t. That’s what we did. We’re not sucking them into hell, can’t you see they’re already there? In your religious presuppositions, you keep creating hell for yourselves and others. I’m taking them into My presence.”

        

That’s when I got it. God did not create hell. Hell is man’s invention, not God’s intention.

        

We create hell for ourselves and each other on this planet, I came to realize on that fateful evening. So the God I had been preaching about had to be a monster to take people forever into the customized torture chamber we call hell.

        

Then came the kicker: I realized that everyone is already saved. Jesus died for everyone. Everyone. Even you. Especially you! Believe it or not.

        I knew my ministry was about to undergo a radical change.

I Once Was Lost...

But it hasn’t been easy. As I turned 50, I found myself in the midst of a dark night of the soul. Unable to accept the new Good News I began to preach, my congregation of more than 6,000 dwindled to a handful. I lost my staff. I went deeply in debt to a building and to church commitments that I could not fulfill. My wife, Gina, and I had two children to support.

       

Most painfully, I was cast out of my beloved evangelical community, who accused me of blasphemy. The largest publication in Charismatic media ran negative articles about me every month for an entire year. I was formally labeled a heretic.

        

Enmeshed in personal and professional devastation, I turned, as I always did, to the example of my Master Teacher, Jesus Christ.

        

Most people know you from your past. Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am? What’s the word on the street?” Even those he loved could only see his past – they had no forward perception, they didn’t see his Christology.”

        

I made the decision to step out of my past and begin a ministry of love and inclusion, starting with myself. If I can love me even though it looks like my world loathes me, I can love those who loathe me, and others who feel loathed.

And Now I Am Found

Now I am preaching the God I know: a God who would never condemn anyone to burn in mythical fires of hell. I am preaching that when we stop believing in hell, we will stop creating it in our own lives. I am preaching about an Infinite, Massive, Ultimate Power, a God I cannot define, because I, as finite, cannot define infinity. I am preaching to you: the prodigal son or daughter who is longed for and welcomed home and wrapped in the open arms of Love.

       

We are recreating our ministry in downtown Tulsa. New Dimensions Worship Center is reaching hundreds who come to worship on a Sunday afternoon in our borrowed space in Trinity Episcopal Church. We reach countless more through our streaming online services. We’ve attracted national attention as media has picked up the story of my revelation.

       

I want you to know that we are all saved by the sacrifice of Christ - gays, Muslims, Jews, atheists, everyone. I have written a book to share my vision of inclusive faith in action. The Gospel of Inclusion proclaims that God is not a Christian, but belongs to all humankind. I have diligently researched the answers to my questions and rest my case for this new evolution of consciousness. Read the book and decide for yourself. You can order your copy now from Amazon.com.

        

The Gospel of Inclusion.

Love in Christ,

Carlton

The Appearing of the High Priest Provided Salvation by Allen D Brooks

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Under the old covenant, the Mosaic Covenant, in Leviticus, chapter nine, the Day of Atonement and the Priestly functions are described.

Once each year, the High Priest, in this case, Aaron, would offer the sin offering for all of the sins of the people. This ritual or ceremony consisted of several steps.

First, the Priest, himself, had to be cleansed. The Mosaic Law required that the Priest be from the tribe of Levi. This was demanded in the law.

Second, a calf or ram or lamb without blemish had to be sacrificed.(killed)

Third, the High Priest entered the Holy Of Holies in the Tabernacle and would take the blood of the slain lamb and sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant for the sins of all the people.

Fourth, the High Priest would then emerge from the Holy of Holies and show himself to the people as a sign that God had accepted the blood sacrifice as forgiveness of their sins.

Each and every step had to be completely fulfilled in order for the atonement to be complete or consummated. The word consummate is very important. It means complete in every detail.  As a verb, it means to make complete. Therefore, all the details of the Priestly functions had to be complete or consummated in order for the atonement or the reconciliation of the people back to God, be complete. This is very, very important!  Not one step could be skipped. The ritual had to be done over and over every year because it was done by man and with the blood of a lamb. It was temporary.

Now the Bible plainly says that the tabernacle, the mercy seat, and all of the elements of the Priestly functions were shadows or types of the real things in heaven. The earthly ones (seen) were temporary, but the heavenly (not seen) were eternal. These were the type of that which would come when Christ came into the world. The book of Hebrews explains this typology in every detail.

Jesus Christ was born into the world to become the lamb or sacrifice. Jesus was without sin or blemish; therefore, Jesus qualified as the sacrifice and shed His blood upon a cross for mankind.

However, Jesus’ blood had to be sprinkled upon the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies in heaven by a heavenly High Priest. The cross inaugurated the atonement but did not consummate the atonement. We know this because there was yet to be a resurrection of Jesus, the giving of the Holy Spirit, and the bringing in of the Kingdom of God. These were all future from the cross and were part of the atonement. Paul says, “if Christ is not risen, we are still in our sins”. We can see that the resurrection was part of our atonement and that was after the cross.

 This presents several problems, but they are solved.

First, Jesus was from the tribe of Judah not Levi. Hebrews 7:14 states: “For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Judah; of which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priesthood.” So, Jesus could not become our High Priest until there was a change in the law, the Mosaic Covenant Law. Hebrews 7:12 states” For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law.”

Therefore, Jesus fulfilled all the law and the prophets thus changing the covenant from law to grace. As a result, Jesus became our High Priest.

Hebrews 9, states: “the Holy Ghost, thus signifying that the way into the Holy of Holies was not yet made manifest as long as the earthly tabernacle was still standing.”

Secondly, Jesus destroyed the earthly temple in Jerusalem with the Roman armies in AD 70 therefore opening the way into the Holy of Holies in heaven. Now, Jesus as our High Priest entered into the Holy of Holies in heaven and offered His own blood on the mercy seat. Hebrews 9:24 says, “For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands which are the figures of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.” The killing of the lamb did not provide the atonement, but the spreading of the lambs blood on the mercy seat of the Ark of the covenant did. Therefore, Jesus’ dying on the cross as the lamb of God provided the blood that would later be spread on the mercy seat in the holy of holies in heaven. These are two distinct  events.

Acts 3:19 “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out when the time of refreshing shall come from the presence (parousia-coming) of the Lord; and he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: Whom the heaven must receive until the time of restitution for all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began”.

Hebrews 10, verse 26..”but now once in the end of the world hath he (Jesus) appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” We must understand that the end of the world is the end of the old covenant age, not the end of the material earth. If it were the end of the physical world, then we are still in our sins because this says” Jesus appeared in the end of the world  to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.” This is important.

Jesus sprinkled His own blood on the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies as our High Priest after the law and the earthly tabernacle were destroyed in AD 70.

Now, there is one more detail that must be completed in order for this heavenly atonement to fulfill the requirements given in Leviticus 9. The High Priest must emerge from the Holy of Holies showing himself to the congregation as a sign that God has accepted the sacrifice for sins.

Hebrews 10: 28 says, “So Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many, and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.”

Hebrews 10:21 says, “ and having  a High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near. Verse 25 says, “not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is, but exhorting one another, and so much more, as you see the day approaching.

Verse 37 says, “For yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry.”

I know this may be difficult for some of you, but if the High Priest did not come out of the Holy of Holies, then the atonement for sins is incomplete. The high Priest had to show himself to the congregation as the sign that the blood sacrifice was accepted by God and the people’s sins forgiven!

This is why the disciples asked Jesus in Matthew 24, what shall be the sign of your coming or appearing?

Jesus told his disciples that these things: the destruction of the temple, the destruction of Jerusalem, the passing of the Old Mosaic Covenant, and the end of the age were the sign of His appearing. This is the emerging of the High Priest from the heavenly Holy of Holies.

If  our High Priest has not appeared, the atonement is not completed and we are still under the law and in our sins. But the Bible plainly says He has appeared and our sins are forgiven because God accepted the sacrifice of His Son’s blood upon the mercy seat in the Holy of  Holies in heaven. Amen

Written by Allen D Brooks

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