Age @ MindSay

6.15 I'm in the judges chambers and I hear Rush's Tom Sawyer (my ringtone)over the hum of the sweeper. I leave the machine running and check the message.

It's Mikey. I haven't heard from him in almost two weeks.

He says sorry for not being in touch, he's been sick and contemplating a deathwish. I text back and ask if there's anything I can do, he returns a text asking if I can stop by after work if I've got some spare change. I say sure I'll be there, knowing I only have $25 in my pocket until next payday, knowing I'm certainly not just going to hand him cash, but knowing he at least needs bus fare, smokes, and a can of Cola.

I was already irritated from having to rush to finish my work this evening. At the beginning of the shift there were no court appearances on the docket, which meant I would only have 2 chambers to clean, no courtrooms. Then at 5pm I find out there's been a USMarshall Drug Sweep resulting in ten late arrests and both courtrooms have been used, which means I have 2 hours to do both courtrooms and both chambers. 

I don't mind working fast and hard, but I HATE time constraints. I can't do the best job when I have to rush just to get done by 7. So the text from Mikey just added to my anxiety, and in my hurry to finish I totally dumped my supply cart over on it's side. I went nuts and started slamming the cart up and down on the floor, scattering crap everywhere and giving myself more work to cram in.

What an idiot I felt like. 

7pm arrives I'm out the door headed for Mikey's. I arrive and we talk, he looks like a tan skeleton accept for his legs which are stark white, we never were allowed to wear shorts on lawn crew.

I ask him what's up. He says..."I just don't see any reason to live anymore, what's the point? I'm 57 still trying to be a kid, doing dope every chance I get, tearing up my body, I live here alone without companionship, and who would have me anyway the way I look and live, my stomach is tore up but there's no way I'm going to the hospital except on a gurney, I work lawn care and my body almost can't take it anymore, I won't get work anywhere else"........and he went on. I just listened.

I asked him simply if he could quit the boy. He just gave that little laugh of his that says don't be ridiculous. He says it's not so much the boy but why he is using more. He just doesn't care. Says he thinks of Hunter Thompson, one of his fave writers, how he couldn't stand his life anymore once he was confined to a wheelchair, killed himself. Hemingway. Says he doesn't even want to get to that point. Would rather end it now.

I looked in the eyes of a man who believes life has passed him by, done by his own hands. His own choices.

I looked in a mirror of my own days past.

I asked and he told me he had absolutely no food in the place. Not even toilet paper. I said let's head to the grocery, and on the 20 minute drive we laughed and talked about last season stories of lawn crew craziness, of this past winter and the nights and days of 20 hour shifts of blizzard snow removal. We chatted about the olympics.

The groceries rang out to $24.58. He'd gotten what he needed for a few days, I told him I'd be over on Saturday with a load of more stuff. I know a few food banks around town, and I know a few people who run them. I'm going to make sure he's got ALL he needs.

And I'm going to love pray and think about him everyday.

He never once asked me for cash. He knew better.

On the 30 minute drive home I couldn't hold back the tears.

BDS

As I listen from time to time on XM Radio , there is a station that is own and operated by Oprah Winfrey and on this station , all the  programs teach some form 'New Age' philosophy. From time to time there will be guest on her 'Soul series' that talk about "The Christ", and they will talk about Jesus as being one of many Men of God such as Buddha, Ghandi, and etc. They bunch Jesus with all the others and speak about The Christ as being something  separate from Jesus and that he had The Christ spirit which made him who he was and that we all Christ ed ones, we are and can possess be this Christ,when we are awakened spiritually. But is this so, or is she greatly mistaken and deceived? Self is elevated to Godhood. We are gods, not God in us, be WE are gods. Sounds good to our egos, especially since, we are gods, we do not have to have anyone over us! We have complete control over all of our lives, and what we choose to do and choose to believe  and choose to conduct our lives, and choose who god is and what god thinks and what god looks like because , blessed be me this is my truth for petes sakes, and that is your truth, and there are no absolutes , and what ever you do is ok because it is your truth. I would ask all you gods out there, when was the last time you created the heavens and the earth?   When was the last time you created life in the womb of its mother? When was the last time you caused the sun to shine and the planets to stay in their orbits, or created them?
Alot of these teachings are good, and some come close to the truth, but all deception has a seed of truth that it springs from other wise we wouldn't get deceived, now would we? Here is some of a teaching on this subject that says it so much better than I, and so I don't regurgitate it back, read it yourselves.

 J.Prestin Eby states:

"There is no point in over emphasizing this fact, but we want to clearly establish the truth that "Christ" is not something Jesus possessed, but it is who and what HE IS. It is not "Christ" as something or someone separate from Jesus that we have received, and in whom we live, but it is JESUS CHRIST who is our very own reality. Let us note but a few of the many passages that make this truth plain. "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into His death?" (Rom. 6:3). "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1). "But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. 13:14). "Unto...them which are sanctified in Christ Jesus" (I Cor. 1:2). "But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption" (I Cor. 1:30). "Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?" (II Cor. 13:5). "For ye are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28). "And hath...made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Eph. 2:6). "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works..." (Eph. 2:10).

Christ means THE ANOINTED! It will be very helpful if in every place in the New Testament where the word Christ appears we would read it with the understanding that it means the Anointed or the anointed One. Anointed with the spirit of sonship we shall overcome in every area, triumphing gloriously in every situation, and will come forth in His victory over all things! Our lives have been foreordained by the Father to walk this path unto sonship. It is a path that was predestined for us in Christ Jesus before the world began. This path was established in Christ for all who are apprehended of the Father to the glory of manifest sonship. It is not "Christ" as something other than Jesus that energizes us, but it is the risen, ascended, glorified, spiritualized, and universalized Jesus Christ who is the genetics of our very own sonship! Therefore we are assured that we shall be able to attain to the same fullness of sonship as it is fulfilled in our Lord Jesus the Christ! What a word! What a hope! Hallelujah!

With this exhortation fresh upon our minds, let us think a little further about the book of Revelation as THE REVELATION OF JESUS CHRIST. Again I say, it is not simply the revelation of "Jesus," nor is it merely the revelation of "Christ." It is the revelation of J-E-S-U-S C-H-R-I-S-T! Nothing more, and nothing less. There is "another Jesus" and "another Christ" that is proclaimed today by the New Age movement, and the concept of some who call themselves kingdom people and sons of God is not far removed from this other Jesus and this other Christ.

The New Age terminology can be mistakenly taken for Kingdom Truth. They speak much of the kingdom of God within man, of Christ within man, of love, mercy, goodness, and spiritual perfection and oneness with God. The ancient serpent is wise, shrewd, crafty and subtle, and he knows that the most effectual way to instill error into the minds of the unwary is to use old and precious words and put a new meaning into them. So when his messengers, masquerading as "ministers of righteousness," seek to lead, if possible, the very elect astray, they use the old precious words, but put an entirely different and false meaning. When they talk about God and our heavenly Father they don't mean the God of the Bible, the personal God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. They mean the impersonal energy that is resident in all things animate and inanimate. They talk of atonement, but they do not mean at all the redemptive death of Jesus Christ on our behalf by which we are reconciled to God by His blood. They mean the at-one-ment in which we recognize our oneness with all things, a cosmic unity, not with the Creator, but within ourselves and with the creation. Jesus has nothing to do with it at all, except as a great Teacher, a Way-shower, revealing to us the divine potential inherent in every man. They believe there are many ways to God - Jesus is merely a way given to Christians - one of many ways to God.

What do the New Age people look to for salvation? A complete or perfect union with this "inexorable principle" or "divine energy" permeating all things, which is their god! It is the same thing as Nirvana of the Buddhist, Brahma of the Hindu - an imaginary god-consciousness, into which all will finally be absorbed. And this is attained by discovering and developing your "inner self" - which "inner self" is the corrupted soul rather than the regenerated spirit! And when they talk about Christ, they do not mean at all our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the actual historic Jesus who lived and died for us, who rose from the dead, ascended up to the right hand of God, and came back again in mighty spirit-power. Oh, no! They mean an "ideal Christ, or a "Christ principle" that is in every man! They mean the "inner self" of the soul! They see God as the life principle of every man and Christ is the name that is given to man once he has awakened to his godhood. Now, it is true that the seed of God is in every man! But no man is "Christ," that is, an anointed one, until the seed of God in him is quickened, germinated, and empowered by the infusion of God's Holy Spirit! Jesus, in the New Age view, was no more the Son of God than the drunk in the gutter. He was simply a good man, a highly developed man, a "Master-Spirit" who developed the Christ principle within him and showed men how to awaken to their true inner self. According to their teaching Jesus was a man who went through many incarnations. These incarnations of Jesus took the form of Confucius, Buddha, Moses, David, and many others. These lives were his days at school, and he arrived at a state of consciousness, while manifesting as Jesus of Nazareth, where he remembered his past lives. They see no need for Jesus as the Lamb slain, for redemption, justification, regeneration, new birth, sanctification, baptism in the Holy Spirit, or any other New Testament experience. Men don't need to be saved, reconciled to God, or cleansed by the washing of regeneration - just awakened to the god within! What the New Age movement has done in America and other western nations is to combine Christian terminology with the tenets of various eastern religions, wrap them all up in a new package, and put a label on the package which guarantees everyone salvation without a Saviour! And what some in this Kingdom walk have done is create their own hybrid strain of sonship, speaking Kingdom truth deadly laced with pagan New Age concepts!

The New Age movement is a modern form of eastern pagan religion - mingled with the darkness of the occult. While they do espouse some principles that contain truth, these are at best but half-truths, which are more deadly than the outright lie! All true reality of the living Jesus Christ is missing - they know not the Lord Jesus as Saviour, nor the cleansing power of His blood, nor the quickening, regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, nor the authority of His name, nor the baptism in His Spirit, nor the fellowship of His body, nor the truth of the Holy Scriptures - in short they are at best bastard sons, subtle counterfeits, and there is no light in them for the light they do have is darkness, merely their own supposed inherent godhood, unquickened and unregenerated, which is the godhood of the self, old Adam - not the true and living God! This "inner self" of all men is the "Cosmic Christ" of the New Age!

No truer words have been penned than those by Bob Torango wherein he writes, "I don't care how much it grieves some to think about having a Lord over themselves, no matter how much it makes their flesh to rebel, there is only one Lord over all heaven and earth, and that is Jesus Christ. It is not your perceived higher self, your I Amness, your shifted consciousness, your universal oneness, your metaphysical self, neither is it your egotistical, sinless, Adamless, fleshless self. Let me go down on record and say that there is only One worthy of honor and glory and adoration, only One to be worshipped and exalted, and it is not YOU. It is Him. If you cannot see Him beyond YOU, then you have a problem, and we need to talk. We don't have to exalt ourselves to feel better about our status in the kingdom. If we would only exalt Him, then He would lift us above our woeful self and bring us into His glory and crown us with everlasting joy. Isn't that enough? Do you really need to lower Jesus in rank and file in order to set yourselves up as kings? Must you continue to try to find another door, another way into God? He is the door, and it is wide open for all. Walk through Him, sit down with Him and drink the new wine and eat the bread of the kingdom. It is enough."

The book of Revelation is not the revelation of this Cosmic Christ, nor of a Christ principle, nor of the old inner self of unregenerated men - it is the revelation of the crucified, risen, ascended, glorified, spiritualized, universalized JESUS CHRIST who is Saviour of all men and Lord of all! It is the revelation of Jesus Christ as Head and body in the earth by the power of the spirit of His sonship! Remember, dear ones, that there is no truth beyond Jesus Christ! He has been given the name which is above every name in the heavens and in the earth! To Him has been given all power and all authority in heaven and in earth! Neither is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved! He is the Head of all principality and power! He is the prince of the kings of the earth! He is the firstborn among many brethren! He is King of kings and Lord of lords! He is the Mighty God and the Everlasting Father! In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily! We are the body in which His fullness is revealed! Those who seek an ultimate truth beyond Jesus Christ, an ultimate reality beyond Him, will discover to their dreadful dismay that they have taken a fearful detour into the realms of outer darkness!

J. PRESTON EBY