On Entering into Freedom, Sincerity and our Need for Tough Love

I expect to be writing more that is specifically focused on the times and seasons, but this ministry is about making the church glorious and this adventure some of us are on has two tracks that are bound together very tightly. The development of our character in this season is most critical.

To start out, here are two items some of you may find very helpful.

Others May, You Cannot
George Müller - Notes on living in faith

The Lord has been working many things on my heart and mind over the past several days. Aaron continues to be very intensely engaged by the Lord, and in this deeply penetrating work he has begun to embrace it, receiving a joy that comes from knowing in his innermost being how it is truly a rare privilege to be attended to with such profound love. We have both of us together been brought into a new place of abiding with strict discipline and contentment.

He who withholds his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him diligently. ~ Proverbs 13:24

4 You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin; 5 and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons,

“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
Nor faint when you are reproved by Him;
6 For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines,
And He scourges every son whom He receives.”

7 It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? 8 But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. 9 Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? 10 For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. 11 All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. ~ Hebrews 12:4-11

I have received email from some precious saints who have been or are being approached and engaged in similar ways, being touched by the Master's hand in a firm, corrective and restorative manner. We perceive that we have turned the page and the Lord's requirements are quite different from before. We all need His constant help to follow His invitation to go beyond where we have been willing to go in previous seasons. I have also received email from some saints who have chosen to avoid such unpleasantries, and that weighs so heavily on my heart this morning. The contrast between those who have received the principles of the “hear-do cycle” and those who have not has never been more evident. Those who are wise hear the word of the Lord and obey, and are rewarded with a hearing ear, and this is also the purchase of the Lord's eye salve. Those who hear and fall short of obedience suffer the loss of what limited visual acuity or discernment they already had, and with that loss they fail even to perceive it. I continue to experience the strongly contrasting emotions that come as the Lord brings this survey before me.

12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
But desire fulfilled is a tree of life.
13 The one who despises the word will be in debt to it,
But the one who fears the commandment will be rewarded.
14 The teaching of the wise is a fountain of life,
To turn aside from the snares of death. ~ Proverbs 13:12-14

He who walks with wise men will be wise,
But the companion of fools will suffer harm. ~ Proverbs 13:20

8 Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you,
Reprove a wise man and he will love you.
9 Give instruction to a wise man and he will be still wiser,
Teach a righteous man and he will increase his learning.
10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
And the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. ~ Proverbs 9:8-10

The Lord has been qualifying me to declare hard things that must be said in this season, which come from His merciful and abundant heart of love for His people. This is not to suggest that I'm perfect, but the Lord has a work to be done.

Most folks read this blog like they read the Bible, glossing over important bits while reading into it what they want to see. And, most will assure themselves that I wrote that about somebody else, but, I'm probably writing this for your benefit. How few there are who have truly paid attention to what has been written here in recent weeks. There was a swell of visitors to The Open Scroll over the past month or two, as traffic statistics indicate. I believe the increase was primarily due to a temporary interest in the perception of the potential for "the rapture" to occur. Evidence of this continues to manifest as people email and comment about Fall rapture possibilities or other possible scenarios.

No doubt this boldness is very offensive to some of you reading here now, and it should be if I actually have your attention. You'll think me arrogant and judgmental, but I'm not here to coddle or enable those who are content with what is going to produce in you a failed crop. I'm here to call you to wake up, by all means, and provide help with a fit word! Clean out your ears. Apply the eye salve liberally. Faith is failing all around and the blind are desperately grasping to find someone or something else to hope in.

I will repeat some of what I wrote in the previous post because it's that important.

“The value in knowing the time was first in knowing when it would come, and doing what was required for preparation. Then, the value was in that which was learned through diligent watching as it arrived. Now that the time has passed, the value is in grasping why. Those who don't believe that the appointed time really did pass fail to gain the benefit. That's you, if you're still looking toward the fall of this year for a rapture on a Fall Feast Day or for some other scenario to play out.

If you weren't paying very close attention to what has recently been written about the high strangeness of the zig zag time trajectory of Satan's fall, a time mission, an ark of salvation, and the epic hoax, I'll probably lose you at some point because I'm going to draw upon all that and the responsibility is yours to keep up with the pace. The Lord will help, or there is no help.

A span of time is going to be repeated, and what happens in the next version is going to be different.
...
As it stands today, with no revealing of the lawless one and thus no sign for the Bride, there was no interaction that would result in the Romans 11:15 “acceptance” trigger. The time passed. Victory: Satan. But it's not over until it's over - and my God is sovereign.

There will be a rerun of this Pesah. Did you get that? I'm not predicting or speculating. If you are convinced that I am, I can only testify that you never truly came to know the time. It has passed. But, we're only going to advance linearly into the future for a set season, then we'll be returned back to some time prior to the 13th day of the 1st month. What those behind the CERN LHC effort are about to do will be largely responsible for this radical departure from the perceived continuum. With perfect timing, the Lord will involve His elect in a time reset mission, otherwise no flesh would be saved. No flesh at all.

Interest has been high in the CERN Time Machine YT video I made. Some new visitors to The Open Scroll have arrived through that work with their eyes open. Here's an mp3 we made from a recent Paul Begley interview that has been popular on YT. Thanks, everyone who brought this to our attention. I can't vet what “Mike From Around the World” is saying, but given what the Lord has revealed to Aaron and myself, there is value in considering what he has to say because it's not implausible.

Paul Begley interviews “Mike From Around the World” on the subject of CERN's LHC and the influence of dark matter

On to other business. Some long term readers of The Open Scroll have recently abandoned it entirely, or have gone into a detached lurker mode of one kind or another. My entire income is limited to what comes in through the PayPal donate button, and I can tell you that the sole regular sponsor of this work seems to have abandoned us. The last donation I received from anyone was on the 24th of March. Yet, since the level of gross income here has only ever been less than what some of you spend maintaining your pets, the impact of the cessation on my subsistence is pretty minimal. While scoffers and mockers are probably laughing with glee at that honest confession, some of you may find that candid report shocking and appalling. When my own resources ran out, Aaron's family generously took me in, and this has been the Lord's provision for the last few years. The Lord has been most kind to me and I have lacked nothing of all I have needed.

So, why haven't I just taken a clue, as some would advise, and given up on this seemingly fruitless venture, returning to my lucrative profession as a web developer after leaving at the peak of my career? I've had four really tempting opportunities present themselves over the past few years, none of which I sought to find. I chose to accept none of them, because each time I chose rather to abide in this humble position as your servant. I have no other source of income, no other employment. I collect no revenue from ads and do not engage in merchandising or profit in any way from other associations that would surely compromise me with conflicts of interest. High on the list of points of general failings of the saints who profess to aspire to become worthy of the Bridegroom is a matter that this lack of support indicates, that most fundamentally of sincerity of profession, hypocrisy.

The Lord's provision for me while in this temporal body presents me with options. I can choose those that involve deferral, forfeit here that purchases reward that is eternal. So can you. I freely admit to having become very frustrated with the lack of support in some former seasons, but eventually I have been brought, with much mercy, to a place of being able to abide with contentment, with an assurance that the Lord is pleased that it should be so, and, finding myself in this state, being able to identify very closely with the Apostle Paul himself.

In this season that is now of unknown duration, I have been led to update a legacy study and retitle it, Entering into the Freedom of Giving and Receiving. The study had previously featured a lengthy thematic analysis of 1 Corinthians 9, which I trimmed down because I upgraded the structural presentation to an interactive version. If you give it your attention you'll find this structure to be quite exquisite, beautifully elegant, and that the wisdom gleaned from it can be quite profound. The interactive version has also been embedded inside the study I just named. From that sudy, one of the included scriptures that addresses the support issue most simply is the following.

17 The elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching. 18 For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle the ox while he is threshing,” and “The laborer is worthy of his wages.” ~ I Timothy 5:17-18

What Paul expressed in 1 Corinthians 9 applies very personally to us, if I am likewise made your servant. Like Paul wrote in verse 15, “I am not writing these things so that it will be done so in my case.” If you have other servants also, and your Master directs you to provide care for them, do so accordingly. This is no guilt tripping conscience manipulation attempt to wrangle funds out of your wallets to pad my fat coffers.

In 2 Corinthians 8, Paul probed the sincerity of the saints at Corinth, who had announced their good intentions but had not yet followed through. “Put your money where your mouth is.” That's a familiar expression that comes to mind. So, let's give the matter of sincerity of profession or hypocrisy some consideration.

To say one thing and do another, that's hypocrisy.

If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. ~ John 14:15

There are many commandments that were given specifically for the saints to walk in, yet how many of us care to actually do so? How we love to profess that we love God, when our deeds testify so loudly to the contrary that no one can hear a word of it above the din. Most of you who are even still reading this post or email have failed to allow the Lord to put the mirror of self-inspection before your face, to show you what you look like in His eyes. Many of you are shamelessly parading yourselves around the Internet and your churches and among your families and friends with an attitude judging yourselves to be fundamentally different from them, and better. You are all the more a hypocrite, if you are failing to acknowledge in that judgment the mercy that you are even now receiving from their Creator. Have you yet subjected your associations, religious, business and personal to the Lord's own approval? When conviction approaches you, do you flee it with ready excuses or don for protection some cosmetic image of your righteous self? Sloth and gluttony and self worship, these also have been brought to me as sins that must be named.

And, again, there is the matter of gender propriety. “Bob, really? Again with the gender propriety schtick?” People, your continued willingness to abide in rebellion against the Lord's appointment of authority has cost you plenty, and you don't even see it. Men and women alike foolishly sit at the feet of the women who teach in the church. I say this to your shame.

But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. ~ 1 Timothy 2:12

Fathers and mothers abide the unruliness of their children, and husbands of their wives, failing to seek and find the Lord's help in using His appointment of authority to His satisfaction. Testimonies of finding His approval in these things and of the reward of entering into the blessings of proper head covering are conspicuously lacking, not entirely, but to a very large degree.

Even yet, there is contentment to abide in these ways, and to profess how much God is loved and honored, but judgment has come for lawlessness and hypocrisy.

3 By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. 4 The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; 5 but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: 6 the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked. ~ 1 John 2:3-6

Look around you. Does this world look like it's worth following? Is theirs the reward you want to enter into? WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! This may now be our final chance to get our priorities straight, getting right with our Maker. We haven't yet lost the opportunity to fall on that Stone.

And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust. ~ Matthew 21:44