LloydEllefson

NOW

By Lloyd Ellefson

The fulfillment of the spiritual realities in Christ as revealed in the scriptures, has to come to us today - in the NOW - not yesterday, nor tomorrow! NOW is the day of salvation! It's not tomorrow; for yesterday's tomorrow is today. When tomorrow comes, it's today; it's NOW! Yesterday is past; tomorrow is not here. We live in the NOW. We are living in whatever sense of being we have NOW. It has to change NOW by the enlightenment of Christ - not tomorrow. Christ comes to us as the mind of the Spirit. He is a teacher; He is an anointing that teaches us things that the natural man cannot see, for man cannot see beyond the veil.

Jesus does not come tomorrow; He comes today. If we expect Him in the days, months or years to come, this time will never come, for He can only come to us today, in the now. As long as people predict that Jesus will come physically in the sky some day, it will always be a future event; it will never come, because that is not the way He comes. He comes IN THE NOW. The rapture, tribulation and millenium are not coming in the sense in which they are generally understood and preached. No rapture, tribulation, nor millenium will come tomorrow. They come in Christ and are fulfilled in Him because HE is the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. Christ is the sum of all things!

Though man would like to extol his accomplishments or offices, it is not good for him to do this. He gives himself credit for his achievements. He may think he has become a little better by receiving the Holy Spirit, or by becoming a preacher, etc. This culminates in labelling himself as pastor, teacher, evangelist, etc. If he is legalistic, he will proclaim his do's and don'ts, his virtues, his constant prayer life, and his readiness for Jesus to come and rapture him away. However this is not good. Eventually our inner integrity will deny it, because every man in his inner being knows (and he has to know), that he has failed God and will do so again. He also needs a hope for the future.

Jesus Christ is NOW! This undoes the whole system of rationalization. When we receive and retain the things of Christ in our own nature, they remain in mortality. If the realities in the Bible only come into our realm of reason, they do not come into life; they do not produce life, nor do they last. Christians will not live that way; they live by the Christ who is their life! He is their life NOW, because He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. If we receive Him as our life, the change to become like Him begins by the fact of Him being here NOW.

THE MISSION OF THE SON

By Lloyd Ellefson

In John 16:23 Jesus said, "In that day you will ask Me no question...but if you shall ask the Father anything, He will give it to you in My name." Asking in the name of Jesus does not mean using the expression, "I ask all these things in the name of Jesus" at the end of every prayer. Many take the name of the man Jesus (because it is all they have), and use it legalistically against demons, sickness, etc. That is not what it is all about. IN THE NAME means that we approach the Father in the nature of Christ. Now the Christ does it instead of us. It is the consciousness or knowledge of God that works in us, so that we can call God Father and ask Him in the name of Jesus.

The person we think we are and which we designate as the SELF or ME, does not have any authority of its own. When we come into the things of God, we realize that we cannot help ourselves, for we don't have any power nor morality in ourselves. These virtues are ours only in Christ. Since we are the body of Christ, we do not have a body of our own. A change has to take place in our thinking. A transition from the self to God has to be made. Instead of thinking that we have power and that life belongs to us, we now see that God is our life, Christ is our life, and that we are sons of God.

We have to approach God in Christ - in His consciousness, in His name, in His nature and in His realization. Only in Christ can we be progressively taken into the consciousness of God our Father, and into the understanding of spiritual things. This understanding will usher out all the former ideas of joy, being healthy and wise, and having honor among men. These are all things that humanity likes to attain in its own self. All these earthly attainments can never bring us into immortality, because they are built on false desires. The only way we will ever be comfortable is when all desire for the false things is gone, and we only have the presence of God to supply these things.

God dwells in light that no man can approach. Man can never approach Him because He lives in light that is unapproachable by natural man. Man first has to go through death - death to his own sense of being. That is the only way he can get to know God, come into the life and true realization of God.

"...whom no man has seen or can see." (1 Tim. 6:16) No natural man has ever seen who God is. After Christ has enlightened our understanding we will be able to discern from people's conversation, whether or not they are operating in the same delusion, conception, and obstruction to truth that Jesus experienced in Israel. The people liked Jesus for what He did, but not for what He believed. People didn't want to be like Him at that time.

The mission of the Son is to bring us out of our wrong sense of being and into the true realization of who we are in the eyes of God. Natural man cannot accomplish this. He first has to lay down his own ideas, i.e. who God is, God's intention for him, how to approach God, who man is, and what the world is. All our ideas are in the death realm, so they have to be separated from us - and that is what death is. Then we can be separated unto God - and that is life!

Let's review this. Man's war is in the mortal mind for it plies its trade of death. This is very evident in all the wars, hatred, and evil things man does. Man is bent on evil for the preservation of self and goods and the desire for power! The mortal mind is death. Everything man does comes from his mortal mind - even his attempt to be good - so it is all in the death realm. All the advantages of scientific and medical knowledge eventually result in death. The power of bombs and guns results in death. "If you live by the sword, you will die by the sword." (Matt. 26:52)

It's wonderful to know that we don't have to have any power of our own, any health of our own, nor any morality of our own, because Christ has been made all these things unto us! "Your life is hidden with Christ in God...Christ is our life...Christ is all and in all." (Col. 3:3,4,11) Our natural mind does not want to receive this truth. This is evident when our minds begin to wander as we meditate upon these things. We believe what our natural minds tell us. The sin is in accepting the deception of the natural mind as truth. The consequences of greed, evil, hatred and disease are accepted as truth or some form of truth. We need to see that these consequences are the result of living in a delusion. Instead of dealing with the various effects of evil, we need to see that man's basic need is to come into truth!

There is no power outside of God's power! We need to see that our own assessment of our identity is not the reality; it is not valid. Therefore we have to realize that we are new creations, created in Christ Jesus! As we accept and live in our new identity in Christ, we are separated from our old understanding. This is the mission of the Son, expressed in the man Jesus, the Christ. God bless!

Excerpts from SHARING THE MISSION OF THE SON