For my next trick, I’m gonna summarize the entire arc of human history for us in a couple bullet points.
Men were created by God to exercise dominion over Satan and his rebellious angels. They handed that dominion over to Satan in Eden, who then imparted dominion to Death and Hades. For generations men looked for relief from their plight, and could see in the Spirit that One would come with the Anointing to exercise dominion, and to restore dominion to us all. That One was Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. He brought the Christ to earth in Jesus’ body to demonstrate what dominion looks like and what it’s for. Then Jesus brought the Christ to the cross to plant the most important seed since Eden: to let it die and resurrect so that dominion would be taken back from Death and Satan and restored to mankind. His ascension released the Helper to help us do the work, but we finally have what we lost in Eden and can start acting like it.
Except that for the most part, we don’t. And that’s what I’m exhorting us to reach for in this season. But I’m not the only one doing so; the Scriptures have been doing it since Cain and Abel, which is the purpose of this miniseries.
Romans 5:14 says in a single line what I’ve said above. “Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.”
Part One of Why We Fight was, “Here’s what we were before Adam and Eve, and why.” Part Two is “Here’s who we are now, and why.” Part Three will be “Here’s why it’s so important.”
Regarding “who we are now”: I’m saying things a little oddly when I’m talking about “the Christ” and that’s for good reason that I want you to understand. We will not know who we truly are in the kingdom of heaven – how devastatingly powerful and able we are to change this world – until we understand this concept.
There were lots of Jews named Jesus at the time that The Christ arrived.
They had to clarify, “Which Jesus we talkin’ ‘bout?”
“Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
And to some, like Peter, “Jesus, who is the Christ”.
“Christ” is the clarifying point; it’s a title just like “the Impaler” is the title for this one dude named Vlad. In many Scriptures we see something that reads like a full name, “Jesus Christ”, but in literal translations of what’s written, like NASB, we see that it actually reads “Jesus the Messiah” (starting right in Matthew 1:1), a name and a title.
Matthew 1:16 is a fine illustration of this title, “Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations.”
And “Christ” means “Anointed”, so the question is, “Anointed for what? For what purpose?” The answer is, “To have dominion.” The first word out of God’s mouth to us, the thing most important to God for men to have.
Exodus 29:6, speaking of Aaron; And you shall set the turban on his head and put the holy crown on the turban. You shall take the anointing oil and pour it on his head and anoint him.
When Moses anointed Aaron, he poured oil on him as a sign that “this one has authority”. He even gets a crown. Then they get to eat BK. In 29:29 the instruction is to anoint Aaron’s successors in the same way for the same purpose.
1 Samuel 10:1, speaking of Saul; Then Samuel took a flask of oil and poured it on his head and kissed him and said, “Has not the LORD anointed you to be a prince over his people Israel? And you shall reign over the people of the LORD and you will save them from the hand of their surrounding enemies.”
When Samuel anointed Saul, and David, and for any other king throughout history, the same is true. Anointing is used to signify and declare something to heaven and earth: This person is our leader. They control where we’re going. What they command is what we are expected to do. They have dominion.
In Jewish culture, long before the time of Jesus, they knew all about this concept of “the Christ”, the prophesied anointed ruler. They referred to him as the one who would restore the kingdom, and they would tack on “restore the kingdom to Israel” (Acts 1:6) because they didn’t realize which kingdom was being restored and to whom. (ends up, it’s the kingdom of heaven and its authority is being restored to all men.)
We know they had expected some kind of military guy who would exercise dominion over earthly armies and people. (everybody fashions the Messiah into the person they need, relevant to their self-absorbed situation, don’t they?)
In truth the Christ came to exercise dominion over powers and principalities. Luke 4:41 describes, “And demons also came out of many, crying, ‘You are the Son of God!’ But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Christ.”
But Jesus was not the only one who had ever been anointed that way. The entire first generation of men were. A few others in the line from Adam to Jesus had been, and Israel recognized this. They had seen this dominion peek its head out a few times before, and identified it with Seth, Enoch, Nimrod, Moses, and most notably Elijah.
So many times throughout Jesus’ time on earth, the crowds said that Elijah had finally returned. Even at the cross they thought Jesus was calling out to Elijah to come save him. Elijah was that big of a deal – Israel, you just saw three years of this guy healing people and raising the dead and having authority over the wind and waves, doing miracles that nobody had heard of before… and you still think that Elijah is superior to Jesus and might come help him out.
This is because Elijah had demonstrated the Christ, too. Having dominion over Death, he raised the dead and ascended to heaven. Anointed to dominate, heaven and earth submitted to him.
Adam had been that. We could call him Adam Christ if we want to. “Christ” is the title for one “anointed for dominion” and Adam had that, right outta God’s mouth. Romans 5:14 called it out, “Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.” Many Scriptures place Adam and Jesus as sort of the two trees between which the reign of Death hangs its hammock. 1Cor 15:45 boldly names both men “Adam”: Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
Enoch had that anointing, and he ruled over every king on earth and was taken up to rule over angels at their request. Like Elijah after him, Death had no dominion over him.
Nimrod wore the robe that God had made for Adam and was the mightiest hunter and warrior in the earth, and subdued all men and built the first cities and ruled them. Today, we are instructed in Romans 13:14 to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” because some garments carry authority and dominion, and the spiritual garment called “the Christ” slays all comers.
Moses was anointed by the LORD himself to lead the children of Israel to crush every nation and principality before them. (i’ve said it before, this is supposed to be a picture of the churrrrrch!) Under Moses covering, Israel dominated those battles – which were dangerous and bloody and something none of us would ever want to live through – because he was given Dominion and was Anointed for the task. Moses' body also didn't go to the grave, like Jude 1:9 teaches: "But when the archangel Michael, contending with the devil, was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment, but said, 'The Lord rebuke you.'" There was a fight over whether Death and the Grave could have Moses' body or not... and we can infer who won that fight.
So Israel had gotten glimpses of the Christ and the title was on their tongues often. They didn’t know what body this entity was going to show up in, but they had enough prophetic vision given by the Christ himself to know to watch for it. 1Peter 1:10 explains this, and it calls out specifically:
The prophets who prophesied … searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.
Note that the Spirit of Christ was in them doing the indicating. The anointing was in them – before it was made manifest on earth as Jesus. This Spirit is not Jesus – the Son of God, who the Father filled with the fullness of the Christ so that he could do the work of demonstrating dominion and then sacrificing and resurrecting it – but the Christ, the Anointed. He’s like a whole other character on the chess board.
That’s why the Jews were all fine with the existence of “the Messiah, who is the Christ” (John 1:41) but they were irate af when someone came on the scene telling them he’s the Son of God.
John 5:18 – This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.
The Son was the character that they didn’t know about. They are not the same thing.
Listen, there is a reason why Scripture refers to “the mystery of Christ”. It’s not “the mystery of Jesus”, and it’s not right in front of our faces, even though it kind of is. What I’m saying is really, really different from what I’ve been taught all my life. But a whole lot of confusing, “mysterious” stuff starts making sense when we untangle the Christ title from Jesus the Son. Like why Jesus refers to himself as the Son, but refers to the Christ, and to the Son of Man separately, both in the third person. Or why Jesus talks to the disciples about “my God and your God.” If we keep equating every aspect of Jesus to God, these statements make no sense.
Peter had breakfast with Jesus for three years, and he got it: In 1Peter 1:3, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!” The Father is the God of Jesus, the perishable body that carried the imperishable Christ. There is no God of God, so… they are not the same thing. Confusing, after all we’ve been taught. Peter understood something different. Mysterious. That’s okay, read on, it clears up.
When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ. (Ephesians 3:4)
Like, Jesus the man understood not just who he was on earth but also the many heavenly actors (shall we call them?) and the strategy that the Father had destined to play out. In his words, not mine, the Father, the Son of Man, the Christ, the angels, Death, the Grave, Hades, the Holy Spirit – they’re all distinct characters with different functions. Why is it important to understand the differences? Because through understanding we become more confident in the purpose we have as disciples of Jesus, which is substantial.
Look at Matthew 23:9, this is red letters where Jesus is teaching, “And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ.”
Wow, right? Third person and forward-thinking instruction looking into the future beyond his ascension.
Speaking of the heavenly actors, in Matthew 17, at the transfiguration of Jesus, it’s Moses and Elijah who appeared to talk with him. Of all the men in human history, ya got three guys who had manifested the Christ having a meet-up. Peter gets the revelation somehow that he was looking at Moses and Elijah… How cool would it have been to hear the conversation that they had, which gave Peter the understanding of who they all were?
But the take-away is that the Holy Ghost wants us to know who was involved. There could have just been a bright cloud and the Father’s voice saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” (Mat 17:5) The detail that Moses and Elijah appeared there is important to the Holy Spirit, and it has to do with our common thread of Christ.
Remember when I was quoting Romans 5:14, “Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses”? Why do you think that stops at Moses? Most of us would say death reigned from Adam to Jesus, right? But that’s not so. According to this, Death wasn’t reigning when Moses was around, was he? Hmmm. Because… that’s right. Dominion was on Moses, not the other way around.
Jesus is, however, the Son of God; divinely special in that he carries the fullness of Christ, and the only one worthy to demonstrate what the anointing does and then plant that seed on the cross so that we can all be “in Christ”. You see, if the enemy had known that we would all become Christ through Jesus’ death and resurrection, they never would have killed him. This is one of the reasons why Jesus keeps silencing people and demons when they shout the truth that he is the Christ and the Son of God. There was a secret strategy planned by God for the Christ, which 1Peter 1:12 calls, “things into which angels long to look.”
You may be aware that witches and the Satanic church acknowledge that Jesus came to earth and was God’s Son and that he was crucified on the cross. They deny the resurrection ever happened. They claim that Satan defeated Jesus by killing him. Think how crucial the resurrection was if our enemies deny that it took place; they agree with us except on that one point. They got tricked when Jesus died and Christ resurrected, which is what they don’t want to admit. (I was only recently made aware of this… but it’s helpful to know the strategy – where the Achilles’ heel is.) 1Peter 1:3 teaches us that “he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” We are only born again because of resurrection, not atonement (blood and the cross). “Born again as what?” The Christ. The thing our enemies were trying to eradicate from their kingdom by killing Jesus and claiming victory as a smokescreen.
Jesus’ story is “demonstrate, teach, suffer, atone, resurrect, ascend”.
Through “resurrect” we regained dominion, as the Christ was freed from Death and the Grave and we can be born again into a new spiritual body – the body of Christ. The same title Jesus walked around demonstrating to us.
Through “ascend” we get help from the Spirit of God to do what we’re supposed to do as the Christ (or “in Christ”).
What I’m trying to get at here, as clearly as I can, is that the Father’s Son, named with his Father’s name “Jesus” – the One seated at the right hand of the Father – was uniquely filled with dominion – the Christ – and was assigned the task of taking that dominion – which men had lost – to the cross. The Christ was created to die and resurrect – he is a spiritual seed. The result was that Jesus fulfilled what the Father asked of him and restored the dominion to all men by making the way for us to be born again into it. Now he reigns forever, seated at the right hand of the Father, worthy to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing, for completing the task.
1Cor 15:42 teaches, “So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable… It is sown in a natural body; it is raised in a spiritual body.” Jesus the Son came to sow the perishable body that carried the Christ, the spiritual seed, the imperishable dominion that had been lost by the first generation.
Can you picture this story? Through a human body the Son of God plants the most important seed since Eden, to sprout a Tree of Life covering the entire earth. That’s why “the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.” Jesus the man planted something in the spirit. The question is, “What did Jesus plant with that perishable seed of his body?” and the answer is, “The entity he was carrying, that people titled him by: the Christ.”
That vine is what we are grafted into when we believe it. Together, we are the Tree titled “the Christ”. Imagine a spiritual root and branch system spreading out over the entire earth, that first sprouted when the Christ resurrected.
Maybe picture it this way: Jesus’ human cells were completely and inseparably saturated with the Anointing the way an acorn is completely saturated with the life force to grow into an oak tree – if it is planted. He planted his own perishable body named “Jesus” to cause the resurrection of Christ. In the spirit, it looks just like a natural seed cycle, right? “Dry wrinkly thing gets planted, life comes outta nowhere.” Seeds are a little picture of the cross and the resurrection.
After sowing that seed, The Son ascended to his Father, leaving behind the resurrected spirit of Christ (again, remember, this is a title) for us to become – a title to be born into through faith in him.
Through faith in Christ, not in Jesus! (huh??) Through faith in the Christ = the Anointed = the one carrying Dominion.
What is faith, again? “I expect something to be.”
“I expect to be reborn as a member of the spiritual body with the title ‘the Christ’, and carry that anointing and have dominion over heaven and earth because of it.”
Not, “I expect to be reborn as Jesus, the Lamb who was slain.”
“I expect that when I speak, that which I say will become, just like my Father does.”
Not, “I expect Jesus to mysteriously still be visiting the earth like a ghost and do supernatural stuff that I ask him for when I pray.”
This is about identity. His and ours.
It’s good to be saved from the second death through belief that Jesus’ death atoned for our sins. It’s way better to not stop at the cross, where I have found some, forever enamored with the forgiveness of our sins and worshiping him for that forgiveness. Jesus didn’t stop at the cross. Jesus was far more interested in what came after the cross.
Jesus had been on earth all those years for one end game: To resurrect the Christ. The secret death-blow to Death. Again – None of the principalities saw it coming; they just saw, “This dude is wrecking us – and he’s teaching people how to do it, too, and he’s extending his authority to them. We gotta take him out.”
But by the wisdom and predestination of God our Father, we get to see the result of resurrection in John 20:17. He’s finished the task of bringing the Christ to death on a cross and subsequently resurrecting, and now comes the next piece of the strategy:
The first words out of Jesus’ mouth are, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.”
Then he says, “But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Before the resurrection he’s saying things like, “No longer do I call you servants…; but I have called you friends” in John 15:15. Post-resurrection he’s clarifying something new, we are brothers. I’m the Son of God, you’re the Son of God, if we’re brothers to the Son of God.
He’s back from the dead and the first thing on his mind is, “Stop making this all about Jesus, because you’re now my brothers, sons of the Father. I’m off, because my purpose is to get the Holy Spirit to help you in the work I taught you to do, exercising dominion as the Sons of God.”
Beyond atonement for sins (the cross), resurrection was the real win. Ascension to release the Helper was the overall plan. The Son’s mind was on ascending so that the Helper could come down and help Christ, ending the dominion of Death and Satan.
From there we can find a hundred Scriptures that talk about “Christ in you” and "you in Christ" and they make a lot more sense this way, than if we think Jesus the Son of God is mystically inhabiting your physical body.
For real. If I go around being myself and people scoff and say, “It’s like Garrison thinks he’s the Son of God or something,” I’ll be like, “Good! Looks like I’m finally getting the hang of this!”
You’re the Son of God. First thing on his mind was to tell us that, brothers and sisters.
Just to be clear: We are not Jesus, the only one seated at the right hand of Power (his words), the only one worthy to open the scrolls, the Lamb that was slain. He is altogether unique, altogether divine, far beyond any of us in perfection and glory. He’s the one that the Father testifies to, “in whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” We are not that.
We are, however, the Christ, more palatably titled “the body of Christ”; the spirit that God created to exercise dominion over heaven and earth, which we wouldn’t have if Jesus had not obeyed the Father and planted that seed. We have become a new creation “in Christ”, right?
It is now we who exercise dominion over heaven and earth as The Revealed Sons of God (Romans 8:19). While we’re here on earth, long before we need to be saved from the second death. This is much better than stopping at the hope of salvation.
I know this is a lot. A lot of stuff we’ve never heard, maybe in like two-thousand years. But test it out with me, like I’ve been doing for a long, long time since these things first dawned on me.
If you really wanna get the feel of it, start doing this: When you read the gospels and epistles, stop equating the word Christ with Jesus. Sometimes the Holy Spirit refers to “Jesus”, meaning the Son of God sent to carry, fully embody, and demonstrate Christ. Sometimes to “Christ”, the anointing and dominion which men had, and lost in Eden, and regained through Jesus’ resurrection. And sometimes to “Jesus Christ” for those situations when he wants to underscore the inseparable nature of this anointing from Jesus the Son of God. Read it like that and as I said before, confusing stuff starts making sense.
Having lots of Scripture to illuminate this is key! Here’s what I mean when I said the Israelites knew all about the Christ, as the Scriptures describe.
Starting right at the top of the gospels, in Matthew 1:16 at the end of the genealogy, “and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.”
Mat 11:2; Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”
Mat 16:19; “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.
Luke 2:25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.
(a lot of Holy Spirit in action there before Pentecost, eh?)
Luke 22:66; And they led him away to their council, and they said, “If you are the Christ, tell us.”
And now, this most important point: We are now The Anointed to exercise dominion.
1Cor 6:15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?
1Cor 12:27 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
1Cor 3:1 But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.
“Infants in Christ” meaning people who don’t yet realize who they are with this anointing for dominion. They still see only the natural world ("the flesh") and cannot see through that flesh into the spirit yet (as fishers of men).
Romans 6:8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.
Here Scripture teaches that there was a period of history when death did have dominion over him (the Christ, not Jesus the Son). As we have already described, between Adam One and Adam Two with brief hiatuses at Moses (Rom 5:14) and Elijah (who did not die but ascended). How interesting, right? Jesus planted Christ so Christ could be freed from the dominion of Death over him. This is that whole business where Jesus says "and I have the keys of Death and Hades," in Revelation 1:18. And starting in 1Peter 3:18, speaking of Christ, "being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison... through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him." "Jesus Christ" the inseparable pairing, created as such for the purpose of resurrecting the Christ. There were spirits imprisoned (by whom? yep.) and then Jesus the Christ has obtained keys so that Death and all principalities are now subject to him instead of the other way around... These statements that were once confusing start to make sense.
Romans 8:9 Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
Romans 8:16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs – heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ
Here are the two of them, Jesus the man, and the Christ, clarified side by side:
1Cor 15:21; for as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, in Christ shall all be made alive.
It’s crucial for us to know who we are, and the magnitude of what this dominion means.
If you’ve heard people say, “I just can’t wait to get to heaven, where there’s no more trouble and he’ll wipe away every tear from our eyes,” Escape My Life is behind it.
If you’ve found people waiting for “the return of Jesus”, not realizing that the Christ is our portion today, and dormant, Escape My Life is behind it.
If you’ve heard people say, “I want to get back to the Garden of Eden, before the curse, the way God intended it to be, just loving Him in perfect relationship,” that is not what Eden was, and Escape My Life is behind it. (i’ve heard this referred to as “original intent” and it’s a deception, a distraction from our actual purpose.)
Have you found a Church that clings to Jesus? ahem Escape My Life is behind that, too. Jesus, the Son of Man, is always talking about his Father, and how he’s the Way to the Father, and he’s showing us the Father, and he’s doing the works and the will of his Father, and he’s saying what his Father says, and how he is ascending to his Father so that the Helper can come. Jesus is looking ahead to his bride becoming ready for him. Instead we find people selfishly looking at what they’re forgiven of and never moving on from that; or continuing to look to him to do everything and be everything. I haven't heard too many worship songs about the Father lately, have you?
Remember when Sauron gave out the rings, “But they were all of them, deceived”? Revelation 12:9 calls Satan, “the deceiver of the whole world”. Do we think we’re excluded from that population? I’m not that proud.
Until.
I see you. This body has been dormant for far too long. We are not going to hide from our destiny and deny ourselves any longer. We are not going to be lost in a dream of being rescued into a better, easier life. We are not diminishing the glory of Jesus and what he did for all humanity, and we are being born again through the resurrection and then growing up again, too. We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ. (Eph 4:15)
That “growing up” looks like what Jesus answered John in Matthew 11:5 when he asked if the Christ had come: “the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.” This is Jesus’ definition of the Christ, isn't it? And isn't that what we are commissioned to do?
I have this tear-filled vision of millions of people doing what Jesus and a few hundred were doing so many years ago. Can you imagine so many of us bringing souls out from under their pain and captivity through deliverance and physical healing? I am thoroughly convinced that this is what Jesus intended for us, by his own words. And by his obedience, he teed it up for us and left us with no excuse. Our Father means for this title to be repeatable and inheritable.
And through the Scriptures the Holy Spirit is trying to get us to understand, “Which Garrison?”
“Garrison of Long Beach; Garrison the Christ.”
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