By: General Jim Green (p. 2 in Issue Ten of The Tribal Call)
Most “Christians” give more honour to the governments of men than to God, especially here in the U.S. But does the Bible teach this? Why is it that most “Christians” would rather live within a secular community rather than form Christian communities or Ecclesias? In both the TRIBAL CALL and the UNITY OF COMMUNITY series, General James Green explains the 5 covenant keys that are available to ALL believers in the Body of Christ. Why don’t we see more “Christians” adhering to the New Testament concepts of ONE HOLY NATION under God, rather than one UNHOLY nation under man? The 5 key concepts are:
1. TRANSCENDENCE:
God is creator; man is created. The Humanist theory that man is a god in himself is disproved. God is the ultimate authority in all matters.
2. HIERARCHY:
God is superior, and man is inferior. God has total authority over all nations, yet He delegates authority in and through men/nations.
3. ETHICS:
Ethics deal with the laws of the Bible, morality, righteousness, and the punishments for breaking those laws.
4. SANCTIONS:
Sanctions deal with our vows and covenants we make at salvation. When we break our vows /covenants, God automatically places sanctions against us—blessings/cursings versus cause /effect principles.
5. CONTINUITY:
Continuity looks at our Spiritual inheritance, available to all who serve Christ, regardless of race, nationality, or color. Continuity means to “continue.” Those that endure unto the END, the same shall be saved.
Welcome to Tribal Call. Tonight we are going to finish up our series that we have been delivering called Unity of Community. The overall picture that I have been trying to present is that of a Theocracy, in order that Christians would desire to live under the Government of God. Most Christians think they are under the Government of God as long as they belong to a physical church. You are deceived. Belonging to some organization, belonging to a church or anything of a religious nature, does not secure our eternal salvation. It does not—it cannot. Only when you have your covenant renewed with God, and you are continuing on in that covenant can you be sure of eternal salvation. This brings me to the last key, number 5: CONTINUITY (For parts 1-5 of these messages, please write and ask for Tribal Call issues 5-9). There are five (5) keys we have been talking about that are essential for the functioning of an Ecclesia or a Theocratic government on this earth, ruled by God not by men: 1)TRANSCENDENCE 2)HIERARCHY 3)ETHICS 4)SANCTIONS AND OATHS, and 5)CONTINUITY. And when I say “not by men,” I am not saying God does not use men, for He does, but the difference is that when God anoints and appoints them for those tasks at hand, He blesses them through His wisdom, knowledge, and understanding, and gives them the Spiritual skill they need. When men choose, out of motives of their own, to be religious, to have power, to have money, or many other reasons and motives why men and women want to be religious leaders, you have something that is not right in the sight of God. That is what you call Babylon religion. That is what America has turned into. Everybody is doing their own thing, and they’re all talking about God. They’re teaching about God, yet THEY ARE NOT LIVING IT, and that is the big problem. It is a big problem among both ministers and their people in this hour. They are not living how God wants them to live, or what’s worse, they’re not even living what they are preaching.
I have always said, practice what you preach. If you are going to preach it, then practice it. That’s why I’m able to preach on community with authority, because I am living in community. I have been leading and living in this missions training corps for years. We have been living as a community, as an army, as a tribe, as a group of people living together. Because of this, we have been able to do missionary work all around the world in many countries. We have learned to work as a team, and we recognize Jesus Christ, God Almighty, and the Holy Ghost as our Superiors, right? God is our Superior, He is our Boss, and He is our Creator—we are the created. This concept goes back to the first key: the transcendence of God that we talked about in the first message. Then, we talked about hierarchy: God has authority over us, and He imputes or invests that authority in men and women in order that they can rule over His subjects. Not ruling as the Gentiles do with an iron fist or without love involved, but yes, God has leaders that will rule and lead in the love of God. Next, we talked about ethics. You cannot have an army, you cannot even really have a society, without some sort of ethics involved. You’ve got to have some kind of ethical standard, a code of conduct, amen? God is a righteous God, and He has righteous standards that His people must adhere to. When God’s people go whoring after other gods, e.g. the television set, music, and all the garbage that the world is flooded with right now, then they have departed from God’s standards. Here in the United States of America, Christians feast on the filth of the world, and they are filled up until their eyes are pooched out with fatness. Should I say more? We have gone whoring after other gods, and we have embraced the strange gods of the heathen through our eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hands, touch, thoughts, heart—through every means available—and we have given God very little service, only lip service at that. The summary of ethics is that if you are serving a holy, righteous God, then live a holy, righteous life and don’t be a stinking hypocrite.
This is why the world laughs at the Christians. You see some fat preacher talking about some righteous thing he reads out of the Bible and then as soon as he leaves the church he lives a double life. He steps out of the back door to his nice limousine and drives off with some whore and has an affair somewhere. This happens all the time. I’ve known ministers that have done this. I’ve known ministers that have become homosexuals. I’ve known ministers that have become lesbians. I’ve known all kinds of weirdos in my past 24 years. These are the ones I have personally known, let alone the ones that have hit the newspapers—you know the big scandals and all that business. Ethics means we have got to be righteous. God wants us to be a holy people. God wants a holy nation, a holy tribe, and a consecrated people.
The community that I am talking about, a Theocratic community, a Tribal community, will consist of a people who will be led by the Spirit of God. They are not going to be led by their appetites, amen? They are not going to be led by their own carnal appetites but by God’s appetite. And what is God’s appetite? What is God hungry for? God is hungry for a holy people, and when He is hungry for a holy people, then He is going to have a holy people. God does not enjoy His people when they are covered in filth, amen? My God, we’ve departed a long way from the truth, haven’t we? Just talking like this makes me realize how far away from the Lord we really are as an international Body of Christ. As I’ ve traveled this world the last 10 years, I have been to many countries, and this disease of religious hypocrisy is not just in America, but it’s in every country to which I have ever been. I see hypocritical preachers, I see people living doubles lives, I see their lips flopping about Spiritual things, and their lives do not reflect anything of righteousness and holiness. We have got to live what we preach, and it takes work to do it; it takes SPIRITUAL WARFARE!
Finally, the fourth key that I was teaching this morning had to do with sanctions and oaths and how they’re connected with blessings and cursings. God will bless us if we bless Him. He will curse us if we curse Him. How do we curse God? We curse God by breaking our commitment to Him. We break our oath to God, and we go a whoring after other gods, e.g. television, music, worldliness, sports, all the things of the world, of the sodomite camp. All these things belong to the Canaanites, to the Egyptians, to the world! They belong to their filthy camp, and yet we embrace them, love them, take them into our homes. We take them into our hearts, we take them into our minds, and we fornicate and have affairs with them. Then we say, “We love the Lord!” Do we really love the Lord, or are we just lying to ourselves? This message also had to do with rewards and punishments, the sanctions of God. God rewards us if we do right, if we are faithful; and He punishes us if we are unfaithful.
Now, let me take the opportunity to tear down this prosperity god that has been built by the greedy men and women of this nation, wherein they say gain is godliness. I am talking about the religious racketeers who have created the delusion that money and material possessions equal Spirituality and God’s blessing in your life. Having money and having things does not prove that you are even close to God. How do I know that? Because there are multitudes of people in the world who don’t even serve God, and they have lots of things and lots of money. That does not prove that they are Spiritual or that God’s blessing is in their life, amen? So, let us get away from the lie that money in the bank or money in the pocket equals Spirituality and God’s favor in your life. The prosperity perverts will tell you that lie so they can get some of the material possessions from you. People say, “General Jim, all you do is preach against money and against materialism.” I preach against it because people love it before they love God. I don’t say it’s evil in itself. The Bible says the LOVE OF MONEY is evil, and it will damn our souls.
I usually start out in Deuteronomy, which has been our primary text for this series of messages. Deuteronomy is the book of the covenant. Instead, I’m going to jump right to the New Testament and go to a scripture that I was looking at tonight which is found in Philippians 3:20. The subject is CONTINUITY, and this is the last of the five keys. Continuity means “continuing on,” and God makes it very plain in His Word that you will not get your full inheritance unless you continue on, steadfast to the end. Going to verse 20, it says, “For our conversation is in Heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.” That is the King James version. Now another version translates “conversation” as “citizenship.” If you look up the word “conversation,” you’ll find that it means “lifestyle or citizenship.” Now what does this mean when it talks about our citizenship being in Heaven? Paul was pointing out that as followers of Jesus, our citizenship or lifestyle is supposed to be in the heavenly or Spirit dimension. And that brings me back to the point which I had previously mentioned, the difference between a Theocracy and a Democracy. In essence, you have two forms of government: one ruled by God from the heavenly dimension, and the other ruled by man from the earthly, carnal dimension. A Democracy has to do with men ruling over other men. A Theocracy has to do with God ruling over man, which is the basis for an individual’s heavenly citizenship. Now, if we want a Spiritual community, then we are going to have to recognize that the foundation, the substance of it, is going to have to be Spiritual. It cannot be carnal, humanistic, or of the flesh. It cannot be just a conglomeration of people and all their resources mixed together. That’s not the kind of community we’re talking about. It has got to be Spiritual! It has to be a SPIRIT COMMUNITY, made up of people who are following the Spirit of God, of people that are Spirit people, not just carnal Christians, who are dull, dumb, and demonic. I am talking about people who are sensitive to God, people that are living what they are receiving from the Lord.
Now, there is another scripture in Ephesians 4:22 that says, we should put off our former conversations and put on the new man. What is our former conversation? It is just what I’ve been talking about: your former lifestyle, your former way of living. This scripture is admonishing us to put the old one off and conform ourselves to the heavenly lifestyle or standard. In essence, it is saying we must change our sinful, worldly ways of living and begin living for God. This brings me back to another point that we’ve been talking about: our covenant that we have made with God. Some people can break their covenants with God, continuing in sin, and not even know it. Going back to the book of Deuteronomy, we find in the very last chapter, Moses led the whole nation of Israel into a covenant renewal. Basically, Moses got the entire people of Israel to make a commitment and vow that they would obey God and do what He asked them to do, thus forming the first large-scale Theocracy in history. After he got the entire nation to establish their covenant, then he laid hands on Joshua and transferred the historical continuity of his leadership unto Joshua, in order that he would continue on enforcing that covenant through future generations as they conquered the land of Canaan, which God had given them for their inheritance.
But getting back into the New Testament, we need to see how this same pattern applies to us. We are to put off the old lifestyle, or in other words, how we lived before we met Christ, how we lived in sin before we came to the cross. The most critical point we need to understand is that when we got saved, we made a covenant, or an oath, with God and said, “Yes Lord, I want you! I want you as my Saviour!” We made an agreement with God, and as I said earlier, it’s in the small print of the agreement where we find out about the blessings and cursings. The facts of salvation are that you will be blessed if you continue and keep your oath, and you will be cursed if you break it. Yes, judgement will befall you if you break your covenant with God. It has to be that way because God is a God of principle; He is a God of righteousness. He must reward us, and He must punish us. He does not just let us float around in limbo. There are rewards and punishments; there are judgements and blessings involved. It is vital that we keep this in mind. The proper understanding of our covenant with God has a tremendous bearing on the lie that has been perpetuated by sinful men, who have been telling everyone that once you are saved, you will automatically stay saved forever, no matter what you do. That is untrue. If anyone even begins to study the subject of covenants, the first thing you find out is that covenants can be broken by God and by man. You can break your covenant with God by turning your back on Him and going your own way, and God can break His covenant with you if you refuse to repent or you continue living in sin—contrary to what popular false doctrine may proclaim. And you can continue on and act like you’re a good Christian, like millions do around the world, yet God has turned His back on you. Your covenant has been broken.
That is what the Bible says. Reality dictates that you must forsake the one if you embrace the other. And now that you’ve embraced the Kingdom of God, dear one, that is only the beginning. This brings us back to the last point of this whole message: CONTINUITY. You must continue on serving God. Not only must you serve but you must also conquer and possess your inheritance in God.
Now let us go to Deuteronomy 34:9, “And Joshua the son of Nun was full of the spirit of wisdom; for Moses had laid his hands upon him: and the children of Israel hearkened unto him, and did as the Lord commanded Moses.” Here we see at the very end of Moses’ life that he laid hands upon Joshua, transferring his authority and confirming his position of leadership. Now, the laying on of hands has a lot to do with inheritance. If you go back and study the Bible, you’ll see that many times when the Father transferred the inheritance to the son, it was always confirmed by the laying on of hands. In the New Testament, we also find the laying on of hands (Acts 8:18; I Tim. 4:14). Anyway, Moses passed on the responsibility of enforcing Israel’s historical covenant to Joshua, and Joshua was to pick it up like you would a ball and run down the field with it against the enemy. Joshua was expected to exercise continuity and CARRY ON!
Going back to Deuteronomy 31:7, there are several things I want to talk about here: “And Moses called unto Joshua and said unto him in the sight of all Israel, Be strong and of a good courage: for thou must go with this people unto the land which the Lord hath sworn unto their fathers to give them; and thou shalt cause them to inherit it.” I want to talk about the word “inheritance.” If you get a Hebrew/Greek concordance and you look up the word “inheritance,” you’ll find that there are two full meanings for this word and that a third meaning is derived as an interpretation from the first two. I want to talk about them because they have a lot of bearing on the subject of continuity, continuing on with the LORD.
To begin, the word “yarash” is a Hebrew verb that has three meanings. The first meaning of this word means to receive land as a gift or inheritance. You’ll find that in Leviticus 20:24. God told Israel that He would give them the land of Canaan because it was not their land to begin with; it was a gift from God. It was theirs because He swore to their fathers that they would have it. He made an oath with them, and He made a covenant. God made it very plain that if Israel would keep their end of the covenant that they would have the land, and if they didn’t keep it, they would lose it and their enemies would rule over them. As you know, the first generation that came out of Egypt did not inherit it. Why? Because they broke their covenant with God in a number of ways, and they all fell in the wilderness dead. Out of the entire group that came out of Egypt, only Joshua and Caleb went in because they kept their covenant and believed God.
The second meaning of this word is to occupy and organize. You’ll find an example of this in Deuteronomy 6:1-3, where “To occupy and organize” is the meaning of inherit. So, when God says I want you to go in and inherit this land, He is saying, I want you to go in and occupy the land. There was only one small problem that faced Israel—and that faces every child of God today—the occupants of the land were dug in and refused to leave! They were heathen nations greater than Israel with fortified cities and powerful armies ruled by the devil. They were all there in that land, and they are all there in OUR LAND! And when Israel looked at those enemies, the first generation said, “Oh we can’t do it; we can’t do it!” This is the same thing that happens to us many times. In fact, this type of doubt and unbelief will attack every Christian who is determined to go forward in God. God will give you an inheritance, and you will have to go in and possess it, and this means you will have to confront and overcome the enemies in your land.
What exactly is our inheritance? It is eternal life. Yet your initial salvation experience was just the beginning of your lifelong walk with God. You have to occupy. How do you occupy yourself? The key is letting God invade and occupy your land. Joshua was a picture or example of Jesus invading the land. You have to let God come into your heart, into your land, and start attacking and driving the enemies out. You say, “Well, all my enemies went away at salvation.” Oh, is that night? Then why do you still lie, steal, cheat, commit adultery, fornicate, and do everything the world does if you have no enemies in you? It’s up to Jesus Christ and the Spirit of God to drive the enemies out and occupy our land. Once the occupation is begun, God starts to organize, or should I say reorganize.
Remember your old government? What was your old government? It was the government of humanism, a satanic government. It was a government of the flesh, of self life, of Adam life; that was the government that we lived under before we were saved, right? When Jesus invaded the land, He set up a new government, and the new government is going to start changing things around. God is going to have to reorganize things. He is going to reorganize things according to His plan and purpose for our lives. This is the basis and cause behind the eternal war that goes on between the flesh and the Spirit. Some Christians are so dumb they don’t know what it means to fight. Honestly, I have met Christians who have had no concept of Spiritual warfare at all. They look at you with a blank stare and wonder what in God’s name you are talking about—Spiritual warfare. Most of the time, they will proceed to tell you that we are to enjoy life because preacher Prosperity says God wants us to have at the things the world has to offer and be prosperous. So they spend their whole Christian life sucking after the world trying to get rich because Pastor Prosperity says we’re supposed to. And all the while they refuse to let God invade their land and reorganize the things inside called their SELF LIFE. They refuse to let God drive out all the demons, tear down their fortified cites, get rid of their powerful armies, and get rid of all the influence of their idolatries. Christians still commit idolatry. They idolize all kinds of things; it’s true! They worship themselves—other gods, other lovers. What is that? That is idolatry, the same thing that was in the land of the heathen. They had their own gods. They had many gods, and Israel was commanded to go in and destroy those gods.
What has happened to the inner conquest in our day and age people? Why have God’s people gone whoring after other gods? They’ve done the same thing that Israel was warned against doing. God warned Israel explicitly not to have anything to do with the gods in the land. Well, Joshua did not, and Joshua’s people that lived after him did not, but the people that lived after them did. In fact, the whole book of Judges is a sad book that describes how they went whoring after other gods and started worshiping the very idols that God commanded them to destroy. As a result, God had to bring his judgments and punishments upon them time and time again.
The third meaning that derives itself from the word “yarash,” it breaks down to mean “a change in power structure.” If you research this, you can begin to see how the change in power structure could very well apply to the power structure of our SELF LIFE. How many people know that the self life is a strong unit within a human being? It’s called pride, to make it very plain. Pride in us, in the way we do things, in the way we think we are, that’s the power structure within a human being. And God wants to break that down, and He wants to become our strength, our power structure. He wants to organize and reorganize us to the point that we will depend on Him and not on ourselves and our own resources. You say, “Well that leaves me helpless with nothing to do.” Is that right? Where are you going to get your Spiritual power? You can only get it from two sources. If you rely on your strength and your power, you are actually deriving it from the kingdom of darkness every time. But if you want God’s power and God’s structure, and a new social order of the Holy Ghost, then you’re going to have to reach up and get it from Him. It just does not plop into your lap. You have to be reorganized, restructured, in order to be a vessel of God’s power. You’ll find the principle of Spiritual warfare in Deuteronomy, you’ll find it in the New Testament, and you’ll find it experientially working in your life everyday as you walk with God. So, to sum it all up, you’ve got to let God have His way in you.
I want to make one more point here that relates back to the subject of continuing on. The fact that Israel could go in and possess that land and receive their inheritance all had to do with the fact that they were the rightful heirs. It had nothing to do, in one sense, with their race; it had to do with who continued on. Some of the people, like Ephraim for example, turned back in the day of battle and they did not receive as much because they failed to continue on. They forsook their inheritance. Esau did the same thing, and he also failed to receive his inheritance. What I’m saying is that in order to receive your full inheritance in God, you have got to continue on and remain faithful with God. This again breaks through the popular lie of “once saved, always saved.” So many Christians believe that we’re all going to go to Heaven together no matter what we do, just because we can say the name of Jesus. Their reasoning goes like this: “I can live in sin, I can embrace the world, I can have a big fling down here, and I can never do anything wrong or go to Hell because I’m saved!” How many have heard this? You’re stupid to believe that because the Bible makes it very plain that the inheritance is only given to those who continue on. Why do you think God took the inheritance away from Israel when they started sinning? Yes, He took it away from them! Not only did He take it away, but He sent them into captivity to be punished! He did that to His own people until they repented, and then He brought them back. This happened numerous times during Israel’s history. (Write for our trilogy on “Once saved, always saved?”)
Discipleship is what this whole subject boils down to: becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ and then continuing steadfast until the end—soldiering, both in Word and in Spirit. We must learn to live by both the written Word and the Spirit Word. All these concepts have to do with community. They all have to do with our inheritance and continuing. If we stop educating people about the written Word, and we stop educating people about the spoken Spirit Word of the Lord, if we stop telling people about the miraculous saving power of Christ, if we stop talking about God, then we stop the inheritance. It’s like the historical covenant has been broken, and each one of us has the power to break that covenant in our own lives. That’s why if you look in Deuteronomy, you’ll find that Israel was instructed to preserve the law, to write it down, put it over their door posts, write it on their hands, put it on their foreheads, tell their kids about it, teaching them from generation to generation. Why? What was God doing? He was telling them that they would have to actively work at continuing on with their inheritance because it could be stopped, and they could be discontinued, which they eventually were. To discontinue is the opposite of continuing on in the faith, and we can discontinue our walk with God. If we don’t want to stop, then we have no other choice but to continue on. The Bible plainly says that those who endure until the end, the same shall be saved. Endure unto the end of what? Until the great tribulation when the rapture takes place, and we’ll all fly away in the sky with our white robes on, and then come back to fight Armageddon? Is that what we’re talking about? That’s what is being taught out there to multitudes of ignorant Christians. That’s not what we’re talking about. Enduring is exactly the same as continuing on. (Write for our “No Rapture” booklets.)
Once you make a covenant or oath with God, and you swear to God that you are going to follow Him, then you’ve got to continue on in that until the end of your life. I don’t care what comes or what goes, dear people. You’ve got to follow through with it. I don’t care if you hit a rough spot; everybody hits rough spots. I’ve seen so many turn back in my 24 years of service that I’m even ashamed to talk about it. How many people have I seen tuck tail and run the other way at the slightest little turbulence in the Spirit dimension. It shook them up, and they ran back and grabbed the horns of the devil, kissed him all over, played with his tail, and went to bed with him. They felt safe and secure all over again. They felt that if they embraced and had a love affair with the devil that the devil would not bother them anymore. You bet he wont bother you anymore, but remember: you will pay a price for that peace with the devil—you will burn in hell for eternity! Remember: rewards and punishments. What does it say? The wages of sin are…blessings? What does it say? The wages of sin is…all you can eat at your favorite restaurant? What does it say? The wages of sin is…going to the big football game, huh? It says, THE WAGES OF SIN IS STILL DEATH!
Dear one, if you accumulate your wages in sin, then you are going to die. How are you going to die? Of course, you may not die physically right away, but you will most definitely die Spiritually or covenantly. In other words, your covenant that you made with God, by which you received eternal life, is going to be annulled and broken by your actions, and you’re going to enter back into Spiritual death once again. You can throw out the once-saved-always-saved nonsense. You will die, pure and simple! Your heart may beat, and you may continue on in your delusion thinking God is blessing you because you are raking in the bucks and living the good life. Nevertheless, whatever you may be doing, you are still dead spiritually, and it is just a matter of time before you go and collect your pay. When you finally get to the bank of Heaven, and you ask for the blessing that is stored up for you, guess what is going to await you there? God’s judgement! A deadly serpent that’s going to bite you; that is what’s going to be there.
A good analogy would be if I worked for the military or the government, God forbid, and just say they had a system where if you worked for 20 years, you could retire and get a monthly pension. So, lets say I worked for only about 18 years, and then I decided that I didn’t like my job anymore, and I quit. If I try to go down and get my pension or my reward, I’ve got news for you, they’re not going to give it to me. They don’t care how long I worked if I didn’t work all 20 years. If I did not fulfill my contract and honor my end of the commitment, then they are not obligated to honor their end. Do you see what I’m saying? And this is exactly how it works with our salvation and our walk with God. The Bible says if you will endure until the end—endurance—then you’ll be saved. But if you don’t endure, if you quit somewhere along the line, you’re not going to be saved. If you stop, that’s the end of that, and even God won’t force you to continue. This has nothing to do with the fact that we all stumble and fall on occasion; however, if we are quick to repent, Jesus will surely forgive us and cleanse us of all sin. Yet if we stop walking with God and start living in sin on a continual basis, we will lose our salvation! Each one of us will get what we deserve, and God won’t make any mistakes. God will not give us our reward if we did not earn the reward. Oh yes, you will get a reward; you’ll get your pay. God promises us we’ll get paid, but it may not be what we are expecting. Amen? If you are living in sin and expecting to receive eternal life, what you will get is eternal death. That is the only thing left for those who don’t finish their course with God.
These messages have covered the five keys that are necessary for a true Theocracy government to function upon this earth, and it is working in our midst. I hope to see it work all around the world. People should forsake these stupid social clubs called churches, where they just go to play games, socialize, and get entertained. Churches are nothing but whorehouses. They’re hang-outs for religious demons; they’re everything except the real thing. GET OUT OF THEM, AND GET INTO GOD! Seek God, and beg Him to help you form your own Spirit community. Let God bless you and deal with you. Let God cut to the heart of your sin problems and eradicate them so that when you stand before Him, you’ll receive your full inheritance. Amen.