Mankind are much like animals in a cage, albeit a big cage with walls unseen. We are free to range within our massive reservation, but it remains a prison in which we live. That is a shocking statement but there is evidence of that.
What size makes a cage? Obviously, even if an electric fence is put around
your personal space, that would be a cage and sort of a virtual prison that is
mobile. It is as if we are circus animals that others marvel at our antics.
If your property boundaries are within a fence, then you are still
contained, but in a larger space. You begin to feel free, just like your pets
do when they seem free range, but are still within the confines of your lawn. They
are liberated each time you allow them outside the walls of your house but are
still confined with the false knowledge that they are free.
Now, increase that living space to include the neighborhood. Stray pets
remain in a cage because of local laws. There are no bars, but their freedom is
at best imaginary.
On the Sabbath, Jews become observant of their cage; called “techum shabbat,”
meaning the Sabbath boundary which restricts each one from walking more than
2,000 cubits, (about 0.7 miles) outside their home city or home.
For Jews, driving or even using motorized transportation is against their
law. Perhaps that is God’s way of persuading them that they are not yet free
beings, but like animals in a cage, not for punishment, but for their own
safety.
Free range on the other days, on the Sabbath day they know that they are in
one of two places: (1) a prison whose “bars” are the Law of God or (2) just a
hedge about them (Job 1:10) that keeps the wicked ones from getting into them.
Their boundaries are their consciences; for some they are sanctified and set
apart for their own welfare, or for others, they are in prison made by the Law
of God.
The latter state is that in which the Jews of the age of Jesus found
themselves. So many saw the Law, thanks to the Pharisees and scribes, to be a
prison rather than a state of sanctification wherein they were set apart
from the wiles of the Devil as Paul wrote so succinctly:
Finally,
my brethren (fellow
Christians), be strong in the Lord,
and in the power of His might; Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be
able to stand against the wiles of the Devil, for we wrestle not against flesh
and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of
the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. (Ephes 6:10-12)
Therein, the wall, or hedge, of protection is the armor of God — His
mightiness. Paul was essentially saying, Commit yourselves to containment
for your own sake. That state of existence is you knowing the commandments given
to you by the Lord Jesus (1 Thes 4:2). Those commands were given by the “Finger
of God” (Deut 9:10)— the “Word” Jesus (John 1:14).
The boundary of your confinement is the Power of God who prescribed, not
really “commandments,” but “prescriptions” for eternal life. The Law is either
a prison or a sanctuary based on the conscience of each person.
Some pets require no laws but stay within the bounds of property lines
because they love and obey their masters. Others love their masters, but
venture out into the world, never knowing the hazards that they may encounter.
Some dogs, even though they love their masters, just cannot resist the exploration
of the world; that is where most Christians live. The most feral dogs go where
the action is and even bite the tires of moving vehicles. They will risk their
necks for the sport of it. That’s the situation of atheists who inherently know
there is a real God, but one who interferes with their quest for excitement
from the world.
Whatever the space in which everyone lives is their conscience. For those
who are conscious of a loving God, laws are sanctuary from the world, and they
are pleased to do them to honor their Master.
To others, the conscience is a hindrance, thus keeping them from doing as they
please, even things that will kill them. As you can see walls do not a prison
make but the state of the conscience.
That was where most of the Jews found themselves when Jesus came in the
flesh… in a prison built by the laws of men rather than freedom in the armor of
God to go even where the even wicked ones might be. The Pharisees taught rigid
enforcement whereas Jesus gave them freedom by instructing the Jews:
“You
shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
They
answered him, “We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how
say You, ‘You shall be made free?’”
Jesus
answered them, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, ‘Whosoever commits sin is the
servant of sin.’” (John
8:32-34)
Is God the prison warden or sin itself? Sin is anything that would displease
God — missing the mark of God, or His standards of thinking and behavior — the conscience
of human beings. That is what makes us human!
The Will of God is expressed in the “Ten
Words” that prescribe healthy living using the Conscience of God — the Law.
Knowing that things are not God’s Will and doing them anyway is criminal to God,
but wanting to do them, even while failing displays the grace of God and makes even
sinners free-range beasts.
“You are of your father the Devil, and the lusts of your father you will do...”
(John 8:44). “Father” therein means that the genetics of the Beast is in all
natural born people. Who is the “Beast”? That can be found in end-of-time
scripture; “They worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and
they worshipped the Beast.”
The “dragon” is the “Devil” who is the spirit of wickedness — the “Wicked
One” (1 John 3:12), and that would be the adversarial spirit in some lower
state of mankind that had carnal knowledge with the female Adam (Gen 4:1).
If that is correct, the woman would have seen the countenance of the Beast
as a shining one, perhaps Lucifer, but outwardly, a lower state of man who the
Wicked One had entered.
Her encounter with the Beast would have been much like shallow Hal’s vision
of Rosemary Shanahan in the movie of that same name; she was fat in reality but
beautiful to shallow Hal whose mind played tricks on him. That was the much
like the situation Adam’s woman was in with her encounters with the Beast,
seeing only the shining star in it.
(To see the origin of the Beast, refer to my book, Creeping Things of
the Bible wherein the creeping thing would have been the genetic origin of
human flesh.)
Lucifer would have provided the spirit, and the beast of the field,
the flesh of Cain, and since then all humans have the spirit of Cain in
them from the Wicked One (1 John 3:12).
We are not “mankind” in the manner of Adam but common mortal men (Ish of
Isha, the woman, and the Beast). We are Eve’s kind and she and Satan are
our genetic “mother” (Gen 3:20) and “father” after she was transfigured with
sin into a brutish being with flesh and disgusting desires (Gen 4:1).
Since original sin, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God”
(Rom 3:23). Human beings are no longer glorious creatures like God without
organic flesh but with organic flesh that will wither and die like any beast of
the field.
The only correction for that state of existence is rebirth (John 3:7) to be
made glorious in the end like Adam’s kind before sin entered them.
Now stand in front of your mirror. Ask yourselves, “Who am I? Are you
glorious or more brutish like? I see the beast in me more often that the power
of God to be honest. I am still biologically a beast but spiritually a sanctified
one protected in a state of safety until I too will be glorified with incorruptible
flesh (1 Cor 15:52).
As with any beast, I can be incarcerated for the safety of others because I
can be a danger to them; or it could be for my own safety from perilous things
that I might encounter.
Because I have Christ in me (sanctification) my abode is in Christ. The Law
would not make a prison but a sanctuary from wild beasts. That Christ is in me is
Christ-consciousness of the “ten prescriptions” for eternal life. They would be
suggestions for us “animals” to serve our Maker, rather than restrictions for
which we look for ways around them.
Jews, for instance, in Palm Beach, Florida tried to enact legislation to
install a wire around the city to increase their boundary on the Sabbath. They
would rather enlarge their wall of protection than let Jesus remove their
spiritual walls and make them free.
Now recall the previous passage about freedom (John 8:32-34). Jesus makes us
free from the Law by becoming sin for us. Paul wrote about God, “He has made Him
(Jesus) to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the
righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor 5:21).
How did God, who never sinned, become sin? He put on human flesh like a
beast. He could sin but overcame the world (John 15:33) by not sinning, thus demonstrating
that we need not sin and do things the other animals of the world do.
From where does the idea that the world is a prison come?
The
Lord God sent him (Adam) forth from the Garden of Eden, to till the ground from
whence he was taken; so He drove out the man; and He placed at the east of the Garden
of Eden Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way
of the Tree of Life. (Gen
3:23-24)
The Garden of Eden, means “pleasantries,” and “east” before time.
Adam and Eve would have been removed from Paradise within both heaven and earth,
to planet Earth alone where they were no longer conscience of God and His
Presence but material things alone. They would become conscious of both time
and matter but no longer privy to heaven and the things therein. Their milieu thereafter
was material things and the tribulations of the world, many of which are
expressed in Genesis chapter three which describe prison conditions
where they would suddenly find themselves.
They would be encaged like the animals they were on planet Earth, and ages
later, Australia became a similar prison for English convicts.
In the same manner, some considered Australia a “Heaven” and in the Outback,
others a “Hell.”
If you have not been born again, your existence here is more a prison from
which Christ can make you free, all the while leaving the world intact (for the
time being.).
Adam and Eve were given coats of skins from God for their new habitation.
He put onto them the Power of God in whom they believed; their spirit had been
willing but their flesh weak, so God provided for them a barrier from the
things of the world — coats of skin (Gen 3:21) from the Power of God.
He put onto them the whole armor of God, not for prison suits but for their
safety in a cruel world that would be a prison to Cain — the free-range beast —
who could go the world over while he was still in a prison of his own making.
God marked that one “prisoner” like Jews would be in WWII where they were free-range
prisoners… at least for a time.
The world to which sinful Eve’s kind would go would be here on planet Earth
where the walls are not of brick or stone but the human conscience that God may
have given them as coats of skin.
If you are not a disciple of Christ, you are not free, whatever you may
think. You may be in prison to be executed at the end of you serving time, but
if marked by God, this prison is more a sanctuary for safety until you
are saved after enduring your time on good behavior and righteous
thinking (Mat 10:22).
Some may think themselves in Paradise in this age, but those conscious of
God understand it is merely a prison with great tribulations that can only end
with death and eternal life in another realm.
Because there are no walls, it seems not to be a prison, but it is. Christians
live in a state of sanctification until they are saved in the end.
Sanctification is not a hedge at all but a state of safety
under the Power of God — encased in His whole armor from the aspects of the
world.
Strangely, you may remain captured all your life because of your lack of consciousness
of God.
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